I feel hopeless.

AroundHere
Fri, 26 May 2017 23:38:07 +0000

The top 18 schools reject over 300,000 applicants every year and enroll only about 18,000 freshmen. Nobody’s odds are very good. If trends continue, by the time you apply they’ll be rejecting even more.

When you are rejected, you’ll never know if it was that B- in 9th grade or a typo on your essay or if 200 other kids cured cancer the same year you did and the readers found it cliché.

The best thing to do is work hard and do what you love for EC’s. By the end of 11th grade, build a college list that includes reach, target and safety schools. There is a college for everyone, but you need to build a good list and not throw all your applications into the toughest pools. That is a recipe for stress and misery.