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Do Your Research
We can’t tell you how many times kids report to us that they want to go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, etc… but when we ask them why, they have no good reason. Colleges want to know WHY you are applying — are you impressed by their world-famous chemistry program? The well-known English department? The art history department with a specialty in Renaissance art? Often times students with particular interests do themselves a great disservice by not bothering to check if the schools on their list match their own academic interest. For example, if you like ancient languages you’d want to apply to a school that at least offered classes in Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Sanskrit and the like. [Read more]
Is the Interview Obsolete?
Dartmouth announced last year that it would no longer offer on-campus interviews. Now Yale is the only Ivy that actually does an official evaluative on campus interview! These interviews are conducted by current Yale students at the admissions office. Harvard offers on campus interviews, but they are not added to a student’s file. Neither Stanford nor MIT offers on campus interviews. Middlebury does offer on campus interviews from June – November, but stresses that they are not evaluative in nature. Columbia and Penn allow legacies (and they count parents or grandparents as legacies in this sense) to interview on campus, but not the rest of the crowd. Keep in mind that just about all of these schools do offer alumni interviews once the student applies. [Read more]
Take Your Time Making a Decision
Some of our students (even those admitted early action) are starting to receive likely letters and regular letters will be coming in the next two weeks. Students often feel pressure to decide immediately where they will spend the next four years, but such a hasty commitment can often be a mistake. [Read more]
Do Extras Matter?
Extracurricular activities DO matter—but only when academics are strong. On the 1-9 academic scale, if you’re only a 1-4, that means that your academics are low enough that extracurriculars won’t make up for them, at least at very competitive schools. On the other hand, if you’re an academic 8-9, they won’t care as much about extras since the academic are so strong. It’s for the middle range of students that extracurriculars and leadership really matter. Just remember, academics are always 75% or more of the decision; once you’re in the range, THEN extras come into play. To say it another way, incredible extras won’t make up for mediocre performance in the classroom. [Read more]
What to Do if an Interview Goes Awry
Students often ask what they can do if their alumni interview was horrible. How could an interview be horrible? Every once in a while, alumni interviewers (who often have zero training in how to interview) use their interview to reminisce about the “good old days” when they were college students and don’t give you a chance to talk about yourself at all. Though sometimes other problems occur, this is the most prevalent problem we’ve heard from students regarding alumni who felt the need to monopolize the time during an interview. They might even show how smart they are by grilling you unfairly or asking oddball questions. [Read more]
Faceboook and College Admissions
A study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that 25 percent of college admissions offices admit to using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN to research potential students and that 20 percent look for the same information on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The reality is that the percentages must be even higher because colleges and universities have little incentive to overstate their reliance on these digital dirt web searches, but they have a significant incentive to understate their use due to a fear of negative public relations and likely backlash from many Gen Y candidates who view information that they post to MySpace and some of the other social networking sites as somehow being private even though it is accessible through a quick Google search.
[Read more]
Likely Letters
As you know by now, college admissions is not transparent. Likely letters, for instance, are a bit on the gray side. Many top colleges will send out a “likely” letter in February—often to recruited athletes, minority applicants, super academic stars and other special cases—saying that although they can’t tell you officially, it is “likely” that you will be accepted in April. YES, that IS the same as an acceptance letter as long as your grades don’t drop or anything. Some things to keep in mind though about likely letters:
Waiting for an Interview!
What should you do if you have applied to a college and have not been contacted for an alumni interview? First, a word about alumni interviews: some schools have evaluative interviews (which means they “count”) while some schools have “informational” ones which do NOT count. Be sure to find out which type of interview you have for each school. Remember, once the admissions office receives your application, they create a regional list of names and pass them on to local alumni networks who then try to divide things up among themselves.
Private versus Public High School
Many parents ask us if for college admissions purposes it’s better to attend a well known private school versus a public school. The key to this question is, “for college admissions purposes.” The truth is, parents should not make ANY decisions based purely on college admissions odds – that’s the wrong way to address a crucial choice that involves far more variables than simply college admissions. One valid reason to send your son or daughter to private school is if you want him or her to have smaller classes, specific classes not offered at your particular public school, a different social environment, athletic opportunities not found at your local school, etc. The worst reason to send a student is in the vain hope of bettering college admissions odds. Most of the Ivies admit roughly 25% of their populations from private schools and roughly 65-70% from public (the rest from parochial or home-schooled), but that merely reflects the fact that more kids from publ ic school apply — again, the acceptance rates are usually about equal.
What To Do If You Were Deferred
Around the first week of March, admissions offices at top colleges sort through all their deferred candidates in order to see how many they will ultimately admit. Much will depend upon the strength of their applicant pool for regular admission — was it higher than usual? Were applications up? Was there a strong geographic spread? In other words, what does the statistical makeup of the class look like, and where might it fall short? For example, if there were a shortage of female apps, the office might accept a higher percentage of females from the deferred pool who showed a strong interest.
Ivy League Admissions Statistics
Our exclusive data on the Class of 2014 Ivy League Admissions statistics, now updated for Early Action and Early Admissions for the class entering 2010. See exactly how many students applied and how many were accepted to different schools.
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