According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a surge of college applications this year, which led to record low acceptance rates at many colleges, including the majority of Ivy League schools. The eight Ivy League schools, as well as some other highly selective schools, sent out acceptance notifications a…
Ivy Leagues Release Early-Acceptance Rates
Many students who applied for early decision/action to Ivy League schools can stop checking their mail for their acceptance letters. Nearly every Ivy League university has reported the number of applicants who were accepted early this year, according to a Business Insider article. Harvard had the lowest acceptance rate, with just 14.5% of applicants receiving…
Tips for Completing Your Application to Columbia University
This post about the Columbia supplement to the Common Application is part of a series of posts written to help you complete the 2012 Common Application supplement for Ivy League schools. When I visited Columbia University, it was clear to me that the undergraduate college takes distinct pride in two things: the 100-year-old Core Curriculum…
Tips for Completing the Cornell Supplement to the Common Application
Cornell University has the largest undergraduate population in the Ivy League, and it’s supplement is also one of the most complex. Undergraduate students at Cornell are admitted into one of seven schools: College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Art, Architecture and Planning, College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, the School…
Tips for Completing your Cornell Supplement to the Common Application
This post about the Cornell supplement to the Common Application is part of a series of posts written to help you complete the 2012 Common Application supplement for Ivy League schools. A friend of mine has a son who studying at Cornell. When I look at the Cornell supplement, it isn’t hard to picture…
Summarizing Your Activities on the Common Application
This post about summarizing your activities on the Common Application is part of a series of posts written to help you complete the 2012 Common Application supplement for Ivy League schools. You’ll find the activities chart just above the essay questions on the Common Application. It looks straightforward, and in some ways, it is. …
How Personal is Too Personal?
The personal statement is a terrific opportunity to share with admissions committees an interesting and unique aspect of your life. However, many applicants are understandably frightened of having to face the “camera” and speak personally about their lives while also trying to impress. So, how much should you tell, and how much is too much?…
College Applications Continue to Rise…
…which means competition for colleges is also on the rise. Ivy League schools in particular are receiving record numbers of applications, some with double-digit percentage increases for the second year in a row. According to a Philly.com article, “Competition for colleges increasing as applications rise,” 1.5 million students apply to four-year colleges every year. This…
Ivy League Schools Experience Application Increases
While top Ivy universities Columbia and Harvard saw a 4% and a 5% rise in applications (respectively) this past year, other universities in this category saw a higher than 15% jump in the number of applicants applying to their undergraduate programs. University of Pennsylvania experienced a 17% increase, Brown came in at 20%, and Princeton…
Admissions Uber-value: Leadership
I just finished reading The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton by Jerome Karabel. This book’s 557 pages plus 100+pages of footnotes tells the story of admissions at these elite institutions since the beginning of the 20th century, when frankly they were more like male finishing schools than…
HEC Tops in Marketing Outside US Per Princeton Review
Reuters reports: HEC in France has been voted the top business school outside the USA for the teaching of marketing by over 19,000 business school students in the latest survey by The Princeton Review. The school was one of only two non-US schools to feature in the complete ranking, which also covered subjects such as…
Ivy League Edge?
The Wall St. Journal reports on a survey conducted by Payscale.com showing that the college one attends “can make a big difference in starting pay, and that difference is largely sustained into midcareer.” Personally, I would like to see this study conducted so that it removes the impact of SAT and high school GPA. Are…
College Admissions Grab Bag
Let’s see what’s interesting in college admissions these days: Perfect Phrases for College Application Essays McGraw Hill recently published Accepted editor Sheila Bender’s most recent book, Perfect Phrases for College Application Essays. Although not yet available at Accepted, it is available from Amazon and other bookstores. Don’t let the fool you. This book is not…
Who Needs Harvard?
Time Magazine argues, "No one," or at least not most of those high school students (and their parents) dying to get it. Time‘s "Who Needs Harvard" should provoke thought and investigation among the thousands clamoring for Ivy League or "brand" in admissions. Unlike most media articles, it focuses not on the small percentage of hyper-competitive…
