This is one of the more commonly known facts about college admission offices. Admission officers review your application for a fraction of the time you spend writing it. At the point an admission officer receives your file, everything is organized (and sometimes summarized). This only barely remedies the time crunch admission officers face.
In fact, facing […]

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One of the most important things to keep in mind when pitching yourself is, ‘who are you pitching yourself to‘? Who are you trying to get to buy? Most students imagine the mysterious folks working in admissions are clever and insightful intellectuals who have studied at elite institutions. This is often not the case. In […]

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The most common source of information is the High School Profile. Usually sent out by guidance offices, this form provides basic facts for admission offices. It will list information such as class size, course offerings, ranking procedures, and test scores. If the school does not rank students, the High School Profile may give distributions […]

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For students coming from within the United States, Ivy League admission offices are need-blind. That means they do not look at how much money you will need in order to attend when deciding on your application. This policy, until recently, did not extend to students coming from abroad. Candidacy, like at non-Ivy League schools, was […]

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Some schools have particular subject areas in which they like to see applicants excel. MIT, for example, puts particular emphasis on math and science. Ivy League universities, on the other hand, have no particular subjects they favor. In general, they want students to have four years in each of the five academic solids (English, Science, […]

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What exactly do admission offices want from your AP scores? Are they looking for the fact you took a lot of AP exams, or for a couple of good scores (quantity vs. quality)? It turns out that admission offices look for the fact students made the effort to take the exam for the AP classes […]

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Which application should you fill out when a college offers both the Common Application and their own? Well, there isn’t complete unanimity on this point, but my suggestion is to go with the Common App. When the Common App was first used, admission officers were very frustrated with the fact the format was different than […]

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Historically, college admission offices have been looking for “well-rounded” applicants. These are students who do well academically in the humanities and sciences, and take a variety of extracurriculars (e.g. football captain, German club president, and vice-president of the student class).
Over time, the concept of a well-rounded applicant has shifted to the concept of a well-rounded […]

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