r/ApplyingToCollege

In Elise’s harvard graduation speech, she mentions her father left Vietnam in 1993. Yet, in her Stanford essay on “what historical moment or event do you wish you could have witnessed”, she states “I’d like to see my father’s boat escape in 1975, as he watches the Vietnam coastline disappear into the horizon, leaving his family’s 20. square foot grass hut for a future of freedom..”

So which one is it?

I'm an Independent Educational Consultant and a former Admissions Counselor. I've read nearly 20,000 Common Apps in my career. Let me share something that might take some pressure off.

An admissions reader often has 15 minutes or less to go through your entire file. That includes your transcript, activity list, essays, recommendation letters, and test scores if you submit them. At many colleges and universities, it's closer to 8-12 minutes. Readers are working through hundreds of files in a season, and they're doing it thoughtfully, but they're doing it quickly.

Most of that time goes to the transcript. The core question is whether you've challenged yourself with the courses available at your school and done well in them. Grades, course rigor, and the trend over time carry the most weight. Everything else adds context to that story.

Here's what students tend to over-stress:

1. Honors and awards. A long list of honors doesn't move the needle the way people think. Readers know that opportunities vary widely from school to school. A couple of meaningful ones are plenty. A local high school award from a teacher can have more value than a national one.

2. Activity list formatting. Nobody is grading your word choice or whether you used the perfect action verb. Be clear, be honest, and show what you actually did and how much time you put in. I don't want to learn what skills you exhibited. I want to learn why this was meaningful and impactful to you.

3. The "flawless" essay. Your essay doesn't need to be a masterpiece or about something dramatic. It needs to sound like you and give the reader a sense of who you are. A small typo won't sink you. A generic essay that could have been written by anyone is the bigger risk. The best essay I ever read described the objects in the student's desk drawer.

So where should your energy go?

- Take the strongest courses you can handle, and do well in them.

- Build relationships with teachers and non-teachers (Other recommenders) who can write about you with real detail.

- Write an essay that's honest and specific to you. It should be something that only you could write.

- Build a college list based on fit, not just rankings.

Applying to college is a lot, but it's more manageable than it looks. Focus on the fundamentals, then breathe

Advice / serious post

I have no money for college and I don’t have the stats for free ivy league.

My parents are extremely strict and never let me go out, volunteer, do internships, or even have a job because they thought “focusing on school” and having good grades guaranteed a full ride or some shit. We are also low income and they didn’t save a dime for me for college. So I can’t get into ivy leagues that give free tuition for low income because my parents never let me build up stats and I have zero extracurriculars. We couldn’t even afford ap exams so I have barely any ap classes or scores. My household is also abusive so I really needed a dorm room but now I don’t know if that’s realistic at all, but I was willing to stay for four more years if I had to. But now i don’t even know if I can go to college at all.

Genuinely what do I do? I would go to community college, but my family is going to block me from actually doing anything (like extracurriculars) so that I can actually have the stats to transfer. I also wanted to be a civil engineer but my community college doesn’t offer it. I feel at a complete loss.

Hey, my biological father was a Harvard alum for his undergraduate. My parents are telling me I should write him as legacy and he agreed because he thought it was funny and worth a shot.

Does this count for legacy?

Hi, i am a junior and have 0 extracurriculars', i know that i will not be having a good shot at t20s cuz of that, but i still wanna get into a good school. My GPA is good(4.6) and test scores are great as well (1530, 35), my academics is rigorous despite the fact i moved countries after sophomore year. That's also the reason why i have 0 extracurriculars'. Aside from a 3 month internship i did, i have nothing, what would be a good starting point for me to start building on my interests and get atleast an above average ec profile.

edit: Wanna do a finance/accounting/eco major, i like all those fields and history(did a course mastery of WW2 once).

Hi, I was wondering how the DOJ's investigations into Yale's admissions might possibly change the game for admissions this cycle. Are stats going to be valued more? And will standardized testing become a more significant factor, even as it's already been fully implemented as mandatory?

I'm tired of pretending like I gaf about this. We'll live.
#bezen

I might be reading into this question too much, but is this question asking about the activity in general, or the exact activity you did? so like for example im on the swim team at my school. i hope that ill be able to swim in my free time in college, so I should answer yes right? But on the other hand, im not gonna be doing swim team in college bc its my high schools team, so I'd put no. for NHS too - Im not gonna be in NHS in college but id still be open to tutoring ppl. so how would i answer these questions?

is the question asking more if you'd like to do a similar type of activity in college? or the literal exact same activity

thank you mb if this is a dumb question

So my Mom and my stepdad (my primary household) make 230k a year. I‘m in my Junior year of High School right now and I’m starting to stress about college application. My mom has mentioned in passing that she will not help with college, but she graduated debt free because my grandma paid for her college. I don’t know how to start this conversation or what might even be reasonable to ask for? I‘ve asked in passing if she’s saved anything in a 529 account but she kind of just brushed it off so I’m not sure if she has anything saved. How do I start this conversation?

I keep on seeing comments talking about ur race will cook u or something like that. That seems kinda stupid but it seems like there are higher standards that need to be met.

is this true?

The T10 moniker generally comes with being the best and most desirable schools. Is there an agreed-upon set? I feel like the ones I consistently see are:

1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. MIT
4. Princeton
5. Caltech
6. Yale
7. Duke
8. UPenn

But that leaves two spots. Between UChicago, Columbia, Northwestern, Hopkins, and Dartmouth, who rounds it out?

Basically title. I got a 1500 on the SAT and 3.9 GPA, so not terrible stats. The problem is my ecs, I have a part-time job and some volunteering, but nothing crazy. I'm happy with my profile, and I really just want to go to a school like Stony Brook or Rutgers. I asked my parents for any suggestions on what I should be looking for in colleges and now its become a whole thing about t20s. They told me I'm likely to get rejected from jobs if I don't go to a place like Yale, Harvard, or Stanford. They're telling me to 'just apply' because I might as well, but I've told them I don't want to write a bunch of school-specific essays for insane reaches. My mom told me I should just do the common app so I didn't have to fill out multiple applications (she doesn't know how the common app works). I would just ignore it but they're literally asking me everyday now if I've started my [insert t20 here] application. My mom got me on the phone with her friend and she asked me if I've heard of MIT. Like I just don't know what to do because at this point its just making me sad that I'll be disappointing them by going to a less selective school (Mom went to Michigan, dad went to Berkeley).

I think it's close between Princeton & Stanford, personally.

I live in a very small town and have no access to college infrastructure. Yet I did some ec's but now at the time of applications my school said they can't help with anything I tried everything talking to Principal was impossible due to hierarchy. I even took my parents there but left with no outcome what should I do?

Some of these schools had waay more students than I thought

Rank	University	Total Enrollment (Grad + Undergrad)
1	UCLA	~48,000
2	UC Berkeley	~45,700
3	Columbia	~36,600
4	Cornell	~26,300
5	Penn	~25,000
6	Harvard	~24,500
7	Northwestern	~23,200
8	Johns Hopkins	~22,700
9	Stanford	~18,500
10	Duke	~17,200
11	Yale	~15,600
12	Carnegie Mellon	~14,800
13	University of Chicago	~14,700
14	WashU	~14,500
15	MIT	~11,900
16	Brown	~11,400
17	Vanderbilt	~10,700
18	Notre Dame	~9,000
19	Princeton	~8,900
20	Rice	~8,700
21	Dartmouth	~6,700
22	Caltech	~2,400

Hello everybody. I am a smart kid. I try hard in school and I value my academic environment so very much. One of the reasons I take all AP classes is so that I am in an environment with teachers and students who actually care, not just people there to cheat and pass the class. I have worked so hard in school and I plan to major in chemical engineering.

I am texas based and will likely not get into UT. My parents think that going out of state is a huge mistake, unrealistic, and not worth it. They keep telling me I should stay close to home and go somewhere like OU or arkansas. I know a girl who literally was in math models, got like a 15/100 on her OU math assesment exam and is somehow doing engineering but says that all she does is party and drink. I want to be surrounded with people of my same work ethic and drive. I want to have good professors who set me up for success. I want nothing to do with either of these schools nor any schools around texas for that matter.

my parents both went to UNT and have stayed literally 30 mins away from where they grew up. They see no reason in going anywhere far from home. They also don’t see a value in paying for a college expierence. please someone help me convince them. what do i do??

‼️PARENTS NOT PAYING FOR COLLEGE‼️

might be a dumb question but honestly I wanna hear what experiences others have to gain some ideas

for context, ap courses/exams are NOT offered at my school (only honors/standard)

the only prep courses we have outside of honors are ACT prep classes in spring of our 9th and 11th grade years

in March of junior year, i took the school-held March ACT, garnering a 27

like some of us, i fell into a habit of watching college decision videos throughout the summer instead of being productive with stuff like college essays & senior brag list

(atp i realized how cooked i was if i was going to be submitting that act score to prestigious colleges)

in July, i began my self-study for the SAT

took the august sat with a 1440 SAT
780 math, 660 ebrw

(obviously, i am not submitting the ACT score)

now i'm working on essays, any suggestions or tips for extracurriculars? :-]