Inside Higher Ed’s headline, not ours 😉
But yes, it’s still ED or bust at many top US colleges, and those spots are getting even harder to come by. As the ED application numbers rise, a change in strategy is often needed. Our prediction:
“In” in 2023 –> match schools in ED.
“Out” in 2023 –> overreaching in ED (or SCEA or REA!).
Find an interesting article on the use of early decision here!
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Everyone should read the Georgia Tech admissions blog.
Read rick Clark’s recent post here. For juniors, this section for seniors is important. Read it now, and read it again this summer when you finalize your college list.
Be reminded that your chances of being admitted to a school with an admit rate below 20% do not go up 20% by applying to 20% more of those schools. Trade out “dream school” for IRL colleges. Apply to a group of schools (you figure out the number but generally more than 2 and less than 10) where you know you will be thrilled to get in and excited to go.*
*and we might add: where you can actually get in! Thanks always, Georgia Tech, for keeping it real!
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UGA continued to serve up a competitive EA round, especially for out-of-staters. Look for other public flagships to do the same again this year (we’re looking at you UF, UNC, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and of course the more selective UCs).
The UGA admissions blog is a must-follow, but if you want to make even more sense out of data they shared, head to Edison Prep’s website.
It is crucial for students to maintain excellent grades in rigorous classes, raise their GPA if possible, and consider the impact of test scores; at schools like UGA, and we would argue MANY other schools—even those that are test-optional—they matter.
Academic rigor continues to be far more important than extracurricular activities, with the average EA applicant (not admitted student!) having 9+ AP/IB classes by graduation.
Senior Associate Director of UGA Admissions David Graves posted a quote on the UGA Blog that we still sincerely wish were included at the top of every UGA mailer: “When parents or students say that their schedule is already so busy with other activities that it is tough to handle challenging courses…instead of dropping rigorous courses, maybe an activity could be dropped.” We tell students daily that no one has ever been ever rejected for having too low of a “play practice score,” but millions of applications are rejected each year for low GPA, low rigor, and/or low SAT/ACT scores. Activities matter if and once your core academic metrics are in the right ballpark.
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Let’s say you were a star student at an Illinois high school last year. You want to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, so you check out the Princeton Review’s guide. You find out that Illinois is competitive in admissions, but how competitive?
The answer actually depends on what you want to study.
To reach its class of 7,963 first-year students this fall, the university started with 63,258 applicants. It admitted 28,355 of them. That’s a competitive class to be sure, admitting 45 percent of those who applied.
But let’s say you want to study computer science, which was the intended major of 16 percent of the applicants. Of the 10,214 applicants, the university admitted only 7 percent of them.
Or let’s say you wanted to study business, which was the first choice of more than 10 percent of all applicants. Of the 6,771 applicants, 28 percent were admitted.
Major matters, and if a major is competitive, you need to be competitive for it. You need to take the right classes and have a resume that points toward that major. You’ll want to read more here!
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What does it take to get admitted to a state university in Florida?
Join JRA Associates for a webinar at 7:00 PM Eastern on September 7, 2022.
This session will specifically address Florida’s State University System (SUS). You can sign up here. Here’s what you’ll learn:
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The team at College Kickstart reviewed the recently released Fall 2022 University of California admissions data and has summarized it on their blog.
California residents and students applying from out of state should review this information. Follow College Kickstart for admissions insights and trends!
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Does it matter whether Princeton was ranked the number one or number three university in the country this year? Do you really care if Stanford’s overall admit rate was 3.95% or 2.16%? What does it mean to you if the University of Pennsylvania denied 94.32% or 95.74% of all applicants?
News flash: these institutions are uber selective. You could be the most qualified student in the country with perfect grades and test scores, an exceptionally written college essay, glowing recommendations, and impactful community involvement, and still be turned down by the most selective colleges.
The reality is, you are rolling the dice when applying to these schools. They could select a full class of new students, throw it out, take the runners up, and guess what…the overall profile of the accepted class would look nearly identical. In fact, schools with low single-digit admit rates could do this many times over. This you cannot control. What you can control is how YOU approach the college search and application experience, and the quality and usefulness of the data you seek.
The class of 2022 is resilient. They’ve weathered a pandemic, the confusion of test-optional, okay at best online schooling—the list goes on.
Great read in Charter by S. Mitra Kalita. “Bottom line: You’re going to be fine. Let’s focus on the next fours years, not the last!”
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