5 Key Takeaways From the 2021 UC Admissions Results
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Admissions News You Might Have Missed: The COVID Edition (& a Shot at 20K!)
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Lucky for you, there’s data on this sort of stuff. And even luckier— I’ve sorted through it all so you don’t have to! Colleges are recognizing the extraordinary stress you’re under, and are doing nearly everything they can to make the 2020-2021 admissions cycle as rewarding and memorable as it could be. From higher admissions rates to making the SAT/ACT optional, you gotta give them credit.
Read MoreWoah, Now Harvard’s Ditched the SAT/ACT
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For the first time ever, most Ivies are waiving their standardized testing admissions requirement. Ivy leagues set an example for other colleges in America, and right now Princeton is the only one still asking for standardized test scores according to CNN. In fact, according to The New York Times, all schools in the University of California system are planning on being entirely test-free in the next four years. Even super-selective schools like Amherst and Tufts are foregoing standardized testing.
Read More9 Shocking Things We Learned From The Hollywood Cheating Admissions Scandal
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Admissions Officers Spend 8 Minutes On Your Application
An ever-increasing number of applications have swamped admissions offices in recent years, resulting in faster reading of files. Whereas once readers could spend 16 to 20 minutes on a given applicant, the average is now around eight minutes. [The Atlantic]
Read MoreHIDE THAT FINSTA & More Admissions News You Should Know
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TIME TO SCRUB YOUR INSTA...."The majority of US admissions officers and prospective students think that it is “fair game” for universities to visit applicants’ social media profiles when deciding who to admit to their institution, according to two recent studies. A survey of 388 US admissions officers found that 68 per cent thought that they could visit sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to help them decide who to offer a university place to, despite the fact that less than a third (29 per cent) said that they actually engaged in the practice, a decline from 35 per cent since last year." [Times Higher Education]
Read More😩😩😩 Class of 2021 Sets New Admissions Records
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Applications have skyrocketed to Ivy League schools. Cornell got 47K+ apps and accepted only 12.5% (a record low). UPenn had 40K+ apps and admitted only 9.15%—the lowest in history. Brown had 32K+ apps and accepted a record low of 8.3%. Stanford got 44+ apps and admitted just 4.65% of that application pool, another historical lowest rate.
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DROP. EVERYTHING. New Common App Essay Prompts for 2017-2018
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🚨 🚨 🚨 There are two new Common App Essay Prompts for 2017-18: one is literally a blank slate, reinforcing my advice to ignore them altogether when writing yours.
Describe a topic, idea or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more? [New]
Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you’ve already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.
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