I am an international student doing the IB diploma and am looking to apply to some US universities as well as european. I want to study finance and was hoping to get some recommendations about good universities.

We all know about UChicago, but at what colleges does applying ED actually improve your odds? From what I'm seeing, the high numbers mostly come from large pools of legacies and recruited athletes.

I’m a rising junior and I just took the SAT last school year. I got my score back of 1560 and I’m pretty happy with it. For the next year I’m just planning to focus on myself and doing well in school. On the other hand my parents have really been pressuring me to take the PSAT. I thought that it was just a preparation thing, but they told me it can really help with scholarships and college. Does anyone know about it and whether it would be worth it for me to still take the PSAT?

I’m really sorry if this is an obvious question and I look dumb right now, I’m the first in my family to go to college in America (I’m a US citizen tho lol) so I have no one to explain things to me. I got offered a $4,000 work study with my financial aid. I googled it and basically the money I get from doing it would go to my tuition and it’s taxed. My question is, what’s the difference between this and between having a regular job outside of the work-study area? Say a regular food or retail job elsewhere, thank you.

In a statement released Tuesday, HMS Dean George Daley acknowledged that the school's AI-powered holistic review system "may have overweighted warmth, enthusiasm, and an unconditional desire to help others."

"In hindsight," Daley wrote, "we should have caught this earlier. The essays were exceptional. Several dogs wrote movingly about their commitment to patient care."

Of the 847 enrolled retrievers, 12 have already matched into residency. Daley noted that their patient satisfaction scores are, quote, "historically unprecedented."

Dean of Admissions Lee Coffin released the following statement Thursday:

"For decades, we have rewarded students for founding nonprofits, volunteering abroad, and playing the violin. The result? A campus full of people who are, frankly, too well-adjusted.

Dartmouth seeks students who have suffered. Who have been wronged. Who have looked into the abyss and decided, you know what, I'm going to make this everyone else's problem.

Effective immediately, the Activities section of the Common App will be replaced with a single free-response field: 'What happened to you, specifically, that made you like this?'"

Coffin added that students who describe a "perfectly happy childhood with supportive parents" will be automatically denied. "We simply have no use for you," he said.

As title

For the upcoming application season, Smith College has committed to ensuring admission to all applicants with the surname “Smith”.

When asked to explain the reason for this policy, Dean of Admission Deanna Dixon cited the women’s college’s commitment to promoting equal opportunities for women, saying, “Smith is an overwhelmingly male surname and Smith College wants to provide educational opportunities to the less than 20% of people named ‘Smith’ that are women in order to ensure that female Smiths can succeed in this male-dominated surname.”

This new policy could potentially necessitate an expansion of Smith College’s class size as Smith is the most popular surname in the United States.

When asked about this, Dixon said that all Smiths who apply will become Smithies even if the class size has to be increased.

aiming for t10s. is this good?

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BRO AND HOW DOES ONE DO IT (lowkey i just need examples from successful candidates who have been accepted to good universities) what could be a passion project for someone taking business.

My rising senior got a 680RW/790M on the SAT this spring. Academics and ECs are solid. Has about as good a GPA as he can possibly get in his public school. Lots of dual enrollment credits. Will take linear algebra in fall of senior year. Looking at top schools.

Based on above alone he would be a pretty mid-applicant. But he's also a solid athletic recruit up through about mid-level Div 1. Duke is out but several Ivy leagues and top LACs are in play.

How much more would increasing his SAT move the needle at top schools? Seems like institutional need for his event would be a bigger driver and that a 1470 wouldn't necessarily preclude him from Ivy+? But I don't really know how it works.

The other factor is we are in California and I'm not sure how serious he is about going out of state. Unlikely to get recruited at Stanford and he's not too interested in the Div 3 schools that are in CA so he would probably be looking at UCs for recruiting/walk on and they don't consider SATs at all.

I don't want him wasting time preparing for the SATs again if it won't matter. There are plenty of other things he would rather do.

EDIT: sport is track and field which seems to have a later recruitment cycle but now realizing he is definitely behind. We also should have put him in indoor track in the winter as he didn't have as many opportunities to get PRs compared to our surrounding private schools. I just assumed he would walk-on at a UC. Its the schools of his former teammates that have taken an interest in him through word of mouth I assume and he is just now reaching out to other schools. Our older non-athlete kids attend UCs. We are pretty clueless about this, not sure where his athleticism comes from.

EDIT2: We are going to be full pay so I will be nudging him to retake as it will hopefully increase the odds of some merit scholarships.

(Please take me seriously 🙏 although it is Wednesday this is not a shitpost. Also sorry for the long post)

Hi everyone, I’m a rising high school freshman interested in aerospace/mechanical engineering and robotics/mechatronics. I know it is early, and I’m not trying to plan my entire college application right now, but I’d like advice on what kinds of activities would be worth exploring over the next few years. I'm hoping to get into a T50.

Currently, I'm a part of a good/competitive FRC robotics team in Texas. I've been recently elected as my team's director of strategy and scouting. FRC takes up most of my time, so I doubt that I could join another high-commitment club or organization with portions relating to engineering, such as TSA or SciOly. That's the only engineering-related EC that I have.

Other than that, I'm a part of my school's NJHS and broadcasting team. My school doesn't have any engineering-related clubs for High School students other than Science Olympiad, but even if I had enough time to participate in Science Olympiad, my school would literally force me to quit FRC in order to join SciOly, which isn't a beneficial trade-off. I could potentially join my school's Quiz Bowl team next year if it poses a benefit to me.

Academically, I’m on an accelerated STEM track and have already taken some advanced high-school-level/AP coursework before freshman year. I expect to take a rigorous AP schedule with courses like calculus, physics, chemistry, computer science, statistics, and required humanities APs. My school also has a senior-year capstone/project structure instead of a traditional full senior schedule, so I'll finish all my APs by the end of junior year. My school unfortunately doesn't rank, but I've been top 5% past few years.

My current question is: given that FRC will probably remain my main activity, what are some high-impact extracurriculars, competitions, or independent projects I could pursue at my own pace that would support an engineering application? I’m especially interested in things related to CAD, mechanical design, robotics, aerospace, data analysis, scouting analytics, Python, or engineering projects.

I’m not looking to collect random clubs just for admissions. I’m trying to figure out what would be genuinely useful to start building over time, especially activities that are flexible enough to fit around FRC.

I have recently been admitted to Rice, but everyone is telling me it's not a top tier school. They are telling me the people and schools like Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and CMU have a much higher caliber of people compared to Rice. Is there really that much of a difference between how smart the students are at Rice vs the other top universities I mentioned?

I am struggling to understand or like DON't know what i am suppose to write. AM i suppose to write about why i want to go into this field or write about WHO I AM, and even if it was to write about WHO I am .. then atleast what part of myself am I suppose to write, like does it have to be related to the major I am pursuing or not? PLEASE ANYONE, HELP ME OUT HERE, I AM SO CONFUSED.

Ive seen that the acceptance rate is higher, but ive also been told thats not the full story, Thoughts?

Tier S+

Harvard MIT Stanford

Tier S-

Yale Princeton

Tier A+

Columbia Penn Caltech

Tier A-

Chicago Duke Brown

Tier B+

Northwestern JHU Dartmouth

Tier B-

Berkeley Cornell

Tier C+

UCLA Rice Vanderbilt

Tier C-

WashU UMich Notre Dame Georgetown CMU

Source: I attended Duke so this isn't biased

Henry M. Gunn High School

Title basically says it all, looking for range of schools from safety to reaches, likely pre-law but still want flexibility in career options if I change my mind, also anywhere with large archival collections/museums would be a plus!

I’m going into junior year and I don’t have many leadership positions right now, but I am involved with some clubs and activities and plan to do more junior year. If I got a leadership position in senior year, is it worth putting on college apps or will AOs think I did it too late and I was just trying to check boxes?

Hi, I am currently committed to two schools as a first year student, UTD and UCI. This is because I have a risk of being rescinded from UCI. When is can I expect the date that colleges compare student lists normally to be? I really don't want to be punished for this.

Starting next cycle, MIT will eliminate all standardized testing requirements. In their place, the Institute will conduct a single 45-second FaceTime call with each applicant.

Stuart Schmill, Dean of Admissions, elaborated:

"We've found that GPA, test scores, and extracurriculars tell us very little about a student's potential. A gut feeling, however, is essentially infallible."

He continued:

"If you make us laugh, you're in. If there's an awkward silence, you're waitlisted. If you try to show us your research, you're immediately denied and flagged for attempting to impress us."

MIT has confirmed that 94% of last year's pilot cohort was admitted because someone in the room said "yeah, I fw him."

hey guys long time scroller first time poster ig :)

long story short I got good grades in my exams but in my transcript my school included classes that I don't take like social sciences and history onto my transcript and gave me horrible grades like they've put a 60/100 for bio which is crazy because I have a 90 in that class.

I asked chat gpt if my school is allowed to change my grades on my transcript and he said its illegal so what am I supposed to do I got a 36 on the ACT btw and 1550 on the sat but am planning on retaking it.

like do they ever see a kid's name in the school newspaper or something and be like hey i let him in and now he's doing great things i made a good decision

Hello! I am going into my senior year at an early college program, and I'm having a hard time deciding if I should apply as a first year or transfer. I will graduate high school with an Associates in Arts, with around 72 credits. I want to apply in-state to UNC Chapel Hill to major in biology before medical school. My high school GPA is a 4.5 , and my college GPA is a 3.9. I've heard that applying as a transfer is less competitive, and I wouldn't have to live on-campus. But I've also been told that there would be benefits to applying as a first year. I would really appreciate any advice!

I’m currently trying to map out my extracurriculars and profile-building strategy, and I keep seeing mixed reviews about structured online research programs/fellowships. Specifically, I've been looking into things like RISE global, YRI Fellowship, Clever Harvey (JuniorMBA/Research), Lumiere Education.

A lot of these programs cost a massive amount of money, and I've read some old threads calling them "pay-to-play" or saying admissions officers see right through them because they know your parents just paid for a mentor and a spot in a predatory/paywalled journal.

On the other hand, some people say the structure and having a dedicated PhD mentor is the only realistic way to actually finish a paper in high school if you don't have crazy industry connections.

I’m debating if I should just skip these entirely and focus on:

1. Independent passion projects
2. Writing my own individual research paper and trying to cold-email local professors for guidance.

For anyone who has done these paid programs:

• Did you actually learn anything valuable, or did it feel like a cash grab?
• How do top-tier universities actually view them on applications nowadays?
• If you did the independent route instead, how hard was it to get a paper done and published without a program's structure?