We’ve spent the past few weeks breaking down each Common App essay prompt one by one, and now it’s time for the grand finale: our ultimate guide to writing the Common App essay. Sure, there are seven different prompts, but at the end of the day, every school is looking for the same thing: a story.
Getting waitlisted or deferred from your dream school is hard. We know it’s hard! You feel rejected, but it’s this weird non-rejection rejection that can leave you feeling lost and confused. And while a lot of things in college admissions are totally out of your control, there is something you can do if you’ve been waitlisted or deferred to give yourself another chance. A letter of continued interest, sometimes known as a waitlist letter or deferral letter, is one of the few, actionable things you can control when admissions decisions seem so out of your control. It’s your only chance to make a good second impression, and we help students write them every single year.
Getting waitlisted is the ultimate limbo – it’s not not a rejection, but it’s not a full-on denial, either. And depending on your circumstances, you could be feeling everything from mild disappointment to full-on panic. Don’t get yourself into a tizzy just yet, because there are things you can do to give yourself a shot at getting off the waitlist and make sure that you have a plan in place for the next year.
Hey, look, sometimes ED doesn’t work out the way we want it to, and we have to change strategies. If you just got rejected or deferred from your ED/EA option, we’d like to introduce you to our good friend, Early Decision 2. ED2 is just as binding as ED, and it signals to the school that you are serious about attending that school, and guess what? Schools like when you’re serious about them.
The trees are yellow. Leaves are falling. Temperatures are dropping. Winter is coming…
Okay, okay, depending on where you live, none of this may be true––and even if this is supposed to be true, it might not actually be (shout out to the hottest October 1st on record in NYC!). Our general point remains, however: it’s October, ED/EA deadlines are approaching rapidly, and even the once-far off regular decision January deadlines which seem like they’ll never come are coming up, too.
Based on conversations that we’ve had with our clients and email submissions from our blog readers, there seems to be some confusion about the intended use of the additional information section on the common app website. Let us start by saying that this blog post will give you guidelines as to what should and should not be included in this section, but we don’t know your life. You should use your best judgment, but before you start writing make sure you’re not just capitalizing on the extra space because you ran out of words elsewhere.
Early Action is an application option offered by some colleges and universities. Early Action (EA) application means that you apply early, typically on or around the Early Decision deadline in early November. You then receive a response of acceptance, rejection, or deferral in December. If you are deferred, your application will be considered during the Regular Decision cycle. If you are rejected, you cannot submit another application Regular Decision. You can apply EA even if you are applying Early Decision to another institution.
Carleton College is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. It is a small school, with an undergraduate enrollment of only 2,078 students, but on a big campus. The Carleton campus includes an 880-acre arboretum, so if you’re interested in the natural sciences, it may be the perfect place for you. Carleton is also a great choice if you are looking to have an active on-campus community without sacrificing opportunities to study abroad. Over 95% of Carleton students live on campus, but 75% study off-campus at some point during their time there. Off-campus programs include study abroad and domestic opportunities such as the wilderness studies program in the Grand Canyon or the public health in practice program in Washington, D.C. The acceptance rate for Carleton is about 21%.
The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university. As its name suggests, it’s in Boulder, Colorado and about 29,000 undergraduate students attend the school. It’s a big school in a city setting, and students at Boulder love the outdoors. The most popular majors are computer science, psychology, and integrative physiology. The acceptance rate is around 80%.
The University of California application is the California-specific application for the nine UC schools: UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UC Merced, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Irvine, and UC San Diego. The UC Application is similar to the Common Application, but it is an entirely different system, requires some different information, and has its own deadline: November 30th.
Washington and Lee is a liberal arts school in Lexington, VA with about 1,750 undergraduate students. Although Washington and Lee is small, the school is home to a few unique programs including Poverty studies and the Williams school, which is a business education within the framework of a liberal arts curriculum. The school also has an interesting schedule: there is a fall term, a winter term, and then a spring term. Spring term is only four weeks long, and during that time students take only one class and do a deep dive on a specific subject. The acceptance rate for the class of 2023 was 18%.
Georgetown is a Jesuit university in Washington, D.C. Georgetown College, the undergraduate college of arts and sciences at the university offers students a liberal arts education that prioritizes diversity of experience with an emphasis on the Jesuit tradition of service towards others. There are 3,400 students, who make up the majority of the 6,300 undergraduate students across the school’s undergraduate colleges.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research institute renowned for its engineering, math, and science — or STEM — programs centered on innovation. MIT is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from Harvard University and only a short distance from Boston. There are 4,602 undergraduate students and 11,574 students in total. When considering applying to MIT, it’s important to remember that it is more than a school that is big on math. They expect every student to be well-rounded, requiring a diversity of courses, and there are exceptional research and maker opportunities for those looking to put their passions into play.
Bard College is a small liberal arts school in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Only 1,900 undergraduates attend the school and the student to faculty ratio is 10:1. All freshman participate in a common curriculum, and the school is big on civic engagement. Bard is test-optional, and the acceptance rate is around 58%.
Harvey Mudd is a science and engineering college in Claremont, California. It is hyper-focused. It is for engineers, scientists, and mathematicians. If you do not want to major in one of those areas, it is literally not designed for you. However, Harvey Mudd doesn’t cut its students off from the world of humanities. The HSA program mandates that students pursue an area of interest in the humanities before graduation, and they encourage a well-rounded education through the Claremont Colleges consortium, which allows students to take classes at Pitzer, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, and Scripps while keeping Harvey Mudd as their ‘home’ institution.
The University of Rochester is a private research university located in Rochester, NY. A medium-sized school, U of Rochester has notable achievements in science (its Institute of Optics was one of the first of its kind in the nation), but it also has a flair for the creative. In fact, like Brown, the school has an open curriculum, meaning there are no required subjects. The acceptance rate last year was 29%.
Lehigh University is a small research university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. There are 5,047 undergraduate students and 1,802 graduate students, placing it on the larger side of small. Lehigh is recognized as an NGO by the United Nations and has 56 UN-related programs every year. They also have impressive academics, but they are better known for the social side of things. Lehigh has a very significant Greek-life and a lot of school spirit, which shows itself at the annual Lehigh-Lafayette football games. 53% of the class of 2022 was filled with Early Decision applicants.
Bryn Mawr College is a private liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. It is a small school with only 1,350 undergraduates. More importantly, it is a women’s college. According to their website, “Bryn Mawr College considers as eligible to apply to the undergraduate college all individuals who have identified and continue to identify as women (including cisgender and trans women), intersex individuals who do not identify as male, individuals assigned female at birth who have not taken medical or legal steps to identify as male, and individuals assigned female at birth who do not identify within the gender binary.” The acceptance rate at Bryn Mawr is 34%
Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, a small town in the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. Williams has approximately 2,000 students, and the most popular major is economics. The Williams admissions office emphasizes that they are not just looking for students with excellent grades and scores — quantitative measures that aren’t perfectly parallel with potential. They want creative, community-focused students. One of the more unique quirks at Williams is that students can borrow art from the College’s museum to hang on the walls of their dorm!
The University of Chicago is a large liberal arts undergraduate college within a powerful research university in Chicago, Illinois. There are 6,285 undergraduate students and 10,159 graduate, professional, and other students. The university is known for a rigorous Core curriculum that requires all students to gain a well-rounded liberal arts education before graduating. It also operates on a quarter system, rather than the typical semester system that most colleges use. Gaining admission to the University of Chicago is analogous to getting into an Ivy League university. The acceptance rate is a mere 7.3%.
Davidson College is a liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina, a close-knit community a thirty-minute drive north from Charlotte. There are 1,843 undergraduate students, and they boast Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, as an alumnus. Davidson is affiliated with the Presbyterian church and has stuck to a strict Honor Code system for over 100 years. The Honor Code has evolved with the times, but what hasn’t changed are the commitments to academic excellence, intellectual freedom, and moral courage.
Mount Holyoke is an all-women’s liberal arts college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is an all-women’s school, but it is not entirely female. Mount Holyoke embraces students who are cisgender women, trans, gender non-conforming, and non-binary who feel that an all-women’s educational environment is the best fit for them. The 2,208 undergraduate students are nearly equally spread among the humanities, social sciences, and STEM subject, and 89% of classes have less than 30 students. They are also test-optional, which means that they do not require you to submit SAT or ACT scores.
Georgia Tech is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. The school is majorly technology-focused and students who attend the school rave about the research opportunities on campus. About 16,000 undergraduate students attend the school, and the acceptance rate for the class of 2023 was 18.8%.