Caroline Koppelman
Why This College Essay Question Guide and ...

Why do you want to go to school here? If there’s one prompt you are certain to write more than once, it’s this one. This prompt comes in a few different flavors, but at the end of the day, they all want to know why their school is the perfect school for you and why you’re the perfect student for them. No pressure or anything.

Caroline Koppelman
Official Common App Essay Guide 2024-2025

We’ve spent the last few weeks breaking down the Common App essay prompt by prompt, and today we’re going to give you our ultimate guide to writing the Common App essay. There might be seven different prompts, but ultimately, all schools want the same thing from their applicants’ Common App essays: a story.

Caroline Koppelman
Rejected Early Decision from Columbia 2023

Getting a rejection in the Early Decision round is definitely not easy. But the good news is, it’s really just the start, and that one rejection has no bearing on how you’re going to do with other, similarly competitive schools. The thing about Early Decision is it comes alone and it comes first. It’s sometimes easier to tolerate a rejection when it’s preceded by several acceptance letters. College admissions are extraordinarily competitive these days and the Ivies are just more competitive than any other time or place in history. That’s it. It doesn’t get harder. And Columbia in particular has just a 4% acceptance rate! So, if you’ve been rejected in the Early Decision round, don’t despair. We have some advice about how you might go forward. (And don’t worry, it’s really not that much more work!)

Caroline Koppelman
Deferred by Harvard — Now What? (2023-24)

If you’ve been deferred by Harvard, you are not alone. Harvard is notorious at this point for deferring an enormous percentage of early admission applicants. While most elite colleges with early admissions programs, like early decision and early action, only defer students they are seriously considering for the next freshman class, the statistics Harvard has released on early admission suggest that they take a very different approach.

Caroline Koppelman
Writing the “Why This College” Essay

Even though every college has slightly different supplementary application materials, you’ll likely run into a variation of one question more than any other: “Why do you want to attend this school in particular?” It’s every institution’s way of saying, Let’s cut to the chase. Why us?

humanities

Guide for Humanities Student in High School

The humanities are a big bucket of subjects that aren’t easy to put numbers on. In there you’ve got your languages, including English, your histories, your electives at some high schools like political science and ethics. In college, these categories will have lots of little sub-categories, but for now, in high school, they are still pretty big buckets. One thing that is the same as it will be in college is that grading is super subjective. There are lots of questions that you can either get right or wrong, but there are many, many more that are in the realm of “ehhhhhh.” A teacher gets to decide if you are right, wrong, more right than wrong, or more wrong than right. You could get a point, or no point, or part of a point, on a test. If your teachers love you, this will work out in your favor. If they don’t, you may feel it on your report card. That essay for English you worked super hard on could be a B+ or an A- based solely on how your teacher’s migraines are doing today.