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?

super scoring

Which Colleges SuperScore the ACT and SAT?

So you invested so much energy studying for the math section of the ACT that your Reading score went down, huh? If only you could be evaluated based on your Reading score from the first time you took the ACT AND the math score you just got on your most recent ACT. You can. No worries. Super score to the rescue. As a reminder, Super Scoring is the process of taking the highest scores from multiple SAT or ACT tests. Brush up on your knowledge and familiarize yourself with what it is. It's a great offering that many colleges have during the application process that maximizes your profile. That said, Super Scoring isn't something that every college does.

What Is Super Scoring?

Your test scores are a significant and important component of your college application. Whether you take the ACT, SAT, and regardless of which SAT IIs you choose to take, you will more likely than not take your exams more than once in an effort to improve your score. Oftentimes the sections that improve during one sitting aren’t the same as the sections that improve during your next sitting.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could take one section that you scored super well in from one sitting and pair it with another strong section from a different sitting? That, our friends, is called supers coring, and some colleges are fine with it.