Is College Admissions The Next Big Sport?
Welcome to the college admissions race.
If you are applying to college, you are familiar with this competition. Students are applying to more colleges than ever before, with many students now applying to over 20 colleges.
As a result, the competition at the country’s top colleges is growing, and they are becoming increasingly selective every year. This year, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern, Cornell and other top colleges reported record-low acceptance rates.
However, what many students and families do not realize is that applying to a large list of colleges may actually reduce a student’s likeliness of acceptance to all the colleges.
How so? Top colleges, especially those among the Ivy League, are looking for high-quality applications with few mistakes. With each application taking an extensive amount of time to complete, especially to write creative, captivating application essays, students simply cannot submit perfect applications to dozens of colleges (while also performing well in school and engaging in extracurriculars). Thus, many of these students are shocked when they receive few—if any—acceptance letters in the spring.
Students should focus solely on their personal fit and future happiness at the colleges on their list—not comparing scorecards with other students.
The Ivy Dean emphasize’s the importance of college fit and applying to a strong list of colleges that are a strategic match to the student’s academic profile, interests, and personality.
With over 40 years of college admissions experience, my students apply only to colleges where they are most likely to get accepted (many of which would otherwise be too far out of reach without my powerful Application Positioning™ strategy). The Ivy Dean’s students both submit higher quality applications and save a significant amount of time throughout the process.
To read more information about this recent trend in college admissions, you may read the full article on the Huffington Post here.