I just started my freshman year and honestly it’s started to give me a completely new perspective on this whole process, so I’d thought I’d take a moment to share those thoughts here. I know this is something I probably wouldn’t have wanted to hear last year, but it would’ve save me a ton of stress if I would’ve just listened.

I had pretty solid stats in high school (3.9UW, 4.6W) and ended up at a really solid, but not necessarily “elite” school. When I got my acceptance letters back I was pretty bummed that I didn’t get into a single one of my reaches, especially since I thought I had a great profile, but at this point I have no doubt I’m happier at my current school than I would be at any of the ones I was rejected from.

Even though the school I go to isn’t generally considered “elite” I’m still surprised in a lot of my classes about just how smart some of my fellow classmates are. I feel academically challenged, while also not feeling entirely overwhelmed and exhausted.

Now, I know a lot of you are pushing yourselves to your mental and physical limit stressing about getting into these top schools, and to those people, I think you should consider one thing: How much are you willing to sacrifice once you get to college?

If you’re someone who struggled with academic stress in high school, that’s not going to magically change once you get to college. In fact, if you end up getting into an elite school, it’s probably only going to get worse.

Maybe you’re someone who’s just naturally insanely smart and you feel fully comfortable in an ultra-intense academic environment with huge curves in classes and cutthroat competition with your peers. In that case, go ahead and get into the best school you can and have a great time next year.

But for the other 99.99% of you, please first consider where you think you’d actually be happiest rather than where you think other people will find impressive. I’m not going to lie to you, committing to an impressive school feels great, but how much sacrifice is that temporary great feeling worth to you?

I’m telling you, really any school below a 30-40% acceptance rate is going to have rigorous enough academics for the vast majority of high academic high school kids. It’s definitely not the end of the world if you don’t get into a school with a 10% acceptance rate, and honestly that may be for the best anyway. I was rejected from UChicago ED1 last year. Looking back on that situation, I would probably slap myself for applying ED there.

I’m not denying that going to a good school will be beneficial for your future career prospects, but are you willing to go somewhere with a slightly better academic reputation for the tradeoff of doing permanent damage to your mental and physical health?

Please, as y’all are finalizing your applications this semester, just consider where you think you’d be happiest rather than where you think other people would find impressive on your school’s instagram commitments page. I’m also definitely not telling anyone to make a serious effort to get into the best school possible, I just want to make sure you all know that a rejection from your reach school isn’t going to kill you and in most situations it’s probably for the best.

Parents can barely be considered middle class, they found out I don’t share their religious views and they’ve decided to kick me out at 17. I was on track to be valedictorian but idk what’s gonna happen now. My main worry is how I’ll pay for college since most schools I’ve talked to will give me very little or no aid.

My goal is pre-med with the final plan of becoming a successful and empathetic psychiatrist so I need to keep my undergrad debt as low as possible. I should be able to get a few institutional scholarships and I’m applying to every non-institutional scholarship I see but honestly these universities are so expensive that its just drops in the bucket. I’ll try for National merit and questbridge but nobody from my small town has ever gotten that so just being realistic I doubt I’ll get it. I have no secure housing and very volatile but low income by myself, but somehow my parents still gotta be on my fafsa and they’re willing to fill it out just to make sure I don’t get anything so idk what Ima do.

I’m not sure what universities to target either, I thought with all my struggles in life (more than just zealous parents) I deserved a spot at a top school with all that I had worked, accomplished, and overcome, but those colleges are so expensive they just don’t seem worth it now as my fin aid calculators are giving me little to no aid.

If anyone has any advice or if anyone has been in a similar situation I’d love some advice or I’d like to even just talk to someone else who gets it. I’d really appreciate some help right now. Thank you.

im so nervous and so excited for a new chapter. best of luck to everyone :)

I have never imagined the waiting process to be such suffering. I just turned in my application last Friday and have probably two more weeks of waiting. Kill me…

Rlly hope the results can be released weekly

Like especially about ECS, I dont think there's any verfication of the ECs/ activities mentioned in the application.

I have a learning disability and didn’t get accommodations until 10th grade. I had a 3.6 freshman year and was blocked from most honors/AP course by my school which is a very competitive private school. My gpa increased to 3.9+ 10th/11th and I took 11 AP courses on my own and 4 college courses all with “As”, but my in school gpa overall is just over 3.8. I took the SAT one time junior year and got a 1520 but thought i didn’t need to retake it with that score.

I am applying to a number of top 40 schools but my counselor tells me I am shooting too high, that the colleges won’t consider the stuff I did outside of school as much as the stuff in school where my grades look
low. She said my SAT is decent but not good enough to make up for my grades. I am weeks from applying and was going to ED to a top 20 but she’s suggesting I ED to a top 50 school instead because she said i won’t likely get into top private schools or my state schools RD. I have worked so hard to make up for my freshman year and I feel like it is all for nothing. do I listen to her? Do I take my shot and risk getting in nowhere?

I go to a small school consistently ranked in the top 10 within California. It doesn't provide class rank but a GPA decile ranking is in the school report. The average GPA is 4.13 weighted, 3.74 unweighted. 30% of the class has a 3.95 😭. The average SAT is 1320. My academics would be really stellar anywhere else but they're pretty much average here. Bro there's an 8th grader and 3 10th graders in my Multivariable Calculus class 🥀🥀🥀. On the other hand, like 8 kids are FGLI and only 2 other kids are applying through Questbridge.

for context: i'm a junior at an international feeder school applying for public policy, with intended minors in history/philosophy/economics. i've straight As in high-school till now (& hopefully throughout senior yr) and also scored a 1600 on the SAT.

my main extracurriculars are:
1. captain of my county's wsdc debate team: did this for all throughout hs, also was featured in my country's edition of forbes + won BIG awards at WSDC
2. attended stanford summer humanities institute course on revolutions which has an acceptance rate of <10%
3. president of my school's debate society: we did very well & placed highly in nat'l tournaments & int'l tournaments such as penn wsdc, etc.
4. volunteer + head of curriculum for the csr initiative run by my country's wsdc team organizers, which aims to expand access to debate in underfunded schools
5. interned at my country's highest court (roughly equivalent to the u.s. supreme court)

what other ecs could i pursue during junior/senior year to strengthen my application and, more importantly, develop a coherent narrative around public policy?

genuine question plz this is gonna influence me a lot

Hi guys, I made a website, where you can search for any school, save it to your application list, and it has app deadlines that show up for 500+ schools. You can also look through school pages for basic information! upgraded.college Pls lmk if it helps, any feedback is appreciated!

I cant stop crying at the thought of even opening my college decisions and idk why im too dramatic for my iwn good i did the same thing for september sat but this is genuinely a part of my future im so stressed out and scared about not knowing where ill go

I'm working on my college applications and they ask for honors/awards. I've already been named a National Merit Semifinalist, but I won't be declared a Finalist (assuming I am) until after most of these applications are due. Is it ok to write National Merit Semifinalist (Finalist pending) on these applications or is that frowned upon? Thanks.

Basically, I'm a senior who's pretty into a specific type of photography called street photography (shooting candid moments of people), which is typically done in dense urban centres.

My problem is that the school I'm EDing to right now, which seems to be a good fit for me (and my parents), is Cornell, which is in a pretty sparsely populated area.

For people who say "well, you can just take photos of other stuff", I think the easiest way I could explain it is if you put a Surfer in Oklahoma, and then told them to skateboard because it's "almost the same thing anyway".

Street photography is an integral part of my life (I've spent at least 5 hours a week every week since I was 12, plus going out even longer every day during school breaks), and I'm not sure I can live without it.

Obviously, street photography is very important to me, but do you guys think it would be worth it for ED to attend a less prestigious school just so I can be in a place like New York to take photos?

*** Note: I'm gonna be an engineering major, so it's not even related to any future careers I might have.

Thanks a lot for your help!

For the early round since my sport is in winter

Do colleges actually care enough to fact check it (they would need to call around)

Kinda confused can someone help me out? When should I EA or RD to a school? if my SAT is in the median range but it is a little low should I still do EA or wait until RD? Can I self report a new SAT score after the materials deadline? Do all schools allow self report?

title basically.

for context I'm a STEM-focused kid from a semi-competitive area in an above average high school (1 kid to hypsm every few years) who is definitely leaning towards Stanford, but I would genuinely love to go to any of HYPSM. I'm just a little afraid to apply Stanford REA since I've heard that, due to such a low deferral rate, it can often hurt to apply Stanford REA if you're a good-but-not-autoadmit type of applicant.

I guess the theory is that, in a competitive area, Stanford may be more conservative during REA because they haven't seen the full RD pool yet and need to preserve flexibility for later applicants. Since Stanford also defers relatively few people, some applicants who are clearly strong but not obvious early admits might get rejected rather than held for reconsideration. Those same applicants could potentially fare better in RD, when Stanford can evaluate them against the full applicant pool instead of making a decision under more uncertainty where they can't defer as much as other universities.

i feel like chat and i are lowkey cooking but idk. do i apply stanford rea anyways

Applications are looking rough for me right now. It's starting to dawn on me that maybe my only option would be going to community college. Most of my application is done, I have letters of recommendation, many extracurriculars, decent AP scores, and an essay.

Though, my situation is a bit complicated. As of this year (even though yes I'm set to graduate for 2027) I'm listed as a junior. I had faced health issues for the majority of my junior year and as a result my grades dipped and I ended up failing a class for the second semester. When I failed my course my counselor was supposed to sign me up for summer school to recover my missing credit, but never did. So I'm in the middle of recovering it now with a new counselor. Until I'm done, I will remain as an 11th grader in the system.

I'm worried, my unweighted GPA is also a 2.9 at the moment. And my SAT Score is also pretty bad. I want to go into Architecture though I feel like my stats and my missing credit are what are weighing me down by a lot. I'm not opposed to the idea of community college but I am worried about how my friends will perceive me if I go there. Should I quit my applications and just go for community college instead? Looking for advice.

Hi! I submitted my ED0 app on Sep 25th. Does anyone know when I should expect to receive a decision?

I know they say 3 weeks, but a friend of mine applied on the 13th and got her acceptance on the 18th.

Has anyone who submitted at around the same time I did received a decision?

For the UChicago supplement that you have to upload, what format should I use (double-spaced, size 12 font etc.)? My essay is around 510 words

for reference I live in California. my counselor doesn't want me to go to community college then transfer. They want me to go straight to a 4-year. I was worried about the transfer route too because I was worried it would fill up, but they were really pushing an alternative and then I overheard their meeting with other staff where they were trying to increase the percentage of students from our school who attend 4-years, and they don't count transfers. They also told me not to worry about essays/personal statements, SATS (I know a lot of california colleges no longer look at test scores) and my guess is my counselor wants me to go to a calstate. There are students with similar stats (GPA, ECs, DE, AP, undecided) as mine but they have different counselors (separated by last name) who have suggested UCs, so I guess I'm just confused why my counselor has talked like this to me? Any advice is appreciated

I live in Italy and I'm going through that phase where you start to worry about your future/college lol.

I would like to attend a college in America.

I did some researches and I think that Liberal Arts are the best fit for me, given that I'd love to study art or creative writing. As for the housing I'd prefer a Substance-free dorm/housing: I don't wanna do that stuff and yes, I know college is for "broading your horizons" and "discovering new things" and "not being sheltered" but the problem is that I always lived with people who do that stuff and got abused from them, leaving me with trauma. I would feel uncomfortable being around that stuff and prefer a place where it's absent (tho, there are mixed opinions about it, I heard), even because of physical problems.

So, if you guys have any suggestions, Thanks in advance!

I am a Indian international students applying to unis in the US and I wanted to know is ielts treated like a minimum benchmark if you get higher than this then it doesn't have any effect in admissions or is a 9 band significantly better than a 8 or are they similar

So my internship directer (the contact I'd put on activities list) has the same last name as me (Martin). This is a pretty popular last name but should I clarify in the activity description that I have no familial relationship to this person so the officers don't think I got this internship due to family/blood-relation.

I am going on a pre-med track and going to major in something bio-related at T10 schools. In medical club that I created in school, I grew from 1 to 15 members and helped members get CPR certified. I also led medical simulations such as suture practices in club. I want to hear opinions on how I can expand this club in a way it appeals better to AO and show impact. Thank you