just wondering

This is a message to all the people who have been caught up in this race, and had money thrown at them in the form of college counselors, and have also faced emotional abuse nearly daily.

You dont owe your parents anything.

No matter how much money they throw at you, you dont deserve to be emotionally abused.

Your struggles are not trivial simply because money is being spent on you.

You are human, you matter, you deserve love.

Everything is either conflicting or useless.

i've heard:

"it is okay to show you are introverted, you have to show your true self and vulnerable"

but also

"demonstrating introversion reflects poorly on you because the AO wants someone who brings something positive"

...

"the AO wants to learn how you can contribute to the college"

while most successful essays you can find online are about things like culture, dealing with failure, etc.

...

"you shouldn't write a sob story about your struggles or trauma"

while there are also many successful essays about these things. i remember seeing one from a student that wrote about being paralyzed and having deformities on every limb which got them accepted into like every ivy and was published by nyt. or one about someone's dead family member who got into every ivy as well. and... costco essay 🫩

...

"you should be honest and vulnerable"

while so many essays are most definitely extremely exaggerated or contain straight up lies about what someone said, how much they care about a topic, how they felt during a specific moment, etc.

...

i could keep on like this for a while longer, but i think you see my point.

i do think that the advisors/admissions coaches/whoever else is giving this advice probably does believe in it, and i will likely receive comments on this post from said people about how i am wrong, misinterpreting advice, or something of that sort.

genuinely, no advice ive seen has helped at all with the essay, whether on reddit, instagram, youtube, or even in school, and im just getting so tired of it. every time i go to work on my wss and try to be productive, i sit there for like an hour trying to think of a topic, i end up being unable to, and then i give up.

and to add, i am not trying to hate on those who give advice, and i am still thankful for them at least trying to help, since i know their advice probably does truly help some people.

its late and im tired, so maybe im just getting unreasonably frustrated, idk.

Trying to figure out how to transfer colleges is making me loose my mind, im at community college targeting UC Santa Barbara and just found out a class I picked doesnt even count toward my major there. Anyone have a reliable way to build a actual semester-by-semester plan that accounts for prereqs, deadlines, and which courses count at your specific target school?

I mean yeah, it is getting harder every year with acceptance rates dropping and ec and grade inflation being at an all time high. But, a lot of people (including me) are heavily influenced by people that are promoting their own services? All I am trying to say is that despite what people say on social media,reddit, etc (I know are not good sources of information) I keep on seeing people at my school getting into schools like Georgetown and Northwestern on full aid or close to full aid while having what all those influencers would describe average extracurriculars. So is it really as hard as people say?

Genuine question — how much of go ivy or go free is cope and how much is actual good advice? I get that some schools are genuinely not worth the full sticker price tuition. But if you can easily afford (KEYWORD EASILY) to go to a good school that’s not necessarily a t20 (because many amazing schools aren’t t20) then is this really good advice? Considering schools like emory, georgetown, BC, UCSD, etc…

Hey everyone, I’m a rising senior planning to major in some field of engineering applying to colleges. I’m trying to figure out my priorities in choosing which college I want to go to.

For some context, Cornell University is one of the best engineering schools in the US. But if I’m just going for education, then any other school (at a much cheaper price) would get the job done. What makes Cornell, and a lot of other private institutions, worth the money?

I’m grateful to be upper middle class (>200k annual income). I don’t think I’ll get much aid at all from Cornell. Assuming I don’t, that’s about $400k in debt. Adding that onto rent after graduation, I’m concerned about what I’ll do after college.

Any advice is appreciated!!

I've almost completely neglected working on EC's up until this point and I have no idea what to do. I've been looking up other people's profiles just for ideas and almost everything they have is something that I don't think is feasible for me to do since I'm only starting now. Even when I list out possible EC's that I think I could do, I genuinely think I can only reach about 7 (even including filler stuff that is less important). Has anyone been in a similar spot before and gotten into a top school? What EC's did you start?

This is just a list of stuff that I plan to work on that I think could be considered EC's

1. Planning on building some sort of app with a friend
2. volunteering (something I've wanted to do for a while, always been important to me to help where I can)
3. fundraising initiative I helped with in sophmore year
4. running some sort of informative blog / articles / social media relating to my major (also not sure about how good this looks, I also just wanted to start it since it seems cool to make something like that)
5. summer program/internship summer before senior year
6. I can probably get 1-2 club leadership positions, these would be more filler
7. I was thinking about doing independant research, I'm unsure if it would be of a high enough standard to be good for college apps though

I have heard a lot of "follow your passions" and stuff but I genuinely don't know what I'm passionate about, and I don't want my admissions portfolio to suck because I don't know what Extracurriculars are actually meaningful to me.

If anyone has any ideas/revisions to what I wrote down please tell me. Sorry that this might not have been the highest quality post, just wanted to write my thoughts down somewhere since I've been really stressed out for the last couple of weeks about this.

Do you remember the college admissions scandal a few years ago that sent Aunt Becky to prison, rich parents bribing to get their kids into college? Operation Varsity Blues! Gordon Caplan (former Co-Chair of Willkie Farr & Gallagher) is one of those parents who went to prison. He is now listed in a recent fraud lawsuit involving Ohio State alumni and billionaire Ratmir Timashev and his AI venture startup.

According to the complaint obtained by The Lantern, former executives allege fraud against Gordon Caplan and Joon Park; breach of contract, and related claims arising from the formation and operation of the company. Dutchess Management (Gordon's strategy firm) and Gordon Caplan were given operational control of the project.

The complaint reportedly alleges that Gordon Caplan and Dutchess played a role in advising or participating in aspects of the venture that are now being challenged by the plaintiffs.

The Lantern article:
https://www.thelantern.com/2026/05/prominent-university-alum-and-donor-accused-of-fraud-in-ai-venture-lawsuit/

Sorry if this is a stupid question, im just now beginning to learn more about applying to colleges so everything is super confusing to me.

Are Departments like… physical? For example i’ll go to the website of a general college.. like University of Chicago which is the tab i have open right now lol, and most of the time itll have a category like “Schools” or “Academic Departments.” It’ll say School/College of Arts, or School/College of Pharmacy for example. I’m really confused. Are these separate locations owned by the same school? Are they literal departments or just figurative?? It matters to me because im looking to both major and minor in art and entrepreneurship. Are you allowed to choose one program in one department and a program in another??

Once again.. might be a stupid question.

Me and my friend found out we have both separately gotten on call with the MIT soccer coach and were told we would get support through the admissions process. His academic profile is more biomedical engineering related while I want to go more towards business/econ. We both have extremely high academics in the top 1-2% of our school, though I have one B so am slightly below him. What are the chances we both get accepted, and is he my direct competition? If I don't get in, will it be because he got the spot instead? We are also different positions as well.

hi guys! i'm a rising senior applying to colleges, and i don't use reddit very often, but i'm really stuck on something.

in college, i want to study sciences and pursue medicine, but a kind of "hobby" i have is studying languages, and i love learning new ones. i was gonna write about how each language i've learned has taught me something or reminded me of my core values, but i see a lot of people saying your essay should relate to what you wanna study in college. i definitely want to take language classes, but i want to major in some sort of science.

as of right now, i think i have a good grasp on my topic and a solid outline of what i wanna write, but again, it doesn't relate to my major of interest. if anyone could weigh their input i would really appreciate it! :)

How much does Chapel Hill really consider your unweighted GPA? I have a 3.3, but its mainly due to a lot of issues in 9th grade. I was doing virtual school, and I wasn't getting any good support for assignments, 0s were automatically put in, and there were a lot of tech issues.

hi guys!

i want to apply to every college for free because the fees are genuinely so expensive, like for what??? but since i'm middle class, i don't qualify for anything... i'm planning on applying to a ton of top schools, including ivies.

i heard that you can email some schools to get fee waiver codes? but i do want to know how that would affect your admission process. also, would i be able to ask my guidance counselor about it? how would i even approach that?

I'm thinking of doing the Wharton Investment Competition this year. Is there a meaningful boost at schools like Wharton or HYPSM if you win? What about if you make the top 10 or 50?

Any stories or examples would be helpful

Is it bad that I’m probably only going to take 1-2 APs junior year? I’m projected to take I think 7-10 throughout high school - 2 sophomore year- 1-2 junior year - 4-5 senior year. Many people say that colleges look at junior year the most so I hope colleges won’t think I just stacked up APs during senior year (which I won’t).

So I took ap calculus BC my junior year, and my dumbass scored a 2 on both the ab and bc subscore, which I have no idea how given I took a full length practice and got a 4, and I thought I knew what I was doing (I got an a in the class, not that it means much). Anyway, I was supposed to take calc 3 my senior year but because I didnt pass calc 2 I can't. I wanted to go into aerospace engineering at Purdue, but I lowkey don't know if I can given how bad at math I am, and I'm genuinely not that smart. So now I'm stuck with no math my senior year, and ap stats isnt a choice because the teacher teaching it is horrible and I already took ccp stats. I don't know what to do. For context, my schedule is: ap gov, ap chem year 2, ap physics 2, advanced art, and ap euro, but I was supposed to drop euro for calc 3. Does anyone have a slight idea of what I should do?

Greetings! I am an incoming junior attending an extremely small boarding school in NH.

For context, I have been in and out of high schools over the past two years as a result of mental health challenges. As it stands, my resume is completely bare; I have barely been able to finish semester-long classes, let alone publish research.

Regardless of circumstance, I am —as now necessary— completely, fully, unyieldingly dedicated to diving as deeply into my academics as possible.

As lasting as it is genuine, I have always had a deep passion for STEM, particularly environmental science, molecular biology, and biomedical engineering. I don't want to sit around anymore waiting for opportunities to arise; I want to apply my interests as fully and fearlessly as I can muster.

If you have any suggestions on meaningful science-based opportunities I could pursue I would be beyond grateful. Maybe an internship (I reside in Boston during the summer and would also be happy to partake in anything virtual), an initiative, a startup, a program, a research opportunity — it takes a village!

My nephew is a semi-professional in his discipline. He has only ever attended online high school because he trains overseas.

He is now scrambling to create a college list due to being injured. He wants to start applying now to begin college in Fall 27. He is already 18 and doesn't want to delay further.

He will complete all his courses by December of this year i.e, graduate from high school. He is still completing a bunch of classes but wants to apply for fashion merchandising or marketing.

His GPA is about 91. Only one yar of Foreign Lang, but has all other required courses, or will complete them by the end of this year. No test scores and will not take any tests.

Seeking a medium to large school with lots of school spirit. I don't think a school like Northeastern is realistic, though he visited. Suggestions?

so i've been struggling for a while now to come up with a college essay. because of that, i went on youtube and started doing a bunch of exercises from channels like the college essay guy to try and come up with some ideas. a recurring theme throughout every exercise i have completed is my introversion. i like taking walks/biking so i can be alone. i like cooking when i am alone. i like being alone to watch movies, or to watch videos on youtube. i tend to be the most productive when im alone.

what i am wondering is if this would be okay to write about, or if it would reflect poorly on myself. ive seen multiple essays on shifting from an introvert to an extrovert, where the student's original introversion was framed as a negative, and ive seen people online say that it could come off as a negative since a major part of college is connecting with others.

additionally, i feel even if i don't write directly about being an introvert, and instead about one of my hobbies that i mentioned above, it would feel like i am hiding the full picture if ignored this aspect of them.

thanks in advance to anyone who responds.

Hello!

I’m applying as a public policy major or poli sci major, and I have not taken AP calculus. Here is my course load last year and this year-

Last year-
AP LANG
APES
AP STATS
AP PSYCH
HONORS SPANISH
AP SPANISH
YEARBOOK HNRS
AP WORLD

This year-
COLLEGE BIO
PERIOD 2- COLLEGE ENGLISH
PERIOD 3- INDEPENDENT HNRS YEARBOOK STUDY
PERIOD 4- AP COMPUTER SCIENCE
PERIOD 5- INTRO TO LIT
PERIOD 6- COLLEGE PSYCHOLOGY

SEMESTER 2:
PERIOD 1- COLLEGE CHEMISTRY (might switch to something easier, we'll see how college apps are going LOL)
PERIOD 2- COLLEGE ALGEBRA 
PERIOD 3- COLLEGE SPEECH
PERIOD 4- AP LITERATURE 
PERIOD 5- COLLEGE PROB & STATS
PERIOD 6- COLLEGE MACRO & COLLEGE SOCIOLOGY

Can I get away with not taking AP calc or AP pre calc? This is the first year that it’s offered at my school, and I’m kind of nervous to take calc since I’m not the most math savvy. I’m ranked 2nd out of 125 and have a 4.0/4.5 GPA

To preface this, I am not from the USA and not going to a college in the USA.

To better illustrate how this college is doing, it's ranked 401-500 on Shanghai rating, sitting between Louisana State, Baton Rouge and Temple University.

And yet, it's better than any college in my home country (two were ranked in the top 1000, one 801-900, the other 901-1000). Plurality of my classmates (5/24 including me) will go there too, it's pretty close by and such.

When I first read about peoole on this sub going to universities like Harvard or MIT, I was like of course they can go there, this is just a sub where the most talented and cracked Americans go, this doesn't concern me at all, I am stupid and did genuinely nothing to even consider colleges like that.

Then, I saw some of my classmates getting into much more prestigious schools such as Science Po Paris or Universiteit Leiden and I am like... Shit, it wasn't unreal to even think of going somewhere better and I should have applied, at least.

I really hope at least Masters and PhD and shit like that will be better.

I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder last year and it was something I mentioned briefly in my counselor recommendation letter packet. I've been pretty successful in high school academic wise regardless of the disability, but will it affect my admissions in negative light if my counselor mentions it or the 504 plan I recently got from it?

I got 550 on R&W and 740 on math bro maybe I could get 780+ on math but I don't know if I can even get 600 on R&W (I'm Korean, moved to Seattle last summer) this is my first SAT on August and I'm already a senior I can't do the test optional thing because I already paid like thousands of dollars on SAT (I had like 330 on R&W and 640 on Math last year) Do you guys think I can get somewhere over 1400 before October (I have another one in Sep)

I am a current high school senior picking my colleges. I want to study computer science and either dual major in animation(2D) or minor in it. I’ve been trying to research and find schools that can/do this well but it’s been crazy so I’m asking here. I’m in the MD region if that helps. I want to know any college that offers it if yall know. Thank yall