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College admissions has become increasingly unpredictable with little transparency, but decision makers are actually willing to shed light on a seemingly opaque process. Recently I attended an IECA (Independent Educational Consultants Association) conference and was fortunate to hear admission officers from Haverford College and Johns Hopkins University speak about their processes. They walked us through…

Standards in U.S. college admissions is a bit of an oxymoron. Colleges have their own application requirements, essays, deadlines, factors for evaluating students, institutional needs, academic offerings, and financial aid policies. It’s often difficult to find consistency and answers to frequently asked questions. Even a college website, part repository of facts and information, part marketing…

The 4% barrier has now been broken. Harvard received more than 57,000 applications this year, a 42% increase, resulting in a stunningly low 3.4% admit rate for the class of 2025. In fact, every Ivy League university saw at least a double digit increase in applications, with Columbia at the high end, up 51%, and…

What do Cornell University, Trinity College, Bucknell and the University of Chicago have in common, aside from being highly selective colleges?  They all consider character and personality traits among the handful of Very Important factors they assess in their admission process. The concept of character is not new to college admissions. Yet within the last…

While ascending the never-ending sequence of hills in Virginia last month, I wasn’t thinking about grit. I was purely determined to pedal my way to the crest of each climb and be that much closer to my destination: the next college on our itinerary. Cycling with other college guidance counselor colleagues in Virginia one recent…

If ever there was a college early application round that confounded the pundits, the Early Decision and Restrictive Early Action results caught many off guard in the 2020-2021 admission cycle. Across the country, applications hit record highs at the most selective colleges, and an unprecedented number of high achieving students with strong credentials were deferred…