The Insider: College Admissions Advice from the Experts

What We Learned From the 2016 Admissions Cycle

Now that colleges have released the bulk of their admissions decisions, and students are reconciling their application triumphs and defeats, it’s time to take a step back and assess the trends and surprises from this year’s admissions decisions. While not all of these findings are unique to the 2016 admissions cycle, they are noteworthy enough that all college bound students – especially those wrapping up their junior year – should pay careful attention. And if you count yourselves among the thousands of hapless seniors who didn’t earn a spot at your dream college, perhaps the rationales below will help explain why you were the recipient of a “thin envelope,” while your neighbor/best friend/classmate was not.

Mastering the Activities Section of the Common Application

College applicants are infamously known to stress about their essays. And it’s not uncommon for students to spend weeks (if not months) brainstorming their ideal essay topic and then editing it down to perfection. But there’s another section of the Common Application that also requires a great deal of writing yet receives far less attention. Some application readers would argue that it also happens to be the section that applicants most often overlook and under appreciate.

It’s now time to discuss what many students consider to be the most important (and stressful) part of the Common Application: the essay. While we won’t be using this particular blog share advice about what students should actually write (we cover that topic and more in other Insider blog posts), we will be focusing on practical, big-picture issues, like “Why aren’t my paragraphs indented in the print preview?” And if you’re utterly confused by the brightly colored charade known as the new “Writing Requirements” section of the Dashboard, here’s your chance to gain some clarity. (Spoiler alert: while we can explain some of the poor choices made by the Common App, we can’t fix them.)

So the dust has settled. For the past several days, students have been hard at work trying to complete the three dozen or so digital pages that comprise the Common Application. Once you get the hang of it, navigating the Common App becomes almost second nature; you’ll soon find yourself deftly flipping from one section to another with the swift click of a button. But there are still some hidden tricks and common pitfalls that plague many applicants each year. In Part II of our in-depth look at the 2015 Common Application, we’ll answer your frequently asked questions related to the Education, Testing, and Activities pages. Don’t see your burning question listed below? Post a comment at the bottom of the screen, and you’ll have your answer soon enough!

When the Common App went live on July 31, 2015 at approximately 7:40pm ET, I was ready. I pounced on the login page, eagerly typing in a username and password that would usher me to the new and improved 2015 Common App. Although I was already familiar with the planned updates to this year’s Common App, I wanted to see them in action. Would the new print preview feature alleviate much of the stress applicants faced last year? Would the new “Writing Requirements” section become the answer to all of our organizational dreams? Over the next few weeks, please join us as we deconstruct the 2015 Common Application, answering many of applicants’ frequently asked questions about completing their college applications. Up first: setting up your Common Application account and competing the Profile and Family pages.

Quadratic equations…polynomial factors…identifying sentence errors…unrecognizable vocabulary words. If you’re preparing to take the current SAT this fall or winter, you are no doubt consumed with mastering all of these concepts and more, simultaneously asking yourself if the score you hope to earn will be strong enough to help you stand out in an overwhelmingly competitive applicant pool. But if your plan is to take the upcoming October, November, December, or January SAT, before the College Board ceremoniously switches over to the “redesigned” SAT in March 2016, you need to be asking yourself three very important questions.

Earlier this month the Common Application introduced the first in a series of webinars focused on best practices and tips for completing the Common Application. Like all presentations in the series, the first webinar, titled “What to Expect in the 2015-2016 Common Application,” was geared specifically for guidance counselors.  But why should guidance counselors have all the fun? We'd like prospective applicants and their parents to get in on the Common App action, too! Unless you’re desperate to sit through a recorded webinar on the ins and outs of the revised 2015 Common App, allow the experts at College Coach to happily summarize the details for you.

What do college admission officers and high school counselors like to do for fun? Complete surveys, of course! In the spring of 2013, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) asked thousands of college and high school officials to share school-specific information about everything from graduation rates and enrollment trends to admission strategies and international education. Earlier this month, NACAC released the results of those surveys in the highly anticipated “2014 State of College Admission Report.” (OK, well, it was highly anticipated by me, at least!)

The Common Application Reveals New Essay Prompts for 2015-16

Some students choose to write about sports. Or their love of helping others. Or even about their unusual hobby of collecting those kitschy plastic-domed snow globes. Whatever the topic, the college admissions essay is meant to reveal a glimpse of a student’s character, one that – ideally – will help set that student apart from the thousands of other applicants vying for a spot at that same institution.

So You’ve Been Deferred… Now What?

It’s devastating. Whether you were deferred from your first choice school or one of your safeties, receiving a deferral can feel worse than an outright rejection. You want to cling on to hope that you’ll be accepted come spring, but you can’t help but feel that you should simply move on and accept the inevitable. In a few days time, when your feelings aren’t so raw and you can think about your remaining college options with a bit more clarity, follow the steps below to improve your chances of acceptance after being deferred.