Score At The Top Blog

Most colleges¹ admit a far greater percentage of students who apply Early Decision (ED) or Early Action (EA) than they do of students who apply Regular Decision (RD). In fact, an article posted on usnews.com in December 2010 contains data on 52 colleges for which that was true. At that time the increased chances of gaining admission to those colleges by applying ED or EA instead of RD ranged from 1.41 to 2.98 – or an average of 1.88. In short, students who applied ED or EA to those colleges were, on average, almost twice as likely to get accepted as were those who applied RD.

Topics: College Admission, College Counseling, Early Decision, Early Action

One thing that you absolutely DO NOT want to do is confuse college admissions officers by presenting contradictory – or inconsistent, and, thus, possibly contradictory – information about yourself in your college applications. And there are multiple opportunities for mistakes in most college applications.

Topics: College Admission, College Application, College Counseling, Activity Resume, Resume

In our recent blog entitled Clearing Up Confusion About the College Application Personal Statement, we explained that “It doesn’t matter in the slightest what you write about for your Common and Coalition Application personal statements — as long as it’s about you. What does matter is what you say and how you say it, because you should have clear objectives, and we’ll provide you with advice on that matter in future blogs.” Here’s the first installment for you.

Topics: College Admission, Application Essays, Person Statement, Essay

At this time of year, it’s typical to see rising seniors agonize over what they should write for their college application personal statement. While some colleges have their own applications and unique personal statement prompts, most schools use the Common Application or the Coalition Application, each with its own set of essay prompts. Here they are for each application for 2018-19:

Topics: College Admission, Application Essays, Person Statement, Essay

While “Demonstrated Interest” (DI) may not carry significant weight for many colleges…it will be important if the school is highly selective with a competitive admissions process.

Topics: College Admission, Demonstrated Interest

Updated July 2017

While there are many schools out there that super-score the SAT, the list of schools that super-score the ACT is much smaller. To aid you in search for information, we have compiled a list (with the help of fellow consultants at IECA) of many of the schools that super-score the ACT. While the list does not cover every single college in the US, it is fairly comprehensive.

Topics: ACT, Test-Prep, Concordance, superscore

SCORES FOR THE JUNE 2018 SAT HAVE BEEN RELEASED AND HIGH-SCORING STUDENTS ARE NOT HAPPY.  THE CURVE ON THE MATH SECTION WAS REALLY UNFORGIVING TO HIGH-SCORING STUDENTS.  THE TEST IS A REMINDER THAT STUDENTS SHOULD BE READY TO RETAKE THE SAT AND ACT AND THAT NO ONE ACTUALLY WANTS AN “EASY” SAT.

Topics: SAT Test, Test Scores, Test-Prep, Concordance

Typing “where should I go to college?” into Google’s search engine yields over one billion hits — and while we’d encourage students to do that and then explore some of the “first page” results, mainly for learning purposes, it’s a far too cumbersome way to find a meaningful answer to the question. Fortunately, we’re here to get you started the right way. We’ll share with you our more than 30 years of experience in helping students find their best-fit colleges by discussing four important parameters you should consider in order to narrow your choices:

Topics: College Admission, College Planning, College Choice

If so, the future physician is almost certainly going to be faced with taking – and passing – the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), a product of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).  The MCAT is a standardized, computer-administered, multiple-choice exam with no questions requiring writing. Some form of the MCAT has been part of the medical school admissions process for 90 years; it’s required for admission to almost all medical schools in the U.S. and many in Canada; and it’s taken by over 85,000 prospective physicians each year.

Topics: Test-Prep, MCAT

Topics: College Application, Coalition App, College Counseling, College Planning, Investment, Application Essays, Common App, Universal App