Your senior has probably seen the Glimpse option in a college portal by now. Most students decide it is either a waste of time or a production. It is neither, and with early deadlines coming up, it is worth an afternoon to get right. What Glimpse actually is Glimpse is run by InitialView. Your student records a 60 to 90 second video in the Chrome browser or the InitialView app on an iPhone or iPad,
Some students know by October of their first year that they chose the wrong college. Others discover an academic direction their school cannot support. Either way, a transfer application is a different exercise from the one your student completed in high school, and much of what decides it happens before the application opens. Transferring is common. A 2012 National Student Clearinghouse study found that about one third of first-time students transferred at least once within
Class Action, a student-driven advocacy group, just published a report by senior fellow James S. Murphy tracking legacy preferences across American colleges. The headline finding is good news. The detail underneath it is the part your student needs to understand. The Trend Line and the Exception Using federal data, Murphy found that nearly half of four-year colleges considered legacy status in 2015. By 2024, fewer than a quarter did. Johns Hopkins, Amherst, Wesleyan, and Pomona
A Census Bureau working paper published this month puts a number on something families have sensed for two years. Graduates of the majors most exposed to AI are getting hired less often, and they are paid less when they do get hired. The paper is Graduating into Disruption, by Census economists Cody Orr, Lee C. Tucker, and Lawrence Warren. It tracks outcomes by major rather than by job title, which matters, because your student picks
Every spring I talk to a Chicago-area family holding a scholarship letter from a big public university several states away. The student is flattered. The parents see a five-figure award and assume they are getting a deal. Sometimes they are. Usually they have not yet compared it to anything. Jeffrey Selingo explained how this market works in The New Yorker, in a piece drawn from his book Dream School. Anyone with an out-of-state flagship on
Stats are the floor, not the ceiling, and the research says the same thing about high schools. The building does not move the floor much. What separates applicants sits above it, and that part belongs to the student. What travels with the transcript Every application arrives with a school profile. It lists the courses the school offers, how grades are distributed, and where the student falls in the class. The counselor letter fills in the
Parents ask me this more than almost anything else, usually in eighth grade and usually with a tuition bill or a house purchase attached. I went looking for numbers. What the data shows about high school admissions impact The most detailed public attempt to measure this is the Elite College Placement Index from Chicardgo School. It estimates what share of each high school’s graduates enroll at a top 25 national university. Across 30 metro areas
Every fall I get the same two questions about interviews, from the same family, in the same breath. Does it matter? And what if my kid is bad at it? Yes, and they won’t be. Here’s why. What the interview actually risks Admissions officers on a panel I listened to this spring put the number plainly: an interview hurts an applicant somewhere around 2 to 3% of the time. That is the rate at which
Two students I worked with this cycle had the grades, scores, and stories for a top-30 school in the Northeast or Midwest. Both had the offers. One is at Clemson. The other is at Alabama. Neither was settling. When we listed what they wanted from four years, it was warm weather, a real football Saturday, a Greek system at the center of social life, and a campus whose politics matched their own. The top-30 school
Every fall I sit with a family whose college list has three reaches, four targets, and a couple of safeties. The safeties are almost always public flagships. Michigan. UNC. UVA. Georgia Tech. For an out-of-state student, those schools stopped being safeties years ago. Several are now harder to get into than half the Ivy League was a decade ago. The list looks balanced. It isn’t. What actually happened Public flagships have a legal obligation to
Many selective colleges track how much interest an applicant shows before deciding whether to admit them. A student who clearly wants to attend is a student more likely to enroll, and enrollment is what colleges are managing. Most families think of demonstrated interest as opening emails or showing up for a campus tour. The single strongest signal is the supplement. A specific, researched “why us” essay proves interest in a way an opened email never
Most students pour weeks into the personal statement, then treat the supplements as paperwork to finish the weekend before the deadline. At selective colleges, that is backwards. The personal statement is one essay that goes to every school on the list. The supplements are different at every school, and they are the only part of the application a college writes specifically to evaluate fit with that college. The personal statement tells a school who your
The conversation in most families about AI and college admissions runs in one direction: should my student use ChatGPT on the essay? The Common App says no, the schools say no, the detection tools are unreliable, and the question dominates parent discussions. The conversation that is not happening runs in the other direction. Selective US universities are already using AI to read applications, score essays, summarize files, interview applicants, and triage tens of thousands of
Recruited athlete status is the single largest admissions advantage available to an unhooked applicant. It is also the one with the shortest decision window, the earliest deadlines, and the lowest tolerance for waiting around. Most families learn what they would have needed to do two years after the window closed. What “recruited athlete” actually means At selective colleges, a recruited athlete is not a strong high school athlete who mentions sports on the application. A
On May 27, Yale announced that it is reinstating its full SAT or ACT requirement starting with the next admissions cycle. The 2024 “test-flexible” policy, which allowed AP or IB scores as substitutes, is gone. Yale is now the seventh Ivy League school to require testing. Two days earlier, on May 25, more than 800 University of California faculty members released an open letter demanding that the UC system reinstate SAT or ACT testing for
Every selective admissions cycle, families anchor their planning on a single number. Harvard 3.6 percent. Columbia 4.23 percent. Stanford 3.95 percent. The number gets quoted, screenshotted, posted, and used as the benchmark against which a student’s application is judged. The number is real. It is also close to meaningless for most applicants. Here is why. What published acceptance rates actually measure The published acceptance rate is a simple ratio. Total admits divided by total applicants.
The most common mistake strong students make on their applications is treating the activities section like a checklist of impressive things. National Honor Society. DECA. Debate. Model UN. Robotics. Hospital volunteering. Mock trial. Each one carefully chosen because someone said it would look good. Each one adding a line to the resume. This builds the wrong kind of application. Selective admissions does not reward breadth. It rewards a coherent identity that an admissions officer can
The previous post in this series laid out the structural picture. Even highly selective colleges are now anxious about filling their classes. The May 1 deposit deadline is functionally extending into August. Federal funding pressure is forcing layoffs at multi-billion-dollar institutions. The demographic cliff is here. This post is the strategic playbook for families building college lists in this market. Five things to do differently than five years ago. Sort the list by who needs
The pathway programs covered in the previous two posts in this series are not isolated. They are one symptom of a larger shift. Even highly selective colleges, the kind families have always treated as buyers rather than sellers, are now anxious about filling their classes. That anxiety is reshaping the admissions cycle in ways every family building a list should understand. The summer of 2025 The cleanest evidence is what happened last August. Duke reopened
A pathway offer is not a normal admission and not a rejection. It is a third category families rarely think about until one shows up in their student’s portal with a short decision window and minimal explanation. The previous post in this series cataloged the nine pathway programs we are tracking at selective American universities. This one is for families who have received one or anticipate receiving one. Six things to do, in order. Read
On March 25, 2026, Vanderbilt released regular decision results for the Class of 2030. A subset of applicants got a fourth option that did not exist last year. A partnership with a company called Verto Education that would let them spend their first year of college traveling abroad with a third-party vendor, then transfer into Vanderbilt as a sophomore. Per the Vanderbilt Hustler, some students had as little as two days to decide. Vanderbilt got
The campus visit is the only piece of data in the entire admissions process that your student generates themselves. Every other input comes from somewhere else. Stats come from College Board and the high school. Rankings come from US News. Net price comes from the financial aid office. Even the “fit” essays your student writes are built from material the college has published about itself. The visit is the one chance in the entire process
In the last twelve months, more than two dozen American universities have launched, announced, or are actively staffing new degree programs built around artificial intelligence. USC, Columbia, Pace, New Mexico State, the University of South Florida, the University at Buffalo, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, Northeastern, and dozens of others have new tracks, majors, or entire colleges that did not exist three years ago. The pace is unusual. The framing is even more unusual. For a
For the last fifteen years, the safe answer to “what should my kid major in?” was computer science. Strong job market. High starting salaries. Translatable to almost any industry. Parents pushed students toward it. Students applied in record numbers. By the Class of 2026, eleven percent of all college students were majoring in CS, up from seven percent a decade earlier. That run is over. And the families who are paying attention are now making
Most college lists are built on brand instinct. The family has heard of eight or ten schools, the counselor adds a few more, someone suggests a safety, and the list is done. Then April arrives and every school on the list says no. The problem is rarely the student. It is the list. A list built around reputation rather than fit, around the hierarchy that existed ten years ago rather than the cycle your student
Every selective college application has sections marked “optional.” An additional essay. A video introduction. A research paper upload. A portfolio submission. An “Additional Information” box at the end. Most families read “optional” and skip it. That is a mistake. Why optional college application sections are never truly optional When a school marks something as optional, they are giving your student an opportunity to show more of who they are. Every other applicant in the pool
Most families approach the Early Decision question backwards. They start with the school their student loves most and assume that is where to apply early. That instinct is understandable. It is also frequently wrong. Early Decision is a strategic tool. Used well, it can meaningfully increase your student’s chances of admission. Used poorly, it wastes the single most powerful lever in the application process on a school where it was never going to make a
An admissions officer will spend roughly eight minutes on your student’s application. In that time, they need to walk away with a clear understanding of who your student is: their passions, their intellect, their place in their community, and their potential place at the university. If they can do that, they will advocate for your student in committee. If they cannot, your student is done. The three questions For an admissions officer to make a
If your student’s stats are good enough for the schools on their list, here is what most families get wrong: there are no bonus points for a 1600 versus a 1520. There are no bonus points for a 4.0 versus a 3.95. There are no bonus points for 18 APs versus 8. Once your student clears the academic threshold at a selective school, the marginal return on higher stats drops to near zero. The differentiation
Most families treat recommendation letters as a formality. Pick two teachers, ask politely, move on. That approach produces exactly the kind of letter admissions committees ignore: “Great student, engaged in class, pleasure to teach.” A generic letter does nothing for your student’s application. A specific one can change the outcome. The difference is not which teacher you ask. It is how you set them up. How to choose recommenders: who to ask The instinct is
Most families hear “merit scholarship” and think their student is being rewarded for being excellent. That is not what is happening. Merit aid is a pricing tool. The school is not recognizing your student’s talent. The school is buying your student’s enrollment. Understanding that distinction changes how you approach every school on your list. How merit aid actually works Colleges below the top 5% of selectivity are competing for students. They need to fill seats
Most families spend months perfecting grades, test scores, and essays. Almost none of them spend any time on demonstrated interest. That is a strategic mistake. A peer-reviewed study by Lehigh University economists, published in Contemporary Economic Policy, examined over 12,500 applicants at a highly selective university and found that on-site contacts like campus visits can increase admission probability by roughly 22 percentage points for strong applicants. For applicants with the highest test scores, the effect
Every year I talk to families who accepted their financial aid offer without questioning it. They assumed the number was final. It almost never is. Filing a financial aid appeal has zero downside. No school rescinds admission because you asked. The process exists because financial aid offices expect families to use it. And the families who do it right routinely save thousands. How to appeal financial aid: the word you should never use Never say
Summer is often treated as a race: the most selective program, the most impressive internship, the experience that looks best on a résumé. For many families the pressure to optimize summer becomes its own source of stress. In reality, the summers that help an application most are not about prestige or quantity. They are about intention. For juniors, the stakes are higher. The summer before senior year is the last long stretch of time before
Around fifty American colleges promise to “meet 100% of demonstrated need.” Most families read this as a guarantee. It is not. It is a promise about methodology, and methodology varies dramatically across schools. What “meets full need” actually promises A school that meets full need commits to closing the gap between its published cost of attendance and its own calculation of what your family can afford to pay. The important words are “its own calculation.”
Before you can compare offers or appeal one, you have to read each offer accurately. Most offer letters are built to make the gift part of the package look larger than it is: loans are folded into the total at the top, and scholarships carry names that disguise what the dollar amount represents. The first job is to decode each letter into its parts and find the one number that matters. Five kinds of money
Most families build a college list around fit, rankings, and gut feeling, then discover the financial implications in April of senior year. There is a framework that prevents this, and a free public dataset that lets any family apply it in twenty minutes. The Selingo framework Jeff Selingo, who spent a year embedded in the admissions offices at Emory, Davidson and the University of Washington for his book Who Gets In and Why, divides four-year
Vanderbilt admitted 2.8% of regular decision applicants to the Class of 2030. Harvard’s most recently reported overall rate was 3.65% for the Class of 2029, with this year’s estimated to land around 3.2%. Read that again. Vanderbilt’s regular decision acceptance rate is now in the same neighborhood as Harvard’s overall rate. This isn’t an anomaly. Vanderbilt received 48,720 regular decision applications this year, the largest pool in its history, on top of a record 7,727
Each admissions cycle leaves a trail of patterns, and the Class of 2030, the students who applied this year, has produced some of the clearest signals in recent memory. Here is what we are seeing. Targets became reaches The clearest single number of the cycle: Vanderbilt’s regular decision admit rate for the Class of 2030 was 2.8%, lower than Harvard’s overall rate of about 3.6% in its most recently published data. Vanderbilt is not an
While most admissions coverage focuses on the top 25 universities, a quieter shift is changing the application process for everyone else: direct admission. Through programs like Common App Direct Admissions, Niche Direct Admissions, and Sage Scholars, a growing number of colleges and universities now offer admission to qualifying students before they even apply. How direct admission works A student creates a profile, usually including GPA, courses, and sometimes test scores, and participating colleges proactively offer
In a rankings-driven culture, it is easy to believe that college success is defined by selectivity alone. In reality, the outcomes that matter most are shaped by fit. Admissions committees understand this, and experienced families learn it quickly. What “fit” really means Fit is not about settling. It is about alignment. Strong fit considers: Academic environment and teaching styleCampus culture and communitySize, structure, and support systemsOpportunities for growth beyond the classroom A college that challenges
Early Action and Early Decision results arrive with a wide range of emotions: excitement, disappointment, relief, uncertainty. For many families, these early outcomes feel final. In reality, they are simply the first signals in a much longer admissions process. Understanding what these decisions actually mean, and how to respond thoughtfully, can make all the difference in the months ahead. What Early Decisions Really Represent At selective colleges, early applicant pools are exceptionally strong. Many institutions
Junior year is often described as the most important year of high school, but not for the reasons many families assume. While grades and test scores matter, the true significance of junior year lies in something deeper: this is when colleges begin to understand who a student is becoming. Academic trajectory matters more than perfection Junior-year coursework carries weight because it reflects readiness for college-level academics, and it is the transcript year admissions readers look
For many families, the college admissions process feels opaque and overwhelming. Advice is everywhere, opinions are loud, and pressure builds quickly, often long before students are ready. In reality, admissions is not a single moment or metric. It is a multi-year process shaped by academic choices, personal growth, and strategic planning. Understanding what truly matters, and letting go of common misconceptions, can bring both clarity and calm. Myth #1: A Strong GPA or Test Score