Getting into college isn’t as hard as you might think. An annual UCLA survey of full-time freshmen nationwide indicates that 70% of students are accepted into their first choice.
It’s easier to get into college than conventional wisdom would suggest, so why the disconnect? It’s because the vast majority of higher-ed press coverage focuses almost exclusively on the highly rejective elite universities where acceptance rates can be in the low single digits.
This column aims to present 10 other higher-ed realities that families may not be aware of but could help boost their admission chances.
No. 1:
Highly selective schools are not looking for well-rounded applicants, but instead, they desire “pointy” teenagers. Pointy students have devoted their extracurriculars and/or jobs to their one or two greatest interests. For instance, a future business major might join a high school’s entrepreneur club, use his Instagram to successfully sell t-shirts and spend summers interning at an accounting firm.
No. 2:
Forget the part about the need to be pointy if a student’s aim isn’t the highly rejective schools. These teenagers can be as well-rounded as they please.
No. 3:
Both college admission offices and teenagers use artificial intelligence to evaluate college applications and create them. Students need to be especially careful if they use AI to generate essay ideas, polish essays or lean on AI actually to write an essay or a good portion of it.
Beyond the fact that using AI heavily to create an essay is unethical, relying on AI for essay help or inspiration can lead to boring and generic essays when what colleges really want is for a student’s voice to come through his or her writing. And if that’s not incentive enough, colleges are trying to protect the integrity of the process by deploying AI to detect plagiarism and authenticity in applications.
No. 4:
Don’t be freaked by published SAT/ACT for test-optional schools. Students with lower scores usually won’t submit them while good test takers will. If many applicants don’t submit scores, a college’s published numbers could be wildly off.
You can find the percentage of score submitters at an individual school by Googling the name of the institution and “Common Data Set.” The CDS, voluntarily completed by many schools, includes various statistics about an individual institution, including admission requirements, enrollment, financial aid, costs and student life.
Here is the test-submission chart, which you will find in section “C” of a college’s CDS.
No. 5:
If a student’s SAT or ACT scores are in the top 25% of applicants at a particular school, then absolutely submit the results, and if they are in the bottom 25%, withhold them. The less selective the school, the less teenagers need to worry about submitting scores if they are in the middle 50%. When in doubt absolutely talk to a college’s admission rep about whether to submit scores or not. Asking will not be held against students!
No. 6:
Check out the admission factors that individual schools care about. In their Common Data Set, colleges share how important or unimportant 19 admission factors are, ranging from grades, strength of coursework and test scores to extracurriculars, geographic diversity and character.
No. 7:
It’s well known that applying early is an excellent way to boost admission chances. Many students are unaware that students who don’t get an ED acceptance have a second chance to apply for ED II.
Many schools offer an ED II after the holidays. That’s for anybody who didn’t apply to ED initially or got rejected in the first round. Here is a list of ED II schools at College Vine.
No. 8:
The drawback of applying ED is that if you’re accepted, you are expected to attend. What many families don’t understand, however, is that students can walk away from an ED acceptance because schools can’t stop them.
Check admission statistics for ED, early action and regular admission at College Transitions. Early action often enjoys an admission boost but not nearly as much as an ED application.
No. 9:
If applying to a liberal arts college or other small school that conducts holistic admissions, students should reach out to the admission representative for their state or region to get on the radar. Find out if they will offer interviews online or in person and ask an intelligent question about the school that shows they have done the research. You can find out the appropriate rep on a school’s admission website.
No. 10:
Applying to schools far away can boost admission odds.
According to the latest freshmen survey by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, only a third of students attend college more than 500 miles away. Schools are eager to get students from as many states as possible. When students are equally qualified, it’s only natural to pick the one from a distant state rather than a prospect 50 miles down the road.