May 2013
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Your Story: Uncovering Your Narrative for the...
As summer approaches and you begin thinking about college applications, let’s take a moment and talk about the “fundamentals” of your college application: the narrative. What is the college application? It’s a package of materials that you send to colleges to show them what kind of person you are. Admissions officers at each college then examine these materials as they decide whether you would...
April 2013
7 posts
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Yale Undergraduate Admissions: Looking Back:... →
Advice from Yale Seniors to High School Seniors. A great series kicking off on the Yale Admissions Tumblr.
yaleadmissions:
The Class of 2013 is nearly at the end of their bright college years – we asked some current seniors what advice they would now want to give to their high school senior selves. Here’s the beginning of a series on what they had to say: “Life as a senior for the second time...
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Updated 2013 Acceptance Rates →
Thanks to the NYT’s Choice blog for this frequently updated data table, which also provides 2012 and 2011 data. Interestingly, Frostburg State and Rensselaer Polytechnic both have regular admit rates higher than their respective early admit rates.
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“These activities must be evaluated in terms of your personal context. If you go...”
– A Former Ivy League Admissions Officer
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Choosing the Right College: Apples or Oranges?...
(Check out Part 1 if you missed it at the end of March.)
It’s time to get practical. When trying to decide between schools, the best of course of action is to visit each one and mingle with the community of current and incoming students. That’s right: if you’re considering attending a school sight-unseen, think again. A prefrosh visit is utterly essential. Don’t even consider attending a...
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Harvard Accepts 5.8 Percent of Applicants →
And just 3.4 percent of regular decision applicants!
March 2013
11 posts
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“I see the notion of talent as quite irrelevant. I see instead perseverance,...”
– Gordon Lish
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Info for MIT's Admitted Students →
MIT’s Admissions Blog has some helpful information for admitted students.
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Choosing the Right College: Apples or Oranges?...
Imagine that you were planning to go to a restaurant with friends and family to celebrate a very, very important event: getting your dream job, graduating, getting engaged, whatever. You want the perfect restaurant, and you wouldn’t pick it just by glancing at some arbitrary list of “best-ranked restaurants” in your city, would you? And that’s just one night, not four incredibly formative early...
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“I may be the world’s worst writer, but I’m the world’s best rewriter.”
– James Michener
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FAQ: the MIT Waitlist →
Matt McGann, MIT’s Director of Admissions, has written a very thorough blog post for students on the waitlist.
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College Visit Advice from a College President (and... →
Another excellent piece from The Choice blog.
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MIT Regular Action Admissions Decisions To Be... →
Many of you are probably already aware of this, but, just in case, here’s the official word from MIT’s Admissions Blog:
MIT Regular Action admissions decisions will be available online on Thursday, March 14, beginning at 6:28 PM ET.
Good luck to everyone!
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One Hundred Seconds of Solitude →
From the back page of last week’s NYT Sunday Magazine, a great piece on how writers—particularly those at writers’ colonies—are battling Internet addiction:
Michael Chabon and Meghan O’Rourke, for example, have installed software programs like Freedom and SelfControl, whose very names evoke a self-help cry for intervention.
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To What Extent Should We Value the Rankings? →
An interesting blog post on the growing controversy surrounding the U.S. News & World Report college rankings.
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A Senior's Last Class Schedule at MIT →
A great post by Jenny X., a senior at MIT, on the classes she’s taking this semester.
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SAT to Undergo Changes
For the first time since 2005, the SAT will be undergoing changes. This recent piece from The Washington Post seems to suggest the changes have come in the wake of the ACT’s growing popularity:
The overhaul comes as the SAT is starting to lose market share to a rival standardized exam, the ACT. Historically, the ACT has been taken by high school students in the West and the South, while...
February 2013
13 posts
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Harvard College Reviewing Record 35k Applications →
From the article:
Applications to Yale this year rose 3 percent to an all-time high of 29,790. Princeton University received 26,505 applications, and Columbia, 33,460. The University of Pennsylvania received 31,219 applications—one more than the 31,218 it received last year. About 22,400 applied to Dartmouth and 28,807 to Brown.
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“Regardless of what you’re doing at Yale, there’s an emphasis on teamwork and...”
– John Yi ‘12+1
John, a student blogger, recently graduated after spending a year with the Yale Whiffenpoofs. Read more of his reflections on his bright college years.
(via yaleadmissions)
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UPenn's Dean of Admissions Offers Advice to HS... →
The Choice recently linked to an interview on NBC’s Today featuring Eric Furda, the Dean of Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Digging Deeper: The journey is the destination...
(Note: This is Part 3 of a three-part essay. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.)
What does all of this mean for you? Perhaps you’re hell-bent on going Ivy. Don’t start filling out all eight applications, though—at least not until you know that if you feel like you’re allergic to reading, Columbia and its core curriculum requirements will drive you crazy; or that at Dartmouth, a majority of students who...
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SAT & ACT Timing Tips →
Our friends at The Choice have linked to a wonderful piece by John Saavedra Jr. on keeping track of time during the SAT and ACT.
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Love Means Never Having to Spend THAT Much Money →
Happy Valentine’s Day! Check out these fun, last minute tips from Student Universe on how to spend the day with your significant other without taking out a second mortgage.
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CommonApp Essay Prompts Released: Start... →
We’ll have more on this as the next cycle nears, but here are the five new prompts (as listed on the always reliable Choice blog):
Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure....
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Updated Admissions Data →
The NYT’s wonderful Choice blog offers some updated admissions numbers.
Here’s the chart itself.
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What I Wish I Knew.. →
Another excellent post from The Choice blog, this one written by a college student on finding one’s place in college. An excerpt:
It may be overwhelming to try new things when your whole life is a new thing — trust me, I know what it feels like to not have an anchor — but it can be really freeing to abandon what you’ve always done in favor of what you’ve always wanted to do.
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Digging Deeper: The journey is the destination...
(This is Part 2 of a three-part essay. If you missed Part 1, check it out here.)
What is the moral of this story?
Preferences matter. The picture this consultant of ours paints of her high school experience tells us that while her much-lauded high school—indeed, it is a nationally top-ranked high school—was and remains a wonderful school, it was not the ideal high school for her. That idea—that,...
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USA TODAY COLLEGE: 5 questions to ask current... →
usatodaycollege:
Before you make any big purchase, it is only fair that you are thoroughly briefed on what you are buying. Heavy research and great contemplation go into this process before you hand over that credit card — so why would you treat the college decision any differently?
• Who are the best…
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Digging Deeper: The journey is the destination...
When one of our consultants here at Veritas was in high school, she did everything wrong. On her transcript, occasional As sat next to more than a few Ds and Cs. She had been on academic probation more than once. Only very few teachers felt that she had any level of academic dedication whatsoever. Although she was passionate about some extracurricular activities, she seldom articulated those...
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At Dartmouth Strong A.P. Scores Now as Valuable as... →
Here’s an interesting debate going on over at The Choice blog. What do you think? Should high A.P. scores translate to college credit?
January 2013
13 posts
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MIT's Mandatory Midyear Report →
MIT Admissions Counselor Chris LaBounty on MIT’s required Midyear Report.
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The Perfect Student: Discipline as Existential...
In an ideal world, this student would summon discipline for work and play alike, maintaining a firm boundary between the two. Given that same five-hour block, you could imagine discipline helping to enable the following sequence of events: thirty minute paper brainstorm and outline, ninety minutes of writing, thirty minutes on Facebook to socialize and clear the mind, an hour of revision, and...
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Want to stop procrastinating from schoolwork? Try... →
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Congratulations to our Early Admits!
Congratulations to our Veritas Early Admits! Good luck at Harvard, Brown, Penn, and Cal Tech, among other schools! Check out the full list here…
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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man...”
– Theodore Roosevelt, from the speech “Citizenship in a Republic,” delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.
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SAT Scores Aren't Everything →
Another wonderful post from The Choice blog, this one by Maimuna Abdi Yussuf. Here’s a great bit from her letter:
All the negative thoughts about who you are and whether you are worthy are not rational thinking. It’s just the stress, the exhaustion, the temporary insanity caused by, well, everything that is going on in your final year.
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The Perfect Student: Discipline as Existential...
Discipline is an often misunderstood concept. (Though this may surprise you, at no other time in my life did I see discipline misrepresented more than during my four years at Harvard.) Often met with a groan from teenagers and adults alike, discipline tends to signify work, effort, and overall unhappiness. Discipline, however, can also mean fun and relaxation if carried out correctly. For...
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Is 'Where's Waldo' Worth Asking? →
A thought-provoking Op-Ed from the LA Times.
Wake Forest asks students to “think of things that fascinated you when you were 10 years old — what has endured?” Come on, the students were 10. Back then I wanted to be a garbage man (because I wanted to drive the big trucks) and was obsessed with reading about the Black Plague. Does either interest scream college material?
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January Admissions Checklist (for HS Seniors) →
Check out the latest checklist on The Choice blog. As usual, there’s some very helpful information here. For instance:
In this world of accelerated deadlines and hype about the college process, it is hard to remain calm, but here is an important fact to keep in mind: The vast majority of students admitted to college apply by a regular decision or rolling deadline.
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Breaking Down the Essay: The Value of Other Eyes
While we are confident that you can do a great deal of this work on your own—this digging deep and thinking carefully—do not underestimate the value of other eyes. Therefore, we encourage you to take the following advice as you write, revise, and improve your personal narrative: Show your essays to others. Make sure you think carefully about whom to ask for help (hint: your buddy from your field...
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Make Your Essay Exceptional →
A helpful piece from The Choice blog on making your essay memorable:
Writing about service or determination reflects important qualities, but no one in our applicant pools writes about how quickly they quit or how much they hate helping society. If you write the “safe” essay, how will you stand apart?
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Expert Thoughts on Dealing with a Deferral →
A helpful Q&A for deferred students by MIT Admissions Counselor, Chris LaBounty.
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Breaking Down the Essay: Vignettable Topics
Getting down to brass tacks, we’d like you to turn your attention back to your new and improved drafts. Remember the essays you have been writing as you have been reading. Even if none of them stands out as an obvious personal admissions essay, there is bound to be one vignette worth exploring. If you can’t see it, try treating your essays as magic eye images and stare at them until something...
December 2012
10 posts
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Breaking Down the Essay: Conclusions
See how splitting up the separate vignettes (Vignette 1, Vignette 2, Vignette 3, Vignette 4) in fact helps us see how the essay works as a whole—and helps the writer/editor (you/you) have a clearer sense of how to make each part function at its best. If you were building a house, you would want to build each part separately, but with the entire structure in mind. The same goes here, where it would...
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Breaking Down the Essay: Vignette 4 of 4
Recently we covered Vignette 1, Vignette 2, and Vignette 3.
Vignette Four: Hurtling toward the future ROUGH DRAFT Being injury-prone is not an adjective that people normally would want to be associated with their identity. I find that it is one of my best qualities. Not the getting injured part in itself, but for what it symbolizes in me. The heart that I display throughout various aspects of my...
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Deferred, But Not Defeated →
yaleadmissions:
“The wait until April to hear a final decision, and to even know whether or not you are into college, can seem like an eternity…. [T]o anyone feeling a little disheartened by a deferral, there are many successful and integral members of the Yale community (including current admission staffers!) who were initially deferred.”
- student blogger Emily Hong ‘14, on being...
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Breaking Down the Essay: Vignette 3 of 4
Recently, we looked at Vignette 1 and Vignette 2. Now, in Vignette Three, the toddler “Mr. Destructo” grows into the young adult “Mr. Destructo.”
ROUGH DRAFT
As a child, tripping and slitting my eyebrow open might not have been because I was diving for the winning goal during a soccer game, it might just have been because I was too intense for my immature body to control. However, as I...
burning-inthe-centreoftime asked: Well I'm a sophomore and I am moving up to Honor classes is it to late for me now to try to get into Harvard? Or should I try again when I apply to med schools
