Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
A number of colleges don’t like the current admissions process.
What ignited their angst and reform desires was the launch of the new Common Application (called CA4) in 2013, which was so buggy that early application deadlines had to be extended, and worse, many colleges were exclusively tied to the Common Application: they had no alternatives.
If you’re a serious science student, one who might want to someday get a PhD, teach, research, become a member of the National Academy of Sciences, or vie for a Nobel Prize, it might best serve your interests to attend a major research university, such as UCLA, USC, Stanford, Northwestern, Yale, or Duke.
Small liberal arts colleges just don’t have the resources available to do meaningful research. Don’t, though, feel too confident in this belief. Just review the resources available to undergraduates at, say, Hamilton College’s Taylor Science Center and the list is enough to dispel the resource limitation concern.
Some people apply to the most selective schools as if it were the lottery.
One such recent case is that of Kwasi Enin. The son of Ghanian immigrants, Kwasi hit the proverbial jackpot by first applying to all eight Ivy League schools, and then, having scored a 2,250 on his SAT and placed #11 out of a class of 647 at William Floyd School, a public high school on Long Island, getting in to all eight.
A perennial question arises with each admissions cycle: ‘does the major I declare on the application affect my candidacy?’ Point blank answer: in approximately 99.6% of the cases, no. Most admissions officers realize that 80% or more of their freshman class will change majors at least once before the end of sophomore year.
If you’re applying to the Ivies, Stanford, or many other selective schools, there is a good chance you’ve already come face-to-face with the Common Application. Some of the 414 member schools, such as Washington & Lee or Carleton College in Minnesota, have no supplements, in which case you merely submit the main application, with one short and one long essay and, from an essay standpoint, you’re ready to apply.
There is, however, another type of essay that challenges students, and it’s usually found in the school’s supplemental application. It’s a matchmaker essay, a persuasive essay where you tell the school why you love it, and it should love you.
The college admissions process creates untold stress. Just the effort to get organized is tough. There are numerous details and losing track of any one of them might lead to a sleepless night: teacher recommendations, counselor recommendation, transcripts, test scores, mid-year reports, secondary school reports, art portfolios and, athletic information. This is a lot to keep track of.
How much would you be willing to pay to attend a school that had no official general education requirement (or, possibly had one or two areas spottily covered) across the following subject areas: composition; literature; foreign language; US government and history; economics; mathematics and; science? Posed a little differently, assume you were selecting a high school and it didn’t require English (writing), history, math, science, foreign language, or literature. How much would you be willing to pay to go to such a school? A better question is how much money would you pay to avoid going to the school?
There will always be endless debates about whether an Ivy League school or other highly selective school is worth the price of admission. Now, however, there is hard evidence about the actual payback for attending a certain school. Not that this information is the last word in these debates, but it certainly supplies the numbers one might want to see when sharpening the pencil and figuring out what are the probable returns associated with attending an UC San Diego instead of a Princeton.
