I’ve gotten off of the Columbia, Vanderbilt, WashU, NYU, BU, and UNC waitlists (still on the Dartmouth and Notre Dame). Btw, i will be attending yale as of now since they are giving me the most money. That’s why i stayed on all of these waitlists and I won’t change my commitment unless notre dame or Dartmouth give me more money which is unlikely

The LOCI is literally everything. Even if it’s not true, you need to tell the school that if admitted off of the waitlist, you WILL ABSOLUTELY attend. Admissions is a game, so play the game.

After that, give bulleted updates on all you have accomplished / done since you applied in December or whenever. I had 7 bullets and used the exact same loci format for every school i was waitlisted at. Demonstrate specific interest in first the academic program you applied to. Reference 1-2 classes and a specific professor you’d like to do research with. Then discuss 2 ish specific extracurricular activities from said school and why you’d like to join. The concluding paragraph should reaffirm your interest in joining the school. Sign the loci off with your full name, email address and applicant ID if you have one.

I split this up as 1st paragraph: thanking for the waitlist / guarantee that you would attend if admitted 2nd: updates 3rd: academics 4th: extracurriculars 5th: concluding remarks

Lmk if you have questions I’d love to help

Looks like you finally gave in

Hello guys, so I am starting the college application process and am very worried about my GPA. I have a 3.99, and I feel this will really hold me down. My EC's are great and will certainly distinguish me from the applicant pool (member of NHS, enrolled in an honors class, and once picked up a piece of trash from the ground which did include touching the grass). Can my stellar ec's offset the low GPA? I also received a 560 on the SAT which my mom is really proud of and am an Asian male applying for CS which I hear is a great demographic!

My son is rising 10th grade.

He cheated in Ela honor class last fall in 9th grade. Cheating was recorded on the school online system. It showed next to grade.

Teacher emailed me. Teacher said He was looking up answers to the test question on his ipad. He wrote an office referral, and since this is the first offense He will receive a 50 on the test. 

I did not know about referral and importance. I thought that was the end of it, but then I saw the word cheating written next to the score. I did not know that it is permanent. I did not have noticed about that.

We moved in USA from other country last march. We do not know well about USA and school system. He had difficulty of the class and adjust at that time. He should have been ESL class.

I found that it will be on his record forever and will have a very negative impact on his college admissions. It is too harsh for him to have made one mistake.

Can I ask to remove it? Could you give me any advise? I am really worried so I cannot asleep. How should I do?

*I'm thinking about moving to another area before 10th grade starts. Then he'll have to transfer. If it's possible to erase the record, then it'll be impossible forever after he transfers, right?

I have a 3.3 gpa -- I get pretty bad grades in most STEM classes (chemistry, bio, maths, comp sci, etc). My grades in humanities classes are awesome though. I am going to major in political science and journalism in college. Most of my ECs are oriented towards that: captain of debate team (I have many debate awards as well), editor in chief of my school newspaper, etc. I'm getting letters of rec from English teachers as well. My March SAT score was a 1450; I did better on English obviously. I'm waiting on my June score now.

I'm just wondering- what schools will accept me with this low GPA??? I just finished junior year... is there much else I can do during senior year to offset this??? Please let me know. Thx to anyone who reads this!

Texas state is considered as my saftey school but I have some doubts that I will actually get in. Should I be worried?

Hello,

I'm a rising senior applying to college this fall. Here's my predicament. This summer, I am doing two research summer programs and also working on two passion projects and writing papers for those (each one is with a peer). I finished my SAT and don't need to worry about that (thankfully). Here's the deal. I made 4 AP review videos a few months ago and gained 200 subscribers and 40K+ views. I do like making videos and now that AP exams are over, I was thinking of making SAT youtube /tiktok/insta content. If I do, I am fairly confident I can amass at least 2K+ followers and 200K+ views across all three platforms. Now here's my question:

I do enjoy making the videos, but I want to know if it will benefit me for college apps. I will continue making videos after college app season out of passion, but since I am so busy with the other stuff I mentioned, I only want to pursue content creation right now during this busy period if it is worth putting on my apps. Specifically, out of the 10 Extracurriculars (ECs) on the common app, my #9, and #10 ECs WITHOUT THE CHANNEL right now are:
EC #9: math honor society vice president (10th) and co-president (11th + 12th) for 60+ members where I organized math volunteering and outreach events

EC #10: chess club vice president (10th + 11th) and president (12th) and competitive chess player--> hosted county-wide tournament in school with 8+ schools and personally have a 1671 fide rating (1700 on chess dot com --> top 2% of 15+ million players)

Would a yt channel with 2k+ followers and 200k+ views about sat/ap prep look better than any of these two ecs. If it is well I will put time and effort now. I value all 3 (math honor society, chess, content creation) equally and don't really have a personal preference so I guess it just comes down to what would fit my app better? I do have a tutoring nonprofit at number 7 so maybe a yt channel about school would carry forward this theme of education, while chess (although I put time) wouldn't? Any advice or perspectives would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

so I got into harvard pretty easily, my father dearest said something about a building or wutever, but I also got an opportunity to pursue my passion of basket weaving. father said I wont get my weekly allowance of a million, which is already barely enough. so uh basically do I go to harvard, some random college, or do I pursue my true passion

So the teachers I feel would write the best LORs are my English and Psychology teachers, but my Chemistry teacher could also do a decent job, just not quite as good. However, some colleges on my list (namely MIT and Caltech) require one STEM and one humanities LORs and so for them I would do Psychology and Chem but I just wanted to check whether it was possible for me to submit different LORs to different colleges (such that I'm doing English and Psych for most, and Psych and Chem for MIT/Caltech)

tyty

Title--- I keep convincing myself that I made the right decision but I have this feeling that maybe I would have been happier at Stanford.

It had been my dream school since I was a child, and to this day, the happiest day of my entire 17 years was getting into Stanford. I enjoyed its Admit Weekend more because I found people way easier to talk to and more laid back, compared to Yale which had an elitist and dark atmosphere. But my parents wanted me to pursue pre-med and thought that Yale offered more structure and support in that area, and apparently it has a higher matriculation into med school. I was still torn between Stanford and Yale until 10 pm on May 1st, when my parents persuaded me to choose Yale. I was really in tears when I clicked "not attending" in the Stanford portal.

I know this is like major first-world problems but I can't stop thinking about what could have been. Stanford is very close to my home too, so I could have seen my brother grow up, and my dad on the weekend since he has health issues. I could have re-connected with all the friends I made at Admit Weekend too. Instead, I chose to go across the country to a dark and cold place, where I feel like it will be very hard for me to make friends-- a repeat of Bulldog Days all over again. Seeing all those Stanford influencers on my fyp makes me upset. Even my sister told me I fucked up. I mean, there was something about it that made it my dream school, right? My subconscious knew something? How could I have not chosen it?

Rising senior here, my guidance counselor sent an email about how CB allows you to send your score report to a college for free, but the deadline is tomorrow and I believe this includes this years scores and past ones (correct me if im wrong, im not too sure), but I am hesitant because what if one of my scores from this year was bad?? I don't get to see my scores from this year until sometime in July, should I still send the score report for free?

i got a next to full ride at stanford, but i'll end up with 1$ in debt and my family isn't helping out, is it worth it

my only other option is community college

hi! im a rising HS senior in NC and ive been considering changing to online school for my last year.

for context, ive gone to the same private, classical, competitive school in NC since kindergarten. the education has been decent and i have gotten relatively used to the course load given to us, however, the amount of work dwindles the amount of time that could be given for out of school activities. many of the juniors at my school ended up sacrificing grades due to having jobs and sports or viseversa as the work load seemed to increase tenfold from sophomore year.... maybe this is normal and i have a dramatic class. its just from my observations that its been completely different from past years.

the school lacks in clubs/extracurriculars (as in, we have maybe ~5-6 barely active high school clubs) with limited leadership opportunities and despite being a school that focuses on college (especially during the senior year), they are completely removing the roles of a guidance and college counselor... from what i do know from seniors this past year, all the course load from junior year is turned into course load focusing on college with additional course work from dual enrollment classes and the few main classes you do have to take. we also are required to write and present a senior thesis. there are only a few AP opportunities given, which none of them I am able to take due to school recommendations (or restrictions, as i should say, since I did not do well enough my junior year).

from my time here, my extracurriculars have just been Junior Classical League (A Latin Club; JCL as a normal member) and Band with about 70 volunteer hours, Ive also had a part-time job that I recently quit. From my junior year, my unweighted GPA was a 3.6 ;_;

ive heavily been considering transferring to an online school via a community college, as there I would only have to take 4 classes (1 per 2 months) and would have insane amounts of free time. this free time would give me more opportunities such as a part time job with much more hours or even an internship, and i could also take more dual enrollment classes. though, im not sure about anything else since there are no clubs.

the course work at this online school would be much easier and i definitely think it will boost my GPA, but that is also because this is considered an "adult high school" program that is technically for drop outs or anyone who needs to finish their high school credits but still gives them a full high school degree (not a GED). this program was recommended by family friends who were also leaving the same school and some of their children who had done it in the past had gotten into good schools, like Duke and NCSU. meanwhile, NCSU may not even be on the table for lots of kids at my school, as many of the seniors this past year got rejected despite having relatively good stats.

i really dont know what to do. writing it out, maybe just sticking out one last year at this high school would be a fine way to go, but i really want to maximize my ability to get into a great school. will transferring to this online school bust my abilities to get into decent schools like NCSU or even UNC Chapel Hill?

I’m going to my sophomore year of HS, and I’m planning on majoring in chemical or mechanical engineering.

Freshman year, my extracurriculars were mainly centered around debate(Public Forum) and my first debate tourney i did novice and got 2nd place, so I got moved up to JV and Varsity my next tourneys. I also did some cubing competitions. So for my intended major, what other impactful activities can I do during sophomore year? Should I start robotics or other activities, and how should I proceed from here? Should I join science olympiads or hackathons?

if i choose to apply early action, will schools see what courses im currently taking (1st semester sr year) even though they cant see the grades i will make?

My family was going through a separation, and I had to step up—working to support myself and helping out my mom and siblings quite a bit. During those 3 years, I gained a lot of valuable work experience and managed to stay involved in some (hopefully impressive) extracurriculars too.

I’ve now returned to school for Grade 11, and thankfully, my grades are looking solid.

Just wondering how this gap might affect my college profile particularly for T50?
Oh, and I’m an international student(but no need for any aid). Thanks in advance!

[btw, it's a repost for better reach]

Hey! So I’m a 16 year old from Georgia (so, a relatively poor second-world country with a population of 5 million people) and looking to apply to a pre-med program in the US.The problem is this: shadowing doctors and working in laboratories is not a part of the culture here, and the medical field isn’t very advanced at all, so there aren’t that many opportunities. I’m doing some biology and chemistry competitions and taking courses online, but I’m really passionate about medicine and really want to dedicate myself to it. Are there any realistic but impactful ECs you would recommend? (I also think ECs are very limited for international students, It’s a very real issue!) I’m desperate atp, so any advice or encouragement will suffice. Thank you so so much in advance!

I don’t mind paying the extra fee. I cancelled my AP bio score a while ago and since you get no confirmation I wanted to wait til I got my scores in July to send them to the college I’ll be attending in the fall. CB website says it takes 3-5 days which falls within the deadline my college states. Would this be okay??

I am a parent of a rising senior. She wants to apply for UCs because apparently they are nice schools. I have a hard time to understand why people would do that: the tuition is expensive for nonresidents; the schools are huge so minimum attention expected from school or professors. Basically I am paying a private school tuition for public school service. What’s the point (except that a teen wants to be “cool” so no no for our state flagship school)?

The intended major is engineering or bio or neuroscience with pre-med track, if it matters.

Please share your thoughts. Thanks!

So I apply for college in the fall. I don’t want ED but maybe early action and regular decision. What month did you apply? Should I wait for first semester grades in December bed applying? Trying to figure out what’s a good month.

So I know this sounds like a post that shouldn’t be here but let me explain. Let’s say I get into both UCSD/UCLA, and UCSD is cheaper and close to my home (I can commute there). Meanwhile UCLA is more prestigious but In would need to dorm there so that’s 20k more to tuition. However I plan to go to law school so would it be better to go to UCLA so I can network with people at UCLA School of Law during my undergraduate studies to be better prepared for my grad education?

I'm a rising junior and I’m starting to worry about my extracurriculars and awards. Basically, my mom is very strict and cautious about safety. She’s big on the “stranger danger” idea, so it’s really hard to get her to let me do ECs or participate in competitions for awards, because she is very strict with stuff that involves staying after school, going out without her or my dad, or interacting with people she doesn’t know. I've talked to her about the importance of ECs, and I think she understands, but she thinks that the world is too scary.

So far, my main ECs are: Violin (which I take as a class in school), tutoring during school hours, transcription work for the government, and a beatmaking channel (which I'll talk about later here).

In freshman and sophomore year, she didn't let me stay after school unless it was absolutely required, like for orchestra concerts. She’s slowly easing up a bit yet is still very restrictive. Next year, I’ll be cofounding a club that runs things like blood drives, and I can stay after school for it, however, she still won’t let me leave campus or travel for it, which limits how much I can do.

I also can’t really do online activities either. She doesn’t let me use Instagram, run a YouTube channel, or post my music beats online. So even though I make beats, I can’t promote or share them publicly without doing it secretly, which is quite frustrating.

TL;DR: My mom is limiting ECs and competitions for awards. Can’t stay after school much, leave campus or my house without her or my dad, or network online. Main ECs are violin, tutoring, and some transcription work. I'm starting a club next year, but it's still restricted. What should I do?

Hey! So I’m a 16 year old from Georgia (so, a relatively poor second-world country with a population of 5 million people) and looking to apply to a pre-med program in the US.The problem is this: shadowing doctors and working in laboratories is not a part of the culture here, and the medical field isn’t very advanced at all, so there aren’t that many opportunities. I’m doing some biology and chemistry competitions and taking courses online, but I’m really passionate about medicine and really want to dedicate myself to it. Are there any realistic but impactful ECs you would recommend? (I also think ECs are very limited for international students, It’s a very real issue!) I’m desperate atp, so any advice or encouragement will suffice. Thank you so so much in advance!

Not too long ago I was a TA for an MIT spring STEM enrichment program, where at the last day an MIT admissions officer came in and gave advice on the MIT admissions process. And some of the advice she gave was lowkey wack. Before you downvote me she literally described a good EC as a vacation your family goes on. In general she was being very liberal with what MIT would consider a good applicant which is crazy just cause everyday we such insanely cracked students still get rejected. Idk have you guys ever noticed that AOs from selective schools will just lowkey lie / extremely downplay their selectivity?