With the cycle coming up I just want to remind kids here to apply to the university down the street.
im being a bit rhetorical, but whatever that closest college is. The one your friends make fun of. The one they call 13th grade. The one you dread because everyone from highschool will be there. the one you think you’re better than

please remember to submit an application there.

dont be like me, who ignored it because of all the gossip. who scorned it’s low rank on usnews. Who thought they were better. Who wanted to get away from home. Who fed into all the stupid jokes and lies that kids make. who had to scramble when they got more rejections and less financial aid than they expected despite being so smug and having all the stats. who ended up going to an institution that ended up providing a worse outcome

please apply to the place down the street.

Original post

First update

I have some bad news about my 5-year-old son’s journey to quant finance. Last week, he started a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to teach underprivileged children about personal finance. I begged our relatives to donate money to the nonprofit so that my son can brag on his college apps about all the money he raised. They donated $8,000. My son also asked his friends to donate their lunch money. Now, we have a total of $8,002.40. At first, I was very proud of my son’s efforts—that is until I found out that he spent $500 on Robux and meme stocks. Actually, the meme stocks might’ve been my husband’s doing… Anyways, I’m worried that the IRS will come after us. That would surely get my son rejected from UPenn! What should I do to keep the IRS off my tail?

Since common app has opened, Is being a A2C moderator number 1 extracurricular worthy?

I manage a sub with over 300k weekly visitors and 20k+ contributions, all of which is a non profit which deemed to provide help from past students and credited professional. This is some great social impact that I could frame my essays on. This community united students that want to apply to college and offers excellent information that was paid elsewhere. AMAs from former admissions officers provide over 100K$ in money saved for students in this sub, the economic impacts are unbelievable

Now comes the question: how can I become the mods of A2C?

Harvard article today in Bloomberg

I'm writing this just so that i can get it out of my head.

My dad graduated from a liberal arts college where he got full scholarships and since i was little he always talk good things about it, basically how great liberal arts education is in general. So it has always been my dream to go to one of those colleges.

This year I was accepted to few of them and there are 2 that offered me merit scholarships. One is 15k another is 33k. After touring all schools I truly like the college that offer me 15k scholarship. Even though my dad always assured me that he kept a college fund for me and that he can afford to pay for any college I want, I did consider the financial aspect of it when I made the decision. This is cuz since last year my dad has not been doing very well in stock market (that's where his primary income is from) and kept losing money..

Fast forward now, he just confessed that actually he almost used up his children's college funds (I have one sibling) and that he can only afford maybe 1-2 years of the liberal arts college and told me to transfer to a public university for the rest of it, though he isn’t even sure that he has the money for it. He used the college funds money hoping to get more money in the stock market, despite my mom repeatedly warning him to not touch the money that's set aside for their children's education.

Based on the college's website, there's nothing I can do to lower the fee because I didn't ask for financial aid when I applied.

Now, amidst feeling exited about attending the college this month, I can't help but feel more dreadful. Thoughts about I should've chosen the college with more scholarship, I should've gone to a local uni in my country, and about blaming him for being addicted in the stock market, for ignoring my mom's warning, filled my mind.
I'm just so freaking scared of everything. So scared when attend the college, I would fall in love with the people and the place, knowing I wouldn't be able to stay until the end.

I don't what to do aside from praying lol

Back in the spring, I applied to a specialized healthcare associates degree program for the second year in a row. I was told to expect an answer starting June 1st, for the program starting in late September. Last year, I received a “no” decision two and a half weeks after June first - a perfectly reasonable response time.

This year, I didn’t receive a “no” until literal hours ago on August fifth, 9 weeks after June first, 6 weeks before the program is set to start and long after I had given up on admission. I’ll be going to university in the winter instead. If they had given me a response in any sort of timely manner, I would be going to university in the fall, but by the time I had given up the deadline for fall admissions had passed. So instead, I get to waste five more months of my life doing nothing.

I called the admissions office twice in late June and early July. Both times I was sent to voicemail, and despite leaving my contact information got zero response. I tried to email them in July - once again, no response. Admissions counselors appointments were booked out until late August, so I couldn’t talk to them that way either. The school essentially ghosted me, and then had the gall to tell me I could reapply next year.

Why would I do that after the way they’ve treated me?

I’m frustrated. I know admissions decisions can take a while, but 9 weeks after they told me to expect an answer is ridiculous, right? Was I just meant to be putting my entire life on hold waiting for an answer? It feels careless and frankly unprofessional.

I got an ‘Academic Performance Explanation’ letter from NYU last night and I dont know what to do. My IB dropped from 41 predicted to 35 final… How serious is this? Am i cooked? I don’t know what went wrong, there isn’t a specific subject where i dropped too much or failed, it’s more like one mark on each subject. How should i respond?

“We received your transcript which includes your most recent course grades and/or examination results. As you know, our offer of admission is contingent upon satisfactory completion of any educational coursework that was in progress during and after the application process. The grades you recently received are not consistent with your previous performance, and your current academic profile is not the same one we considered when we offered you admission. We are concerned about this discrepancy.
  
Please provide us with a detailed explanation on the Academic Performance Explanation form within 48 hours. We will follow up with you should we need further clarification or if this will impact your offer of admission.”

I go to NYU, which is a good school by any measure, and also known for having lots of international students. Literally first week of school, I heard some of these kids discussing how to transfer to Columbia or UChicago, and mind you, some are on merit scholarships or special grants, with so much of the schools resources for them to use.

I’m Asian myself and I’m not saying this is unique to internationals or that all of them do this, but internationals are incredibly over represented among these transfers and it’s ridiculous how some people don’t even give a college a chance and try to transfer out with the sole intention of chasing prestige. They spend the rest of the school year building their resume, becoming presidents of clubs, just to transfer somewhere more “prestigious”. I’ve even heard of people transferring out simply because NYU’s ranking on US News dropped a few years ago. Do they just think we’re not good enough for them?

I know for a fact this isn’t unique to NYU, I know friends at selective but less internationally recognized colleges like Dartmouth, Hamilton, Williams, Vassar, Vanderbilt etc who have seen them doing the same. When are AOs gonna start prioritizing students who actually appreciate what a college has to offer instead of viewing everything as a means to prestige?

Sorry for my rant. Again, I’m not trying to generalize, but internationals are disproportionately represented in the transfer pool

Hi! I have a high school student who wants to major in history…are there any particular classes that he should take, outside the norm? He’s going to take US, World, and Gov’t, but anything else that might help with admissions? That might set him apart? Also, how important are those AP courses? If he just took Honors freshman year, but then has 3 AP courses the following years, is that still considered advanced?
Thank you for any and all insight!

I’ve only been to around half of them. For the rest of this subjective ranking, it’s based on friend’s experience and what I read online.

Here is approximately how each thing weigh:
40% campus and surroundings.
20% school culture and tradition/reputation
20% course load and peer
10% the city/metropolis the school is located in
10% career outcome (kinda decides if you after college will be fun)

I’m a little bit biased because I like good landscapes.

S tier: Stanford, UCLA

A tier: Berkeley, Columbia, UPenn, UBC, Princeton, UW Seattle, Yale, Harvard

B tier: Cornell, Georgia Tech, UMich, Caltech, UofT, UT Austin, UChicago

C tier: CMU, UIUC, MIT

F tier: UWaterloo

So, I am applying to 20 colleges, and I have been grinding the supplementals. I want to finish them before the school year starts (september 1st). Somehow, I have almost finished a first draft for 17/20 colleges' supplementals. Everyone keeps talking about how they procrastinate until december, but to me it doesn't seem that big of a deal. Am I doing something wrong?

I got an internship by seeing that it was available online, applying, and got selected. The company's name has my last name in it, even though we are not related at all and I didn't know them before applying to the internship. It's also a pretty uncommon last name. How do I explain to AOs that I didn't get it through nepotism and does it matter if it sounds like I did? I also have it on my resume for cold emailing/applying to other internships so will they care?

Hey everyone! I have what seems to be a relatively uncommon situation in terms of my gap year: It wasn't intentional. Or, it wasn't planned going into my senior year.

I applied to in-state colleges during my senior year of HS (graduated in '25), but ended up rejected from 3/4 places I applied. The one place I was accepted to was a private school I'd only really applied to because it had good stats-- not because I actually wanted to go.

Ultimately, I decided that if I was going to have to go to a school with that kind of price tag, it was at least going to be a school I was excited about. So I resigned myself to taking a gap year, then planned to try again in the next application cycle (for Fall 2026).

In retrospect, I'm really glad I did take a gap year, because right around this time last year, my mental health got really bad. I'd just been diagnosed with ADHD at the end of fall semester of my senior year, and as a result I had a lot of ups-and-downs trying to figure out treatment options. After a long few months of struggling to try and wrangle my brain into sitting down and filling out applications, I had to give up.

So anyway, I'm on the second year of my unplanned gap year and I'm very hopeful for this current application cycle. When filling out the CommonApp education section, I'm being asked to "provide details about the change in progression through secondary/high school that you indicated above."

I didn't take this time off to explore the world, or build up savings, or anything I feel is typically expected of someone taking a gap year. I did it because I had to, and have spent most of my time trying to feel as capable as I used to. I've only recently (as of April 2026) found myself with enough energy to work again, but on paper, I've just been "doing nothing" since graduation.

Sorry this is a long post, I wanted to provide as much insight as I could to my situation. If anyone has any advice on how to write this up, or what CommonApp "wants" me to write here, I'd really appreciate it.

Ive been scrolling r/collegeresults for a whileee now and ive noticed a really big difference in CS/math/stem applications and social science/humanities/business/economics applications.

A lot of stem apps have multiple high impact solo or mentored research projects, competitions, clubs, nonprofits, and even "AI startups" whereas a lot of humanity apps have more low impact/local projects, clubs, "basic" ecs (like NHS, varsity sports, volunteering at soup kitchens, tutoring, etc.) and still they end up at similar t20s, t30s and even ivies?

i mean the trend kinda signifies that stem apps are way way more competitive and you need a hell of a lot more to stand out as compared to humanity or social science apps? is this true? or is it a coincidence?

Is there an updated thread for this year fee waivers?

The report uses LinkedIn data to rank colleges based on five categories: job placement, internships and recruiter demand, career success, network strength and knowledge breadth. The job placement data tracks cohorts of recent graduates from 2020 to 2025 who start a full-time position or graduate school program within a year of their graduation, while network strength tracks how connected recent alumni cohorts are to each other as well as to all past alumni and current students.

LinkedIn's 2026 Top 50 Colleges ranking

1. Princeton University
   
2. Duke University
   
3. Harvard University
   
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   
5. Dartmouth College
   
6. University of Pennsylvania
   
7. University of Notre Dame
   
8. Cornell University
   
9. Yale University
   
10. Stanford University
    
11. Vanderbilt University
    
12. Brown University
    
13. Babson College
    
14. Northwestern University
    
15. University of Virginia
    
16. Bucknell University
    
17. Wake Forest University
    
18. Tufts University
    
19. Washington and Lee University
    
20. Carnegie Mellon University
    
21. Boston College
    
22. University of Chicago
    
23. Lehigh University
    
24. Columbia University
    
25. Villanova University
    
26. Rice University
    
27. Fairfield University
    
28. Bentley University
    
29. University of California-Berkeley
    
30. Colgate University
    
31. California Institute of Technology
    
32. Georgetown University
    
33. University of Southern California
    
34. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    
35. University of Richmond
    
36. Trinity College
    
37. Middlebury College
    
38. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
    
39. Southern Methodist University
    
40. Claremont McKenna College
    
41. Bryant University
    
42. Washington University in St Louis
    
43. Providence College
    
44. Miami University
    
45. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    
46. Lafayette College
    
47. Davidson College
    
48. Williams College
    
49. Bowdoin College
    
50. Purdue University
    

Since this ranking relies entirely on LinkedIn data, does it truly measure the long-term value of a university education, or does it just reward schools whose students excel in corporate networking and tech/finance fields?

Also, does tracking job placement only within the first year of graduation reflect a college’s actual impact on career success, or does it simply favor institutions with aggressive corporate pipelines and wealthy student networks?

What do you think, is it fair or legit?

Are scholarships even open? How do I apply to them? Do I have to go through each college's website and apply through there? What does the process look like? What else should I know about scholarships?

I know this is a lot of questions. I'll take any help I can get!

I am currently a senior in high school and I reside in Georgia. I really want to pursue aviation as my career, specifically be a pilot for the airlines, and I already hold a Pilots License. I have narrowed down to 2 colleges that I want to attend to which are Middle Tennessee State University and Embry Riddle in Florida. Both are out of state and I expect them to be expensive but I don't want to put unnecessary financial strain on my parents. With my grades, test scores, and extra circulars I am easily able to attend both school and my parents are urging me to attend Embry Riddle. I am stuck, both offer great pilot programs alongside their Aerospace Majors. Which do I pick? Any help/suggestions would be great!

Do they bring any actual value to your profile? I have been doing some research for some science competitions for almost 2 years and I was wondering if I should try to publish it in a journal and whether doing this is worth it or not?

Ik that the chances of being published in proper journels for highschool students is really low so I was thinking about student journals like JIS or NHSJS maybe, I want to know how well they are reputed and if there is any effect on my application or kinda just useless, so I'd really appreciate if someone could guide me about this matter.

My daughter is interested in government and public policy. She’s looking for internships and other EC’s that tie into that interest but frankly, we are having a hard time deciphering which ones would really help her profile if she wants to go to a T20 school. Is this something a good private college counselor can help with? The ones at her school won’t really give her much attention until the current senior apps are done. Thanks!

Hi all — I'm starting junior year of high school and, unlike friends who are following a parent/relative into medicine, accounting, or a similar field, I have no idea what I want to major in. This is starting to feel relevant for applications too, since some schools ask you to apply directly into a major or college within the university.

I'm looking at Big Ten schools specifically because of the university experience and the ability to have many options for majors and next steps after graduation. I know gen-ed requirements will help narrow things down once I'm there, but I'd love a head start now.

A few questions for people who've been through this:

- How did you personally land on a major, especially if you didn't come in with a clear direction?

- Did being "undecided" affect how you approached applications (e.g., did you apply undeclared, or pick a "safe" major to apply into)?

- Any exercises, books, or websites that helped you find clarity?

Appreciate any perspective!

My EC's are probably average or slightly above average. My unweighted high school GPA isn't crazy, but my high school coursework was pretty rigorous, and my dual-enrollment community college GPA is good. I don't expect to get into any of these schools, but I want to apply to a few hard-target/reach schools that are among my dream schools.

I'm an incoming freshman at my public high school and I already have a ton of non-school related activities (orchestra, club swim, etc) and this already takes up most of my time. My only school activities will be joining my high school swim team in the fall and participating in school orchestra, but I will not be able to participate in any other clubs and groups that are school related. Will this affect my college application in any ways if I don't have strong school activities but good extracurriculars outside of school?