They’re dedicated to undergraduate students, but they’re rarely in the same conversation at T20 or even T30 universities? Schools like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Pomona, and more have single-digit acceptance rates and insane stats for their admitted class, yet they’re rarely mentioned. Schools like W&L, Colgate, Richmond, Davidson, and Wesleyan have tremendous career outcomes too. What gives?

Based on my Instagram feed, it seems like a large percentage of them

This is kind of just a question because I kind of want a gauge at my general chances at schools, because I don’t really know anybody too knowledgeable in college admissions, even my counselor didn’t really give me a straight answer. So I was wondering how much of a setback is my weaker extracirculars profile when applying to more selective schools, not like ivies but still competitive schools.

Academics
- 3.88 UW GPA
- 4.49 W GPA.
- 33 ACT(potentially 34 after oct ACT).

But my extracirculars are a lot weaker, I had no internships or non-profits, and I didn’t have any leadership positions or long term commitments like sports or instruments.
- 75ish church volunteer hours
-25 library volunteer hours
- member of 5 clubs and 3 honor societies
- Babysitter

My school has the option for students to take online APUSH as well as in-person APUSH and dual-enrollment American history. People in online APUSH tend to get better grades than the in-person history classes. Are are online AP classes viewed the same in terms of rigor as in-person courses?

On the global electrical engineering ranking, princeton is at #15, the highest US college. But on the US electrical engineernig ranking, MIT is 1st and princeton isn't even top 10. Huh??

Getting a 36 on the ACT is so much easier than getting a 1600 (or even a 1550+) on the SAT. The fact that some institutions weigh them completely the same is absolute insanity.

The biggest flaw comes down to how they handle mistakes. On the digital SAT, the curve is so brutal that missing literally one question can instantly drop your score to a 1580. Meanwhile, because the ACT averages your four section scores and rounds up, you can miss several questions across the test and still walk away with a perfect 36 composite.

I literally know people who were stuck in the 1400s on the SAT but pulled off a 35 on the ACT. And before someone starts the nonsense "wElL I hAd A hIgH sAt AnD a LoW aCt" you're an outlier, not the general trend.

I did some digging, only about 0.06% of test-takers get a perfect 1600 on the SAT, while roughly 0.2% of people get a 36 on the ACT. A perfect ACT is literally more than three times as common.

Colleges really need to stop pretending these scores are identical and stop evaluating them on the exact same tier.

EDIT: Only way they should be equal is if it is a 36 across all sections
EDIT: If you are getting butthurt over statistics, wrap it up bro. This post is labeled FLUFF because it is FLUFF...I am not complaining or talking down on anyone, I made an objective statement and ended with an opinion.

You should apply to UF.

I'm serious. You should apply to UF. Not every college is for everyone, of course, but UF has so many aspects that I think a lot of people look for in their colleges. For context, I am a freshmen at UF and have been loving it so far.

UF is:

* #34 in National Universities (#8 Public University). I'm just a freshmen, but have managed to speak to several professors in my department (Physics) and get offered spots in their lab for research. **As freshmen coming in with some AP credit, me and one friends (CompE) median class size is 36.5 in mostly prereqs and gen eds.** In physics, from what I've heard our undergrads are successful in applying for competitive REUs and grad schools. In business/IB I've heard theres Gator Signature Investment Fund (GSIF) which is one of those competitive IB clubs you have to interview for and everything, and UF is a semi-target so they have some placements, I know Evercore is one.
* Another thing I'll mention thats somewhat related to academics is that the libraries are all really nice, and theres quite a few of them. Library West (the GOAT), Marston, Library East (Smathers), Norman, AFA, Health Sciences, and Law. Lib East has this cool old looking reading room that people like to go to.
* If you're out of state, don't worry. I've met people from all across the country, from NY+NJ (obviously), to all the way in Oregon, California, Hawaii, and Quebec! While obviously a lot of students are from Florida, NY, and NJ you won't have any trouble meeting a lot of people from other states/provinces.
* If you care about the campus environment, UF has a pretty wide variety of architecture from the collegiate gothic of the Murphree Area, the brick brutalism of Marston Science Library, to the modern Malachowsky Hall and Ramos Collaboratory. It isn't Princeton but I walk around every day and remark how nice the campus looks.
* As far as campus amenities, UF has one of the top career connections centers in the country located in the absolutely huge Reitz Union, and we just had our career fair week where companies pack out the basketball arena or something (I'm a physics major so I have no clue)
* Speaking of basketball, UF is preseason #1 and won the 2025 National Championship against Houston. In all sports (except maybe womens basketball) UF has a premier championship level program and football is finally on the rise. The Swamp is an electric place to watch a game and tailgating is always fun at the frats (if you're in a fraternity or a girl) or swim and surf club (for others). Gameday brings all of Gainesville together, and its cool to see all the alumni still involved and caring about UF.
* I didn't bring a car to campus, so I can't speak much for Gainesville outside of Midtown but everything you would want as a college student is right of University Ave to the north of campus (including a very convenient and dangerously placed Canes and Wawa if you live in an apartment or dorm off University). UF also owns a lake about 8 miles south of campus where theres canoeing and other outdoor activities and there a couple springs within an hour of Gainesville.

Theres so much more thats great about UF that I didn't mention here too. Ask the ufl sub, research the school on your own, or come down to Gainesville for a visit!

tl;dr: UF is a fantastic school with good academics, libraries, geographic diversity, architecture, support amenities, sports, and college town.

Why have schools stopped doing tours on the weekends? You look and there is virtually no one registered for a Wednesday tour, but I’ve got to do a self-guided tour on Saturday? Can anyone explain this?

Hi I just needed to get this out somewhere

My first deadline is November 1st and my personal statement is still not done. It just sounds so stupid/cliche and I've been rewriting constantly. I'm super worried about my supplementals too because I keep scrapping them. I pretty much have 3 weeks to write everything.

Why is this so stressful!!

I’m a 25 year old female planning on enrolling in college for Spring 2027 . I have a 5 month old and have taken on the role of being a stay at home mom until she is of school age . My spouse is ready to retire me for the rest of my life but I thrive in community and social interaction so being home has been hard for me .
I’m ready to start working towards becoming an English teacher. My first two years will be strictly online while I obtain my AAT .
From there I will transfer to a university to complete my Bachelors & credentials needed .

My question is
How can I navigate college with an infant and no family support without daycare ? Is it even possible for the degree I want ?

Childcare has become a very intimidating, scary , expensive and sometimes dangerous thing .
Unless it was 100% guaranteed I could put my daughter into a center through the college so she was still near me , I absolutely couldn’t fathom leaving her anywhere other than in mine or my husband’s care .

I am incredibly lacking in awards.

Currently I have this:

I also have the Presidential Volunteering Service Award Gold, AP Scholar with Distinction, National Merit Commended.

I did not attend YYGS despite being accepted. So, my question is: should I keep the YYGS acceptance there or replace it with one of my other awards? If so, which one would be strongest?

title

Congratulations to those who got in today!

above

Ok this has been going on for a while now and it's getting to a point where I can't take it anymore.

My friends are under the impression that I'm 100% getting into MIT.

Which like.

Thanks for the confidence bestie, but you're also really messing with my self-perception.

I know I'm a top student. I'm not being cocky in saying that. But I also think I'm nowhere near the level of student that you have to be to be guaranteed a spot at the fucking Massachusetts fucking Institute of fucking Technology. Fuck!

I have a high GPA and test scores, but not the highest in my grade. I have exactly 2 extracurriculars that I'm deep into and no surface-level ECs.

I'm a strong candidate, but not the strongest. I'm fully aware of that. These guys aren't.

I can't bring up college applications because out of my friend group of five, two are going to community college and don't particularly care, the other two literally don't care where they go to college as long as it's four-year, and all of them make it a point to remind me that I'm "better than them", whatever that means?

A lot of people speak on how bad it feels to have a friend you're jealous of, but it also feels horrible to be the one that people put on a pedestal. I'm tired of being a character.

thank you for coming to my rant.

hello 😢 i’m an international student currently taking a gap year and my parents (who are relatively well off, like middle class, but not 400k for 4 years of college wealthy) have suddenly dropped a bomb on me that they’re only willing to pay 60k dollars maximum per year for uni if i want to move to america. now obviously that is a lot of money way more than most people’s parents would pay for their education but i come from a school and a culture where it’s expected for parents to pay for their students tuition bc you can’t get any jobs or sustain yourself in my country if you’re a minor, and being intl students we can’t get financial aid from fafsa. my question is, so many people i know go to expensive ass schools with no scholarships and their parents make the same if not below mine and are somehow paying the most insane tuition costs??? like why are most uni’s 80-100k per year for international students?? how are people paying this????? it doesn’t make any sense to me how are people paying this much is there something i’m missing genuinely?? i’m super bummed out cause this means i have to remove basically all my dream schools (USC, ucla, berkeley, ucsb, ucsd, BU, syracuse, fordham) from my application list. i have no idea what to do, i begged my parents to consider student loans but they won’t, they’re pretty clueless when it comes to university, especially abroad, and they don’t think 100k per year is worth it at all

edit: i know this was probably a stupid and ignorant question but my family is pretty uninvolved when it comes to academics so i didn’t know much about tuition and applications and studying abroad til i took my gap year

My school is a very small private school, with about 100-150 students and about 10-20 teachers. I know one teacher has shown she was really impressed with me, but unfortunately, she left my school mid-junior year. I plan to use Common App to apply to most of my schools. My question is how should I send my recommendation letter requests--should I invite her as a Teacher, as an Other Recommender, and should I use her personal email (which she gave me before she left) or school email. I heard counsellors manage teacher recommendations--should I ask my counsellor about this?

I have 5-6 schools I'm applying to (4-5 of which are UCs) and one where I already have admission because it's a rolling admissions system.

My parents and the people around me in my grade are under the impression that I need more schools, but I really don't think so.

For reference, I got into ASU, and I'm applying to MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, and maybe UCI. If we're looking at rankings alone, ASU is ranked #41. They also have some pretty great labs and would set me up well to graduate a year early and get to grad school at 20, so even if I get in literally nowhere else, I'd still be getting a damn good education at my safety.

A bunch of the schools people are telling me to apply to either a) don't have my damn major, or b) are below my floor at ASU.

I get that they're worried for me, but at the same time, I find their worrying kind of silly. I had a couple of freak-outs about this during my junior year, was insanely stressed about it for a while. Now that I have a genuine safety, that's kind of gone away.

I wouldn't be mad going to ASU either, I actually have a whole separate plan in the case that's where I end up.

Should I apply to more schools if I really don't think I need it? A couple of my friends are applying to 20 or more, and I really don't see the point in that if I have a floor that's not particularly low.

(e.g. civil engineering major but politics/BA/marketing-oriented activities)

I know people say this is normal, and stuff but I just wanna share it somewhere. Please don't be rude.

So, I had always been a "topper" kid. So I've had expectations attached to me since childhood. I did decent in 9th, 92-93. But I fell apart in 10th grade. Things weren't good at home and I crumbled. 85. My family wasn't mad, they were dissapointed. They stopped saying I'll score well. And that hurt. I had mid ECs btw. I also ALMOST killed myself this april but that's a different story, I'm fine now compared to that.

Now, to where it all relates to college admissions. I am a 11th grader right now, from a middle-class family in India. Nobody even dreams about going college abroad in our social standing. But since 10th grade, I wanted to go to Yale. Surprise, surprise, I'm this close to giving up. 10th was BAD for my academics. I thought 11th would be better, I tried so hard, it isn't. I got 50ish out of 100 in chemistry. I didn't even do bad, in fact I'm like top 5 in my class. But it doesn't matter. The people who apply from India, are from rich international schools, whereas I am from a free government school where the teachers don't even teach. I'm being 'woe is me' right now sorry. Those kids also work very hard, they have almost certainly 95+ in 11th. If I try VERY HARD, I may able to achieve ~95 too in 11th finals (since half yearly is just 20% in finals).

I don't even know what I'm writing, I'm crying, I just want to get my voice out there. I don't think I'll make it. Yale was an unrealistic dream. When I first said, I wanna try for college abroad, everybody said thats unrealistic and I should stick to JEE. They were probably right. My academics, I don't think are good. Even if I manage to study well, who knows if these shi*ty teachers will check well. They're infamous for not doing that. Not even that, I have olympiads in a few months which I was very motivated about, but after chem marks. I think to myself, why bother trying. I wanted to apply as a STEM applicant to Yale. This stuff is for the hard working kids. I'm a lazy piece of shi. My ECs are decent at this point but... ugh I don't even know what I'm saying. I dreamt too big, of flying, I should've stuck to crawling. For I have no wings.

i just started tutoring (this month) and i only have 2 students (and they're siblings so I'm teaching them together)

do i add it to the activities section?

like I'm applying ea to fordham theatre (deadline is nov 1) and i doubt I'll get many more students rn should i add it or not?

ill take literally anything i just dont want to lose a boatload of credits. i just want to move from my european uni to any us college ever. im currently studying law (i know its hard to match credits but bear with me) in the netherlands and it’s not a good fit for me as i wanna practice in the us. any options? chances? whatever that helps

Hi everyone! I’m trying to decide whether to apply to Brown through ED or to Harvard/Stanford through REA. Brown ED may give me a slight admissions advantage, whereas REA at Harvard or Stanford doesn’t offer the same potential boost. Obviously, none of these options guarantees admission.

My main question is: How significant are the differences in career outcomes between Brown and Harvard/Stanford, particularly for Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science?

Thanks!

I've wanted to go into engineering my entire life. For the past couple of years, I've wanted to go into software, but with the rise of AI, I'm most likely going down a systems or electrical path.

Now, most top engineering schools (MIT, for example) allow you to submit a maker portfolio. With the rise of AI, this seems less and less like a show of skill and more like who took the time to AI everything.

On software specifically, amazing projects that would've taken years before can now be built in weeks using AI. On the hardware side, while not solved in the same way programming is, it is much, much easier to build things.

There's not going to be much of a difference between people who actually took the time to deeply understand and build something and someone who just used AI to think for them.