Application Strategies

January 6, 2023

Only one-quarter of the 111,000 freshman applicants to UC Santa Barbara are admitted. This makes the school about three times as selective as it was back in the late...

January 6, 2023

If you desire to call yourself a University of California Irvine Anteater, you are far from alone. With almost 120,000 freshman applicants, UCI can only accept 21% of that...

January 5, 2023

Now accepting just 30%-40% of freshman applicants, San Diego State University is one of the more selective schools in the California State University (CSU) system. Unless your high school...

January 5, 2023

If you want to attend UC San Diego as a freshman, you’ll need to possess close to a 4.0 cumulative high school GPA. However, if you feel short of...

January 2, 2023

You long to become a member of the Wolfpack, but you don’t have the stellar grades and test scores to get admitted to NC State directly out of high...

December 30, 2022

For those applying as first-year applicants, Barnard College has a single-digit acceptance rate. The standards for this Columbia-affiliated women’s college has reached full-blown Ivy League levels. More promising for...

December 28, 2022

Florida State University accepts less than one-third of freshman applicants and the mid-50% GPA for admitted students is 4.3-4.6. Given this spectacularly high level of selectivity, many aspiring Seminoles...

December 27, 2022

In a typical year, UMiami accepts between 1,000 and 1,500 transfer applicants. This gives hope to many prospective applicants to a school that now boasts a sub-20% freshman admit...

December 27, 2022

Your goal has always been to become a Terrapin, but you don’t have the grades and test scores to make the cut directly out of high school, don’t worry—all...

December 26, 2022

Tufts University is now a full-fledged member of the single-digit club—school’s that reject more than 9 of every 10 individuals who apply. While the Tufts transfer acceptance rate is...

December 23, 2022

Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland is among the Ivy-equivalent colleges that now perennially sports a single-digit acceptance rate. This means that very few of the deserving crop of...

December 22, 2022

A sharp rise in selectivity at the University of Florida in the 2020s has made the goal of becoming a Gator more difficult to achieve than ever before. While...

December 22, 2022

If your dream is to become a Nittany Lion, but you don’t have the grades and test scores to make the cut directly out of high school, don’t worry—all...

December 21, 2022

Much like the Ivy League colleges, Stanford, and MIT, the University of Chicago rejects many applicants who possess near-perfect (or perfect) test scores, grades, and extracurricular profiles. To further...

December 20, 2022

Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is one of the most competitive private universities in the country. They reject close to 9 of every 10 applicants who apply to...

December 19, 2022

In accepting as many as 550 transfer applicants per year, Emory University is one of the more transfer-friendly elite private institutions in the United States. Most schools with an...

December 19, 2022

Ranked among the top 30 public universities in the country, Texas A&M draws a competitive applicant pool for coveted spots in their freshman class. This includes almost 6,000 students...

December 16, 2022

By any measure, the University of Notre Dame is an elite and highly-selective institution. Incredibly, last year, 87 of every 100 freshman applicants were turned away. In more cheerful...

December 15, 2022

For those applying as first-year applicants, Rice University has a single-digit acceptance rate. These high standards leave many aspiring Owls outside of the nest. Yet, not everyone is ready...

December 14, 2022

The average successful freshman applicant to the University of Washington has a 1370 SAT and a 3.8 GPA. If you fell short of these numbers and weren’t offered a...