‘Tis the season…for early application decisions!

Over the next few weeks, many schools will release their early application decisions - especially those with binding early decision plans (some non-binding early action decisions will not come in until January or even February). If you aren’t sure when to expect decisions from the schools on your list, check out this website for expected dates and times.

Make sure to consider where you want to be when you receive your decisions. We recommend you log into your portal or open your email or letter in the privacy of your room or home, not in your high school cafeteria ​​or while with a group of friends. You need to be able to have an honest, emotional response. We have seen a trend developing in which students record themselves opening their admission decisions and then post the video on TikTok. We definitely do NOT recommend this approach!

You should also take some time to decide how you want to share this information, whether positive or negative. Tell your parents. Tell your counselor at school. And of course, tell us! Beyond that, remember that YOU get to decide if and when you choose to share your news with anyone else.

Read on for some helpful tips, broken down by decision!

• If Accepted:

• First of all, congratulations!

• Be gracious. Congratulate yourself. It is ok to celebrate—but be appropriate. Remember there are many of your peers and friends who have not heard anything, are still applying to schools, or have been deferred, waitlisted or denied ​​(sometimes by the same school that just accepted you!).

• Be grateful. Thank your parents. Thank your recommenders. A hand-written thank you note goes a long way for an educator who cares about your success and puts the effort in to meet your school’s deadlines. 

• Be engaged. Your acceptance is not the signal to check out or give in to “senior slide.”

• Be proactive. If you have been accepted early decision, be sure to withdraw your applications from the remainder of your schools. You agreed to do this when you signed the early decision form.

• IF Deferred:

• Continue to work hard in your classes. Many schools will ask you to submit midyear grades in the portal, on the SRAR, or from your counselor.

• Check with us or your school counselor before sending additional submissions. More is not necessarily better. Follow the school’s directions for submitting materials.

• Compose your letters of continued interest (LOCI). Write brief (seriously: brief!) letters that state why you want to attend the schools and why you would be a great fit. Check out our prior blog post: Writing an Effective Letter of Continued Interest: Instructions and Samples, and again, only do this if the schools at which you were deferred will accept them (most will!).

• If Waitlisted:

• Respond. Be sure to follow the school’s instructions to accept your place on the waitlist. 

• Redouble your efforts and study, study, study. These schools will see your 3rd and 4th quarter or winter and spring term grades, which, if strong, can help you.

• Refocus. Be sure to deposit at another school by May 1 to ensure you are going to college somewhere, even if you remain on other waitlists.

• If Denied:

• Process the news. It’s ok to allow yourself time to be disappointed (for a day or two). What you feel is real and needs to be expressed, but cannot take over your life. This sounds impossible, but don’t take it personally. Read our previous post:  5 Steps to Take After Being Deferred or Denied Early Admission.

• Maintain perspective. Remember you have a balanced list for a reason.

• Pull yourself together and submit your remaining applications. Do not allow a denial to paralyze you. You need to continue to work hard in your classes and make sure all of your remaining applications are submitted.

• Prioritize self-care. Got a shredder? Print out your letter and shred it! Have a fire pit? Invite friends over and make s’mores out of your denial letters! Be creative and find a way to move forward!

If you ARE A CURRENT CLIENT:

• If you need help adding new schools to your list or reviewing application materials over winter break, make an appointment with Colleen or Sally to review it and discuss whether or not you need to make any changes

• If you need more essay coaching meetings, book them as soon as possible (but don’t add new schools without running that by us first)!

If you need help now but didn’t work with us earlier in the process on an ongoing basis, it’s not too late.

• If you need help adding new schools to your list or reviewing application materials over winter break, you can book one of our Class of 2024 Strategy Sessions.

• If you already know where you want to apply and just need help finishing up all those essays, you can book pay-as-you-go essay coaching sessions here. 

NOTE: We may be able to add additional essay coaching availability depending on demand, so the earlier you let us know you need help, the better! Please send our admin team an email to discuss options if you can’t find a session that works for you using the links above.

REMEMBER: We are rooting for you just as much as you are (maybe even more!). Stay smart, stay positive, and enjoy the rest of senior year! 

5 Steps to Take After Being Deferred or Denied Early Admission

Last week was the one that so many high school seniors were waiting for–early decision releases! The news came flooding in, and we were anxious all week long! If you’re still waiting, remember that you can check this website to see the official list of release dates and times. It’s updated almost daily!). 

We are absolutely thrilled to see that so many students have been accepted into their first choice schools. Thanks to all of our families who emailed us to share the news! If you were admitted early decision, make sure you carefully read our recent blog post for ED admits. We outlined 5 crucial steps you need to take now that you’ve been accepted. 

But what happens if you didn’t receive the decision you were hoping for? Well, first of all, don’t get down on yourself. There's been a HUGE increase in applications over the past two years, and it looks like that trend will continue. As of November 1, college applications for Fall 2023 were up 41% from the 2019-2020 cycle. All of these numbers add up to inevitable disappointment for some students. 

If you didn’t get the news you wanted or were expecting, don’t panic! This is NOT the end of your college admissions journey. Take a look at these 5 steps for managing deferrals and denials.

Do you need help navigating a deferral or denial?

Book a session with us by clicking here. We offer strategy sessions and writing support.

For More Information:

If you are looking for more information on details we mentioned above, we encourage you to read some of our blog posts from past cycles:

How to Turn a Deferral into an Acceptance

Writing an Effective Letter of Continued Interest: Instructions and Samples

5 Steps To Take After Being Admitted Early Decision

What now? That’s the question thousands of families will be asking this month, as colleges and universities begin to release their early decision notifications. 

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing tips to help parents and students navigate early decision news, whether it’s great, disappointing, or downright shocking. 

And if you’re an ED applicant wondering when you’re going to hear, don’t forget to check out College Kickstart’s compilation of Class of 2027 Early Decision and Early Action Notification Dates , which we shared in a recent weekly update. Most students have another week or so to wait, although one of our seniors found out last night that she got into Boston College - yay!

We’ll keep our focus on the good news for new - check out the five steps to take after you’ve been admitted early decision:

Coming Up…

Stay tuned for future blog posts where we’ll help you strategize next steps for early decision deferrals and rejections.

Class of 2022 UVA Early Decision/Early Action Results

I’m sure that most of you have read Dean J’s blog post by now with the EA admissions statistics for UVA’s Class of 2026. I love how she breaks the numbers down between in-state and out-of-state, by the way. That is so helpful and I wish other flagship state universities would follow suit.

The Early Decision numbers for in-state applicants didn’t change all that much from last year, except there was more of everything: total applicants, accepted applicants, deferred applicants and denied applicants. It all balanced out, though. 38% accepted as compared to 39% last year; 29% deferred as compared to 26% last year; and 33% denied as compared to 35% last year.

Early Action followed a similar pattern for in-state applicants - the raw numbers for each group were up, but percentages were actually exactly the same as they were the year before: 30% accepted, 27% deferred, and 43% denied.

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But here’s the interesting thing. The percentages staying constant do NOT mirror what we are seeing and hearing anecdotally from kids here in Fairfax, Arlington, and even Loudoun County. Not at all. To the point that I checked my math about five times (I really hope I didn’t make a mistake)!

I am not going to perpetuate the rumor that UVA has quotas, because they don’t. Yet I would really love to know the breakdown of these in-state numbers by county or region. Is it possible that even though the in-state numbers as a whole don’t show a significant difference, the county-by-county breakdown would? It’s just really hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that the percentages stayed the same this year when so many of us counselors (independent and high school) are observing a different scenario with our Northern Virginia students:

Here’s what we noticed in particular:

1. Over the past two years there has not been a huge difference in terms of the quality of the admitted student pool between the ED and EA rounds. Statistically, ED is slightly easier, but it’s also a different applicant pool - there are typically more legacy students and recruited athletes in any school’s ED applicant pool. This can often balance out a moderate differential. Anyway, in terms of our internal data (which is admittedly statistically insignificant and from a similar demographic), it did not seem like the ED advantage was anywhere near as substantial as it is for some other schools. Other independent and high school counselors noticed the same.

2. This year was different, starting with ED. We had some students admitted in that round that I was very surprised (but thrilled, don’t get me wrong!) were admitted. These were not kids with any particular connections, either. And of course we also had students admitted ED that were extremely qualified. As well as a couple that we thought should have been admitted. But overall, it was a significantly easier ED year.

3. We did not have that many EA applicants this year, because so many of our students had UVA as their first choice and applied ED. We also had a lot of ED kids admitted to other schools who later pulled out their UVA EA apps. But of the remaining applicants we had in the EA pool, there were some really shocking decisions. Kids who 100% should have been admitted were not. If I shared their stats, which I can’t for confidentiality reasons, you would be shocked. And you can’t blame it on essays or teacher recs or something else, because these ultra-qualified kids have been admitted to other schools that are in some cases significantly more competitive than UVA. And SO MANY OTHER COUNSELORS are noting the same. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had this week about it.

4. A number of students (not our clients, actually) were not admitted even though they had already advanced in the rounds for the Jefferson Scholarship. This is WILD to me. Understandably, these students were more focused on the scholarship at this point and assumed that admission itself was more or less a done deal, since, hello! They are supposed to be the top students in the applicant pool! The reason this is so interesting to me is because the admissions committee does not make the decisions for Jefferson Scholars - it's a separate committee from the Jefferson Scholars Foundation. And my assumption is that the Jefferson Scholars committee is free to make decisions based on merit, while the admissions committee has to take other factors into consideration about shaping the class.

Again, I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the stats do not add up with what we observed from other years with our admittedly-not-representative-of-the-state-as-a-whole student group.

SO - My advice for Class of 2023 juniors interested in attending UVA? Apply early decision, and for the love of God, please PLEASE continue foreign language during your senior year!!! 😃 I HATED IT TOO SO I FEEL YOU BUT THIS WILL COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU!

Choosing Your College

Now that our Class of 2021 students have their last decisions in hand, it’s time for our students who weren’t admitted ED to choose which campuses they’ll be on next year and send their deposits in! While it would be nice if the stress ended with the arrival of the acceptance letters, and we always joke that too many choices is a good problem to have, this is typically the first major life decision that a student will make - and the pressure and anxiety that comes along with such a big decision can turn it into the most difficult part of the process for many. That has never been more true than this year, when many students in the Class of 2021 have never had a formal college visit.

So if you’re struggling with these issues, here are some tips that might help you to think through your final college decision!

P.S. If you are a parent hoping to help your student through this difficult time, check out our post from a couple of years ago - written especially for you!

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1. Make it familiar.

Part of the reason that choosing a college can feel so overwhelming is that it is an entirely new experience! We hear this from students and families all the time: “I’ve never even been to sleep-away camp! How can I choose?” And yes, college will absolutely be a big adjustment for many of those students. But it doesn’t have to be totally unfamiliar or unexpected.

Think about your high school right now. What do you love? What about your school will you miss after graduation? And what do you dislike? What are the things that make you say “ugh, can’t wait to get out of here!”? Try to list at least three things in each category.

Then, use your list as a guide for your preferences. Sick of seeing the same faces day in and day out, and ready to meet some new people? You might be interested in a school with a large, diverse student body. Sad to leave your friends and the favorite teachers that made high school so special for you? You might be looking for a close-knit community with small class sizes.

Remember, don’t be afraid to be honest with yourself about what really matters to you, even if others roll their eyes. After all, you’ve already established during the college search process that every one of the schools to which you applied would be a good fit!

So if all else is equal, and you suffered through four years of living with roommates through cold New England boarding school winters (cough cough this was me), toss those snow boots in the trash and cross off any of the schools north of the Mason-Dixon line. And don’t feel even a tiny bit guilty about going for the schools that will allow you to have a single during your freshman year! You’ll be so much happier this way…I know from experience :)

2. Think about the future

Where do you hope your next steps will take you? I’m asking this question literally, from a geographic perspective- you already looked at important percentages during your college search, so you know that it’s likely that every school on your list will result in employment or graduate school placement. But where?

Of course, you can certainly go to school in Virginia and end up with an amazing job in Denver after graduation. But for the most part, students from your school will likely migrate to the nearest large city after graduation, and that is probably going to be somewhere with a big alumni network that can help you. A William & Mary graduate in Washington, D.C. is going to benefit a lot more from the network and name recognition than one who is job searching in Los Angeles! 

On a similar note, if campus recruiting is important to you (i.e., for business and engineering majors), take a look at the geographic reach of the companies on the school’s recruiting schedule. Many school career centers will advertise the companies that recruit on their campuses, and this can be a good guide to help you choose the place with the right connections and geographic footprint. So if you’re a prospective business major and living in the windy city isn’t so appealing, you may consider bypassing Michigan after all - campus recruiting in the Midwest is very Chicago-centric.

3. Go beyond pros and cons

Making a pro/con list is a tried and true decision-making technique. But then again, these can get messy! After all, how do you compare “Has a really impressive maker space” with “No cars on campus freshman year”? Instead, think about the top three to five MOST important factors in your college search, and let those guide your decision.

When we are brainstorming with students, we call these the “must-haves” - important qualities that align with your values. These are going to be different from student to student, but may include things like a particular major or area of study, the community on campus, the location, the career opportunities, and the cost of attendance. If you didn’t do this at the beginning of your college search like our students did, or if you suspect that your “must-haves” evolved over time, it’s never too late!

For those who considered these from the start and now have a list full of schools with must-have characteristics, I have an exercise to recommend that actually came from my mom during my own college search. When we were sitting in a hotel room in Nashville and trying to differentiate between my top picks, Vanderbilt, Wash U, and Emory, she suggested that we not only make a pro/con list but actually rank those pros and cons so that we weren’t giving too much weight to factors that weren’t as important.. even if there were more of them.

Vanderbilt had more pros for me than Wash U and Emory, so if we were tallying up pros and cons it would have been the clear winner. But they had no traditional undergraduate business program, and I wanted to major in business…. while I was prepared to work around it, that was still a pretty big deal at the end of the day.

Almost 20 years later, I’m still relying on that train of thought when I help students calculate a weighted average to determine which preferences are more important than others. For example, if you have five very important factors, but one is clearly more significant than the rest, followed by a second, maybe you decide to weight factor #1 as 40% of your decision, factor #2 as 30% of your decision, and the remainder as 10% each.

4. Go with your gut

Don’t underestimate your instincts! Sometimes, you will just have that feeling that a school is the right place for you as you walk around the campus, and that factor is just as important as any listed above. 

5. But don’t stress if you don’t know what your gut is telling you

This has been a difficult year for all of us. If you haven’t had the chance to visit many schools or see a campus in full swing, you may very well not have been able to experience any kind of “gut feeling.” No big deal, really.

Honestly, even in a normal year, I often have students express concern about this - it’s easy to feel like you’re doing something wrong when other kids at the lunch table talk about how they “felt right at home” after stepping on a given campus, but you don’t feel that kind of passion for any particular school.

I think it’s more of a reflection of personality type than anything else - some people are fact-finders and others make decisions quickly. Those people might fall in love at first sight down the line, too, but that doesn’t mean their relationships will be any stronger.

Whichever strategy you use, be confident in your own decision-making skills and know that in the end, the college experience is what you make of it, and you can be happy at a lot of different schools - there is no “the one”!

If you are still struggling with making a decision, you can always come and talk to us! Current clients can go ahead and book a meeting, but for those who are not clients, we have recently introduced our new Post-Decision Senior Strategy Session to help you make the best choice!

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CHECK OUT THE POSTS BELOW FOR MORE ON All Things Decisions!

What To Do After Your ED Acceptance

This was a historically competitive early application cycle, so we know that not every student got the decision they wanted - if you were deferred or denied from your early decision school, read our post from two weeks ago for next steps. 

That being said, we are very proud that SO MANY of our students were admitted to their first choice schools! If you received the early decision acceptance you were hoping for, you may be busy celebrating and sharing the news, but the work isn’t over just yet. Read on for your next steps after receiving that ED acceptance!

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1. Accept the Offer

This would seem to go without saying, but it is important to officially accept the offer and pay your deposit to the school. This process will look a little different for each school, but can usually be completed through your applicant portal. Make sure you take the time to re-read the decision letter carefully and make sure you are following any instructions from the school about how to confirm your acceptance. Your deposit officially holds your place in the class, so make sure to do this soon!

2. Withdraw Other Applications

We get it - we also want to see whether our students were admitted anywhere else! But after an ED commitment, it is important that you let other schools know that you will be attending college elsewhere. Many schools will allow you to do this through your applicant portal - you just click to withdraw or cancel your application and usually fill out a short form or comment box. For those that don’t, you will need to send an email. You can send this email to the school’s main admissions address (found on their website). Here is an example:

3. Contact Your Counselor and Recommenders

If you have not already, let your school counselor know your decision. Then, make sure that you also let anyone who wrote you a letter of recommendation know that you were admitted. They have been rooting for you! This is a great time to write a thank-you note or email thanking them for their help and including your big news. 

4. Keep Up Your Grades

With the acceptance letter in hand, it is tempting to sit back and coast through the rest of senior year. But remember, your acceptance is contingent on you keeping up your academic performance! While it is okay if your grades slip a bit in one or two classes, a big drop or a drop in every class is reason for the school to be concerned, and you absolutely don’t want to end up in a difficult situation due to your senior year grades. 

5. Check Your Email

IThe school you’ve committed to is likely to continue to communicate with you by email throughout the spring. Make sure you are checking regularly for information about housing, orientation, course registration, and any other important deadlines. You may also join an admitted student group on social media to get to know other students who will be attending. 

6. Celebrate!

While it is important to do everything on this list, don’t forget to take some time to celebrate, share your news, and buy a school sweatshirt. You did it! Take a deep breath and get excited for the next four years!

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We hope that you all are having a happy holiday season and a restful winter break!

2019-2020 Early Decision Aftermath

It’s that time of year again and our students are hearing decisions by the day! Five years ago, anyone applying in the early round could expect to learn all of their early application results before the holidays. Now, the timeline has shifted a bit due to increases in application volume. With so many more applicants, the admissions officers just don’t have time to finish reading applications as early as they could. Each year, more and more schools shift to release EA decisions later and later.

Fortunately, schools are still generally following the model of a pre-holiday ED release, and we had a LOT of ED applicants this year. While I have always been very pro-ED in terms of strategy, this year I was a bit more aggressive in pushing every single family to give serious consideration to the option (as long as it made sense from a financial perspective) because of the trends I observed last year.

We had a huge number of students accepted to their top choice schools ED with only one decision that I was really bummed about. We also had a couple of others deferred from schools that were gigantic, “Hail Mary” type reaches. This year was without a doubt our most successful yet.

Our last student waiting to hear back from ED learned her decision on Tuesday (another acceptance! yay!) and I would say about half of the early action students have received notification thus far. These will continue rolling in throughout the next couple of days. The rest of the early action news will come in January or February, and regular decision results will follow in late March.

As much as I’d love to go into a deeper analysis of 2019-2020 trends from the early round, I’m going to save that until I have a more complete picture after the rest of the EA news comes in this winter - and the ED II news as well!

The Final Decision!

The “National Candidates Reply Date” of May 1 is quickly approaching, so we’ve come up with a few last minute tips to help parents support their children through what may be their first major life decision.

(Side note: it’s also completely okay if parents are the ones making the decision! In my family, s/he who will be paying the bills will be playing a large role in the decision-making process, although I know many families approach this from a different mindset!)

1. Consider which factors matter most when reflecting on the idea of “best fit.”

This goes beyond a generic pros and cons list. First, think about which factors are most important to your family. Academic ranking in a specialty field? The institution’s post-grad job placement rate? Extracurriculars that the school (and specific major) offer? What about location - do you want to embrace a college town or big city? After answering the questions that your family and student find most significant and weighting the answers accordingly, rank each school and see which name lands at the top.  

2. Reach out to your network.

Do you know any alumni who attended the schools on your final list? If you have any questions about their college experience at said school, general or specific, now is the time to ask. Chances are, if for some reason they cannot give you an answer to one of your questions, they’ll know who can and will put you in contact with the right person to provide you all of the information you’re seeking.

3. You may have to make a decision before you think you’re ready.

Students have to send a deposit to one school by May 1, and yes, this is still the case if your son or daughter is waiting to hear back from a potential waitlist option. Don’t fret if you’re admitted to your top choice school after sending a deposit to another school - you are still able to accept the waitlist spot. Just be open and honest about the situation to that first institution, letting them know right away that you’ve been admitted from the other school’s waitlist. Note: You will typically lose your deposit from the first school, generally $500 - $1,000.

4. Whatever you do, don’t double deposit!

I can’t stress this enough! Some parents may think they are protecting their child by considering a “double deposit,” the term for depositing at more than one school at a time. First and foremost, it is unethical to make this kind of commitment to more than one school, and it takes a spot away from another deserving student.  Colleges can and often do share lists with one another, and it’s not worth the risk.  Institutions almost always rescind their acceptance offers if they discover a student double deposited. 

5. Trust your gut.

You know that this-just-feels-right feeling you experienced when you first visited campus? Well, that means something. Beyond the college’s rankings and all of the other statistics, percentages and numbers thrown at you, the most important question is – could this be your home away from home? Would you be happy here? We can’t stress this enough to the students and families we work alongside, although there may be more than one school that feels “right.” Whether using your gut to narrow down or make the final decision, make sure that the school you ultimately select gives you the chance to answer these questions with a resounding “YES!”