How do you get accepted to your #1 college choice AND be awarded financial aid? By understanding how different types of colleges award both need-based and merit-based aid, you can put together a college application list that increases both your chances of being accepted and receiving a generous aid package. Here’s how to get college scholarships:

Step 1: Get Accepted to College

The first order of business is to get accepted to a number of colleges. The potential issue is that the criteria for admissions is very different at different universities. The question of how you get accepted to the Ivy League is not the same as the question of how to get into the University of Wisconsin, which is still different from being accepted to your regional four-year college or a less selective liberal arts college. You first need to understand the admissions requirements for the schools you are targeting and follow these requirements very carefully.  

Bear in mind, however, that at the top-tier universities, there are unstated, subjective factors in the admissions process that are not easy to discern. For example, to get accepted to Harvard or any of the other Ivy League schools, you not only need outstanding grades, test scores, and teacher recommendations: you also need to demonstrate things like motivation, energy, curiosity, leadership ability, and special talents. 

Therefore, as you prepare for college during high school, you need to concentrate on your academic performance. No matter where you want to go to college, you must do well academically. But the more ambitious you are, and the more you want to get accepted to the Ivy League or other top-tier universities, you must also cultivate these subjective characteristics. 

Step 2: Earn or Receive College Financial Aid 

It is more difficult to be admitted while also being awarded a merit aid scholarship. Most universities will reserve their scare scholarship dollars for its top performing students and applicants, focusing first on need-based aid and then non-need-based merit aid. You don’t automatically earn consideration for a college scholarship just for applying.  

The better your high school performance, the higher the odds you’ll win a scholarship. For example, the very selective liberal arts college Washington and Lee will award non-need merit-based scholarships to only a very small percentage of its incoming class (see detail below). It reserves most of its financial aid budget for students with high financial need. So, it you want to be awarded The Johnson Scholarship at Washington and Lee (W&L), you need to be among the cream of the crop within its applicant pool.  

Examples of How Financial Aid is Disbursed 

University of Puget Sound – Less Selective Liberal Arts College (LAC) 

At some less-selective private colleges with a high cost of attendance but lower yields, many of its students receive some type of aid, whether it be need-based or merit-based aid. For example, at the University of Puget Sound, 100% of the 430 students in the Class of 2028 received some form of financial aid. 64% (277/430) received need-based financial aid and the remaining 36% (153/430) received merit aid. Puget Sound’s tuition is $65,000 for the 2025-2026 academic year with the total cost of attendance (COA) approaching $88,000. The average aid package for students demonstrating need is just over $59,000. The non-need-based award package for those 153 students was $30,400. 

Bucknell University – More Selective LAC 

But, at the more selective Bucknell University, only 50% (493/991) of the Class of 2028 students are getting any sort of financial aid from the institution, while the other 50% of Bucknell students will pay the full price of admission. 41% (407/991) received need-based financial aid and 9% (86/991) received merit aid (excluding 79 athletes). Bucknell’s tuition is $70,000 for the 2025-2026 academic year with the total cost of attendance (COA) just over $88,000. The average aid package for students demonstrating need is just over $52,000. The non-need-based award package for those 86 students was $19,000. 

Washington and Lee – Even More Selective LAC 

At W&L, which has an impressive endowment for a school its size, 61% (287/472) of the Class of 2028 students are receiving financial aid. 57% (269/472) received need-based financial aid and 4% (18/472) received merit aid. W&L’s tuition is $66,800 for the 2025-2026 academic year with the total cost of attendance (COA) just over $86,500. The average aid package for students demonstrating need is just over $68,500. The non-need-based award package is an impressive $60,000, likely due to many of the incoming 18 students being awarded The Johnson Scholarship. 

Source: College Common Data Set reports. 

Get Accepted to the Ivy League With Financial Aid 

How do you get accepted to the Ivy League with a scholarship? Can you get accepted to Harvard with a merit-based scholarship? The answer is: ‘not likely’. The first issue is that unlike W&L, Bucknell or the University of Puget Sound, Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League do not offer merit-based scholarships. Their financial aid budgets are reserved for students who exhibit financial need. 

For Harvard’s Class of 2028, roughly 54,000 high schoolers applied of which only 1,970 students were admitted, an acceptance rate of below 4%. But, Harvard is very generous to the high-need students it accepts. For the Class of 2028, 920 of the 1630 (57%) enrolled students qualified for need-based aid with the average package totaling $74,000. Only 3 students received non-need merit aid of which the average award was only $6,000.  

What’s the conclusion? While Harvard is very generous to students who qualify for need-based aid, only the most exceptional high-need students in the world will be admitted to Harvard.  

What Are the Odds You Will Receive Financial Aid? 

So, what are your odds of getting accepted with a merit scholarship to an Ivy League university?  

Very small. 

But what are your odds of getting accepted to another college with a scholarship? They could be pretty good, if you are strategic about where you send your applications. 

What Should You Do? 

Understand the financial aid process at different schools 

If you want to get accepted to university with a scholarship, you first need to understand how different schools allocate their scholarship dollars. Use the examples above as reference points while your building your college list. 

What college scholarships do you want? 

Second, you need to make sure what sort of scholarship you are aiming for? Will you be eligible for a need-based aid? If not, you need to hunt for schools that offer merit-based scholarships. 

Where will you most likely get college financial aid? 

Third, you need to look at which schools are more likely to offer YOU a scholarship. You need to carefully assess where you fit in the application pool. If you are going get accepted to university with a scholarship, you need to be realistic about which schools are going to shower you with money. As we have seen, the University of Puget Sound is mostly likely – of the colleges we examined above – to give you a merit-based scholarship. 

Need help with the college admissions process?  

College education is an investment, and college admission to selective schools is very competitive, especially Ivy League and the ever-expanding list of Little Ivies and Public Ivies. So how can you invest your college budget wisely? How can you get accepted to college with scholarships? 

These are questions that the team at Great College Advice can answer. We can help you identify those colleges where you will likely be accepted AND receive a generous aid package. Just contact us on this form and we’ll set up a no-cost, no-obligation meeting so we can learn more about you and discuss how we can help make the college admissions process more successful and less stressful.  

Since 2007, the expert team of college admissions consultants at Great College Advice has provided comprehensive guidance to thousands of students from across the United States and over 45 countries across the world. Great College Advice has offices in Colorado, New Jersey, Chicago, North Carolina and Massachusetts.  

In addition to our one-on-one counseling, Great College Advice extends its support through one of the most active and resource-rich Facebook Groups for college-bound students and their families: College Admissions Experts. With over 100,000 members—students, parents, and experienced counselors—this vibrant forum offers peer support and expert advice like no other.

The post How to Get College Scholarships first appeared on Great College Advice.

“Very carefully.”

The same sensibility applies to choosing a college.  A college may not clamp its toothy jaw around your arm and rip it off, it’s still a good idea to be careful in choosing the right college for you.

Too many kids choose a college based on the wrong criteria.  They look too hard at the architecture, they fret too much about the climate, and they obsess about climbing walls.

As educators, we try to keep the focus where it should be:  on your education.  While the some of the atmospheric issues of architecture and climate–and the amenities like climbing walls–can factor into the choice, we want to help you be sure to consider the kinds of educational environments that will help you succeed.  We want to help you identify the resources, both material and human, that you need in order to propel you personal and professionally into the future.

And the thing is, what’s right for one kid could be just awful for another.  Every student is different, and every student wants and needs different things out of their college education.

So at Great College Advice, we take the time and give the care necessary to help you identify the criteria that will drive your college choice.

And then based on our experience, we will help you identify the colleges and universities that meet those criteria.
 
It’s a fun an exciting process. No alligators.
 

The post Find the Perfect School for You first appeared on Great College Advice.

The post Get Help from an Admissions Insider first appeared on Great College Advice.

Similarly, the rankings organizations use these student to faculty ratios in how they rate different schools against one another.  The lower the ratio, the higher the rank.

However, student-to-teacher ratios are misleading statistics. They really don’t tell you much about the quality of teaching going on at an American college or university. It turns out that the research agrees with me.

Which teachers are included in student to teacher ratios?

In a report by the American Federation of Teachers, entitled, “American Academic: The State of the Higher Education Workforce, 1997-2007,” We learn that adjunct instructors and graduate students are teaching a very high percentage of undergraduate courses in the United States. The AFT updated its research in 2020, only to find that higher education is delivered by an “army of temps” that make low wages–sometimes at or below the poverty line.

The fact is that these ratios do not really reflect how higher education is being delivered and by whom.  These ratios are not a great guide to understanding what is really happening in today’s college and university classrooms.

What is the actual student to faculty ratio? 10%?  25%?  50%?

In thinking about the student to faculty ratio, we tend to assume that the faculty are full-time teachers–most with tenured positions–whose life-calling is to advance human knowledge and impart it to young people in their classrooms.

The facts belie our assumptions.

A 2023 report by the American Association of University Professors using data compiled by the US Department of Education found the following:

At community colleges, it’s worse: four out of every five people teaching a course are non-tenure-track faculty.

At publicly-funded research universities (you know, those “flagship” campuses like UC Berkeley, CU-Boulder, Michigan, and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill). A whopping 41% of the instructional staff members are graduate assistants, 15.8% are part-time faculty, and 14.4% are full-time, non tenure track faculty. So at our “flagship” research universities. On average, only 28.9% of the instructional staff are full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty members.

On average, private universities fare no better, with only about 29% of instructional faculty at both research and comprehensive universities either tenured or on the tenure track. But within this group, it’s important to recognize that different universities have very different mixes of instructional faculty. And as usual, those universities with bigger budgets and bigger endowments will generally have more full-time, tenure-track faculty. Also, many smaller, liberal arts teaching colleges are likely to have a higher proportion of tenure-track faculty. Even though the proportion of these professors has been declining in the past decade, too.

The one major difference of private, comprehensive colleges and universities (i.e., not the doctoral granting research universities) is that you will find very few graduate assistants teaching courses: only 2% of instructional faculty at these institutions are graduate students.

Why is this stuff important?  Because when you hear statistics like “student-to-faculty ratios.” These ratios usually include ALL INSTRUCTIONAL STAFF, including adjuncts and graduate students. Hidden behind this statistical ratio is the dirty, little secret that full-time. Tenured professors of yore are NOT the norm in most larger universities, whether public or private.

So when the admissions office or the leader of your student tour trumpets a low student-to-faculty ratio. Ask in the admissions office some more probing questions. Take a copy of the AFT report with you to the admissions office. Ask what percentage of undergraduate courses are taught by full-time, tenure-track faculty, adjuncts, and where they come from. Ask about the proportion of courses taught by grad students.

And as you ask these questions, watch the face of the admissions officer. It’s going to turn white. After a moment of panic, the officer stumbles off to find the director of admission or the VP for enrollment management. Then these marketing and sales bosses will try to reassure you that “faculty are very qualified” and “incredibly accessible” and “they are required to hold office hours.” They will downplay the importance of these statistics in the AFT report. And they’ll probably fudge the answers (which are publicly available online and reported annually to the US government).

But I assure you, these statistics from AFT are going to give you a better idea of what the undergraduate educational experience will be like.

If you’re interested in more on my take on student-to-faculty ratios, you can get a general explanation of what these statistics mean and don’t mean. How a low student-to-faculty ratio can actually have a negative impact on class sizes, and you can watch a short video in which I ask some students on one college campus what this statistic means to them. And in the meantime, when college representatives tell you that the student-to-faculty ratio on this or that campus is really low, just smile knowingly and ignore them.

Mark Montgomery
Myth Busting College Counselor

The post What is the Student to Faculty Ratio first appeared on Great College Advice.

Hi, I’m here with some Great College Advice, and today we’re going to talk about Dartmouth College.

There are probably at least three things you need to know about Dartmouth College besides its unique D-Plan academic schedule. And maybe that’s prefaced by, first, the fact that I went there. So I know a lot about this school. Both good and bad, and while I’m a loyal alumnus, I’m not beyond seeing the warts on the actual institution. So it’s a great place; it’s not for everyone.

But what are some things that you need to think about as you’re examining Dartmouth College in the context of the other seven Ivy League institutions?

The Size of Dartmouth

Well, the first is that Dartmouth is the smallest of all the other Ivy League schools with an undergraduate population below 5,000. So classes generally are going to be smaller. They are generally going to be taught by professors. While there are some professional schools at Dartmouth, they are very much disconnected from the undergraduate experience.

There is a growing number of graduate students in the arts and sciences. Shall we say, and there’s actually a change now that they’re creating a school for all of those programs. But the numbers of graduate students that are actually in the classroom with the undergraduate students? Really insignificant. Whereas at some of the other larger Ivies like Penn or Cornell, you’re going to see graduate students a lot. Not so at Dartmouth.

Dartmouth’s Location

The second thing that you might think about is Dartmouth is geographically the most remote. It’s two hours, almost exactly, by car, from Logan Airport in Boston, and it is in the woods. We talk about it, you know, the granite of New Hampshire and the woods and all that stuff. But the area of the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River is actually relatively cosmopolitan. There are lots of start-ups in the area, housing prices are kind of crazy because lots of people want to live there. There’s the Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital which makes it a medical center for all of upper New England.

It has a great arts center, the Hopkins Center, which is a magnet for artistic creativity in the region. It doesn’t feel remote. There are only a couple of stoplights. Maybe three, four stoplights in the whole town, but it doesn’t feel like it is in the boonies. Actually, it’s a relatively cosmopolitan atmosphere.

Dartmouth is Conservative Compared to the Other Ivies

The third thing is that Dartmouth has often been considered the most conservative of the Ivies. In some ways that’s true. It’s certainly the Ivy that has the greatest participation in the Greek system. So an overwhelming percentage of students, and last I heard at a reunion was that about 60% of students belong to either a fraternity or a sorority. Now, it’s definitely true that that culture, you know, it may or may not be your thing. However, there are openly gay members of fraternities, there’s actually, recently, was an openly gay president of a fraternity. Dartmouth is not an intolerant environment.

The Demographics

And of course, you also have to look at the fact that like all of the Ivies, the demographic is changing. Whereas all of the Ivies used to be dominated by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Actually now, according to statistics reported by Dartmouth, only 45% of students at Dartmouth are white. There are 15% who are Asians, 5% are Black or African-American, 10% are Latino or Hispanic. And an interesting just over 1% are Native Americans because Dartmouth was established way back in 1769 to educate Native Americans.

It’s a promise that they actually didn’t make good on until the 1970s when President Kemeny at the time said, “We must do what we said we’re going to do.” So they’ve made a very concerted effort to recruit Native Americans with some success. Also, we have to remember that 8% of students are of more than one race. Which is kind of the way America rolls right now. And there are 3% of students who did not declare their race on the form.

So anyway, however you slice it, Dartmouth is a much more diverse place, certainly, than when I went there and certainly the generation before. So while it’s conservative, maybe because of the fraternity system, that doesn’t mean that it’s an intolerant place.

Get Outside and Explore

I would also highlight the fact that because of its remote location, it is a paradise if you’re interested in outdoor activities of any kind. They have their own skiway, they own a mountain with this really cool lodge at the bottom of it, so if you want to go hiking at any time, there’s this network of cabins and stuff. It’s really a cool place if you’re interested in the outdoors.

So Dartmouth, the smallest of the Ivy League, yes; most remote, but not in the boonies; conservative, perhaps by some measures but certainly reflective of the American population and certainly reflective of all the other Ivy League schools; and if you like the woods, it’s the place to be.

So check out Dartmouth, and if you’re interested in figuring out how to get into Dartmouth or other highly selective universities, please let us know how we can help. 

The post Dartmouth College in the Ivy League Context first appeared on Great College Advice.

Common App Essay Prompt 1 asks a deceptively simple question: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

It sounds like an invitation to write about whatever you love most. But according to Pam Gentry, a college counselor at Great College Advice, that’s exactly where students get into trouble.

The Trap of the “Obvious” Identity

Gentry sees it constantly with her student-athletes. A soccer player wants to write about being a soccer player. A pianist wants to write about being a pianist. On the surface, it makes sense — these activities take up hours of a student’s week and shape how they see themselves.

The problem is that thousands of other applicants are writing the exact same essay. Soccer, piano, dance, debate — these are common identities, and a common identity is hard to make distinctive on the page. If a student wants to use one of these as their “core identity,” Gentry pushes them to dig deeper: What did you actually learn from this identity? How does it show up in parts of your life that have nothing to do with the activity itself?

That’s the real test of Prompt 1. It isn’t about naming an interest — it’s about proving that the interest has shaped nearly everything else about who you are.

Why Prompt 1 Isn’t for Everyone

Gentry doesn’t recommend Prompt 1 to most of her students, and that’s a deliberate choice, not a lack of imagination. The prompt asks for something that has been genuinely pervasive — a thread running through a student’s entire life, not just their extracurricular résumé.

She points to a former student who was on track for the Olympics in archery. In 10th grade, that student made the deliberate choice to stay in a traditional high school rather than pursue a GED early, choosing a conventional high school experience and a path toward college and nursing instead of leaving school for elite training. That decision — not the archery itself — became her core identity: someone who chose a fuller, more typical life experience over an accelerated one, even when an extraordinary opportunity was in front of her.

That’s the level of depth Prompt 1 is looking for. As Gentry puts it, the identity a student writes about “really needs to be something that has led your life up until this point” in order for the essay to work.

A Simple Test for Whether Prompt 1 Is Right for You

Before committing to this prompt, it’s worth asking:

• Is this identity actually rare, or does it just feel personal to me? Plenty of students feel deeply connected to activities that, from an admissions officer’s chair, look identical to thousands of other applications.
• Does this identity show up outside the activity itself? If a passion for music only appears in the context of practicing and performing, it may not be broad enough to anchor a full personal statement.
• Can I point to a specific choice or moment that reveals this identity, rather than just describing it? The strongest Prompt 1 essays, like the archery example above, hinge on a concrete decision — not a general description of a passion.

If the answer to these questions is murky, that’s a signal worth taking seriously. Plenty of strong personal statements come from prompts other than Prompt 1 — the belief-or-idea essay, the personal growth essay, or the open-ended Prompt 7 all offer other ways to reveal who a student really is.

The Bigger Picture

Prompt 1 rewards specificity and depth, not passion alone. A student doesn’t need an unusual hobby to write a great Prompt 1 essay — they need an identity that has genuinely organized their choices, values, and priorities over time. For most students, that bar is high enough that it’s worth testing a few other prompts before settling on this one. Our comprehensive guide to all seven Common App prompts is a good place to start comparing options.

Not sure which Common App prompt is the right fit? Great College Advice’s counselors work one-on-one with students to find the story only they can tell — and the prompt that lets them tell it best. Contact us for a free consultation to get started.

The post What Makes You, You? How to Answer Common App Prompt 1 first appeared on Great College Advice.

The question families ask us most is not “which school has the best ranking?” It is “will this degree actually lead somewhere?” That anxiety has only grown as tuition has climbed and employers have gotten louder about wanting graduates who can do specific things on day one. Liberal arts education sits right at that tension, praised as the foundation of a well-rounded life while also dismissed as an expensive detour from a real career.

At Great College Advice, we work through this with families every day, and the honest answer is more precise than either camp suggests. The value of a liberal arts education depends on three things: what the student wants to do after graduation, how well the school supports exploration and advising, and whether the student actually takes advantage of the breadth the curriculum offers. When those align, a liberal arts education delivers outcomes a narrowly professional degree often can’t. When they don’t, the student drifts. Understanding the difference is the whole game.

Why “Is It Worth It?” Usually Gets Asked Wrong

“Worth it” almost always defaults to one number: starting salary. That’s a real data point, but it’s the wrong lens for a four-year undergraduate experience, and it systematically undervalues what liberal arts colleges are built to produce.

The better question is: what kind of professional will this student become over a 30-year career — not just in the first job? A liberal arts education is designed to build the durable, cross-disciplinary capabilities that compound over decades, which a single professional school often doesn’t develop. The “worth it” question also tends to ignore the advising infrastructure that separates small liberal arts colleges from large research universities — one of the most underappreciated factors in the entire college search.

What a Liberal Arts Education Actually Provides

Exploration before commitment

A liberal arts college is, by design, a place to explore a wide range of courses before declaring a major. That isn’t a weakness; it’s the point. At a large research university, a student who enters a business or engineering program is, as our counselor Sarah Myers puts it, “kind of more locked in” from the beginning. The liberal arts model delays that commitment deliberately, giving students time to discover what they’re genuinely good at before they specialize.

This matters most for the large share of students who arrive without a clear professional direction. For someone certain about computer science or a specific engineering track, a large university with a dedicated professional school is a reasonable fit. But locking into a professional program at 18 carries real risk for the student who is curious across several domains and hasn’t yet found the subject that will define their career.

Close faculty relationships — and what they lead to

The deeper structural difference isn’t just curriculum breadth; it’s the density of the student–faculty relationship, which has concrete career consequences.

At a small liberal arts college, a first-year seminar might have 20 or 30 students, or fewer. That professor often becomes an advisor who knows the student as a person across four years. As Sarah Myers describes it, “they really get to know you as a person and help you throughout your next four years to think about your future career.” At a large research university, the dynamic shifts: “the professors aren’t necessarily gonna be living nearby as much… they’re gonna spend a lot more time sometimes with their graduate students than their undergraduate students.”

For students aiming at graduate or professional school, this is not abstract. A recommendation from a professor who genuinely knows a student’s intellectual development is categorically more valuable than one from a professor who taught them in a 300-person lecture hall. In addition, it opens up potential research opportunities as an undergraduate with your professors, as you’re not competing for campus lab internships with graduate students.

Critical thinking as a career asset

The skills liberal arts education develops most deliberately are the ones hardest to automate and hardest to teach on the job: critical analysis, written and oral communication, synthesizing information across disciplines, and making values-based judgments in ambiguous situations. As AI takes on more of the routine cognitive work in every industry, these skills are becoming more valuable, not less — the people who oversee AI systems, catch their flawed outputs, and make the calls algorithms can’t are precisely the ones trained to think critically across domains.

Where Liberal Arts Education Has Real Limits

Intellectual honesty means naming where the model isn’t the right fit. Engineering is the clearest example. A handful of liberal arts colleges — Union College and Lafayette College among them — offer engineering, but most do not. A student committed to engineering needs the facilities, faculty, and curriculum infrastructure of a large research university or technical institute.

The same logic applies to a dedicated undergraduate business school, or to a student who wants large-scale laboratory research as an undergraduate. Pre-med is the nuance here: a student can absolutely complete the required science coursework at a liberal arts college, and small classes and faculty access often make that preparation stronger — but original lab research at scale is easier to find at a research university.

How the Two Models Compare

Career Services and Alumni Networks Change the Math

One of the most practical arguments for a strong liberal arts college is the quality of its career services, especially for students outside STEM. As Sarah Myers puts it: “When you’re a non-STEM major, you’re in the College of Liberal Arts. It can be the type of major where you’re gonna very likely go on for grad school, so having a place that offers really good advising is so important.”

Look for specifics: how many staff the career center has, its hours, whether students can drop in or only book weeks out, and how active the alumni network is in connecting graduates to internships and jobs. The Colleges That Change Lives (CTCL) group is a useful starting point — these schools are known for strong advising and a nurturing environment for students still finding their direction.

Alumni networks also have a geographic dimension families overlook. A college with a strong alumni base in the city where a student plans to build a career can be more valuable than a more prestigious school whose alumni are concentrated elsewhere. The connection often matters more than the name on the diploma when it comes to landing that first internship.

Common Mistakes When Evaluating Liberal Arts Colleges

Treating exploration as a lack of direction. Students sometimes pick a professional program to appear decisive when they’re simply still curious. The liberal arts model exists for exactly that curiosity — masking it with a professional major often produces four years of studying something the student doesn’t actually want.

Ignoring graduation and retention rates. These numbers are a proxy for institutional health and student satisfaction. Check both the four-year graduation rate and the first-to-second-year retention rate before committing. It’s also worth checking whether a school empties out on weekends, which can dampen the community experience.

Assuming prestige equals fit. Some of the most prestigious universities are large research institutions where undergraduates get less faculty attention than peers at smaller schools. As Sarah Myers notes, at the most prestigious schools “graduate students may get more of the research opportunities, they may get more of the professor’s time than the undergraduate students would get.” Prestige and academic fit are not the same variable.

Underestimating the value of breadth. Pre-professional students often treat general-education requirements as obstacles rather than assets — but the habit of navigating people and ideas outside a narrow discipline is exactly what a broad curriculum builds.

Making the Decision With Clarity

A liberal arts education is worth it when the student values exploration, benefits from close faculty relationships, is heading toward a path that rewards broad analytical skills, and attends a school with strong advising and an engaged alumni network. It’s not the right fit for a student certain about a technical path that needs specialized infrastructure from day one.

At Great College Advice, we build college lists iteratively — starting with what a student thinks they want, then refining as we learn how they actually learn and what environments bring out their best work. The liberal arts versus research university question is one of the first structural decisions we work through with every family, because it shapes every school on the list that follows.

If you want a counselor who will give you a direct answer rather than a hedge, reach out to the Great College Advice team to start building a college list that reflects who your student actually is — not just the schools they’ve heard of.

The post Is a Liberal Arts Education Still Worth It? first appeared on Great College Advice.

A strong SAT or ACT score can shift an admissions conversation, but it cannot rewrite a four-year academic record. The honest answer: a high score can strengthen an application built on a weaker GPA, but how much it compensates depends on how low the GPA is, what caused it, what trajectory it shows, and how selective the target schools are. These four variables interact in ways a single number can’t capture.

Getting this wrong in either direction costs students. Underestimating a strong score leaves a genuine asset unused; overestimating it leads to a misaligned college list and avoidable disappointment.

Why do colleges treat GPA and test scores differently?

GPA and standardized test scores measure fundamentally different things, and admissions officers read them as such. A GPA reflects sustained academic behavior across four years: showing up, completing work, engaging with material across dozens of classes. A test score is a snapshot of performance on a single morning under standardized conditions.

This matters because colleges are trying to predict one thing above all: whether a student will succeed once enrolled. A four-year GPA is a more direct predictor of that than a single test date. A strong score tells an admissions officer a student has the cognitive tools to handle college-level work; a strong GPA tells them the student actually uses those tools, consistently, over time.

That said, a high score is not irrelevant when the GPA is lower than ideal. It can signal that the GPA underrepresents the student’s ability, which opens a door. Whether the admissions office walks through it depends on what else the application shows.

The 4 variables that determine how much a score can compensate

How low is the GPA, and what caused it?

There’s a meaningful difference between a 3.4 at a school with a rigorous course load and a 2.8 with a declining trend. The first may be competitive at a wide range of schools; the second signals a pattern a test score alone can’t address.

Colleges read GPA in context. As Sarah Farbman, Senior Admissions Consultant at Great College Advice, explains, the same number means different things at different schools: “Colleges are going to look not just at your GPA, but at the typical GPA for your high school.” A 3.7 that looks strong to a parent may sit below the median at a competitive high school — and admissions officers know it.

If a documented illness, family crisis, or other identifiable disruption explains a dip, that context belongs in the application. The additional information section exists, Farbman notes, for “something that you feel like you need to provide an explanation or context for.” A score paired with a credible explanation is far stronger than a score standing alone against an unexplained record.

What does the grade trend show?

Colleges look at both cumulative GPA and trajectory. “Both matter,” Farbman says. “Your cumulative GPA, absolutely — that is your high school performance boiled down to one number, and colleges are very interested in that. However, the way in which it happened also matters.”

An upward trend tells a different story than a declining one. A student whose grades peaked freshman year and eroded through junior year presents a narrative that concerns admissions officers: it suggests they may not be ready for university coursework right now. A high score doesn’t neutralize that. It can sharpen it, because the gap between demonstrated ability and demonstrated follow-through becomes more visible. An upward trend, by contrast, is “much more compelling to an admissions office,” Farbman says. A strong SAT score there reinforces the narrative rather than contradicting it.

The movement of grades matters as much as the number itself. Colleges read the story your transcript tells, not just the summary statistic at the top — and it helps to understand how that headline figure is built in the first place.

How selective are the target schools?

The compensatory power of a test score is tied directly to selectivity. At highly selective schools, the pool is dense with students who have both strong GPAs and strong scores. A high test score with a weak GPA doesn’t create an advantage there; it removes one disqualifying factor while leaving another in place.

At less selective schools, the calculus shifts: a strong SAT score can meaningfully differentiate an applicant. A declining GPA, Farbman notes, “is probably going to require you to apply to less selective colleges,” but that’s not a closed door: “There are a ton of great schools out there that are not that selective. There are a million ways to get a great education here in the US.” A high SAT score does the most work when it’s paired with a list calibrated to where the full profile is genuinely competitive.

What classes produced that GPA?

Colleges don’t read GPA in isolation, they read it against course rigor. A 3.5 built on AP Chemistry, AP Calculus BC, and AP English Literature tells a different story than a 3.5 built on standard-track courses, and colleges recalculate GPAs using their own methodology, which typically accounts for rigor.

Farbman is direct on the trade-off: “You want to be able to show colleges that you challenged yourself and took a hard load of classes, but you also want to make sure that you can still succeed in those classes.” A lower GPA earned in harder courses is often viewed more favorably than a higher GPA in easier ones — which is also why understanding weighted vs. unweighted GPA matters, since colleges use those calculations to assess how you handled the load.

What does “compensating” actually look like in practice?

There’s no formula. Admissions officers read these numbers together, in context. The principles that emerge:

• A high ACT score does the most work when the GPA dip has an identifiable cause, the trend is upward, and the course load was genuinely challenging.

• It does the least work when the GPA is declining and the course load was not rigorous.

• An upward trend plus a strong ACT score reinforces a narrative of growth.

• A declining trend plus a strong ACT score raises questions about follow-through the score alone can’t answer.

Should you submit your score at test-optional schools?

The rise of test-optional admissions adds a layer of strategy. If a student has a weaker GPA and a strong test score, submitting it is almost always the right move. The score supplies evidence of academic capability the GPA doesn’t. And a student who has already earned a strong score should submit it even at test-optional schools; withholding it removes a positive data point for no benefit.

The reverse, a strong GPA and a below-range SAT score is where test-optional policies genuinely help, letting the GPA and the rest of the application carry the weight. Students who know they aren’t strong test-takers, and face a large gap between their diagnostic and a submittable score, should weigh whether test prep time is better spent protecting their GPA and extracurriculars.

For international applicants, a score can do double duty. As Farbman points out, a local-curriculum transcript doesn’t always translate to an American admissions reader, so taking the SAT or ACT “is a really great way to demonstrate to an American admissions office that you have the same proficiencies that an American student does” (U.S. admission considerations for international students).

Common mistakes when navigating this question

• Treating a test score as a GPA substitute rather than a supplement. A strong ACT score adds to an application; it doesn’t replace what a GPA shows. Investing in test prep at the expense of junior-year grades rarely pays off.

• Ignoring the trend in favor of the cumulative number. Two students with identical cumulative GPAs — one climbing, one declining — are in very different positions. It helps to define what a good GPA is for your specific goals.

• Applying where the full profile isn’t competitive. A high ACT score doesn’t make a student competitive where the median admitted GPA is significantly higher.

• Leaving out context that exists. If a documented circumstance explains a difficult semester, that information belongs in the application.

Build the strategy around your actual profile

“Can a good test score make up for a weaker GPA?” is ultimately the wrong frame. The better question: what does my full academic profile communicate, and how do I build a college list and application strategy that reflects it honestly?

A strong test score is a genuine asset in college admissions. Alongside an upward trend, a rigorous course load, and a credible explanation for any dip, it contributes meaningfully to a competitive application. Alongside a declining GPA and a standard course load, it raises as many questions as it answers. And the right SAT target is always relative to the middle 50% of the colleges actually on your list.

The students who navigate this best understand their profile clearly, build a list calibrated to where they’re genuinely competitive, and use every element of the application to tell a coherent story. If you want a frank, experienced read on your profile and what it means for your list, our team at Great College Advice works through exactly this kind of analysis with students and families.

The post Can a good SAT/ACT score make up for a weaker GPA? first appeared on Great College Advice.

In this video, we will explore what makes Brown different from all the rest.

So here I am today on the campus of Brown University one of the eight Ivy League schools. And sometimes it’s hard when I’m giving presentations to explain the difference among the Ivy League schools, and of course, the Ivy League is really nothing more than a football club. It was established so that athletes could play against one another, not because the schools have anything in common academically. Of course, a lot of really great students go to places like this, but they’re all very different and structured differently. Brown’s claim to fame is that it really has no structure.

Way back in the 1960s, 1968 and all of the—let’s call them reforms that happened in education around the ‘60s. The idea was that there was no need anymore to teach the old canon of academia. Prior to that a lot of students took Greek and Latin, took a very prescribed curriculum and the push in the 1960s was to eliminate all requirements.

Brown still embodies that decision to eliminate all requirements and allow students to study whatever it is they want. So you have a major at Brown but beyond that, you can take anything and everything you want.  So there are no curriculum requirements other than completing a major. You also have the option of taking classes without even ever getting a grade. Again, this idea of the 1960s of we can do anything we want, where ever we want, it’s for us to decide and not the man; that is still very much the tradition at Brown.

Other Ivy League schools have a different set of priorities and a different curricular structure. But Brown really is that freewheeling, do whatever you want; you don’t even need to get grades if you don’t want to kind of place. It’s a very wonderful place. Providence is a fun town, an interesting town. Thayer Street is kind of fun and funky and of course, the campus is beautiful and the academic facilities are remarkable.

But don’t think that all the Ivy League schools are the same. They’re very different not only in look and feel but in the academic priorities set by the institution itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Brown’s Open Curriculum and how should my child address it in their application?

Brown’s Open Curriculum is a distinctive educational philosophy that eliminates general education requirements, positioning students as the architects of their own education. To address this effectively, an applicant must transcend superficial mentions of ‘freedom’ and instead present a sophisticated ‘Intellectual Trajectory.’

This requires demonstrating two key components:

1. A Coherent Intellectual Narrative: The applicant must connect their past pursuits—academic, extracurricular, and personal—to a future, interdisciplinary path of study that is uniquely possible at Brown. The goal is to show that their interests are not random but form a foundation for advanced, self-directed inquiry.
2. A ‘Provisional Blueprint’ for Exploration: A top-tier applicant will articulate a potential, yet flexible, course of study. This blueprint should reference specific departments, research centers, institutes, and even professors. For example, a student interested in the ethics of artificial intelligence might propose combining courses from Computer Science (e.g., ‘CSCI 1420: Machine Learning’), Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences (CLPS), and Philosophy, citing a desire to engage with the Data Science Initiative. This demonstrates proactive research and intellectual maturity.

Expert Strategy: The application should frame the student not as a consumer seeking freedom, but as a future scholar prepared to build something meaningful with it. The blueprint should convey excitement for exploration, not a rigid, predetermined path. It proves they possess the self-motivation and maturity to thrive with the autonomy Brown grants its students.

Learn more about Brown University and why Brown is so different from the other Ivy League universities.

Great College Advice Will Help You Get Accepted to Your Ivy League Dream School

Understanding how selective colleges like Brown actually evaluate GPA, course rigor, extracurriculars and your standardized test score is the foundation of a competitive application strategy. If you are ready to understand exactly where your academic profile stands and what steps will strengthen it, connect with our team to start building a strategy grounded in how admissions offices at elite universities actually make decisions.

The post What is Brown University Known For? first appeared on Great College Advice.

Watch the video to see more or read the transcription below.

Transcript describing Dartmouth’s D Plan

During a visit to Dartmouth College we spent more time learning about Dartmouth’s unique “D-plan.” At Dartmouth, the campus operates on a quarter system where students have the opportunity to decide which terms they are on campus and which terms they do an off campus program. During their off-terms students may participate in a study abroad program, internship or any number of valuable educational experiences.

However, one of the interesting parts of this structure is that all students are required to have an on campus term during their sophomore summer. So, even though some students across the country may think that summer school sounds like a drag, students at Dartmouth actually love the chance to be in Hanover, NH in the summer. There are such a wide variety of outdoor opportunities in the Upper Valley during the summer months.

Students go hiking, swimming in the Connecticut River, visit local farmer’s markets and much more. In addition, with all the sophomores together in summer it gives their class a wonderful chance to bond together. A wide variety of classes are offered to students in the summer, many specifically targeted toward sophomores. So Dartmouth students can make sure they are fulfilling specific prerequisite courses and getting to know their professors well in small classes and in a more relaxed atmosphere.

So, the next time you are thinking that summer classes may not sound like a lot of fun. Think again, and maybe even as you are considering what college to apply to it would be worth looking to see if the college offers classes in the summer.

Learn more how Dartmouth’s size, location, and culture makes it unique among the Ivies.

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This video was made in 2011 but the content remains relevant to this day.

The post Dartmouth College Distinctive D-Plan first appeared on Great College Advice.

College application fees are easy to underestimate. At $50 to $100 per application, a college list can cost anywhere from $750 to $1,500 by the time all of your student’s applications are submitted. That number climbs fast when families add schools impulsively or fail to plan around the fee structures different institutions use. The good news is that reducing this cost is entirely achievable with a few deliberate choices made early in the process.

This article covers every practical lever available to students and families: how to build a smarter list, which fee waiver programs exist and who qualifies, how school-specific promotions work, and why the number of schools you apply to is the single biggest variable in your total application spend.

Why Application Fees Add Up Faster Than Families Expect

Most families focus on tuition when thinking about college costs and treat application fees as a minor line item. They are not minor. The Common Application allows students to apply to up to 20 schools through a single platform. If a student uses all 20 slots and each school charges an average of $75, the total fee bill reaches $1,500 before financial aid, before test score sends, and before any supplemental materials.

The University of California system illustrates this clearly. It uses its own separate application, not the Common App, and charges $80 per campus. A student applying to five UC campuses pays $400 to that system alone. California State Universities operate similarly. MIT also maintains its own application outside the Common App which costs $75. These parallel systems mean that students applying to schools in California or to MIT are paying fees on top of whatever they spend through the Common App.

The core misunderstanding families make is treating the application list as a wish list rather than a financial decision. Every school added to the list carries a cost, and that cost compounds quickly when the list is built without a clear strategy.

The Most Effective Cost Reduction: Apply to Fewer Schools

The single most impactful way to reduce application fees is to apply to fewer schools. This is not a compromise on ambition; it is a reflection of how a well-researched list actually works.

A list of 12 carefully chosen schools, with genuine interest in each one, costs less and produces better applications than a list of 20 schools assembled hastily. The reason is straightforward: supplemental essays. Most selective schools require them, and the quality of those essays degrades when a student is writing for 20 schools simultaneously. Students who stretch to fill every available slot on the Common App often find themselves writing supplemental essays for schools they have not researched and do not genuinely want to attend. The essays show it.

The Trophy-Hunting Problem

One pattern that inflates both costs and workload is applying to schools primarily for the status of having applied, without real interest in attending. Adding a $75 application to a school in Ohio because there is one slot left on the Common App and no essay required is a real scenario families face. That decision is worth examining honestly: is the $75 spent on a school the student has no intention of attending a good use of the application budget? For families watching costs, the answer is usually no.

Schools That Charge No Application Fee

A direct and underused strategy is prioritizing schools that do not charge an application fee. These schools exist across all selectivity tiers, and building a list that includes several of them can meaningfully reduce total costs.

Colby College, a selective liberal arts college (SLAC) in Maine, for example, charges no application fee and requires no supplemental essays, making it one of the most accessible applications in terms of both cost and time. Kenyon College in Ohio is another SLAC without an application fee or supplemental essay. In-state public universities in certain states also frequently waive or eliminate fees, particularly for residents. The key is to research fee structures during the list-building phase, not after the list is finalized.

Substituting three fee-charging schools on a 15-school list with three no-fee schools does not require reducing the total number of applications. It simply requires intentional research during the school selection process. This approach works best when the no-fee schools are genuinely good fits, not just added to save money on schools the student would never attend.

Fee Waiver Programs: Who Qualifies and How to Access Them

Fee waivers are the most powerful cost-reduction tool available to qualifying families, and they are more accessible than many students realize.

Income-Based Fee Waivers

Students who qualify for free or reduced lunch at their high school typically qualify for college application fee waivers across the board. This is not a school-by-school negotiation; it is a systemic eligibility that applies broadly. The process works the same way as obtaining an SAT or ACT fee waiver: the student speaks with their high school counselor, who provides a code or documentation that can be submitted with applications. With this waiver in place, a student can apply to any school on the Common App without paying fees, regardless of what each individual school charges.

For families in this category, the visit-based and early-deadline promotions described below are largely irrelevant. The waiver covers the full list. The priority is simply to connect with the school counselor early in the process to obtain the documentation.

Visit-Based Fee Waivers

Some schools offer to waive the application fee for students who visit campus and take a tour. This is a genuine incentive, not a marketing gimmick. Schools use it to encourage demonstrated interest, and students who visit and then apply are signaling real engagement with the institution. For families who are already planning campus visits, it is worth researching whether each school on the tour itinerary offers this benefit. The savings can be meaningful, and the visit itself improves the quality of the application by giving the student concrete material for “why this school” essays.

Early Application Deadlines and Free Application Days

Some schools offer free applications to students who apply before a specific date. These early-deadline promotions reward students who have their materials ready ahead of schedule and are worth tracking during the application planning phase. This is particularly relevant for schools that use rolling admissions, where applying early can provide both a financial benefit and a faster decision.

Colorado has formalized this concept at the state level with Colorado Free Application Days. On one specific 3-day stretch each October, students can apply to all the public and some private Colorado universities at no cost. Students applying to in-state public Colorado institutions should plan their timeline around this window. Missing it by a week means paying fees that could have been avoided entirely.

The table below summarizes the main fee reduction strategies, who they apply to, and what action is required.

Practical Application: Building a Cost-Conscious List

Putting these strategies together looks like this in practice. A student building a list of 12 schools starts by identifying two or three schools that charge no application fee and are genuine fits. They then research whether any of the remaining schools offer visit-based waivers or early-deadline promotions. If the family qualifies for income-based waivers, the counselor conversation happens well before applications open.

The student applies to 12 schools rather than 15 or 20. Three of those schools charge no fee. Two others offered visit-based waivers during summer campus tours. The remaining seven charge an average of $70 each. Total fee cost: $490, compared to $1,125 for a 15-school list with no fee optimization, or $1,500 for a full 20-school Common App list at average fees.

The quality of the applications also improves. Writing supplemental essays for 12 schools the student has researched and genuinely wants to attend produces stronger, more specific writing than grinding through essays for 20 schools under deadline pressure.

Common Mistakes That Inflate Application Costs

Filling the Common App to capacity without a strategy. The Common App allows 20 applications. That ceiling is not a target. Students who treat it as one end up paying for applications to schools they have not researched and writing essays they do not care about.

Adding schools late without checking fees. A school added to the list in October because a parent mentioned it at dinner may charge $85 and require two supplemental essays. Late additions should be evaluated on fit and cost before being confirmed. If you find yourself rushing and need to change something on your application after submission, it can lead to additional stress and potential costs.

Missing Colorado Free Application Days or similar state programs. These windows are narrow and not widely advertised. Students applying to in-state public schools should research whether their state has a similar program and build it into their calendar.

Not asking the school counselor about fee waivers. Qualifying families sometimes pay fees they did not need to pay simply because no one told them the waiver existed. The conversation with the high school counselor should happen late in junior year or at the beginning of senior year, not the week before applications are due.

What a Smart Application Strategy Actually Costs

Application fees are a real and manageable expense. A student applying to 12 well-chosen schools, using available fee waivers, prioritizing a few no-fee institutions, and timing applications around promotional windows can reduce their total fee spend significantly without compromising the quality or ambition of their list.

The deeper point is that the strategies that reduce application fees are the same strategies that produce better applications: a focused list, genuine research, early preparation, and intentional decision-making at every step. Cutting costs and improving outcomes are not in tension here. They point in the same direction.

If you want help building a college list that balances ambition, fit, and cost from the start, working with an experienced college admissions counselor is the most efficient way to do it. Great College Advice has helped students navigate exactly these decisions; book a consultation today.

The post How to minimize college application fees first appeared on Great College Advice.

The Common App’s seventh prompt reads simply: “Share an essay on any topic of your choice.” For many students, that freedom is paralyzing. Every other prompt gives you a frame; this one hands you a blank canvas and walks away. The result is that students either default to Prompt #7 out of laziness (“nothing else fits”) or avoid it entirely out of fear (“too open-ended”). Both instincts are wrong, and both produce weaker applications.

Used correctly, Prompt #7 is the most powerful option on the Common App. It exists because the Common App’s architects recognized that the most compelling stories don’t always fit a predefined category. A student who spent three years obsessively mapping urban heat islands in her neighborhood, or one who built a philosophical framework around competitive chess, or one whose defining experience is genuinely uncategorizable, deserves a prompt that gets out of the way. The question is whether your story actually belongs here, and if it does, how to structure it so it lands.

This guide gives you a decision-making framework for both questions: a filter to determine whether Prompt #7 is the right choice, and three structural templates to execute it well once you’ve decided it is.

Why Prompt #7 Exists (and Why Most Students Misuse It)

The Common App personal statement is not a resume summary. As Pam Gentry, a counselor at Great College Advice, puts it: “It should be something that only that student can write. It shouldn’t sound like anybody else.” The admissions reader reviewing your file already has your GPA, your test scores, your activity list. What they don’t have is a sense of who you are as a person.

Prompt #7 is not a catch-all for students who couldn’t make the other prompts work. It is a deliberate invitation for students whose most authentic story doesn’t map cleanly onto the other six options. The misuse happens when students treat it as the path of least resistance: “I’ll just write about whatever I want.” That approach produces essays that feel unfocused, because they are. The prompt’s openness is a feature for students with a specific, well-defined story to tell. It is a trap for students who haven’t done the work of identifying what that story is.

The admissions officer reading your essay is, as Pam Gentry describes, “probably closer to 28 than my age. They’re excited, they’re sculpting a class.” They are not looking for more data. They are looking for a person they want in that class. Prompt #7 gives you the most direct path to showing them that person, but only if you know who that person is before you start writing.

The “Why This Prompt?” Filter

Before committing to Prompt #7, run your story through this checklist. If you answer yes to more than two questions in the first group, your story likely belongs on a different prompt. If you answer yes to the questions in the second group, Prompt #7 is probably the right home.

Consider a different prompt if:

• Your story centers on a challenge you overcame (Prompt #2 is the better fit)

• Your story is primarily about your cultural background, family history, or identity (Prompt #1)

• Your story is about a sustained intellectual passion or academic interest that fits neatly into one domain (Prompt #6)

• Your story involves a belief or idea you hold, but it connects directly to a personal setback or failure (Prompt #5)

• You chose Prompt #7 because you couldn’t figure out how to start the others

Prompt #7 is the right choice if:

• Your story combines two or more domains in a way that doesn’t fit any single prompt’s framing

• Your most authentic narrative is belief-based or philosophical, and it doesn’t involve a specific challenge or failure

• You have a high-quality piece of writing from another context (a class essay, a different application) that captures your voice and can be adapted without feeling like a leftover

• Your topic is genuinely unusual, and forcing it into another prompt’s structure would distort the story

• The story you want to tell is the one that would make an admissions officer remember you specifically, not just your category of experience

The last point matters most. Gentry’s benchmark for a successful personal statement is whether the reader “wants to sit down and get to know you better and have a cup of coffee with you.” That test applies to every prompt, but Prompt #7 is where it becomes the primary criterion, because there is no structural scaffold to fall back on.

The “Recycle and Refine” Strategy

One of the most underused approaches to Prompt #7 is adapting existing writing. Students who have written a strong analytical essay for an AP English class, a research paper for a science competition, or a personal statement for a scholarship application often have high-quality material sitting unused. Prompt #7 is the only Common App option flexible enough to accommodate this kind of adaptation.

The key distinction is between recycling and repurposing. Recycling means submitting the original piece with minimal changes. Repurposing means identifying what made the original piece strong, extracting that core, and rebuilding it around the question the Common App is actually asking: who are you, and why does this topic reveal something essential about you?

A scholarship essay about food insecurity research, for example, might be analytically strong but written in a detached, third-person register. To repurpose it for Prompt #7, you shift the lens: instead of “here is the problem and here is my research,” the essay becomes “here is how this problem changed the way I think, and here is what that change reveals about who I am.” The research stays. The data stays. The argument stays. What changes is the frame: the essay now centers on you, not the topic. For students who have completed a major independent project, learning how to write a capstone project well can provide the raw material needed for this kind of deep, reflective essay.

Three questions determine whether a piece of existing writing is worth repurposing:

1. Does the original piece reveal something specific and authentic about how you think, not just what you did?

2. Can you reframe the opening so it begins with your perspective rather than the topic’s context?

3. After revision, will an admissions reader finish the essay knowing something about you that they couldn’t have inferred from your activity list?

If the answer to all three is yes, the piece is worth adapting. If the original is primarily descriptive or accomplishment-focused, it is better to start fresh.

Three Structural Templates for Prompt #7

Once you’ve confirmed that Prompt #7 is the right choice, the next decision is structure. The prompt’s openness means you have to impose your own architecture. The following three templates cover the most common story types that land in Prompt #7.

Template 1: The Deep Dive (Intellectual or Academic)

Best for: Students whose defining characteristic is a specific, sustained intellectual obsession that doesn’t fit neatly into a single academic discipline.

Structure:

• Open with a specific moment of discovery or confusion, not a general statement about the topic

• Spend the middle section tracing how your thinking evolved, not summarizing what you learned

• Close with what this intellectual pursuit reveals about how you approach problems, not where you plan to take it professionally

The Deep Dive works because it shows the admissions reader how you think, not just what you know. A student who became obsessed with the mathematics of musical tuning systems, for example, isn’t writing about math or music. They’re writing about the way their mind moves between domains, which is exactly the kind of thing an admissions officer cannot infer from a transcript.

The structural risk with this template is that it becomes a report rather than an essay. Every paragraph should answer the implicit question: “What does this reveal about you?” If a paragraph is purely informational, it needs to be cut or reframed.

Template 2: The Manifesto (Belief-Based)

Best for: Students who hold a specific, well-developed belief or philosophical position that has shaped their choices, and whose story doesn’t involve a single defining challenge or failure.

Structure:

• Open with the belief stated directly, then immediately complicate it with a specific experience that tested it

• Use the middle section to show the belief in action across two or three concrete examples

• Close with what holding this belief costs you, not just what it gives you

The Manifesto is the highest-risk, highest-reward template. Done well, it produces the most memorable essays because it gives the reader a clear, specific sense of how you move through the world. Done poorly, it reads as preachy or abstract.

The correction for both failure modes is specificity. “I believe in the power of community” is not a manifesto; it is a platitude. “I believe that the most important decisions are the ones you make when no one is watching, and here is the specific moment that belief was formed” is a manifesto. The belief has to be yours, earned through specific experience, not borrowed from a motivational poster.

Template 3: The Hybrid (Two Disparate Interests)

Best for: Students whose identity is genuinely defined by the intersection of two domains that don’t obviously belong together, and who can show that the intersection is productive rather than merely coincidental.

Structure:

• Open by placing the two domains in the same sentence in a way that creates productive tension

• Spend the middle section showing how each domain has changed your understanding of the other

• Close with what the intersection reveals about how you will approach college, not just who you have been in high school

The Hybrid template is the most common misuse of Prompt #7, because students often list two interests without demonstrating that the intersection is meaningful. “I love chemistry and I love poetry” is not a hybrid essay. “Here is the specific way that writing poetry changed how I read a titration curve, and here is what that shift taught me about precision” is a hybrid essay.

The test for whether a Hybrid essay is working: if you removed one of the two domains entirely, would the essay still make sense? If yes, the intersection isn’t doing real work. The two domains need to be genuinely load-bearing.

Common Mistakes Specific to Prompt #7

Choosing the prompt because the topic is unusual, not because the story is authentic. Unusual topics are not inherently compelling. A student who spent four years repairing a single car has a more powerful essay than a student who lists twelve exotic hobbies. As Pam Gentry notes, colleges can spot the difference between a student who “did it just to get into college” and one who was “genuinely interested.” The topic’s strangeness is not the point. The authenticity is.

Writing about the topic instead of writing about yourself. Prompt #7 is not an invitation to submit a research paper. The admissions reader wants to know what the topic reveals about you. Every paragraph should be traceable back to your perspective, your choices, your way of thinking.

Treating the prompt’s openness as permission to be unfocused. The absence of a frame means you have to supply one. Students who write Prompt #7 essays without a clear structural template produce essays that feel like they’re circling a point without landing on it. Choose one of the three templates above and commit to it. If you realize after submission that your essay lacked this focus, you may need to learn how to make changes to your college application to ensure your best work is on file.

What Makes Prompt #7 Work

The Common App personal statement, regardless of which prompt you choose, succeeds when it does one thing: it makes the admissions reader feel like they know you. Prompt #7 gives you the most direct path to that outcome, because it removes every constraint except the one that matters. The story has to be yours, told in your voice, revealing something specific about who you are.

The backwards approach that Great College Advice uses with every student applies here: start with the three to five things you want the admissions committee to know about you, then find the story that demonstrates those things most clearly. If that story doesn’t fit Prompts #1 through #6, Prompt #7 is waiting. If it does fit one of the other prompts, use that one instead. The goal is never to use Prompt #7. The goal is to tell the right story. Sometimes Prompt #7 is the only prompt that lets you do that.

If you’re working through the Common App and aren’t sure whether your story belongs in Prompt #7 or somewhere else, that uncertainty is worth resolving before you write a single word. Explore how that process works and what it looks like in practice at Great College Advice.

The post How to Answer the Common App ‘Topic of Your Choice’ Prompt first appeared on Great College Advice.

When students and families build a high school course plan with college admissions in mind, one question surfaces again and again: do dual enrollment or AP classes send a stronger signal to admissions officers? The honest answer is that neither is universally superior. The better question is which option demonstrates the highest level of academic challenge your school makes available, and which one you can succeed in. Understanding how colleges actually read these credentials on a transcript is what lets you make a strategic choice rather than a reflexive one.

Both AP and dual enrollment signal academic ambition, but they signal it differently, and selective colleges evaluate them through a specific lens: your school profile. Getting that distinction right matters more than most families realize.

Why the AP vs. Dual Enrollment Question Is More Nuanced Than It Appears

The framing of “which looks better” assumes colleges compare these credentials in isolation. They do not. Colleges look at you in the context of your high school environment. Admissions officers review a school profile, a document submitted by your high school that describes the coursework offered, the number of advanced or honors classes available, and the historical performance of the student body. A student who takes every rigorous course their school offers is evaluated more favorably than a student at a more resource-rich school who takes only a fraction of what is available, regardless of the AP or dual enrollment label.

The implication is direct: the “better” credential is the one that represents the ceiling of rigor at your specific school. How college admissions works differently at small vs. large high schools often comes down to these differences in resources and course catalogs. If your school offers 15 AP courses and you have taken 3, that gap is visible. If your school offers no AP but partners with a community college for dual enrollment, taking those courses is the appropriate demonstration of rigor.

A common misunderstanding is that AP is inherently more prestigious than dual enrollment. That perception exists partly because AP has a standardized national curriculum and a scored exam. As Pam Gentry, a Senior Admissions Consultant at Great College Advice, explains: “AP classes are standardized across the US, and even with international schools, so they know what the level of rigor is, because it’s the same curriculum.” Dual enrollment, by contrast, varies in quality depending on the college offering the course. But a standardized exam does not automatically make one option more impressive in the admissions read.

How Colleges Define and Distinguish These Programs

It helps to be precise about what each program is.

Advanced Placement (AP) is a higher-level curriculum developed by the College Board and taught at some high schools. Students complete a standardized course and sit for a scored exam on a 1-to-5 scale. Colleges use those scores to determine whether to award credit, and the threshold varies by institution and course.

Dual Enrollment (also called Dual Credit) is a college course offered to high school students in alignment with their high school; students earn credit from both at once. A related option, Concurrent Enrollment, involves college classes that may not count toward high school graduation requirements in some districts.

International Baccalaureate (IB) is a third category: an advanced curriculum offered by some high schools under the global auspices of the IB organization, with its own grading scale and diploma structure.

These are distinct programs with different structures, and colleges treat them accordingly.

What AP Scores Actually Signal to Selective Colleges

For students applying to selective universities, AP scores carry a weight that dual enrollment grades typically do not replicate. The reason is standardization: an AP score of 4 or 5 is a nationally normed data point admissions officers can compare across applicants from thousands of high schools.

For more selective schools, three AP classes is a common baseline for an AP-heavy curriculum. At the most elite universities, fives are increasingly expected in relevant subjects; at strong but less selective universities, fours are often sufficient.

Gentry’s read on why colleges lean toward AP is direct: “Generally speaking, I would advise students to take AP classes over a dual enrollment or concurrent class, because admissions officers will see that that’s a more rigorous option.” A grade of A in a dual enrollment course at one community college is not directly comparable to an A at another, and admissions officers know it. They value dual enrollment as evidence of college-level work, but cannot benchmark it the way they can an AP score. Still, a strong grade in a dual enrollment course at a well-regarded four-year university carries more weight than one at a community college, and both beat no advanced coursework at all.

When Dual Enrollment Is the Right Strategic Choice

Dual enrollment is not a fallback. For many students it is the correct choice, and in some cases the stronger one.

Access and Availability. Some students attend schools that offer few or no AP courses. This is not a disadvantage if the student takes full advantage of what is available. Admissions officers understand that not every student has access to 20 AP classes; a student who pursues dual enrollment because their school does not offer AP is evaluated on whether they maximized their options, not penalized.

There is also a cost-and-credit dimension. As Gentry notes: “If the student is typically applying to their in-state colleges and universities, dual enrollment will be seen as a step up. A dual enrollment class for someone applying mostly to their in-state colleges will guarantee them credit for those classes, without depending on an AP score at the end of the year.”

Depth Over Breadth. Dual enrollment courses, particularly at a four-year college, can demonstrate academic independence that AP does not. Sitting in a college classroom, managing a college syllabus, and earning a college transcript record signals readiness for higher education in a concrete way.

Subject-Specific Gaps. AP does not cover every subject. Students interested in business, the arts, or specialized technical fields may find dual enrollment offers coursework AP does not. A student interested in business who lacks AP Business courses can pursue dual enrollment in business or economics and supplement it with activities like FBLA, DECA, or entrepreneurial projects.

Underlying all of this is a principle Gentry returns to repeatedly: “The whole point of taking these classes isn’t to get into college, it’s to learn the material. Getting into college is the bonus piece of that.”

The GPA and Weighting Dimension

Both AP and dual enrollment affect GPA, but differently depending on your school’s policy. Many high schools give more weight to harder courses, including honors, AP, or IB. A weighted vs. unweighted GPA rewards students for tackling those courses and helps communicate relative rigor; colleges review both.

Dual enrollment courses may or may not receive the same weighting as AP, depending on the district and state. Confirm this with your high school counselor before deciding on GPA strategy alone.

The more important principle: take the hardest classes you think you can succeed in, and perform well in them. A mediocre grade in an AP course does not serve you better than a strong grade in dual enrollment. The highest-impact combination is maximum available rigor plus strong performance. Colleges recalculate GPA their own way, so the pattern of challenge and achievement matters more than the raw number.

The following table summarizes how AP and dual enrollment compare across the dimensions colleges evaluate most closely.

Practical Application: Making the Decision

The framework is straightforward once you understand the logic.

Step 1: Audit what your school offers. List every AP, IB, honors, and dual enrollment option available to you. This is your ceiling of rigor, and colleges will see it in your school profile.

Step 2: Identify where you can genuinely succeed. The best path is to take the hard course and earn a good grade. Stacking AP courses you are likely to struggle in does not serve your application. Gentry is blunt about readiness: “AP classes are very rigorous, and if a student isn’t going to be successful in that environment, then by all means they should take the honors class or the standard class offered at their high school, where they’re supported and can really learn their best.”

Step 3: Prioritize core subject areas. Colleges give the most weight to the five core areas: math, English, social studies, science, and foreign language. Rigor here matters more than advanced electives.

Step 4: Use dual enrollment strategically for gaps. If AP does not cover a subject relevant to your intended major, dual enrollment fills that gap and adds authentic college-level experience.

Step 5: Prepare for the AP exam if you take AP. Taking an AP course without sitting for the exam, or scoring a 1 or 2, raises questions about genuine engagement. For selective schools, the score is part of the credential. When deciding what senior year courses you should take, maintaining rigor matters, but so does avoiding burnout.

Common Mistakes Students Make With This Decision

Choosing AP purely for perceived prestige. Students who load up on AP in subjects they are unprepared for, or unrelated to their interests, often end up with inconsistent grades and low scores. The rigor signal is strongest when paired with strong performance.

Dismissing dual enrollment as less rigorous. A dual enrollment course at a four-year university in a subject relevant to your intended major, completed with a strong grade, is a meaningful credential. Treating it as lesser leads students to avoid it even when it is the better fit.

Ignoring the school profile context. Students who transfer schools mid-high school, or attend schools with limited offerings, sometimes feel disadvantaged. The school profile exists precisely to contextualize these differences; admissions officers read transcripts in context, not in a vacuum.

Conflating credit potential with admissions value. The credit you might earn is separate from the admissions signal a course sends. Do not choose a course primarily to save tuition money; choose it because it represents the right level of challenge for you.

What This Means for Your College Application Strategy

The AP vs. dual enrollment question has no single correct answer, because it depends on your school, your readiness, your intended major, and the colleges on your list. What is consistent is the underlying principle: colleges want to see that you challenged yourself with the most rigorous curriculum available to you and succeeded in it.

At schools with robust AP offerings, a strong AP record with competitive scores is the clearest signal. Where dual enrollment is the primary advanced option, a strong dual enrollment record is equally valid. With access to both, use AP where standardized benchmarking matters most, in core subjects and intended-major areas, and dual enrollment where it fills subject gaps or provides genuine college-level experience.

The transcript is not just a list of courses. It is a narrative about how you used your four years, and your course selection should be made with that narrative in mind.

If you want a clear-eyed assessment of how your transcript reads to admissions officers, and a specific plan for the courses that will strengthen your application, the counselors at Great College Advice work through exactly this analysis with students every year. Get in touch to learn how we can help you build the strongest possible academic record before you apply.

The post Do Dual Enrollment or AP Classes Look Better on Your Transcript? first appeared on Great College Advice.

Most families treat rolling-admissions schools as an afterthought, focusing their energy on the Early Decision and Early Action deadlines. That’s a mistake. A well-placed rolling admissions school can change the entire arc of your application season.

What Rolling Admissions Actually Means

Rolling admissions means a college reviews and decides on applications continuously as they arrive, rather than waiting for a single deadline. As counselor Jeanette Hadsell explains: “Rolling admissions is a school that does not have a set deadline of when they’re going to make decisions. They’re making decisions as they get applications.”

The practical consequence: apply early and the school has filled very few seats, improving your odds on both admission and financial aid. The same application submitted in October versus March faces a very different competitive landscape.

Why Rolling Admissions Belongs on Your List

Confidence. Students who reach December without a single acceptance carry a weight that affects every subsequent application. Submit a rolling admissions application in October and you can have a decision by early November, before most other deadlines have passed. As Sarah Farbman puts it: “You can say to yourself, ‘I know I’m going to college.’ That’s a really good feeling. No matter what else happens, I have this one acceptance under my belt.” With that safety net in place, students can take more creative risks in their remaining essays and reach applications.

Feedback. A rejection in October is still useful. If you don’t get into your rolling admissions school, it’s an important signal to reassess your list or your application strategy and you’re getting it early enough to make adjustments before it’s too late.

Less competition. Rolling admissions tends to be a little less competitive than admissions with a fixed deadline. The applicant pool in September and October is smaller than what accumulates later in the cycle. Timing is a variable you can control.

How to Use Rolling Admissions

Identify rolling admissions schools during your list-building phase, not in November. As Sarah Myers confirms: “It’ll say if it’s a rolling application deadline.” Check each school’s admissions page directly.

Apply early; for most students, that means fall of senior year. Rolling admissions schools read applications as they come in, and once the class fills up, they stop. The same goes for financial aid: once the budget is expended, the money stops too. Applying early doesn’t mean rushing. The goal is to be among the first wave reviewed, when the most seats and financial aid dollars are still available.

Build a focused list of 10–12 schools, with the rolling admissions school as a genuine anchor at the likely end, not a checkbox. Research it thoroughly. Confirm it’s a place you’d actually attend.

Common Mistakes

• Waiting too long. By the time ED/EA results arrive in December, the rolling admissions school has already filled much of its class. The competitive advantage is front-loaded.

• Applying without real interest. If you haven’t researched the school, an acceptance can’t serve as a confidence anchor.

• Confusing rolling admissions with open admissions. Selectivity varies widely. Evaluate each school on its own merits.

• Applying Late

If you’ve missed the early window, many rolling admissions schools continue accepting applications into spring. Students with particular strengths — a specific sport, a musical instrument a program needs — may still find openings late in the cycle. As Sarah Myers notes: “If you have a special skill or you’re playing a certain sport they’re really looking to fill, or a certain musical instrument that they want or something, there’s a chance you can still be admitted in that rolling process.” If you have a legitimate reason for applying late, use the additional information section of the Common App to explain it.

Ready to Build Your College List?

Rolling admissions is one piece of a well-constructed application strategy. But knowing which schools to target, when to apply, and how to position yourself takes more than a checklist. The team at Great College Advice works with students at every stage of the process, from building a balanced college list to crafting essays that reflect who you really are. If you want expert guidance tailored to your specific profile, reach out to us today to start the conversation.

The post Want an Early “Yes”? Why Rolling-Admissions Schools Belong on Your List first appeared on Great College Advice.