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Your application essay is not about grades, scores, or achievements—it’s about you. It introduces you as an individual and shows that you can write and think coherently.
Colleges want curious and articulate people who are ready to enter college. Your essay can show them you are that person.
Over the last decade, the internet has made it much easier for students to apply to college, especially thanks to services like the “Common App.” For the nearly 700 schools now part of the Common Application—the nation’s leading standardized online college-application portal—students can browse by name, state, or region, by the type of institution (public or private), and by whether it’s co-ed or single-sex. Clicking on a college takes students to a brief profile of the school and then an invitation: “Ready to apply?”
And now that students can apply to more colleges with the click of a few buttons, they are doing exactly that.
The first schools that many students learn about are famous, highly selective colleges like Yale and Harvard. About 50-60 U.S. colleges are considered “highly selective.” They have admission rates of 33 percent or less. For some, admission rates are in the single digits.
So what does it take to get in?
What’s your college major? You’ve probably been asked this more than a few times. So what’s all the fuss about? And what’s a major anyway?
Every college expects you to “major” in a field of study in order to graduate. However, usually you can start college without declaring a major. If you think you do know your major, you can use your freshman year to test it out.
Yale is making some changes to the prompt for its freshman application. While high school students applying to the elite US university were previously given free rein on its secondary essay requirement (“Reflect on something you would like us to know about you”), applicants this year will face a set of newly specific questions.