And I’m back with another application masterpost (and a new url - formerly s-tudybean)! Sorry it took so long, but I hope you still find it useful ♡.
You can view the one I did about applying to the UK here.
Okay so let’s get into this. First off I want to say that applying to the U.S is a tad more confusing than any of the other applications I did because there are not as many “universal guidelines” that you can follow to successfully complete all of your applications. What you need to do can vary greatly from school to school, which means I might miss something out that your specific school requires.
As a result, right off the bat I want to stress that once you know where you’re applying, head over to their website and look up their application instructions and bookmark the page/note it down somewhere. If you are unsure of anything, don’t be afraid to call/email the school’s application office directly - they’re there to help!
THE BASICS
At some point in time you’ll probably hear or read the word holistic in reference to U.S college applications. . I would say the majority of U.S schools pride themselves on using this holistic approach to admissions, which basically describes that they use a combination of factors (GPA, test scores, extra curricula’s, essays etc) to get an overview of the applicant as a whole and help with their admissions decision. As a result, a popular misconception is that awesome extra curricular activities will erase the impact of poor grades/test scores. This is wrong. Just remember that you are still being admitted into an academic institution, so grades are probably the most important, but it is not the only important thing.
A large number of schools in the U.S use the Common Application (CA), a system which allows you to centralize your college application (i.e. search for colleges, complete and submit applications all in the same place). A similar system is the Universal College Application, however I have no experience using this so will not be referring to it in this guide again.
Not all schools use the CA, it mostly serves private school applications. Public colleges/unis tend to have their own application system. A list of schools that use the CA can be found here.
Unlike in the UK, I would say for a large majority of schools in the U.S you don’t have to apply for admission into a specific course/program, you can, but you can also go in “undecided”. The good thing about this is that you have the flexibility to change your major during the course of your studies.
As I said before, each school may vary in application requirements. However some of the things you may see across the board (in no particular order) are:
- Personal details, educational history, extra curricular engagements etc - just general info about you
- High School Transcript
- An application essay (or several)/short answer questions
- Testing (SAT, ACT, Subject Tests)
- Teacher Recommendations
CHOOSING COLLEGES
Now let us proceed into a discussion about the vague art of choosing colleges.
Unlike the UK, as far as I know, there is no limit to how many colleges you can apply to in the United States. I have friends who applied to only one and were happy with that, and then others friends who applied to 20+. I personally applied to about 11.
It’s all about you and what you’re looking for. But I will note here that the more colleges, the more time and effort it will take to complete the application and the more money it will cost. Yes. Next year’s (and the following 3 year’s) tuition is not the only thing you have to worry about. Applying to college in the U.S is hella expensive, and if you’re on a budget that’s something that should be high on your radar.
Some general choosing college advice: academic prestige/your major is not the only important thing. Consider everything from the weather to the food. This is going to be your new home for the next few years. Make a list of the things that are important to you and research each school based on those factors. For example, as a kid who has lived all over the world one of the most important things to me in a school was the level of student body diversity.
Irrespective of how many schools you choose to apply to, students usually try to have at least one school that fits in each category: safety, fit/match and reach.
Your safety school (or schools) is a school that based on the admissions statistics (% of admitted students, average GPA and tests scores of admitted applicants etc.) you’re basically guaranteed admissions (i.e. you surpass the admissions requirements). Your safety school should be a school that if you are not admitted anywhere else, you would be happy to attend anyway. People often do not take enough care choosing their safety school. In my opinion your safety school is the most important one on your list because it’s your backup plan, and your backup plan needs to be concrete. You don’t want to end up miserable for 4 years because you didn’t take the time to choose a safety school that truly fits you.
Your match school is basically a school that you’re aiming to get into, as an applicant you meet the admissions requirement for that school comfortably, and want to attend there.
And finally your reach school is a school that perhaps you don’t exactly meet the admissions requirements for, or it has an acceptance rate on the lower end of the spectrum. It’s a school where based on your assessment of the admissions statistics you are by no means guaranteed acceptance - you’d be lucky to be accepted. This includes ivy leagues and other “prestige” schools with notoriously low acceptance rates.
Here’s a list of places to start when choosing colleges:
Big future college search tool
College Confidential - college discussion forum
College Niche - a college review website
Unigo - a college review website
APPLICATION TIMELINE
The timeline for applying to school in the U.S is generally a lot longer, and starts a lot earlier than any other country simply because of the sheer amount of crap you have to do in order submit a complete application.
For example, you will need time to prepare for any testing, ask teachers for recommendations, give them enough time to complete the recommendations, draft and complete essays etc.
So you probably want to start the college ball rolling early in your junior year (12 months before the app deadline is a good place to start). This will make sure you have ample time to complete everything without feeling rushed. The pressures of regular school and college applications are not fun, so anything to reduce that stress is good.
In terms of application deadlines, again these vary from school to school, so you have to look up the deadlines for the specific schools you are applying to and make note of that.
Despite the lack of fixed dates, many schools offer three general system of application timeline you can follow based on when you want to get your acceptances/rejections. These are regular decision, early action and early decision.
The regular decision deadline is the deadline followed by most applicants. It’s just your regular college application deadline, and is usually the last chance you have in that admissions cycle to apply to a school. Generally regular decision applications are due in January/February and you get a response by March/April.
Early action and early decision applications have earlier deadlines (usually October/November), and you receive you will receive feedback (i.e rejections, acceptances or deferrals) both earlier and faster than regular decision candidates. Usually acceptances for early action/decision candidates are released in December/January.
The difference between early action and early decision is that early decision applications are binding. You are only allowed to apply to one early decision school, and if you are admitted you must attend that school and withdraw all regular decision applications you may have submitted.
Early action deadlines do not have a binding contract, however some schools offer a single-choice early action scheme which means if you want to apply to that school early, you can ONLY apply to that school early.
There are no definite advantages in terms of admission likelihood to applying early action. For early decision it will show the school that you are 100% committed to attending their institution, which may or may not make them more likely to admit you. When people choose to follow one of these early admissions schemes, it is usually for their top choice school. So take time to consider what is best for you.
In addition to application deadlines, you want to make note of things like financial aid application deadlines and scholarship deadlines so you give yourself enough time to prepare and submit any necessary documentation (note: I won’t be talking anymore about financial aid or scholarships in this post, but please please please if you are applying for either, find out what you need to do and do it!).
Here’s a useful application checklist by college board.
And here is a neat application timeline, also by college board.
TESTING
Eeekkkkk probably the most notorious part of U.S school applications: testing.
Most schools require some form of testing in the shape of the SAT or ACT. Some schools may additionally require you to take SAT Subject tests. Other schools, however, are test optional, which means they don’t require any form of testing, but it can be submitted if you so desire to do so. Knowing exactly what is needed of you will depend on the school, so make sure you do your research!
The SAT & ACT are supposed to be assessments of your overall college “readiness”. And SAT Subject Tests are subject specific tests you can take in addition to these general tests of college readiness (e.g. Biology, French, World History etc.). Back in my day (LMao I graduated high school in 2015) I took both the SAT, ACT and two subject Tests. But since then the SAT has changed! Which makes me so sad because I had so many awesome SAT books to recommend to you all!! Instead I’ll just give you some general advice.
Choosing between the SAT & ACT: First I would say if possible try and take both and use the score of that you do better on. I no longer feel qualified to make a statement on the difference between the SAT and ACT due to the SAT change, but in terms of my experience I would recommend the ACT for people who are better into science/math, because it has more of that and more difficult math than the SAT, and then I’d recommend the SAT to people who are better at english, read a lot and have the capacity to retain copious numbers of word definitions. I’d love it if someone who’s taken the new SAT give their input.
Advice for test prep: I highly encourage you to prep well and throughly for all testing, even if it’s your first time taking the test. I am not an advocate of the “I’ll take the test see how I do and then I’ll study for the next one” method. Study hard, and study hard now because you may get a high enough score the first time and not need to spend the extra time and money taking subsequent tests. Most people take the tests multiple times, and that’s okay! I’m not against that (I took each test test twice!), but I don’t think it’s worth the time and money not preparing for the test to just see how you do. This is just my opinion though, go ahead and do as you please.
There are thousands of books, online resources, prep courses etc. available to prep for each test, so look around and get recommendations from friends. I won’t recommend any of the SAT books I used since the test has changed, however the official college board one is always the best place to start. For the ACT I just used the official ACT guide and the online resources they offered.
But my biggest piece of advice for test prep is to do as many practice tests as possible, and to do them under the official test conditions. So that includes timing yourself, taking breaks at the designated times etc. I’d even reccomend that at least one Saturday you wake up early and simulate the test session from start to finish. It’ll give you a good understanding of what to expect, so you’ll be as ready as possible for test day.
TEACHER RECOMMENDATIONS
Just a few short notes here about teacher recommendations:
- On the CA you sign a waiver about recommendations saying whether you’d like to forfeit the right to read the recommendations after the application cycle. My counselor recommended that you do forfeit, and I followed that advice. She said if you don’t it might make the teacher want to be less honest, so idk, I just forfeited and most people at my school did too.
- Make sure the teacher you’re asking for a recommendation actually likes you. Lmao I am not kidding, my guidance counselor stressed this so much. Because you don’t get to see what the teacher has written until you’ve been accepted (or never if you forfeited), you need to be sure that the teacher you pick has nothing bad to say about you. Also it’d be great if the teacher has more to say about you than the generic “xyz is a good student”. So throughout your secondary school career make an effort to forge positive and meaningful relationships with your teachers!
- And finally, make sure you contact the teachers you want to write a recommendation well before the deadline. They don’t need to pressure of your deadline looming over them, they’re doing you a favor by doing this, and if you contact them last minute they may feel tempted to write a thing or two about your disorganization (lol). So make sure you contact them in a timely manner.
ESSAYS
Applications essays are probably one of the most central parts of your college application. It was definitely my favorite part of the application but also the most stressful.
If you are using the Common Application, you are required to write one 250 to 650 word essay that is sent to all schools . This essay is based on a choice of five different questions that are released by the Common App organization every year. If the school you are applying to is not using the CA, they usually will still have a main essay question that you need to answer to complete your application.
In addition to the CA essay, many schools have school specific essays you must complete and some short answer questions as well.
Essay questions for U.S school admissions are famous for being unique and quite quirky, which as someone who loves creative writing, I loved. But this is often daunting for a lot of people, which is understandable. There is this pressure to stand out, be unique and write something that has never been written before. You need to find a way to let go of that pressure and instead focus on conveying who you are as a person and what you have to contribute as an individual in your essay. No two people are the same, if you focus on those two aspects, your essay is bound to be one of a kind.
General Tips:
- Do not draft your essays/short answers on the college application system. Instead draft and finalize everything on an external word processing software and then copy and paste it into the designated part of the application website when you are done.
- Start brainstorming essay topics/writing the essay as soon as the questions are released, or as early as possible. The essay is not something you want to (or really can) rush. Take your time.
- There are some cliché topics that you might want to try and steer clear of when brainstorming essay topics - I think this list covers those nicely.
- Draft and draft again. Don’t be afraid to write multiple essays and then seek external opinions on which one is better (I did this and it was super helpful). Try different takes on one question, allow yourself to explore all of your ideas.
- There is a fine line between trying to be unique and coming off as absurd in essay writing. Whatever the topic of your essay make sure it has point, answers the question and does not deviate into nonsensical bla bla in the name of uniqueness.
- Get someone you trust (if possible more than one!) to read it over, provide feedback, check for grammatical errors etc. It’s definitely worthwhile to ask an english teacher to give it a read through just to make sure its perfect.
- As you’re writing, every now and again you should copy and paste what you have so far onto the application to see where you are in terms of word count.
Tips for getting started:
- Go to the college website and note down the words they use to describe their school, their students and the type of students they seek to admit. These words will be useful to incorporate into your essay.
- Get a blank piece of paper/empty word doc and write down all your ideas. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mess, getting your ideas down on paper allows you to have an overview so you can sort through and eliminate what’s good from what’s meh.
- One method I like to use (not just for application essays but for all essays) is to start by writing out the first sentence of each paragraph, because then you’ve got a framework of sorts, and can go back and fill in the blanks. While you’re writing this is especially reassuring because it reminds you that your essay is going somewhere.
- Just get started. Often the best way to finish is just to get started. Open a word document and just start writing.
Tips for Writing:
- Be general. This is in particular reference to the CA essay. You have to be general if you are applying to several colleges because this essay will be sent to all of them. The essay can be revised up to a maximum of two times between submitting them, however I still think it’s important not to include specific university names in your writing for example.
- Be specific. This may sound confusing since I literally just said you had to be general, but you also need to be specific enough in your writing to convey your passion for the subject you are applying to enter. Give specific examples to corroborate the things you say.
- Be concise. You have a limited word count to write about things that could take up an entire 400 page book, so use your word count wisely. Use meaningful vocabulary. If you have a sentence that means the same thing when you take out a word, then take out the word. If a sentence does not add anything to the essay, take it out.
- Use examples. Examples, examples, examples. Corroborate everything you say with examples. These examples can come from extra curricular activities or general life experience.
And that’s all for this post guys! I hope it was helpful. As always feel free to message me with any questions, things to add or general inquiries and I’ll try my best to do what I can. ♡ Also if you feel you have anything to add that will benefit people, please feel free to reply/reblog and comment.
