Caroline Koppelman
Why This College Essay Question Guide and ...

Why do you want to go to school here? If there’s one prompt you are certain to write more than once, it’s this one. This prompt comes in a few different flavors, but at the end of the day, they all want to know why their school is the perfect school for you and why you’re the perfect student for them. No pressure or anything.

Caroline Koppelman
Official Common App Essay Guide 2024-2025

We’ve spent the last few weeks breaking down the Common App essay prompt by prompt, and today we’re going to give you our ultimate guide to writing the Common App essay. There might be seven different prompts, but ultimately, all schools want the same thing from their applicants’ Common App essays: a story.

Caroline Koppelman
Rejected Early Decision from Columbia 2023

Getting a rejection in the Early Decision round is definitely not easy. But the good news is, it’s really just the start, and that one rejection has no bearing on how you’re going to do with other, similarly competitive schools. The thing about Early Decision is it comes alone and it comes first. It’s sometimes easier to tolerate a rejection when it’s preceded by several acceptance letters. College admissions are extraordinarily competitive these days and the Ivies are just more competitive than any other time or place in history. That’s it. It doesn’t get harder. And Columbia in particular has just a 4% acceptance rate! So, if you’ve been rejected in the Early Decision round, don’t despair. We have some advice about how you might go forward. (And don’t worry, it’s really not that much more work!)

Caroline Koppelman
Deferred by Harvard — Now What? (2023-24)

If you’ve been deferred by Harvard, you are not alone. Harvard is notorious at this point for deferring an enormous percentage of early admission applicants. While most elite colleges with early admissions programs, like early decision and early action, only defer students they are seriously considering for the next freshman class, the statistics Harvard has released on early admission suggest that they take a very different approach.

Caroline Koppelman
Writing the “Why This College” Essay

Even though every college has slightly different supplementary application materials, you’ll likely run into a variation of one question more than any other: “Why do you want to attend this school in particular?” It’s every institution’s way of saying, Let’s cut to the chase. Why us?

math

9th Grade College Strategy for Math

Calculus? Algebra? Trigonometry? There’s so much math, we don’t even know what to do with it! If you’re here, you think you might want to study math in college, and we don’t blame you. Math touches every single field and has applications within business, finance, education, the social sciences, and so much more. Maybe you’re drawn in by the allure of solving complex problems, the fascination with how math underpins everything in our world, or just the fact that mathematical concepts are integral to every part of our modern society. Now, you, as a 9th grader, want to know what you can do to start the college prep process.

10th Grade College Strategy for Math

Addition! Derivatives! Exponents! Math! It’s probably used to some extent in every single topic, job, and hobby in the world. The career applications with a degree in math are endless. Teaching, finance, economics, data analysis, accounting, truly almost every field can benefit from someone with a math degree. If you’re here, you are probably interested in studying math in college. Or maybe math is your best/favorite class. Either way, let’s talk about it.

Best Applied Math Undergraduate Programs

Applied math is not simply math. Math as a whole is not just math. At the collegiate level, math can be broken up into a bunch of types but there are two big buckets: pure math and applied math. Pure math is math for the sake of math. It’s beautiful and it’s amazing, but it isn’t really focused on how that math can be applied. Applied math is focused heavily on the application of math, which shouldn’t be surprising given the name.