Improve your chances of getting into college,

Everything can matter in admissions. However, things matter only within context. Generally speaking, it's more impressive to graduate at the top of a class of 800 vs. 80. However, there aren't a whole lot of schools with an 800 student senior class that could compete academically with, say, San Francisco University High School, which typically has a graduating class of about 90.

Of course, different aspect of class size matter differently to different schools. For the University of California, class size generally doesn't make a bit of difference; what matters are rank and ELC status. With most private universities, graduating at the top of a massive high school is great...but what really matters is the combination of class size, academic reputation, and student rank.

Call them every single day.

Obviously, don't do this. What should you do? It's like the first rule of creative writing: show, don't tell.

Do:

Go to information sessions and meet the representative.

Go to high school visits and do the same.

Try to visit the school and take advantage of all of the ways you can get to know the school.

Try to get an interview.

Get the name of your regional rep, and at least email them so they know who you are.

Really get to know the school, the profs in your major, and so forth.

Don't:

Stalk

Be weird

Assume that "interest" in a school is a super-important factor in admissions. It matters, but not too much. What matters more? How much you'll fit in with the general feel of the school. Because of this, you really need to get to know the place.

Early Decision

Perhaps the most significant decision a student can make in the college application process will be if she applies RD (Regular Decision )ED (Early Decision) or EA (Early Action). To provide some issues pertaining to ED (both so-called EDI and EDII):

1. Students may apply to just one school ED (unless they apply to an ED school, are rejected, and then apply to an ED II school). This does not impact the number of RD schools to which they can apply.

2. If they’re admitted, they must attend this school.

3. Applying ED provides students with a significant statistical advantage in the application process.

4. Schools will frequently accept up to 40 percent of their freshman class from the ED applicant pool.

So, a student receives a significant advantage by applying ED to a school that offers the program. Even further, students are at a significant disadvantage when they apply RD to a school that offers ED; so many of the slots have been filled with the ED applicants that the room for RD students is very narrow.

Early Decision II

EDII is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it’s one of the more difficult to understand, but let’s try to go through it. EDII is the same as ED, but the application date usually falls right around the RD deadline. To clarify, let’s review a scenario that would prompt a student to apply under EDII.

Were a student to apply ED or EA to a school, they would typically do this at the beginning of November. The school would inform them if they were admitted or denied by December 15. If this student was denied ED from, say, the University of Pennsylvania, they would still have two weeks in order to apply under an EDII plan – for instance, at NYU – with the “bonus” that typically accompanies ED.

As you might guess, schools that offer EDII are good schools, but they’re depending on the students rejected from top-tier ED schools to apply to them under EDII. There aren’t too many schools currently offering EDII, but the list is growing. As I've mentioned NYU offers the plan, as do Claremont McKenna, Emory University, and Vanderbilt University.

EA is rather different from ED in most ways, aside from the "early" component of the application...and how confusing it can be.

• Non-restrictive EA

This plan is the most flexible of all the EA options, and it doesn’t provide an enormous statistical benefit in terms of admissions. However, if a student is interested in applying to a school that offers this plan, the student should apply under it, unless another school prohibits them from doing so.

Non-restrictive EA, offered at Chicago, Cal Tech, and MIT, for instance, is a plan that allows students to apply early – typically in early November –and receive a decision by mid-December. Depending on whose numbers you look at, there is a slight advantage to applying under this plan, and if a student is admitted he is not locked into attending the school.

Again, there are few true disadvantages to applying under non-restrictive EA. The timing can be an issue for some students, though, as they might not have earned their highest SAT score by the October test date (the latest test date that this plan will consider) or, if their spring junior year grades are less than stellar they won’t be able to show schools their fall grades. Aside from these factors, though, non-restrictive EA is thoroughly advantageous to the student.

• Restrictive EA (REA)

However, not every student will be allowed to apply non-restrictive EA, as schools in the REA category will prevent students from applying anywhere else early. Stanford, Yale, and Boston College all offer REA, which again does not require the student to attend the school, but gives them a bit of a boost in terms of admissions. Yale, for instance, has an RD acceptance rate of approximately 6 percent. Their REA acceptance rate hovers around 14 percent. Stanford’s numbers are almost exactly the same as Yale’s.

So, REA does give students an edge without locking them into the school. However, students will need to sacrifice applying to all other schools early (aside from those offering EDII) if they apply under REA. Choose wisely!

Probably a few of the essays that I've read. One was written by a girl about her first sexual experience. I remember the first line was her internal monologue: "That was it?" That essay was passed around the office.

Another was an essay I received shortly after 9/11, written by a Muslim student (who happened to be at a Catholic high school) speaking about his faith. In essence, it was a sort of preemptive attack against anyone who would try to challenge him on the basis of his heritage. Really gutsy at that time, and it said a ton about him. Obviously, if done correctly, the essay can really leave an impression.

Oh, of course. I'm only coming at this from the standpoint of an independent consultant (I haven't worked in admissions since before the recession), but it's not too hard to do a bit of inductive reasoning and come to some (admittedly not-so-nuanced) conclusions:

1. Public institutions are opening their doors to more out-of-staters and international students (read: revenue streams) than ever before. Most UCs used to be a slam dunk for the students with whom I worked. Not anymore. Michigan, North Carolina, and Virginia were all shockingly selective with my applicants. Not anymore.

2. Mid-level privates are suffering, and they're throwing the doors open to full-pays. "Mid-level private," FYI, does not mean a school like USC or Wake Forest. It means your local Catholic college (with the exceptions of ND, BC, and Georgetown) and most regional private schools. Why? Because what Washington resident, for instance, would want to go to Seattle U. (no offense...a great school in its own right) for $50k per year when she could attend UW for half the cost?

3. The CHYMPS schools, as well as the remainder of the top 15 or so, are as selective as ever. Why? I think it's because students are applying in a polar way: They're putting their money on either their state school (for the tuition break) or the sweatshirt school (with the hope that the price tag will be worth it), with not much stock given to the schools in the middle. It's this behavior that leads to both of the issues above, as well.

Yup. I think that the best example of this is MIT, which (according to their Common Data Set) admitted about 800 women and 880 men in 2010. So far so good...But they received over twice the number of male as female applicants! In short, it's almost twice as easy to earn admission to MIT as a female than as a male.

This pattern continues at schools with dramatic gender imbalances. The flip side, of course, is the liberal arts college with a 70/30 female/male breakdown, where men are coveted.

Of course, diversity, multiculturalism, inclusivity, etc., are all huge buzzwords now, and everyone wants to have a representation of every perspective available. It's just good business. If a school doesn't have "enough" of you, you can rest assured that you'll have an edge in admissions. So much of the application process, unfortunately, has turned into a business of trying to leverage any "minority" status that you have.

When I worked at a small school, I knew my high schools and the counselors incredibly well. When you lobby for a student's admission, you really need to know the school profile frontward, backward, and sideways.

When I worked at a large public school, I knew zero about our applicants' schools. We were on a point system that eschewed any "school favoritism."

In other words, it really depends on the college. Also, it's worth noting that I would only know a student's school had that school had an applicant in the past. There would be no reason to know a thing about the school of a stealth applicant in the middle of nowhere. This is where the high school profile and counselor report are invaluable.

When I worked in private college admissions, I would spend about a half-hour on the application proper. However, this doesn't take into account any of the following:

The discussions I had with counselors regarding their students.

The follow up I would (somewhat frequently) conduct with individual teachers regarding letters of recommendation...especially those with, "Please call me with any questions or concerns," written in the body of the letter.

Admissions/scholarship interviews.

Meetings with prospects at information sessions.

Meetings with prospects at college fairs.

In other words, I was able to get to know the kids really well.

When I was with the University of California system, I spent an average of five to seven minutes per application. And, this does take into account the following:

I never spoke with a counselor regarding one of their students.

I would not always be well acquainted with the high school from which the applicant was applying.

We didn't solicit letters of recommendation.

We didn't offer interviews.

We would rarely attend college fairs outside of our area.

So, here you have the two extremes. I would even go further, and claim that at a more prestigious private school versus a less selective public school than mine, the "attention gap" would be even wider.

As always, this differs dramatically from school to school. At UC and most publics, there's no way to "compare and contrast," as it were, since the applicant pools are just so massive. The only way UC can really do this is through ELC (Eligibility in the Local Context) identification (top 9 percent of kids in a class), but this only does so much.

With private schools, it again depends on the school. No one publicly says, "We have caps on admission from certain schools," but I doubt that Cornell admissions would feel too excited about admitting, say, 50 percent of the applicants from a particular high school, no matter how qualified they are. In my experience, we would sometimes deny students from particular schools from which we had a slew of applicants to "send a message" that we possessed some selectivity. Of course, this strategy could backfire, and I don't believe it happened frequently.

In terms of the specifics - how a decision would be come to between two applicants - the process is largely the same as any other admissions decision: look at the kid's numbers, rigor, EAs, LoRs, and so forth to make a call. However, there is an added dimension: What will the counselor/school think of us if we deny the boring 3.85 and admit the fascinating 3.3?

This is largely irrelevant to the question, but it is an interesting process. And, as with everything, it's a judgment call. If we felt that such an approach would irreparably damage our relationship with the counselor/school, we would do the following: think about the decision extensively; try to come up with a diplomatic decision (Maybe one of them gets waitlisted? Admitted for spring?); and if this fails, contact the counselor to let them know the reasoning behind our decision upon its release.

I would push ED on a student with the following make-up:

1. The school is one that they're legitimately interested in. They've spoken with school representatives. Hopefully, they've visited. This doesn't have to be "the dream school," but it does need to be one that they could realistically (and joyfully) see themselves becoming a part of.

2. Unless it's "the dream school," the school should not be too far out of reach, nor should it be a safety; students only really get one Early Decision application, and it shouldn't be wasted. A 3.6 GPA with a 2000 on the SAT shouldn't use ED on Columbia, but on an application that's not quite so far out of reach...maybe Carnegie Mellon. Similarly, a 3.9 unweighted with a 2380 should certainly not use ED on Carnegie Mellon; the student will be a straight admit sans ED. In short, choose a school that would be tough without the "ED bonus," but not impossible.

3. They could potentially afford to pay the tuition (minus any federal aid). This factor, though, is certainly not a deal-breaker. To begin, the only truly legitimate reason for pulling out of an ED agreement is due to unmet need. If you're admitted and you ultimately can't afford to attend, no harm no foul.

More optimistically, though, while colleges are not beholden to offer ED admits institutional aid or scholarship money, they generally do a pretty good job of ponying up...specifically the top-tier schools. It has come to the point where it appears as though the Ivies, for instance, are all concerned with one-upping each other regarding college affordability. It's somewhat unusual that the "best" are also the most affordable, but that's the direction that college admissions are moving.

Applying ED provides students with a significant statistical advantage in the application process. For instance, Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins Universities ED acceptance rates are frequently greater than double their RD acceptance rates.

For EA, I have seen few schools with non-restrictive EA who claim higher acceptance rates under this plan. However, under Restrictive Early Action (REA), the numbers do go up.

Stanford, Yale, and Boston College, for instance, all offer REA, which again does not require the student to attend the school, but gives them a bit of a boost in terms of admissions. Yale, for instance, has an RD acceptance rate of between 6 and 8 percent annually. Their REA acceptance rate hovers around 14 percent. Stanford’s numbers are almost exactly the same as Yale’s.

Figure it this way: With ED you're totally committing yourself to the school; with REA, you're slightly committing yourself; and with standard EA, you're not making too much of a commitment. The admit rates under these plans follow similar patterns.

As I mentioned in another response, your odds of acceptance (statistically speaking) can go up dramatically through applying ED. With a school like Johns Hopkins, for instance, you're looking at an overall acceptance rate of around 18 percent. The ED acceptance rate is over double that. So, by the numbers, applying ED offers far better odds than otherwise.

However, this brings up a question: Is the pool of applicants better in ED? In other words, does the strength of the other applicants outweigh the statistical advantage of applying ED? Even further, is this the cause of high ED admit rates?

My perspective on this (and, frankly, I haven't come across enough data disaggregated by the schools to offer a crystal clear picture) is the following: At top 10 schools and right thereabouts, I've found that students applying ED will be generally very strong. Once you get outside this group, the students applying ED will be applying under the plan looking for "an edge."

Why? Because few students will apply ED to a school for which they're a "lock." Most students are applying ED to schools a level or so above where they would usually get in. To simplify, students who're looking at Carnegie Mellon as a target would be inclined to apply to, say, Washington U. ED. This being the case, the CMU ED class (in my opinion) will often be slightly weaker than the RD pool; students are using this opportunity to shoot a bit higher.

However, one can't make the same argument for the ED pool at, say, Columbia or Penn. There are almost no students applying to these schools that feel "comfortable" with their chances for admission to the schools.

So (again in my opinion), the ED pools (and the REA pools, for that matter) of the blue chip schools are rarely depleted by an "applicant flight" to more competitive institutions. There just aren't more competitive schools out there!

In a nutshell, then, I suggest this: Identify a level or so above where you would normally get in. Ensure you've taken the tests in time for the 11/1 or 11/15 deadline. Ensure that your six-semester transcript is solid. If these tasks have been done, use ED to leverage your chances.

If you pull out of an ED agreement, there needs to be a ludicrously convincing reason why. The only publicly accepted rationale is lack of ability to pay, but one would imagine that there are other legitimate excuses (student needs to stay close to home to help a relative, assist with running a business, etc.).

Does the school have any legal recourse if you pull out of the agreement? No, but you can rest assured that the school will remember it. And, when students apply ED from your high school in the future, admissions offices will have some serious questions about how extensively the counselors at that school have explained what responsibilities ED entails. You won't pay, but I'd be surprised if someone down the line didn't.

In the cases that I have worked on, the students that have been the most successful "professionally" are the students that have the most objective view of the situation: It's hard to make a go of it in the arts.

What these students have done is to develop a professional insurance policy, by combining dance with finance, visual arts with public relations, and music with marketing. Clearly, these aren't fixed pairs, but they're instructive: pair up an interest in the arts with an interest in a more "practical" field.

You'll notice that the "practical" majors I've cited all have some relation to business. Here's why:

1. Business programs are eclectic, and it's not a stretch to find most majors with a potential relation to some area of business.

2. In the event that the student develops her own dance company/opens his own gallery/signs a recording contract, she'll have some understanding of business to fall back on; successful artists are typically at the mercy of "manager" types to dictate the business side of things. An understanding of business neutralizes this imbalance.

But, to answer your question more directly, I think that the best strategy is to broach this issue before entering undergrad. Pair you degree up with a practical major, or at least a minor: accounting; biology/chemistry (for pharmaceutical sales or biotech); and engineering field; a business major. The work will clearly be intense, but it will be a far easier task to tackle this issue in undergrad than, say, after graduation.

Of course! There are few Master's programs that will restrict applicants based on undergraduate major; worst-case scenario, a student will be required to take a few spot classes here and there (e.g., econ and calc classes for an MBA; foreign language classes for certain humanities majors; and so forth).

Even with terminal degree programs, many students go in without a full background in the field. Master of Fine Arts programs, for instance, put most weight on the portfolio, not on the transcript. In a different vein, law schools weigh the transcripts heavily, but will not necessarily prefer one major to another.

Of course! Just don't to so with the intention of this having a direct impact on any admissions decision. Do personal feelings and biases play into the process? Of course. But, you would be amazed at how many students deep down really feel that, "If they like me/if I show I'm really excited to come, they'll take me." No one cares...at least no enough for this to be a huge tipping point (although it does play a small role).

Too long/didn't read version: Network, but do it for information and without an agenda.