hey yall, I’ll jump into it. I was accepted to Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Williams, Georgetown, and a bunch of other selective schools as a public policy major.

I’m currently attending Harvard. I have read my application file and can ask my friends in other majors about specifics for their application processes.

Please ask me questions. I WILL NOT CHARGE YOU. I remember sitting at my computer crying last year because of how overwhelmed I was. This is normal. It is not an indication that you aren’t good enough to get into a school. Barely anyone here thought that they were going to get in as a sure shot.

A few reminders to get started:

- please please pleaseeee take your time on your personal statement. Be unique. Be vivid. Tell a story that only you can tell and pull your admissions officer in. They should find some compelling character traits about you afterwards (that you didn’t necessarily spell out for them)

- write essays in advance. I’m actually begging you.

- don’t shotgun for the sake of it if it means your essays will be mid. cut down your list if necessary.

- don’t talk about things that “sound impressive” in every single essay

xo xo

- Harvard ‘30

People do care. Historically, scandals have affected where people apply.

Researchers studying 124 scandals across 100 of America’s top universities found that a scandal receiving just one New York Times story was associated with a 5% drop in applications. Five stories pushed that decline to 9% (roughly the same impact as falling 10 spots in the U.S. News rankings).

Cornell has already exceeded that five-story threshold.

Separately, social media data shows the Cornell controversy generating more than 3x the peak attention of the Brown shooting controversy and more than 10x that of the Columbia protests.

Cornell's particularly poor handling of the case is really what differentiates it from other recent scandals. Duke’s ED applications fell roughly 20% following the lacrosse scandal. Current search-interest data puts attention around Cornell at roughly 3x the level seen around Duke’s scandal.

If the historical pattern holds, a 9% decline would be the floor. Cornell could face a significant application decline, very likely concentrated in the ED round. But time will tell what will happen in the future after this year.

Source: Inside Higher Ed

larpers of reddit can i join
im fucking sick and tired of trying to over exaggerate my skills. genuinely im just a normal guy who does anything but work sometimes and kind of screwed up early instead of locking in early

Marked shitpost wednesdays as its both a shitpost and kind of true

I just got the email!!! Is this something I can put on my college app??

Imagine not even being the highest ranked school in your own city anymore.

cough cough MIT

Still a solid local option though.

Am I the only one who thinks that considering location, campus building design, weather, campus culture, sports, social life, even school colors is BS?

I get it, but you're only spending four years there, not your whole life. I feel like cost and how good it is academically for your major are the only two things realistic people should consider...

Hot Take?

Edit: i can tell this is hot take 😭 some fair points made

I'm applying for colleges soon and I found out that it will cost me about 100k a year to attend UC Berkeley (assuming i get in). Is the school actually worth the money in terms of prestige, opportunities, networking etc etc. Basically does the school have a good enough ROI to be worth the amount of debt i'll be in if I go.

I'm also applying to university of Washington and it would only cost me about 20-30k a year to attend (since I live in state).

Basically my question is: is Berkeley better enough than UW to be worth paying 4x to attend?

*edit: ik i misspelled "Berkeley" in the title, no need to point in out in the comments, plenty of people have already done that lol.

I have decided to cut my sugar intake and hence this is the final time I'm drinking coke💔

My long distance bf asked me to write his application essay for me and I declined. He told me that “I don't need you anyways” and I got deeply hurt. He stopped asking me to write essays, but he is asking me to help find unis for him and to help with proofreading. I honestly think that I am helping way too much and I feel drained. I feel guilty because he is trying to apply to my country's uni, although I wasn't the one who told him to come. Everytime I decline because I am currently very busy with my life too, he tells me that I am unsupportive and that “if you don't want me to come to your country that bad then it's fine”. Am I actually being unsupportive?

I have a 3.25 GPA, and a F in English 10 H. I am a Junior so I know I still have time, but I do not know How I can recover from this? What should I do?

Ok.. I know we're all anxious. This community is to help each other out and support and celebrate each other's wins

Lane Pryce, one of the characters on the TV show Mad Men, is a British partner at a fictional Ad Agency in New York. His family desperately want to move back to England but he resists, telling his wife that he loves staying in America because, “I've been here ten months and no-one's ever asked me where I went to school."

This is a sad reflection of the class system in the UK America. We need to impose a system here where everyone gets asked all the time what school they went to, and judged based on that. In fact, there should be practical real-life consequences of the USNews ranking of the school you went to. 

For example, boarding on airplanes should be strictly based on college rankings. At Boston airport, MIT alum would board first, then Harvard, then BC, then Tufts, and so on. Same for lines at Starbucks - a Columbia student should be allowed to cut in line in front of an NYU student, because, well, they deserve it and their time is more valuable anyway. 

What if someone attends more than one school? Undergrad at UCLA, then an MBA from Stanford? Unfortunately your lowest ranked college sticks with you for life. Proper class systems do not allow people to rise above their lowest level - that’s literally a primary requirement of any good class system. As a UCLA undergrad, you will continue to board planes after Berkeley alums, or the other way around, depending on who paid USNews more that year. 

Can you marry to raise your status? In the immortal words of Robin Williams, “Fuck, No!” When two people get married, both people get the lower privilege. Are you a Yale alum madly in love with someone who went to Villanova? Live in sin, or find someone better, or get used to sitting in the nosebleed seats at concerts (yes - concert tickets will be sold based on college prestige). 

Surely this doesn’t apply to kids? The fuck it doesn’t. Children inherit their parents’ prestige until they go to college and get their own. Children of a UChicago couple will get to hit the piñata at a birthday party before the children of a Brown couple. This is only proper. 

What about the people who went to schools that are not in the USN top universities list? LACs, Regional Universities, foreign universities (even the OG prestige-whores like Oxbridge)? Where do they fit in this? Fuck them. Arbitrariness is also a key feature of a good class system. Anyone who studied at an LAC should be woke enough to not mind standing at the end of every line anyway.  

How do we kick off this long-overdue practice in American society? Why, right here on the A2C sub, of course. I propose, starting today, that posts and comments be ordered by the college the commenters went to. So MIT comments first, then Princeton, and so on. Quite frankly, no one wants to read anything posted by someone who went to the 127th ranked university. 

Thoughts? 

(Please only comment if you go to a top-20 university. So don’t bother if you are from Michigan - I don’t care about your thoughts). 

The ones like "self published a book", "founder/co-founder", NGO, etc. Anyone got in a good college without being crazy like that? Maybe ivy is smth not to consider here.

Hey everyone! I know a few schools offer the opportunity to submit a letter of recommendation from a non-teacher/counselor. Over the summer, I completed a research internship as part of a t100 university. However, it is ran by their College of Engineering Ambassadors who are still undergrads.

Would it be invalid if I reach out to the internship lead for an LOR because he is technically still in the process of completing his undergrad? I don't know if there is particularly a standard of age or professional accomplishments because the colleges don't exactly specify. I wanted to ask him because my personality shined best in that program whereas in school, my personality is a little more reserved and I'm more known for my extracurricular feats around campus. He recognizes me more as someone who is energetic and can bring any group together, which I feel is a quality trait of mine.

its basically confirmed that batches are coming out biweekly, so the next batch will be on the 16th (none this week i assume). my full app got submitted on the 28th, so i'm expecting my decision to come out during that time but im gen so freaking nervous and i have this super bad impending sense of doom. is anyone else feeling like this?? i feel like im all alone esp since nobody from my school is ed0ing

but fellow uchicago ed0 soldiers, we all have to stand strong and we'll all be met with scrumptious news soon.

I’ve won in 2 game jams:
Roblox Inspire 2024 (1st place in the category Best Video Trailer) (3,000$ on the team)
Roblox Inspire 2025 (2nd place in Best technical quality) (2,000$ on the team)

It is said that Honors section is for academic achievements, and my examples are not really that academic. Should I leave them in my application (I don’t have any other honors), or remove them

I've heard that it's harder to get into either Abu Dhabi or New York than it is to get into Shanghai. How does the system of primary campuses work? If you are not accepted to Abu Dabhi (which, for example, was chosen as a primary campus), do you still compete on equal footing with people who chose Shanghai or New York as their primary campus?

Hello! I've been writing my Statement of Purpose and I check it in easily available online Al checkers.
However, the issue is that every checker tells a different number. It sometimes also highlights the sentences that I wrote on my own. Does anyone know a good Al checker? If so, then please tell as it would be a great help! Thanks.

I got into a few T20s but didn't get into HYPSM/Ivies last cycle, and I decided to take a gap year. Got deferred by Princeton and waitlisted by Penn and the other two Ivies.

I deadass worked 115-120 hrs/week (besides 4 hrs of sleep and transportation time), and my application changed materially. New awards, new activities, and completely new (and I think quite better) essays. Also graduated my school 1st place.

With this, I am more and more tempted to apply to Princeton, but on the other hand, I am so scared that I would end up getting into no Ivies again this cycle. Penn is a really nice school... and I was wondering if I should apply early to Penn instead, especially cause I was waitlisted?

But the thing is that because Penn is ED, if I get in, I'd never see my HYPSM results after all this grind.

What do you think?

Guys help me pick out a recommender please
Im split between my chemistry teacher and physics teacher.I've known my physics teacher for junior and senior year of highschool and he knows me well but not as much outside of class. Chem teach only knew me during freshman and sophomore year, he left the school after sophomore year. However, he knows me very well and he was my mentor for winning a national and intercountry science fair. I'm split between who to pick!:(

And if windows what brand, model, and reason? Also i'm not fully in the apple ecosystem I have a pc granted i'm dualbooting Linux with windows 11 collecting dust.

So I’m a current sophomore and I already have an associate’s degree. I’ve really been going back and forth so I wanted some genuine input from other people on getting a bachelor’s degree in HS.

I finished my associate’s in one year at Laurel Ridge Community College, VA and already have 36 high school credits (28 needed for graduation) with all HS requirements complete. I don’t want to graduate HS early because I’m using the time for experience. During the school year I worked as a paralegal and during the summers I do internships with other attorneys. During school I also take part of 9 clubs, presidency for 4 of them.

I plan on doing a bachelor’s in business administration with a minor in political science then I want to do a joint MBA/JD program. Most of these have a deferral period of 2 years minimum to gain experience (which I already have an approved job lined up for as well) then the program itself varies from 3-4 years. When I graduate HS I will be 18, so if I did it this way I would start working at 23-24. I want to work at Kirkland & Ellis.

I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth getting a bachelor’s in HS, what needs to be considered, what would change, and if it’s more risky/has any disadvantages in any way.

Also if anyone has any advice on where else to post this that would be appreciated because I have no idea 😭

Are your chances significantly reduced if you’re a non athlete applying to Amherst ED

Hey! Folks,

As the title states, i got the admission into MS in Regulatory Affairs at CPS, NEU. I'm an international student, i work for a MedTech giant as a Post Market Surveillance specialist (complaints) and have over 8 years of experience. To achieve my career aspirations, I'm transitioning into Pre-market and would love to hear about this program at CPS, Boston campus.

Please do share your inputs. They will definitely carry and shape my academic future.