Anonymous wrote:Start preparing for rush spring of senior year if you want a top-tier bid. Connect with fraternities/sororities on Instagram, figure out who the top dogs in the house are, and start engaging with them. Don't be the rando rolling in during formal rush thinking your Sperrys and Southern Tide will push you to the top of the list. Build that network early!

ha. its not a joke. i agree about thinking about this. i had no idea.
applies to schools like Michigan, Cornell, Vanderbilt...

- be wary about going test optional if you are from a wealthy zipcode. Rest of your app needs to be perfect if you have no test score to submit
- pay attention to your school’s scattergrams. Some colleges never take kids from certain high schools. Don’t waste an ED on a school that has never accepted a kid from your school ED
- Find a safety/likely that releases decisions in December. I cannot tell you how much stress relief it brings to your kid when they are in somewhere they are genuinely happy to attend early in the process
- if you can afford it, pay someone to manage the app process with your kid. Makes for a much smoother process and you can enjoy the last year with your senior instead of arguing and nagging them about deadlines and edits to essays

If doing music supplements, start them early and check the requirements!! Some schools require certain pieces, some do not. Some require music to be memorized, some do not.

Coming from a top private:

-Admission to top schools is MUCH easier for boys than girls. It pretty much SUCKS to be a female applicant in 2025. Boys this year from our school are getting in with stats way below the girls. (I have 2 boys in upcoming admissions years so I don't say this from a point of sour grapes as an only girls mom or anything)

-Being a legacy with parents who are also VIPs or big donors is huge. I mean duh. But wow, it just is.

-ED is such a crap shoot and I'm not sure how to play it best. My kid went for a top10 and lost (deferred) and now I have no idea how far down she'll fall. She's hoping for RD decisions to schools where classmates with GPAs much lower than hers got in ED (like 3.9 RD vs 3.4 ED). What is the right/best way to play ED? I don't know. TBD in our case.

Don’t do EA to UChicago. Do either ED1 or ED2.

Lot of schools seem to be deferring EA students with good stats rather than either accepting or rejecting them. Some of these schools want these students to do ED2 because they think they won’t join otherwise.

Start preparing for rush spring of senior year if you want a top-tier bid. Connect with fraternities/sororities on Instagram, figure out who the top dogs in the house are, and start engaging with them. Don't be the rando rolling in during formal rush thinking your Sperrys and Southern Tide will push you to the top of the list. Build that network early!

Kind of an edge case—but when looking at undergrad business programs, it's very important to consider whether students are accepted into and matriculate as freshmen directly into the business school.

In my experience, many students and parents don’t understand this, and our private school counselors also failed to mention it as a major consideration. My concern was: what if DC gets sick, has a bad freshman semester, etc., but chose the school based on the business major—then ends up getting rejected from the B-school and is forced to choose another major? UGA Terry was one of those schools. Great B-school, but only a 40% acceptance rate. DC just wasn’t really willing to roll the dice with other great options where they matriculated as an incoming freshman. Now a happy freshman already taking core classes in a great undergrad business school!

1. Get your SAT/ACT scores as high as possible because even 10 points on SAT/1 point on ACT can affect merit aid tremendously (have teens and that was literally the only difference for them for places requiring scores!)
2. Have your main essay ready before the Fall. If possible, do as much as possible including other essays over the summer as well. Fall will be busy with actual applications + school so it's good to have that out of the way to minimize stress.
3. If applying to CA public schools from out of state, you may not realize this: be aware that Cal State and U of C schools have different platforms. They are different from common app and require extra input of grades/more essays.
3. Most important of all: Submit every application you can submit EA EA. It feels absolutely amazing to get acceptances early in the process.
4. Downside of 3: your kid might lose steam if admitted early, so you really should submit everything early even for later deadlines. Dd dropped the ball on several she was planning to do over winter break.
5. Do not stress too much: if your kid is a solid student with good grades and ECs, they will definitely get in places! Mine have gotten in everywhere so far, from a large public and not top 10% of class.

There ARE 4 year, accredited universities in the Eastern time zone that WILL accept poor stat, underachieving applicants. Just have to know where to apply.

- your school’s data or history is probably more important than you think.

- your kid needs to be memorable, especially at selective schools and the application should have a theme or narrative so that an AO can refer to you by a short phrase or tagline.

- watching results come in at our HS….major makes a HUGE difference. Example: UT OOS acceptance to Film school while all others deferred.

- start the essays as soon as school ends junior year. The best essays took months of editing and refining. And better new ideas emerged from all that writing.

- use the search function here. I found good tips and links to help my kid with the activities list.

- be prepared for deferral and WL with draft LOCI

I learned that a lot more people tried to finish apps during the early action/early decision rounds than I was expecting!

1. Some folks don't understand that the game is really in early action. They see early action and regular decision and think they're equal. Many, many schools have much reduced odds by doing regular decision. So if you do regular decision, the kid is doing the same work, essays, etc and have a much lower chance. I've been surprised by the amount of parents who didn't know this. Basically, go in with the mentality that all apps will be due Nov 1 (plus or minus a few weeks). Of course, some don't have early action, so reg decision is fine obviously.

2. For all of the emphasis you'll hear on demonstrated interest, I was suprised how many of the schools my kid applied to didn't track demonstrated interest (you can see on every schools "common data set" whether they consider demonstrated interest in admissions). So check common data set before you force yourself to fly across country to make sure you have demonstrated interest.

3. Before the search begins and all along the way, emphasize over and over that we're not looking for a dream school. We need to identify 4-5 schools you'd be excited to attend. Watching the "dream school" kids be disappointed even when they end up at good schools is rough.

4. Understand your budget before ever letting a kid look at a school. Schools that would never be affordable (even with merit or aid it'd be too much) aren't on the table.

I have learned that things are not nearly as dire as the people on here seem to think (or want everyone else to think?).

For those going through the application process w/DC this school year, what lessons have you learned?
What do you wish you’d done differently? What’s worked out well?