Overview

It takes a lot of your time and requires the time of a lot of people to create high quality college applications. Essays must be written, proofread, and edited. High school transcripts must be submitted and SAT/ACT Score Reports must be ordered. For many colleges, there will be many email notifications of additional information that is required or updates that must be made to a student's application. There are likely to be even more emails exchanged with financial aid, and perhaps hundreds of dollars paid in application fees, in addition to fees for sending SAT/ACT Score Reports. Students who choose to visit college campuses may spend hundreds or thousands of dollars more.

With so much time and money at stake, this module provides insight into the college admissions process for selective and highly selective schools. At such schools, more academically accomplished students will be denied admission than those who will be offered admission. Rather than investing the time in researching the right schools, and in creating high quality college application packages, many students will choose to apply to less selective schools, which may not even require an essay. However, there is a price to pay by not applying to the right schools and not investing the necessary time in submitting high quality college application packages. The price is less financial aid and more student loan debt. Pay now or pay later.

Estimated time to complete: Undetermined. 

Objective

Expand your understanding of how applications for admission are evaluated.

Estimated time to complete: Undetermined

Guiding Questions

  • What do colleges take into account when reviewing applications?
  • How do I compare to others applying to selective schools?