For those of you that have been waitlisted at one of your top choices, here's a list of 2016 waitlist statistics for several popular private and public schools, along with notification dates and latest status where available.  

Our sample of waitlist statistics from 163 private and public institutions paints the following picture:

• On average, 18 percent of students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted

• 55 percent of the schools admitted 10 percent or less of the students accepting a place on the wait list last year

• 37 percent of the schools admitted 5 percent or less

• 11 percent admitted no one

There are several factors driving the low rates, including the size of the waitlist (often very large), and how well a school anticipates its admissions yield. 

Click Continue Reading for the list.

Here's our latest list of regular decision notification dates for the Class of 2021.  As many of you know, schools often post results in advance of their "official" notification dates, so we've compiled the most recently updated dates for you here, along with the notification dates from last year.  Bookmark this site, as we'll post updates often.

Good luck, seniors!

The University of Virginia announced last week that it admitted 9,957 applicants to the Class of 2021.  

A total of 36,807 applications were received this year, resulting in an overall admission rate of 27 percent.    

Click here for the news release.

Here's our latest list of early notification dates for the Class of 2021.  As many of you know, schools often post results in advance of their "official" notification dates, so we've compiled the most recently updated dates for you here where available.

Good luck, seniors!

The University of Virginia announced today that it admitted 5,914 early action applicants to the Class of 2021.  

A total of 20,446 early action applications were received, up 22 percent from the previous year, resulting in an early admission rate of 29 percent.  47 percent of in-state applicants were admitted while 22 percent of out-of-state applicants were admitted.  

Click here for the blog post.

Here's our list of reported overall admission rates for the Class of 2020. We've included results for nearly 100 popular institutions, including American, Amherst, Babson, Bard, Barnard, Bates, Boston University, Bowdoin, Brown, Bucknell, Butler, BYU, Caltech, Carleton, Carnegie Mellon, Claremont McKenna, Colby, Colgate, Colorado College, Columbia, Connecticut College, Cornell, Dartmouth, Davidson, Dickinson, Duke, Emory, Oxford at Emory, Fordham, Franklin Olin, George Washington, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Grinnell, Hamilton, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Lafayette, Lehigh, Macalester, Miami - Oxford, Middlebury, MIT, Mount Holyoke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Oberline, Occidental, Pepperdine, Pitzer, Pomona, Princeton, Rice, Scripps, Skidmore, Stanford, Swarthmore, Tufts, Union College, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, University of Chicago, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Maine, University of Maryland, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Richmond, USC, University of Virginia, Union College, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Washington and Lee, Washington University in St Louis, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Whitman, William & Mary, Williams and Yale.  

Click Continue Reading for the list.

Here's our latest list of reported early admission rates for the Class of 2020.

This list includes several popular private and public schools, including Amherst, Bard, Boston College, Boston University, Bowdoin, Brown, Colorado College, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Davidson, Dickinson, Duke, George Washington University, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Hamilton, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Johns Hopkins, Lafayette, Middlebury, MIT, Mount Holyoke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Pitzer, Pomona, Princeton, Scripps, Stanford, Tufts, Union College, University of Georgia, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt, William & Mary, Williams and Yale. 

Click Continue Reading for the list.

U.S. News & World Report released their 2017 college rankings earlier today.  Over 1,800 schools were covered nationwide and evaluated on multiple measures of academic excellence and outcomes to produce the final rankings.

Princeton retains sole posession of the top spot for National Universities, and Williams College tops the list of Liberal Arts Colleges.  

Click on Continue Reading to see the rankings changes. 

In search of colleges and universities with strong engineering programs?

Look no further, we've identified 60+ schools that fit the bill.  To make the grade, we looked for public and private institutions that granted engineering degrees to 10% or more of its graduates last year and were consistently ranked highly by a variety of third party sources.

There are plenty of household names like MIT, Caltech and Stanford on the list, in addition to several lesser known gems.  If you're 100% certain about engineering, you might consider schools like Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering or Webb Institute, or if you're looking for engineering in a liberal arts setting, consider checking out Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, Bucknell, Lafayette, Lehigh, Trinity or Union Colleges.  

To help you categorize schools into safeties, targets and reaches, we've included admission rates, mid-50th percentile SAT and ACT scores.  We've also provided links to each school's website to help you explore fit.

Click on Continue Reading for the details. 

The Common App for 2016-17 is now live, and we've just wrapped up our analysis of the real number of short answer/essay prompts required for each school.  If you've been through this process before, you know that just because a school lacks a writing supplement doesn't mean there are no additional essays to complete.  Many schools in fact simply embed these prompts in the main application itself.

This post summarizes the prompts required for 200+ Common Application schools in our coverage universe.  Our definition of a prompt is a question that requires more than a one word or one sentence answer.  It's not perfect, but it should help you gauge the amount of writing you'll need to get through over the next few months.  It'll also help you identify schools that you can apply to without the need for extra essays!

Click on Continue Reading for the list.

Money Magazine just released its college rankings for 2016-17. Nearly 2,000 schools were evaluated based on 24 factors along three dimensions: educational quality, affordability and outcomes. The result: 736 schools that deliver a great education at an affordable price, with good outcomes post graduation.

The top of the list:

• Princeton University
• University of Michigan
• Harvard University
• Rice University
• University of California - Berkeley
• Brigham Young University
• Amherst College
• Cooper Union
• University of Virginia
• Stanford University

Click here for the rankings or here for the methodology.

For those of you that have been waitlisted at one of your top choices, here's a list of 2015-16 waitlist statistics for several popular private and public schools, along with notification dates and latest status where available.  

Our sample of waitlist statistics from 160 private and public institutions paints the following picture:

• On average, 17 percent of students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted

• 58 percent of the schools admitted 10 percent or less of the students accepting a place on the wait list last year

• 41 percent of the schools admitted 5 percent or less

• 12 percent admitted no one

There are several factors driving the low rates, including the size of the waitlist (often very large), and how well a school anticipates its admissions yield. 

Click Continue Reading for the list.

Here's our latest list of regular decision notification dates for the Class of 2020.  As many of you know, schools often post results in advance of their "official" notification dates, so we've compiled the most recently updated dates for you here, along with the notification dates from last year.

Good luck, seniors!

The University of Virginia announced last week that it admitted 9,358 applicants to the Class of 2020.  

A total of 32,426 applications were received this year, resulting in an overall admission rate of 29 percent.    

Click here for the news release.

The University of Virginia announced today that it admitted 5,203 early action applicants to the Class of 2020.  

A total of 16,768 early action applications were received this year, resulting in an early admission rate of 31%.  Total early action applications accounted for over 50 percent of the total applications received for the year.  The targeted size of the class is expected to be approximately 3,675.  

Click here for the news release.