GPA: 3.45 unweighted
SAT: 1400, TOEFL 100
ECA: participation in Model UN conferences, volunteer works, organizing a TEDx event, volunteer works, club secretary at a club in High School, participating in a drama, organizing a few national events in college
International Student, studying A-levels.
class rank: 5/110
You have as good a chance as anyone with those statistics and who is “full pay”. But what will drive a decision is your
teacher references, the quality of your essays, your preparatory/high school’s reputation and its familiarity to the Office. The process is holistic, there are more than 8500 applications per year, and yours might as well be distinctive to be considered favorably.
Good luck with your college search!
thank you so much !
any tips on essays would be much helpful ! thanks in advance 
Ensure you apply your personality to the essays in order to represent who you are. Be sincere, clear, fresh and to the point and, of course, ensure that you treat the topics thoroughly. And if the opportunity arises in the course of the work, explain why Colgate is your choice, a great fit for you. This means you absolutely must do your research as to what is offered in various areas in order to demonstrate your knowledge and interest.
You may find that this is newish for you and require hard work. I should add that some other colleges that like to compare themselves to Colgate and its true peers have reduced and/or watered down the requirement to submit essays. They have their motives. However, Colgate takes the view that these essays are extremely important as a tool to learn about you personally. They are read carefully and can make all the difference!
Best of luck with your college search!
Go 'gate!
Great advice in the first paragraph.
For the 2nd, I’m curious:
What colleges are true peers of Colgate?
What colleges like to compare themselves to Colgate and its true peers?
What are their motives for reducing/watering down their requirement to submit essays?
What schools are “true peers”? I don’t know how to answer a question that involves so many subjective areas.
But others often do: see Princeton Review and other publications that address common applicant pools/crossovers and what guidance counselors may say.
About essays, and to underscore my point, I believe in whatever it takes to distinguish applications from one another, and essays help in this regard. For the Class of 2022 I understand Colgate received over 9600 applications for 770 places. That’s a big jump and relates to many factors including its reputation for awarding excellent financial aid as it strives to attract the most talented and diverse class it can. We will see in the coming months how this affects its year on year acceptance rates and yield, important areas of focus for performance measurement of the school’s efforts.
So that’s where the discussion leads. I prefer not to go into other schools’ strategies; I don’t know much about them apart from commentary I have read in the popular press nor do I track their outcomes to derive any conclusions.
Better then to select a dozen or so schools you might determine have a lot in common and which you mightnwekk be happy to attend, segment them accordingly to their admissions most recent admit criteria relative to your own objective stats and get to work on your essays! This, alongside your high school’s reptutation at your selections, your teacher recommendations, and those revealing extracurricular activities will all be subject to evaluation. Of course, each school does what they do differently.
Best of luck with your college search!
fiske guide to colleges circa 2010 says the overlaps of colgate are: dartmouth, boston college, cornell university, middlebury, williams, tufts.
markham, where did you get the 9600 figure?
Good question!
I read it in an informal summary by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees following their 25-27 January, 2018 meeting.
Go ‘gate!
that is great. i hope that in the future, that number will exceed 10,000.
In my opinion, Colgate is most similar to Dartmouth. Fairly conservative, preppy & fraternity oriented. Also, rural/semi-rural settings.