I’m a high school junior applying to colleges this fall. I’m not sure whether to apply ED Dartmouth through the Common App or QuestBridge. My family income is around $54k and I don’t mind paying for the applications; I’m simply concerned about my chances of getting accepted. If I become a QuestBridge finalist, would my chances be better if I apply through QuestBridge as compared to the Common App?
If your sole reason for considering applying to Questbridge is a boost in early admission to Dartmouth, the standard wisdom would be to apply to Dartmouth’s ED rather than going through Questbridge’s college match program. Dartmouth tends to ‘match’ only a handful of students a year (3 last year), although many more Questbridge finalists will be accepted via the RD process. Questbridge offers many other advantages both in resources, in the admissions process overall and in being part of an extraordinary community. The QB college match works best for students who take advantage of the opportunity to apply early to as many as 8 colleges. If you are certain that you only want to ED at Dartmouth, your odds will be much better in that process. However, here’s another option if you choose to apply to QB NCM, from the Dartmouth Questbridge page: Finalists who do not match cannot apply for admission through Early Decision to Dartmouth, but may be offered the option of receiving an Early Decision admissions decision. Eligible applicants will receive an email in early December with more details and instructions.
@honeybee63 thank you for the reply. So if I understood correctly, my chances are better if I apply ED Dartmouth through the Common App? But if I get rejected, I should apply to other schools RD through Quest Bridge?
That would be a good strategy. You would actually have to submit the Common App as well as the Questbridge app to Dartmouth for NCM if you were to go that route anyway ( some QB colleges require the CA in addition to QB app). If you are going to apply to QB schools RD (or at least have that option available) you’ll have to go through the process starting in September– submitting the in-depth QB app with 2 essays (800 and 500 words). The advantage of this is being able to paint a much more detailed self portrait, but you do need to be organized and have the QB app ready to submit by the end of September. Of course then you can reuse your essay(s) on the Common App, so most of your work will be done very early. You will also want to request teacher recommendations by the end of this school year since they will also be due at the end of September. I think there’s a really detailed timeline on the QB website.
@honeybee63 That was very helpful, thank you so much. For Questbridge, most schools do want both the Common App and the QuestBridge Application. How would that work? I would have to get recommendations for both the CA and QB. Then my counselor would upload my transcript to both the CA and the QB app. Both applications would list the same ECs, and probably the same essays too :?. Would I submit both the Common App and Questbridge to colleges even though their contents are pretty much the same? It also seems weird that I would have to get recommendations twice and have my counselor upload the same transcript to both apps?
Maybe I haven’t understood the process? How does sending both the QB and the CA app to colleges work?
Please do enlighten me. Thank you.