The advise that I can think of is
a) Manage a good GPA and a good class rank. GPA supersedes every other aspect of your app.
b) Try and involve yourself with activities outside of school. Internships, competitions and volunteer work can only get you so far; try working out a research project on a topic you really love. Send it as a supplement to your dream college. Trust me, it works 
Consider post college graduate plans when choosing which school to attend. Especially in these financially tough times. The “best (highest caliber)” school will not usually be the best at launching your career.
<ol>
<li>Make full use of the CollegeBoard.com website. It has comparable info. on colleges, as opposed to some of the colleges may issue skewed information. For example, it has great comparable information on merit aid, need based aid, etc.</li>
<li>Be aware that housing costs vary greatly from college to college and from city to city. This particularly applies to colleges where most juniors and seniors have no choice except to live off campus.</li>
<li>Go to a college in a region of the country where you want to eventually work. That will maximize alumni contacts in job hunting. </li>
<li>Most colleges publicize the SAT scores of the median 50% of accepted students. That is valuable for most students, because it separates out the students who may have been accepted for special reasons (such as geography, underrepresented minority, athlete or legacy) and separates out the top 25% who would have gotten in no matter what. However, that is very different from the SAT scores of ENROLLED students. For most colleges (particularly those where only 25% of the accepted students enroll), the SAT scores of actual students is much much lower. You can compare the enrolled scores at [College</a> Admissions - SAT - University & College Search Tool](<a href=“http://www.collegeboard.com%5DCollege”>http://www.collegeboard.com). That is because the best students had multiple choices and may have chosen more prestigious colleges. </li>
</ol>
This is important because the quality of the student body may not be as high as it appears. Students learn the most from fellow students.
For a college that does not require SAT or ACT scores, this number is particularly suspect. That is because the students with lower scores will not submit them. Only the higher scoring students will submit the scores, which will skew the numbers. [College</a> Admissions - SAT - University & College Search Tool](<a href=“http://WWW.collegeboard.com%5DCollege”>http://WWW.collegeboard.com) also reports the percentage who reported scores.
<ol>
<li>To maximize financial aid, minimize the amount of resources that are in the student’s name, and maximize the amount of money you put into IRAs. (However, IRA contributions during the current year make no difference in current aid). Spend the assets in the student’s name first.</li>
<li>To maximize use of Federal subsidized loans, take out the maximum amount allowed each year. There is a limit per year of from about $4,500 to $7,000 per year. Too many people spend all of their savings in the first 2 years, and then find that they are limited in the annual amount they can borrow. That pushes them into much more expensive private loans. The Federally subsidized loans do not charge any interest while you are still in college, so there is no downside to taking them out freshman year. The private loans start charging you interest from the day you take them out. </li>
<li>Very detailed information about colleges is available on their annual “common data set”. Some colleges hide it and some publicize it, but it is usually available with a google search. For example, that profile tells you details about statistics for admitted students and also tells you how many students graduated in each major. That is valuable because majors with low numbers of students are typically not very good.</li>
<li>Look at [Rate</a> My Professors - Find and rate your professor, campus and more - RateMyProfessors.com](<a href=“http://www.ratemyprofessors.com%5DRate”>http://www.ratemyprofessors.com) for another viewpoint. It will tell you what current students thought of professors in various majors at their college.</li>
</ol>
I can’t resist . . . 
Most common attributes of accepted students:
Princeton = smart child of alum
Harvard = grandchild of alum
Stanford = very smart athlete
Yale = liberal smart child of alum
Brown = celebrity who is diverse
Dartmouth = conservative smart child of alum
Duke = smart non-Ivy legacy
U Chicago - quirky smart non-Ivy legacy
<ol>
<li>Advanced Placement policies vary greatly from college to college. At some colleges, they give credit for a 3 or a 4, while other colleges require a 5 or offer no credit at all in various subjects. Some colleges have strict limits on the amount of AP credit they accept, while others have no limits.</li>
<li>Colleges in very rural areas and small towns are much less likely to be able to offer useful internship opportunities during the school year. They also tend to promote alcohol and drug abuse because there is less to do.</li>
<li>Beware of colleges that spend tens of millions of dollars to add new athletic facilities when their library is crowded and their classroom buildings are outdated. Colleges are all engaged in a competition to develop the fanciest exercise facilities, admission offices and student union buildings. Sometimes a college tour provides a very deceiving viewpoint - where they only show you the one new dorm and a couple buildings that are designed to impress. Save some time to walk around areas where the tour does not go, including adjacent neighborhoods that vary from the route that website tells you to take.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li>Look at the primary building(s) used by the department in which you want to major. It is where you will be spending much of your time. If it is small, overcrowded and in need of renovation, it may tell you the college does not really care about that major.</li>
<li>Go to a site like <a href=“http://www”>www</a>. ************** .com and <a href=“http://www”>www</a>. ***** .com to list your favorite colleges and then read student opinions about them.</li>
<li>Apply to enough colleges so you can compare financial aid offers. Colleges generally offer the most merit aid to students who are in the top 15% of their applicants. Therefore, there is much more likely to be merit aid for a student who applies to a college that is not extremely hard in admissions.</li>
<li>Be aware that colleges that brag about huge endowments may actually have very high debts that effectively cancel out those endowments. I don’t know how to find out that debt information.</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li> When you apply, read financial aid deadlines very carefully. Many of the colleges that give out the most financial aid require that the fafsa and the profile both be filled out by Feb. 1st. If you apply Early Decision or Early Action, some colleges want the profile form in November, using estimates.</li>
</ol>
Some colleges run out of financial aid very quickly, and are much more likely to offer a large aid package if the forms are submitted early.
(Fafsa cannot be filled out until Jan. 1st, but the profile is available Oct. 1. It is good to start early in collecting the information and seeing what is required.)
The personal statement is by far the most important part of the application. Sure, grades and test scores count but they don’t give the admissions officer any idea of who you are as a person. You want to be as concrete and specific as possible here. Seriously, convince them you’re a person. And have friends and family look over your essay to make sure you are representing yourself well.
You also want to be sure that your essay is well-written and provides a good idea of your academic ability. Write several drafts and have a few different professors look over them. You don’t want to misspell one word or leave out any punctuation here.
I really want to stress just how important this part of your application is. I’m fairly certain my essay is what got me into all of the schools I applied to.
I was an out of state applicant to UCLA with a GPA below 3.5, no test scores, no high school diploma and only a few extracurricular activities. But, to be honest, my essay was awesome. I spent a lot of time on it and got really personal. I told an inspiring story (which I think most transfer students can do, since we come from incredibly diverse backgrounds) explaining some of the adversity I had faced and how I overcame it.
Note: don’t manufacture sob-stories, just stress how hard you’ve worked to get to the place you’re in. They’re looking for evidence of dedication.
Note II: I know several people who had the grades and activities to get into the top schools but didn’t. Their essays weren’t poorly written or abstract, they just didn’t personally connect. Time for some soul searching!
I would add to the above post about essays - if a college is asking an essay question about why you want to attend their particular college, they are really asking if you are serious about that school or just submitting one more common app. You need to work to convince them that you are really really interested in their college, and that you know alot about it.
I’m almost done applying, but I wanted to say to people: apply early and check the dates for scholarships. You never know what is going to happen, and you might just get a scholarship to a good school. I started off with a 29 on my ACT, and now it’s a 32, and I regret not applying to several scholarships to Southern California, Georgia Tech, and Emory, which I think I had a chance at getting now. I didn’t apply back then because my scores were too low, but now they are so much better.
Also, if your school offers Early Action, take that choice, and don’t wait for the Regular Decision deadline, unless you are stressed with other college applications. I think I did nothing in the month of November after applying to all my colleges that were due November 1st. I could have been completing my applications for December 1st, which were all EA, but they had a RD date as well.
I wish i would have known how important EC’s were and CS hours were.
it’s like school doesn’t teach as much as they should.
Do alot of extracirricular “leadership” crap to put in on your application, no matter how useless, contrived, or honorary the position is.
Honestly there were a lot of things about the admissions process that I wish I would’ve known or discovered earlier, but my advice to others is not exactly about those things. I was really down on myself my junior year and the beginning of senior year because there was just so much I didn’t know about earlier that I ended up discovering later. If you find yourself in that position please do not beat yourself up about it. If you didn’t know, you didn’t know.
My parents are both pretty clueless about the college admissions process, everything that I know now I researched and discovered on my own. I remember suggesting to my mother a couple of times that I get a head start on researching colleges and standardized testing but she kind of dismissed that. I don’t blame her, and I’ve learned to stop blaming myself, it isn’t really anyone’s fault that we were ill-informed.
If you are a freshman or sophomore or even still in middle school and you’re reading this you’re already off to a good start. Start researching and preparing now. Find out what standardized test you’re better at and work on getting a good score. Pursue YOUR interests, join clubs and activities that you like, or start your own if your school doesn’t offer it. Take advantage of your summers, look into programs, volunteering or internship opportunities.
ALWAYS visit before applying, especially if you’re going to a new part of the country. Also, don’t get fixated on one school because there really are no guarantees for where you get in
On the third day of school in September I drove three hours to the school I’d attended the previous year and asked a teacher if she would write a letter of rec for me, and she accepted. After six weeks I sent her an email (I’d moved to a different state) asking her if there were any problems, I just wanted to make sure that she’d gotten the stupid envelope. She didn’t answer. I asked her again two weeks later, no answer. Then again a week later, then three days later.
Four days before the app was due, she still had not answered ANY of these emails. I was completely freaking out, drove three hours to the school to see her. GUESS WHO WASN’T THERE. Haha so I politely asked a different teacher who I absolutely loved, but whose class was less competitive, and I explained the situation to her. She went home and wrote a letter for me that night and sent it out the next day. Haha I’ve never been so thankful for anything in my life.
Oh, and guess who, after making it clear when the deadline was, after all my emails, finally replied to one of my emails eight days after the application was due. YUP. She said she “apologized but [she] had not sent out the letter.” ********. I didn’t answer. I later learned this teacher had said she’d write letters for a total of eight people, and had not sent the letters out for ANY of the kids.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Get an extra teaching rec. You never know who’s going to flake out and leave you in a ****ty situation.
wanton: Was she fired? That is a very low blow thing to do to a kid in the middle of college apps. Hopefully there was something really major going on in her life to do that to 8 kids. Otherwise… there is no excuse.
I had a similar situation. A teacher of mine was going to write me a recommendation, but he never made the deadline. Thankfully, I had three teachers writing me letters of rec so I was solid.
I would strongly suggest to make use of your summers! Visit colleges. Do summer programs. I thought I loved Johns Hopkins, but after I did a summer program there I realized that Baltimore had too high of a crime rate for me. The next summer I did a program at Columbia and fell IN LOVE with it. I applied ED to Columbia and got in. Never been happier.
Also, APPLY EARLY DECISION. If you don’t have financial issues, find a school you absolutely love and apply ED. Think of it like this: you’ll have to choose eventually. Knowing before all of my classmates has lifted a serious weight off of my shoulders. Columbia was also a reach school for me, and I don’t think I could have gotten in regular decision. Always shoot above and beyond with a few schools. You never know.
Start your essay early! I made the mistake of waiting about a month before the application was due to start my essay, and I found it incredibly difficult to write. I scrapped it about a week before the application was due and cranked out a whole new essay. I was happy with it, but it could have been better. Do NOT underestimate the difficulties of writing such a personal essay.
Be true to yourself! Do NOT get caught up on brand name schools. Do NOT think that all Ivy leagues are the same. Find a school that suits YOU, not a school that’s on the top ten in US News. I loved Columbia, not its ranking.
“If you don’t have financial issues, find a school you absolutely love and apply ED.”
Even if you need financial aid you can apply ED to your dream school:
<a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/docs/downloadforms/ED_Agreement.pdf[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/docs/downloadforms/ED_Agreement.pdf</a>
It’s like a take-it-or-leave-it situation, but if a school offers you FA at ED time, they really want you, since they’re willing to take a “loss” on you financially. But remember that you can’t compare financial aid offers with ED.
Don’t apply ED unless you are 100 PERCENT positive. If there is even an ounce of doubt, don’t do it!! I’m regretting applying ED right now and I made the decision fully aware of the consequences. It doesn’t matter if it increases your chances of getting accepted unless you know for a fact you have the cost of attending (COA) that school tucked away in savings. It sucks to find out you can’t afford your ED school and have no other option come spring when they suddenly decide to reduce your financial aid offer.
ED can risky if your family’s income is irregular, as it can be with, e.g., self-employment. And don’t do ED just to increase your chances; be sure you really have a by-far number one choice.