We™ve spent the past few weeks breaking down each Common App essay prompt one by one, and now it time for the grand finale: our ultimate guide to writing the Common App essay. Sure, there are seven different prompts, but at the end of the day, every school is looking for the same thing: a story.
Getting waitlisted or deferred from your dream school is hard. We know it hard! You feel rejected, but it this weird non-rejection rejection that can leave you feeling lost and confused. And while a lot of things in college admissions are totally out of your control, there is something you can do if you™ve been waitlisted or deferred to give yourself another chance. A letter of continued interest, sometimes known as a waitlist letter or deferral letter, is one of the few, actionable things you can control when admissions decisions seem so out of your control. It your only chance to make a good second impression, and we help students write them every single year.
Getting waitlisted is the ultimate limbo “ it not not a rejection, but it not a full-on denial, either. And depending on your circumstances, you could be feeling everything from mild disappointment to full-on panic. Don get yourself into a tizzy just yet, because there are things you can do to give yourself a shot at getting off the waitlist and make sure that you have a plan in place for the next year.
Hey, look, sometimes ED doesn work out the way we want it to, and we have to change strategies. If you just got rejected or deferred from your ED/EA option, we™d like to introduce you to our good friend, Early Decision 2. ED2 is just as binding as ED, and it signals to the school that you are serious about attending that school, and guess what? Schools like when you™re serious about them.
When it comes to college admissions, there are tons of statistics at play. The most discussed is the dreaded acceptance rate, which (as we™ve written ad nauseum), has slowly crept downward for top-tier schools year after year. But lurking in the background of the whole process is a more mysterious calculation: the college yield rate. A yield rate is essentially the number of students that are accepted to a given school who end up attending. This is why you should care: