The Early Decision applicant pool continues to widen

According to a recent article in the New York Times, Early Decision, once popular only among east coast applicants from elite private schools, has widened its appeal. Jess Lord, dean of admissions and financial aid at Haverford, describes this shift: “Early decision historically tended to be more homogenous than the regular pool — more white, more upper-class and upper-middle-class, less international. That’s changing fast.”

Recent reports from top colleges indicate that two to four times as many international applicants are applying early. And this shift has affected who is getting early acceptances. Fifty-six percent of student accepted early to Princeton University were from public schools this year, up from 50 percent 5 years ago, and Harvard’s early admits were nearly 20 percent black or Hispanic, up from 15 percent in 2005.

For those of you who are denied entry to your top choice - don't fret. There are many, many fish in the sea, and though it may seem that your top choice is all there is, once you find the school that's right for you, you'll wonder why you were every interested in anyplace else.

Now's the time to get started on the rest of your writing if you haven't already, and to get organized with the Essay RoadMap to minimize the amount of work that's required of you. As always, let us know if you need help getting started! That's what we're here for.

Harvard reinstated its early admission program this year.

As many of you know, the early admission deadlines for schools recently passed. For those of you anxiously waiting till December 15^th when most results are posted, you can check out this chart of early admission application counts for top schools as well as last year’s early admission rates, published by The New York Times Choice Blog. You may notice a decrease in a few of the most selective schools due to this year's reinstatement of Early Admission programs at Harvard and Princeton.

So if you have been without power for the past few days, as I know many in New Jersey and Connecticut have been, you've got time to get your app in.

And if you've just changed your mind and really do want to send out that early app you've been procrastinating on, well, you got another chance to submit.

The last thing you want to do is to wait until you hear back from your early application schools in mid-December to begin the rest of your work. If, unfortunately, you are denied acceptance to your top-choice schools, you'll have a substantial numer of essays and application forms to finish in only a few weeks - weeks that happen to span the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

Try to finish about 75 percent of your essays before you hear from your top-choice schools, so you're in good shape to complete your regular applications quickly and with far less stress. As always, College Essay Organizer can help you simplify and optimize the work you need to do for all your applications. Just head over to your Essay RoadMap preview and see how many essays your schools require, and how College Essay Organizer can help you make your workload much more manageable.

And you're right. The purpose of these essays is not to talk about them but to talk about you. Your job in all of your college essay writing is to convince the reader that you're an interesting person who belongs in their highly-selective class. You're trying to get them to choose you instead of someone else.

Easier said than done, indeed. So today we direct you to a post written last year that has gotten a lot of traffic: How to tell a college that you're interested.

Always keep in mind that your job is to express what you have that they want. It's already implied that they have what you want - a great education and a raft of opportunities for your future, whatever that may be. Do this by identifying your own intellectual interests and developing them from a personal standpoint.

Don't miss your chance to apply early decision

Whether you are undertaking the somewhat treacherous admissions path on your own or with a consultant to help lead the way, make sure not to overlook the importance of applying early decision. This article by Steve Cohen, which appeared recently in The Daily Beast, demonstrates how this will benefit students looking for the best way to beat the odds this season, and Cohen has the numbers to prove it.

The statistics clearly illustrate that applying early decision will maximize your chances of getting in. Brown University, one of the country’s most selective colleges, admitted only 7.5% of its regular decision applicants, while 20% of early decision applicants got the green light. So if you want to reach for your dream college, do it early decision, but don’t put off writing the rest of your essays till you find out if you’re accepted. This will leave you only a few short weeks to pull together several more applications. Make sure to plan ahead, and write your essays as early as possible, making your senior year less stressful and more organized.

That's right. The wait is over.

The Common App went live yesterday officially beginning the application process for the class of 2016. The Common App, now totaling 456 schools, has added 45 new members this year, including Caldwell College, Howard University, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

College Essay Organizer is now in the thick of the updating process, keeping track of all the new changes and supplemental essay questions for you. Expect hundreds of updates by the end of the week!

We continue to receive feedback on how College Essay Organizer is the perfect partner for using the Common App. It instantly delivers not only the supplemental essay questions, but also the department-specific questions and scholarship questions, which are often not included in the Common App. Check here for some great tips on how to use College Essay Organizer and the Common App to write winning essays.

College is close, young stallion. Very close indeed.

Yesterday we talked about where to seek out advice on which college to attend when your acceptance letters amount to an embarrassment of riches. One of the primary factors for students with multiple options is always cost. But make sure not to just look at the retail price of your college education (hello, sticker shock) - keep in mind the many possible sources of third-party money, not to mention the increase in your potential income over the professional life a more prestigious education may buy you.

There are many sources on the web (College Essay Organizer among them) that will help you find scholarship, fellowship, grant, and work-study opportunities to offset the increasingly intimidating cost of higher education. If you're able to begin work before you arrive at school and spread your applications far and wide, you may be surprised at the breadth of the resources out there. CEO's database of questions includes not only optional, departmental, and program-specific questions, but also scholarship, fellowship, and honors essays that can often result in free (as in really free) money for college. In many cases, those scholarships are renewable for the entire length of your stay at the university.

When you couple those opportunities with the fact that the education you're buying can pay dividends later on, often times the difference in quality of your more selective diploma can pay for itself. Think long term! It's not easy, especially at the end of your senior year, but it can really make a difference.