College Admissions Blog

Learn how to write MIT supplemental essays in 2026 with prompts, word limits, and real examples to help you craft standout, competitive applications

Learn how to write the Stanford Supplemental Essays in 2026: prompts, word limits, and examples to craft strong, authentic responses.

Learn how to write the Princeton supplemental essays for 2026 with prompt breakdowns, examples, strategy tips, and guidance from a college coach.

Complete guide to Yale supplemental essays with all prompts, word limits, strategy breakdowns, and real 400-word and short answer examples.

Complete guide to the Harvard supplemental essays, including all five prompts, word limits, strategy and strong example essays with analysis.

Real college essay topic examples showing the difference between résumé-driven essays and message-based essays that reveal how students think.

Most advice about college essay topics is wrong. Learn from real mistakes students make and how to choose a strong topic built on insight.

Learn how to choose a college essay topic by focusing on message over prestige, and writing an essay that shows how you think and what you value.

Worried about whether your college essay looks “right”? This guide breaks down college essay formatting: word count, paragraphs, fonts, spacing, and Common App quirks, so you can avoid technical mistakes and focus on what really matters: clear, readable writing that admissions officers can engage with.

You don’t need a perfect hook to start writing a great college essay.

Every year, thousands of students and parents ask themselves the same question:Do we need to hire someone to help with college admissions essays? For many, it’s uncharted territory. Students may not be sure what a college essay coach actually does. Parents, understandably, might be skeptical of a service that probably didn’t exist when they applied to college. But behind the question is something deeper: college admissions matter, and families want to get it right.

I need help honing my brand. How should I package myself? Now in my tenth year as a consultant for college admissions essays, I have seen a shift in the lexicon of applicants, who now want to market themselves with “value-added,” “leverage,” and other catch phrases borrowed from the business world. Similarly, parents are increasingly seeking to turn their daughter or son’s college application into a pitch deck for admissions officers at Princeton, Stanford, and other highly

To me, the secret about elite universities — or at least the fact that they prefer not to publicize overtly — is that the admissions game is far from fair, which most people would define as based on merit. The truth is that when it comes to admissions, the Ivies, Stanford, and other top schools have their own agendas. Which means that the actual number of spaces available for students without a “hook” is much smaller than one might think. One agenda is to favor legacies. Har

There is one — and only one — thing that a student must include in his or her main college admissions essay. You MUST provide a sense of who you are, how you think, and what you value. Doing so sounds simple. But it is not easy. A good starting point is to avoid some mistakes. Try not to dwell on figuring out what admissions officers “want to hear.” Understand that what they want is a way to go past your transcript and test scores. What they want to get to know you and creat

There is no shortage of evidence that large numbers of students from certain private and public high school end up at elite universities. As noted by others, many students from Boston Latin School go to Harvard and many from Princeton High School go to Princeton. When I got to Dartmouth, I flipped through the Freshman Book — a hardcopy precursor to Facebook — I noted an unusual number of students from both Andover and Exeter. To me, the question is whether there is causation

For anyone interested in attending Harvard — or any other elite university — the question of developing a so-called spike is a good one. ...

The role of the college admissions essays is to personalize an applicant who might otherwise be defined solely by grades and scores. Admissions officers get to see students as people, not numbers. This differentiation becomes important in the process of applying for elite colleges, which receive thousands and thousands of applications from students with near perfect test scores and super high grades. There comes a point where there is no way to parse the numbers. To decide w

Dartmouth, like all elite colleges, has qualities which are favored in the admissions process. Of the 2,092 students who were offered...

It is hard to look at Aaron, Nick, Nigel and Zach Wade -- all four accepted to both Yale and Harvard -- and see anything other than a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, a Haley’s Comet in the world of college admissions. I am confident that the odds of a similar success are low. Extremely low. I am also confident that while “quadruplet” is the kind of quirk that gets attention, none of the brothers was accepted to any college simply because he was part of a package. Each student