If getting an Ivy League degree is your goal this
article is perfect for you we are officially kickstarting the fall 2025 series and in this particular I'm going to show you as a high
school student or a gap year student what exactly you need to do to make sure
that you have an absolute standout application for the fall 2025 intake.
Fall intake
and the spring intake
Intakes first off I want to provide some clarification
about the two different types of intakes that are present in US colleges we
have the fall intake and the spring intake for the fall intake this is the most
popular one. Almost every single College in the US has a fall intake which
means that you will begin your classes in the fall or August in other words now
the advantages of the Fall intake are because every college offers this the
chances to get a scholarship in the fall intake are especially high and almost
every single College will offer a scholarship in the fall intake second because
this is a popular intake going through the Visa process if you are an
international student is also going to be slightly easier coming to the spring
intake not not a lot of colleges offer this especially the top colleges Ivy
Leagues.
There is no spring intake for ivy league universities
which means that you have less options to choose from less scholarships and you
may be put under the microscope and face some issues when it comes to obtaining
your student visa as an international student.
When to
apply?
For the sake of this article I'm going to focus on the
fall intake now let's talk about the rough timeline the biggest mistake I see
students make especially when it comes to US College admissions is they don't
apply on time the one big thing that I would like to like scream in every
article is that whenever you want to study in the US you have to start applying
one year before the entire application process takes one whole year it is a
lengthy process which means that let's say you are just now entering Class 12 you
will apply right now this August. If you want admission next August so one
entire year for the fall 2025 intake applications will open this August and
most of the applications will close in December or January.
I'm not going to go specifically into details about
when each university has the deadline because that can be slightly different
but having a ballpark of December to January is a good idea now I know what you
guys are thinking if you are applying just as you're entering Class 12, how do
you submit your final 12th grade report or your board exam results now when
you're applying to US colleges you do not need your final year exam marks to
apply they consider two alternative documents instead one is a media report and
the second is a predicted mark sheet for Class 12 students.
As a Gap
Year Student
As a Class 12 student you are in the clear to apply
the second thing let's assume you are a gap year student who's applying in that
case you can obviously submit your final class 12th marks to keep your reality
and Sanity College list. It's good to have a very thought out College list that
has dream universities within reach colleges and safety colleges so to build
your college list you're going to follow a three prong approach.
What you
want to Study?
The first prong is identifying what major you actually
want to study and understanding what your priorities are for example location
scholarship Prestige of a college. The second prong is shortlisting
universities and researching which are the best universities that actually
offer what you want with the priorities that you want and what I mean by this
is for example, let's say someone wants to do computer science UCLA might be a
super good fit for them if their only priority is prestige and career prospects
and opportunities considering that UCLA is in the Bay Area and they offer no
scholarships at all.
Student's
Priorities
On the other hand let's say that another student's
priorities are getting a good engineering degree but maintaining a balance
between affordability and you know expenses as well maybe you UT Austin or UT
Dallas might be a good idea because they offer good engineering programs and
have a very affordable and a lower cost of living.
The last and third prong is based on the research that
you've done you would then prepare a list of 10 to 20 universities and divide
them into dream colleges within reach colleges and safety universities
typically I do not recommend students apply to anywhere more than 20 to 25
universities because remember for each one of these universities.
Write
different Essays
You will also have to write different essays and it
can get really draining and stressful very quickly now let's talk about the
documents that you'll be required to submit when you're actually filling out your
college applications the first How to apply? thing is you'll be using a
platform called common app which is one website that allows you to add up to 20
colleges and just apply to them all together without having to submit and fill
out personal information again and again it makes your life easier.
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Now the essays can be divided into
two parts your personal essay which is going to be your long essay it's a 650w
essay about a personal story in your life it's nothing related to academics and
this is the common essay that goes with every application so you write it once
and every college that you submit to the same essay is kind of like sent to
them.
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The next set of essays are
supplemental essays these are college specific essays that are much shorter in
length so I've seen these be like 150 to 300 words depending on which college
is asking and different colleges have different questions like some colleges
may say explain your favorite extracurricular activities other may ask you to
write about what you did last summer or just a random question on a particular
topic but the important thing to note here is each one of your supplemental
essays need to be different for each College.
If you end up just writing one essay and copy pasting
for each University by just changing the name it's very easy for that college
to find out that you are recycling the essays and it doesn't look good for you
as a student and for those of you that think that using Ai and chat GPT to
write your essays is a cool and smart thing to do teachers are getting smart
College admission officers are way smarter than you they have plagiarism
Checkers and AI detecting Tools in their system already so what I've seen is
applications and essays that are using AI based technology kind of a
automatically get rejected and college officers don't even read those essays so
stay away from all of that.
Required
Documents
You know land in trouble the LORs last thing on the required
documents list are letters of recommendation now typically you can expect
colleges to ask anywhere between one to two letters of recommendation and it's
a good idea to get one maybe from like an English teacher or a science or math
teacher that you know maintains a good amount of variety because these letters
of recommendation need to be be sent to the colleges remember applications open
in August. It's probably like a good time to ask sometime around then so
teachers have enough time to kind of think about what they're going to write
with this we Activities &honors move on to the optional documents.
Now the number one thing on the optional documents are
activities I know that many students get excited with this but remember
activities the entire section is optional so you have the option of adding up
to 10 activities and up to five honors it's probably a good idea to fill up all
of these spaces but try not to over exaggerate like you know we don't want
redundancy like 10 different activities where you founded a club or were the
CEO of a club mix it around have some places where you're learning contributing
to the society having a good impact in your community.
Test
Standardized
The test we tackled sat tests which are optional but
good to have similarly you have AP exam now if you are really looking to stand
out writing AP exams is the right way to do it showing academic Excellence
really goes a long way and you can just write AP exams get a good score and it
has a really good impact on College admission officers there are 38 different
AP exams to choose from and if you're seriously thinking about getting admitted
into a top university you need to aim at writing anywhere between 10 to 20 even
more if that's possible next Deadlines coming to the deadlines there are four
type of deadlines that we're going to talk about there is an early decision
deadline early action regular decision and rolling I'm going to tackle early
decision and early action together these deadlines typically fall somewhere
between end of October and beginning to Mid of November and there are some
specific rules associated with them for early decision you're allowed to apply
to one college only and if that college accepts you have to say yes to them
this is kind of like a legally binding offer and it's understood so you
typically cannot reject their offer if they accept you so it's a good idea to
maybe have like a dream University as your early decision option.
You have to
apply for Early Decision
It's not necessary that you have to apply for early
decision but it is an option for those of you that are interested typically the
early decision and early action acceptance rates tend to be slightly higher
because less number of students are actually prepared by then when it comes to
ear action.
Deadline
You can apply to as many universities as you want the
only Advantage here is because the deadline is earlier you're competing against
few students um and you have a better chance of actually getting in the
acceptance rates are slightly higher coming to the regular decisions.These
deadlines usually are mid to end of December or even January sometimes and this
is the deadline that almost every single student will be applying to you cannot
miss this deadline if you do there's just no chance for you to apply for that
admission cycle again lastly rolling deadlines rolling deadlines are typically
associated with lower tier or mider colleges.
These are colleges that just don't have a deadline or
they'll have a deadline of like May June or July for example there are some
colleges that have a July 2025 deadline for the fall 2025 intake so just for
like top tier colleges imagine that the deadlines will typically be regular
decision and no Scholarships rolling de headlines but moving on let's talk
about everyone's favourite scholarships and financial aid.
Merit Base
Scholarship
Now typically there are two types there are
scholarships which are typically Merit based you don't have to fill any
separate applications if you're a good student basically you have a good
academic score or you're good at some sort of activity like sport or cultural
you they the college will give you a merit based scholarship and this is
usually mentioned in the offer lighter directly on the other hand we have
need-based now need based is not dependent on the student a little bit but more
dependent on your parents how much money do they earn what is the size of your
household how many siblings do you have what are their expenses like how much
property do they own all of that is considered.Then a need based financial aid
as it says is given this is not automatic you have to fill out the CSS profile
and yes. The CSS profiles also have deadlines they're separate to college
applications you need to look for the deadlines and make sure that for each
College you fill out the CSS before their deadlines and apply for them now a
big thing to remember is if you ask for if you ask this is optional right but
if you ask for need-based financial aid there is a chance that you may be wait listed
or rejected because you're asking for Aid. So colleges consider the fact that
hey this student is asking for Aid they cannot afford the entire tuition fee so
maybe we don't give them the offer letter at all, so be very careful and
deciding like talk to you parents and then decide which colleges you should ask
for Aid.
