SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

Northwestern University is an excellent choice for college, but can you easily explain just why you want to go there? If you're planning to apply to Northwestern, you’ll need to submit a "Why Northwestern" essay—a supplemental statement that describes why you’ve chosen to apply to this school and what you think Northwestern can offer you in terms of your future goals.

In this article, we’ll go over what this kind of college essay entails as well as why you're required to submit a "Why Northwestern" essay. We'll also cover various topics and tips you can use to craft a compelling Northwestern supplement essay.

The eight schools in the Ivy League are among the most well-known and selective universities, both within and outside of the U.S. Because of this, Ivy League (and similarly selective non-Ivy) schools have tens of thousands of students from whom to choose their class of 2023.

But what are Ivy League schools' acceptance rates, and how have those rates changed over time? In this analysis, we'll look at Ivy League admissions, from the number of applicants to the number of students who ultimately end up attending.

In addition to the eight Ivy League schools (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, and Yale), we'll also consider eight equally selective non-Ivy League national universities: Caltech, Duke, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford, UChicago, and Vanderbilt.

Are you preparing your college application for Stanford University? If so, you’ve probably heard about the Stanford roommate essay, which you must complete as part of your application. The Stanford roommate essay is a unique essay that asks every applicant to write a letter to their future roommate.

In this article, we’ll talk about what the Stanford roommate essay is, show several Stanford roommate essay examples, and offer tips for making your response stand out from the thousands of other Stanford applicants.

Ah, October. The changing of the leaves, the onset of autumn allergies...and the knowledge for high school seniors that slowly but surely, college application deadlines are drawing ever nearer.

If you're applying to schools in the U.S., you've probably heard of the Common App before, but you may not know about the relatively new Coalition Application.

The Coalition Application works pretty much the same way as the Common App—it's an online application that you only have to fill out once (aside from supplements for certain schools). This centralized application system is a big time saver if you're applying to multiple Coalition Application schools.

To help you figure out if you can use the Coalition Application for the schools on your college wishlist, we've listed all the current Coalition Application schools in this article, broken down by state.

For students applying to Yale, the “Why Yale” essay may seem straightforward, but can also be very intimidating due to its low word-count limit and the specific nature of the prompt.

You might be wondering what you can write to make sure your answer stands out from the crowd of applicants and helps your application get accepted.

In this article, we break down the “Why Yale” essay, explain everything the university is looking for in this essay, suggest topics to write about that’ll help you stand out, and give a “Why Yale Essay” sample to get inspiration from another student’s answer.

When it comes to college applications, you have a few options for how you can apply. Two of these are the Common Application (or Common App) and the Coalition Application (or Coalition App).

In this extensive guide to the Coalition vs Common App, we’ll go over the major features of the two application systems and take a look at their biggest pros and cons. We’ll then review the colleges that don’t accept either application system, and offer you tips on whether you should choose the Coalition or Common App.

Are you hoping to be one of the 5% of students admitted to Stanford this year? If so, you’ll need to write some amazing essays as part of your application.

In this article, we’ll outline the different types of essays you need to write for your Stanford University application and teach you how to write an essay that will help you stand out from the thousands of other applicants.

Did you know that the ACT is accepted by all four-year colleges? And that more students now end up taking the ACT than the SAT? With the test growing more popular each year, it’s helpful to get a handle on what schools are toughest when it comes to applicants’ ACT scores. 

For this article, I've compiled a list of colleges with the highest average ACT scores for admitted students. With this data, you can compare your own ACT scores (or goal scores) with those earned by admitted applicants at top colleges. We'll also talk about what these rankings actually mean: are these schools the best you can attend? Are they the most competitive? What if your ACT scores are below the listed averages?

Read on to find out the answers to these questions (and more)!

One of the essays that you’ll have to write when applying to Columbia University is the “Why Columbia” essay. In this essay, you’ll need to convince the admissions committee that Columbia is your dream school and that you’d be a great fit on the campus.

The “Why Columbia” essay question can be intimidating for many students.You might be wondering: what should I mention? What does the admissions committee want to hear from me?

In this article we’ll breakdown the “Why Columbia” essay, explaining in detail what the prompt asks and what the committee wants to hear. We’ll also show “Why Columbia” essay examples and explain they work. Finally, we’ll suggest some topics for your essay and give tips on how to write your college admissions essays.

Aiming for the world-renowned Harvard University? As part of the application to this prestigious Ivy League school, you'll have the option to submit a supplemental essay. But what should you write about for your Harvard essay? What are the different Harvard essay prompts to choose from, and how should you answer one so you can give yourself your best shot at getting in?

In this guide, we give you advice for each Harvard essay prompt as well as tips on whether you should choose a particular prompt. But before we look at the prompts, let’s go over what Harvard actually requires in terms of essays.

If you're applying to New York University, you'll need to submit both the regular Common App materials as well as the NYU supplement, which includes a short essay. At its heart, the NYU essay prompt asks you to answer a single straightforward question: why do you want to go to NYU?

In this article, we'll fully analyze the "Why NYU?" essay prompt and what successful essays need to accomplish. We'll also go over potential topics to write about and look at the essay that got me into NYU's College of Arts and Science.

First, however, we'll begin with a quick discussion of why schools ask students to write "why this school?" essays

For students applying to the University of Chicago, the “Why UChicago” essay is more straightforward than most of the other essay prompts you’ll see, but it can still be intimidating to try to figure out how you should tackle this essay.

What should you mention? What will impress the admissions team? What are they really looking for in your response?

We break down the why UChicago essay, explain everything the University of Chicago is looking for in this essay, suggest topics to write about that’ll help you stand out, and give why UChicago essay examples to help get your creative juices flowing.

Got your heart set on Princeton—the #1 ranked university in the US? Then you’ll need to learn how to write amazing Princeton essays for your Princeton Supplement, a key part of your application for admission.

In this detailed guide, we go over the different types of essays you’ll be required to write for your Princeton application and provide you with some expert tips on how to write your most effective and unique essay possible.

The 2018 PSAT is coming up in mid-to-late October, and scores should come out by mid-December.

When you get your score report, you'll see a bunch of different kinds of scores, including your total score (out of 1520), your section scores (out of 760), and your Selection Index (out of 228).

Sorting through all of this data to figure out what's a good PSAT score can be tricky, so we've written this guide to understanding your PSAT score report. We'll begin with a quick run-through of the different types of PSAT scores, then get into how you can figure out how your score compares to that of other students.

What's a good Subject Test score? This might sound like a straightforward question, but it's actually a little more complicated. What makes a good score varies by SAT Subject Test as the number of test takers differs from test to test. For instance, in 2017 more than 140,000 students took the Math Level II Test, more than 48,000 students took the Literature Test, and only 453 took the Modern Hebrew Test.

As you'll see below, most good scores for SAT Subject Tests are in the 700s, but there are other factors to consider as you set your target scores. Let's take a look at the average scores and percentiles so you can know what a good score is for each individual SAT Subject Test.