SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

Applying to colleges is a rough enough process on its own. If you're interested in a lot of different subjects that don't necessarily mesh nicely together into one major, then figuring out what you should go to school for can seem like an impassable obstacle on the road to figuring out where to apply to.

In this article, I'll take you through the same steps I, a student with multiple disparate interests, took back when I was looking at colleges to figure out what I should go to college for.

I'll also go through how, as a well-rounded student, you can narrow down what kinds of schools you should apply to.

Are you applying to college soon? If so, you’ve probably heard of the Common Application—an online application you can use for more than 800 colleges. Since you only have to fill out one application, it saves you time when applying to college.

But which colleges use the Common Application? And which Common Application schools are in your state? We have a complete list here, broken down by state and updated for the 2019-20 academic year.

Are you aiming to attend an Ivy League school? What ACT/SAT scores do Ivy League universities—Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Penn, and Yale—expect? Here, we look at what test scores these eight highly selective schools consider good, as well as what scores are considered borderline.

The decision to attend college is a big one. Getting a college degree takes time: at least four years for most people. Getting a college degree also costs money: tens of thousands of dollars for most people. You might be asking yourself, "Is it worth it? Should I go to college?"

In this article, I'll explain the benefits of going to college and detail some of the potential drawbacks. Furthermore, I'll give you all the information you need to decide whether or not you should pursue a college degree.

Whereas fall means college application season, spring means admission notifications time. All high school seniors want to get a college acceptance letter to their top-choice school. But what exactly does an admittance letter look like? And what does it say?

In this article, we go over what information a typical college acceptance letter includes and show you real college acceptance letter samples so you can get an idea of what they look like. We also give you our top four tips for what to do after you get an admittance letter.

Applying to college is a confusing and stressful process, but waiting to hear back from the colleges you applied to can be just as anxiety-inducing. When do college acceptance letters arrive?

In this guide, we explain when to expect to receive your college decision notifications. We also give you a chart of estimated college acceptance dates for 2019 and offer helpful tips on what to do as you wait for your college acceptance letters.

If you love our strategy guides, we have great news: PrepScholar is launching a college admissions podcast! It's hosted by PrepScholar co-founder and Harvard grad Allen Cheng and writer Melissa Brinks.

Download our podcast now at iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and Libsyn (or wherever you get your podcasts).

For years, the Common Application (CA) was the only widely available application for use at multiple colleges. It was created in 1975, with 15 colleges in its first year. It still dominates the college application world, and today is used by more than 800 colleges and universities.

However, back in 2007, the Universal College Application (UCA) was created, and now serves 18 colleges and universities. So what exactly are the differences between the CA and the UCA? Why do colleges use one, both, or neither? And which one should you use? We will explore these questions in this post and help you decide how to apply.

Do you dream of becoming a doctor? If you’re set on going to medical school, then a combined BS/MD or BA/MD program might be for you. The majority of these combined programs allow motivated high school students to go right from undergraduate to medical school without having to go through another application process.

While there aren’t a ton of spots available in combined programs, there are schools throughout the country that offer them. Before we look at those, however, let’s review what BA/MD and BS/MD programs entail, as well as the pros and cons for high school and young undergraduate applicants.

So you’ve just landed a college interview for the school of your dreams. That’s amazing! Once you finish celebrating, it’s time to start preparing for the big event.

But the process of preparing can feel overwhelming. That’s why we’ve put together our top five tools for preparing for your college interview. Keep reading to learn more about our expert recommendations for the tools you must have to knock your college interview out of the park!

Getting waitlisted at a college certainly isn’t a bad thing—your application was good enough to not get rejected!—but it’s definitely an uncomfortable place to be. After all, when you’re on the college waitlist, you don’t know whether you’ll be admitted or not, and that alone is anxiety-inducing.

Luckily, there are many things you can do to increase your odds of getting off a waitlist. In this article, we explain how the college waitlist works, what steps to take if you've been waitlisted, and how to raise your college waitlist chances so you can attend your dream school.

Not all help with the college application process is created equal. Some are a little too hands-on, which can mean your application doesn’t sound like you. Others may not offer the kind of help you need. When you’re looking for assistance, you need services that help boost your own skills, not ones that do the work for you.

It’s perfectly okay to get college application help. This guide will walk you through some options for assistance, including what you should seek help for, what you shouldn’t, and some of the best places to find reliable assistance with your college application.

If you’ve applied or are currently applying to Ivy League schools, you’ve likely heard the phrase "Ivy Day." Ivy Day, or Ivy Admissions Day, is when all the Ivy League schools announce their admissions decisions for regular decision first-year applicants.

Keep reading to learn more about what to expect on Ivy Day, when Ivy Day 2019 will be, and what to do with your admissions decision(s) once Ivy Day is over.

Transferring from one school to another is a wise or even necessary choice for many students, but it’s not without obstacles. College transfer acceptance rates are actually lower than freshman acceptance rates, meaning competition is higher.

This might sound like it’s cause for alarm, but, like applying as a freshman, it just means you need to be prepared.

If you need or want to transfer but aren’t sure where to go, check out some of the colleges with the best transfer acceptance rates.

You might be interested in going to a small college, but just how small? In general, schools labeled small have fewer than 5,000 students in total. However, quite a few schools are actually at least 10 times smaller than this.

In this article I’ll describe the characteristics of small colleges and then provide a list of the smallest colleges in the nation by category.