If you’ve ever worried that your college essay sounds like a thousand others, you’re not alone. With thousands of students applying to the same schools, often with similar GPAs, test … Continue Reading How to Make Your College Essay Stand Out (Without Sounding Like Everyone Else)| EdTech Classroom
If you’re applying to college, one of the most insightful questions on the Common Application is Prompt #3: Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What … Continue Reading How to Write the Common App Essay for Prompt #3 in 2025| EdTech Classroom
If you’re a high school student applying to college, chances are you’ve heard about using AI tools like ChatGPT to help with your college application essays. Maybe you’ve even tried … Continue Reading Why You Shouldn’t Use ChatGPT to Write Your College Application Essays (And How to Use It the Right Way)| EdTech Classroom
If you’re applying to college, one of the most insightful questions on the Common Application is Prompt #2: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to … Continue Reading How to Write the Common App Essay for Prompt #2 in 2025| EdTech Classroom
If you’re applying to college, one of the most popular essay questions on the Common Application is Prompt #1: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is … Continue Reading How to Write the Common App Essay for Prompt #1 in 2025| EdTech Classroom
If you’re getting ready to apply to college, chances are you’ll be filling out the Common Application (Did you know it’s used by over 1,000 colleges across the U.S.?!). One … Continue Reading Your Go-To Guide to the Common Application Essay in 2025| EdTech Classroom
April 1, 2025 In the years post-pandemic, several of the Ivy League institutions (along with their shadowed, loosely defined cousins, the “Ivy Plus” universities) have re-instituted their policy of requiring the SAT for admission. I have said several times in public, and I’ll repeat here, that I don’t care if they do or they don’t, […]| Jon Boeckenstedt's Admissions Weblog
This is one of those posts where I’m trying to figure out where to start, and which direction to take it. So let’s just start with the facts. ACT and Revolution Prep yesterday announced a “strategic” partnership that makes the latter one of the former’s “Preferred Test Prep Partners.” For the low, low price of […]| Jon Boeckenstedt's Admissions Weblog
Five years ago on March 25, 2020, all the public universities in Oregon announced that they had adopted a test-optional admission policy for first-year students. Although other institutions around the country were making similar announcements about the same time due to the onset of COVID and cancelled SAT and ACT administrations, the Oregon public universities’ […]| Jon Boeckenstedt's Admissions Weblog
Last week, I wrote about how College Board and the Highly Rejective Colleges are to blame for the concerns being expressed by many high school and independent counselors about the lack of SAT testi…| Jon Boeckenstedt's Admissions Weblog