In search of colleges and universities with strong engineering programs?

Look no further, we've identified 60+ schools that fit the bill.  To make the grade, we looked for public and private institutions that granted engineering degrees to 10% or more of its graduates last year and were consistently ranked highly by a variety of third party sources.

There are plenty of household names like MIT, Caltech and Stanford on the list, in addition to several lesser known gems.  If you're 100% certain about engineering, you might consider schools like Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering or Webb Institute, or if you're looking for engineering in a liberal arts setting, consider checking out Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, Bucknell, Lafayette, Lehigh, Trinity or Union Colleges.  

To help you categorize schools into safeties, targets and reaches, we've included admission rates, mid-50th percentile SAT and ACT scores.  We've also provided links to each school's website to help you explore fit.

Click on Continue Reading for the details. 

The Common App for 2016-17 is now live, and we've just wrapped up our analysis of the real number of short answer/essay prompts required for each school.  If you've been through this process before, you know that just because a school lacks a writing supplement doesn't mean there are no additional essays to complete.  Many schools in fact simply embed these prompts in the main application itself.

This post summarizes the prompts required for 200+ Common Application schools in our coverage universe.  Our definition of a prompt is a question that requires more than a one word or one sentence answer.  It's not perfect, but it should help you gauge the amount of writing you'll need to get through over the next few months.  It'll also help you identify schools that you can apply to without the need for extra essays!

Click on Continue Reading for the list.

Money Magazine just released its college rankings for 2016-17. Nearly 2,000 schools were evaluated based on 24 factors along three dimensions: educational quality, affordability and outcomes. The result: 736 schools that deliver a great education at an affordable price, with good outcomes post graduation.

The top of the list:

• Princeton University
• University of Michigan
• Harvard University
• Rice University
• University of California - Berkeley
• Brigham Young University
• Amherst College
• Cooper Union
• University of Virginia
• Stanford University

Click here for the rankings or here for the methodology.

Hot off the press!  We've had a chance to review the Fall 2016 admissions data released yesterday by the University of California and thought it would be helpful to summarize it and our key findings.  

Long story short, overall freshman admission rates are up as the University of California makes good on its plan to enroll an additional 10,000 California undergraduates over the next three years.  And while the emphasis was on admitting more California residents for the Fall 2016 class, we suspect a "new normal" has appeared that creates more room for non-residents as well.  If you're an out of state or international student, pay close attention...there appears to be a window of opportunity to take advantage of favorable odds at several UC campuses.

Click on Continue Reading for the details.

Forbes released its list of top ranked colleges for 2016. 

The Forbes ranking methodology is driven by student satisfaction (25%), post-graduate success (32.5%), student debt (25%), graduation rate (7.5%) and academic success (10%).  

At the top of this year's list are:

1. Stanford University
2. Williams College
3. Princeton University
4. Harvard University
5. MIT
6. Yale University
7. Pomona College
8. Brown University
9. Wesleyan University
10. Swarthmore College

Click here for the full list.

Here's a great article from Willard Dix in Forbes about the pros and cons of strategizing for college. Long story short, there's no magic formula for getting into a dream school, so keep things in perspective, focus on the basics and try not to get too carried away!

Click here for the article.

The following post was written by Anna Carapellotti and appeared originally on the Admissionado College Admissions blog.

Those of you with your heart set on attending one of the Universities of California may have already noticed that they have replaced the personal statement this year with eight “Personal Insight” questions, from which you must choose four to answer. Each response is limited to 350 words, and their hope is that this format gives you a “clearer guidance and more flexibility in the kind of information you want to share.”

So, how should you approach these new questions? Let’s take a look at what they are and some strategies you could use to maximize your answers.

The University of Chicago announced today that it admitted 2,482 students to the Class of 2020.  

Applications totaled 31,411, resulting in an overall admission rate of 7.9 percent.  

The reported yield for the Class of 2020 was 66 percent.

Click here for the news release.

Courtesy of CNBC, here are some nuggets of wisdom from several of this year's notable commencement speakers, including Sheryl Sandberg, Jane Goodall, Lin Manuel-Miranda, Mike Krzyzewski, and last but not least, President Obama.  Enjoy!

Click here for the article.

A new release of College Kickstart is now available!

This release features:

• An SAT score converter to help you reconcile new and old SAT scores  
• Resident and non-resident admission rates for situations where the difference materially impacts how a school is categorized in College Kickstart
• An updated affordability panel with graduation rates
• Expanded school coverage

Click on Continue Reading for the scoop. 

Concordance tables are now available from the College Board to help you reconcile your new SAT results from March to all of the college admission data that uses the old SAT format.

Click here for the tables or here for the College Board conversion tool.

The following is a guest post written by Sarish Kasat of Admissionado, a premier college admissions consulting company focused on helping students get into their dream schools.

Congratulations! You’ve been admitted to college!

But wait, not only have you been admitted to one college, but after years of hard work and dedication throughout your high school life, you’ve been accepted into more than one college. And they’re all amazing programs. Yikes, you thought the application process was hard, now you have to decide between Northwestern, UCLA and UC Berkeley like our student Tim? Not an easy task, but a very admirable position to be in. Where do you start? Our advice is always, above all, without a doubt, go to the BEST college you get accepted to. But what if you get accepted into two equally great universities that are both in the same “tier” of excellence?