Williams College admitted 244 applicants to the Class of 2019 under early decision.  

With the total number of early decision applicants at 593, the early admission rate remained unchanged from last year at 41%.

This year's early admittees represent 44% of the targeted class size of 550.

Click here for the news release.

Johns Hopkins admitted 539 applicants to the Class of 2019 under early decision.  

The total number of early decision applicants grew 17% to 1,865, resulting in an early admission rate of 29%.

This year's early admittees represent 32% of the targeted class at the Whiting School of Engineering and 68% of the targeted class at Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Click here for the news release.

Duke admitted 815 applicants to the Class of 2019 under early decision.  

The total number of early decision remained relatively unchanged at 3,180 this year, resulting in an early admission rate of 26%.

Of those admitted, 652 will be attending the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, while the remaining 163 will matriculate at the Pratt School of Engineering. 

Click here for the news release.

Brown accepted 617 applicants to the Class of 2019 under early decision.  

The total number of early decision remained steady at 3,016 this year, resulting in an early admission rate of 20%.

A total of 1,968 applicants were deferred to regular decision and 408 were denied admission.  

Click here for the news release.

Dartmouth accepted 483 applicants to the Class of 2019 under early decision.  

The total number of early admission applicants grew to 1,859 this year, up 11% from last year's 1,682 applicants.  This resulted in an early admission rate of 26%.

Dartmouth anticipates these early admits will account for 41% of this year's class.    

Click here for the news release.

Stanford announced that it accepted 743 applicants to the Class of 2019 under early action.  

The total number of early admission applicants grew to 7,297 this year, up 5% from last year's 6,948 applicants.  This resulted in an early admission rate of 10.2%, down slightly from last year's 10.8%.    

Click here for the news release.

Harvard announced earlier today that it admitted 977 applicants to the Class of 2019 under early action.  

With the total pool of early applicants up a whopping 26% from last year, the early admission rate fell to 16.5% compared to 21% for the Class of 2018. 

Click here for the news release.

Today the UC Office of the President issued a press release announcing that applications are up another 6.5% from last year.  Preliminary figures indicate the total number of high school seniors applying to at least one University of California campus is now over 158,000.  

An update will be issued in January.

Here's an excellent posting from Johns Hopkins University on essays that worked.  Unlike the previous posts that focus on tips, this article provides seven actual essay examples submitted by applicants and commentary from the admissions committee on why they worked.

Here's a student's perspective on the college admissions process, courtesy of Katherine Varga for hercampus.com.  Bottom line: don't panic, you're going to be fine.

Here's a video segment from the Today Show featuring Jacques Steinberg, former New York Times senior editor and author of The Gatekeepers.  It's about the art of writing college essays and he provides some examples of what works and doesn't and why.  Though the segment is from 2010, it should be of help to those of you trying to figure out how to best convey your thoughts on paper. 

Here's another useful set of tips for writing an effective application essay, this time from Jeff Brenzel, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Yale University, courtesy of the College Board.

We've designed College Kickstart for simplicity, but there's plenty more under the covers for those looking for more.  In this blog post, we'll take you through five "hidden" features that can improve both your productivity and understanding of how College Kickstart does its thing:

1. Bulk loading schools to your list
2. Improving your list grade with MixFixer
3. Finding additional school ideas with MixFixer
4. Using popups for greater clarity
5. Putting commitment checkboxes to work

You've used Naviance to come up with a list of colleges you're thinking about.  Excellent!   

Now what? 

In this age of single digit admission rates and $75 application fees, it's no longer as simple as "just apply to them all."  

College Kickstart helps you make the leap from "colleges I'm thinking about" to "colleges I'm applying to." Read on to find out how we turn the data you've collected into a sensible and actionable plan.

For those of you interested in getting some insight on how colleges make admission decisions, here's an interesting article from Nick Anderson at The Washington Post.  It's from March of this year, but it provides a glimpse of the admission process from the inside at George Washington University.