The Common App for 2015-16 was posted earlier today, and we've just wrapped up our analysis on 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.

Here's an updated list of reported early admission rates for the Class of 2019.

This list includes several popular private and public schools, including Amherst, Bates, Boston College, Boston University, Bowdoin, Brown, Colby, Colgate, Cornell, Dartmouth, Davidson, Duke, Emory, Emory (Oxford), George Washington, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Hamilton, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Middlebury, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, NYU, Pitzer, Pomona, Princeton, Rice, Stanford, Trinity College, Tufts, University of Chicago, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Williams and Yale.

Click Continue Reading for the list.

Here's an updated list of reported admission rates for the Class of 2019. This update adds several popular private and public schools to the list, including Clark University, DePauw, Oberlin, Smith, University of Richmond and Washington & Lee University.  

Click Continue Reading for the list.

With your college list more or less finalized, give some consideration to early admission—many schools offer it and can be a terrific way to boost odds and minimize wasted motion.  All you need to do is apply 45-60 days earlier than you normally would. 

Here's a list of competitive 4-year institutions offering early admission to applicants.  Depending on the school, these options range from Early Decision (binding) to Early Action (non-binding) and Restrictive Early Action (non-binding with restrictions on where else you can apply).  

The first wave of deadlines is coming up in November, so take a quick look to see if any of your schools offer something worth considering. Or click here to find out how College Kickstart can help you fully capitalize on it.

In search of colleges and universities with strong undergraduate international relations programs?

Courtesy of Foreign Policy magazine and the College of William & Mary, we've compiled their list of top 25 programs in the United States, along with admit rate and test score data to help you locate safety, target and reach schools to add to your list.  As always, we've also included a link to each school's websites to help you explore further.

The report also calls out Chinese and Arabic as the two most important languages for aspiring international relations majors to learn, and global climate change as the most important topic to contend with over the next ten years.

Click on Continue Reading for the list, or here for the Foreign Policy article. 

Forbes released its list of top ranked colleges for 2015. 

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

Click here for the full list.

In search of schools that do a great job of keeping your interest and getting you graduated?  

Look no further, here's a list of 50 public and private institutions that do just that. To make the list, each institution has to have freshman retention and six-year graduation rates of 90% or better. 

Many of the schools listed will come as no surprise, but others—in particular the public institutions—will!  We've also included admit rates and mid-50th percentile SAT and ACT ranges to help you narrow down your choices.

Lots of big-name schools post their decisions over the next 48 hours, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, Rice, University of Pennsylvania and Yale.

Continue reading for the updated list of regular decision notification dates for several popular private and public schools. Good luck, seniors!

In this Los Angeles Times article, Carla Rivera writes about the rising number of college applicants taking advantage of early admission programs to remove stress and uncertainty from the admissions process.

The article also looks at early admission from the school perspective, and why/why not schools choose to participate.  

With admission rates falling and the number of early admission programs on the rise, we maintain that every college applicant needs to at least consider the possibility of applying early.  It may not always be appropriate, but when it is, it's a valuable way of maximizing odds and minimizing wasted motion for simply applying 60 days earlier than normal.   

Read the early admission article now

Early admission results continue to roll in.  Here's a summary of what's been reported as of 5:00pm PST December 20:

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.

Need-blind schools do not take financial aid into consideration when making admissions decisions.  Knowing these schools can be invaluable for making sure you or your teen's application is getting maximum consideration with regard to financial aid.

Here we've compiled a list of private schools that practice need blind admission for full-time, first year, U.S. citizens and permanent residents.  Please note that not all of these schools offer financial aid to meet 100% of demonstrated need. Note also that the list isn't exhaustive—it's meant to cover the more competitive 4 year institutions in the nation.

This list is integrated into the latest update to College Kickstart. 

Need-Blind Schools

Are Ivy League schools overrated?  William Deresiewicz, who taught at Yale from 1998 to 2008, sure thinks so: 

Click here to read his article in the The New Republic, entitled "Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League."

Brown announced today that it made 2,619 offers of admission for the Class of 2018. This represents 8.6 percent of the 30,432 students who applied.  Brown anticipates an incoming class of 1,560 in the fall.  583 of the 2,619 admitted were admitted in December through early decision.

Click here for the news release.