Did you know it's possible to be guaranteed admission to certain public universities based solely on your academic credentials?  

While institutions like the University of California won’t guarantee you admission to a specific campus, the good news is that most will based on some combination of class rank, GPA and test scores.

For example, if you’re a Texas resident interested in the University of Texas at Austin, a top 6% class rank will grant you automatic admission.

Better yet, assured admission often extends to non-residents as well. A 3.0+ GPA or Top 25% rank will assure admission to the University of Arizona, or a 3.25+ GPA will assure admission to the University of Kansas.

Of course, you’ll still need to complete an application and sweat the details, like making sure you’ve satisfied curriculum requirements and that your GPA is calculated appropriately. To help you understand the specifics, we’ve included links to program criteria for the public institutions listed.

If that’s still too much work, consider checking out College Kickstart. We track assured admission criteria for over 50 programs across the nation and will automatically flag situations where your academic credentials appear to meet assured admission criteria for schools on your list.  It's a great way to take some of the stress out of the process!  

Click on Continue Reading to see our list of selected institutions with assured admission programs.

Hot off the press!  We've had a chance to review the preliminary Fall 2024 admissions data released recently by the University of California and we thought it would be helpful to summarize it and share our key findings.  

Overall freshman admission rates increased systemwide from 63 percent to 66 percent year-over-year, fueled by a 5.8 percent increase in acceptances. If you're an out of state or international student, pay close attention...there continues to be a window of opportunity to take advantage of favorable rates at a couple of UC campuses.

Click on Continue Reading for the details.

Most schools have completed their updates for the 2024-25 admission cycle (Class of 2029), and several of the changes we've observed are worth noting. 

Over 20 schools have modified early admission options available to applicants this fall.  Notable changes include American University (new EA1), Carnegie Mellon (ED2 removed), RIT (new EA1), UConn (new ED1), University of Florida (new EA1), UT Austin (new EA1), and University of Vermont (new ED2).

If you're considering early admission, be sure to check out our list as it may impact how you decide to apply this fall.   Note to our subscribers: the data has already been incorporated into the product, simply run College Kickstart to see how it impacts your plan.

Click on Continue Reading below for the details.

For those of you who have been waitlisted at one of your top choices, here's our initial update of Class of 2028 waitlist notification dates and status where available.  

To get a sense for what's happening at the macro level, we took a look at recently released Class of 2027 waitlist statistics from 84 private and public institutions.  Our analysis paints the following picture:

• The number of students admitted from the waitlist increased 134 percent year over year from 19,000 for the Class of 2026 to 44,000 for the Class of 2027

• On average, 23 percent of Class of 2027 students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted, down from 19 percent in for the Class of 2026

• Students admitted from the waitlist accounted for 15 percent of Class of 2027 enrollments, up from 8 percent for the Class of 2026

• 42 percent of the schools sampled admitted 10 percent or less of the students accepting a place on the waitlist for the Class of 2027 (vs. 67 percent for the Class of 2026)

Be sure to bookmark this page as we expect to be updating status over the next several weeks.

Click Continue Reading for the list.

Here's our updated list of reported overall admission rates for the Class of 2028. Results are now available for American University, Amherst College, Auburn, Barnard, Boston College, Boston University, Bowdoin, Brown, Bucknell, BYU, Carleton College, Colby, Colgate, Colorado College, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Elon, Emory, Fairfield, Florida State, Fordham, Franklin & Marshall, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Holy Cross, Howard, Johns Hopkins, Lafayette, Lehigh, Macalester, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, NYU, Oberlin, Rice, Santa Clara University, Swarthmore, Tufts, Tulane, University of Georgia, University of Miami, University of Richmond, University of Southern California, University of Tennessee - Knoxville, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt, Wellesley, Wesleyan, William & Mary, Williams College and Yale.  Latest year application totals are available for many more.

Bookmark this page as we'll update frequently as more institutions report results. 

Click Continue Reading for the list.

Boston College announced that it admitted 14.7 percent of applicants to the Class of 2028.  

Overall, 35,475 applications were received

Click here for the article.

William & Mary announced that approximately 5,800 students were admitted to the Class of 2028.

A total of 17,787 applications were received this year, resulting in an overall admission rate of 33 percent.   

Click here for the news release.

NYU announced today that it admitted 8 percent of applicants to its New York campus to the Class of 2028.  

118,000 applications were received, up 13 percent year over year.

Click here for the article.

Georgetown announced recently that it admitted 12 percent of applicants to the Class of 2028.  

A total of 3,226 students were admitted out of 26,170 applicants.  

Click here for the news article.

Oberlin College announced recently that it admitted 34 percent of applicants to the Class of 2028.  

A total of 9,699 applications were received. 

Click here for the article.

Carleton College announced recently that it admitted 17.9 percent of applicants to the Class of 2028.  

A total of 1,405 students were admitted from a pool of 7,869 applicants.  Applications were up 22 percent from the previous year.

Click here for the article.

Here's our updated list of regular decision notification dates for the Class of 2028.  As many of you know, schools often post results in advance of their "official" notification dates, so we've compiled the most recently updated dates for you here, along with the notification dates from last year.  Bookmark this site, as we'll post updates often.

Good luck, seniors!

Emory University announced today it admitted 5,058 applicants to the Class of 2028.

A total of 34,914 applications were received, resulting in an admssion rate of 14 percent.

A total of 3,453 were offered admission to Emory College and 2,792 were offered admission to Oxford College.  1,187 were accepted to both.

Click here for the news release.

Northwestern University admitted 7.5 percent of applicants to the Class of 2028.  

Over 5,0000 first-year applications were received. 

Click here for the article.

Dartmouth announced today that it accepted 1,685 applicants to the Class of 2028.  

Applications totaled 31,657 for the year, resulting in an overall acceptance rate of 5.3 percent.

Click here for the news release.