University of California counselor conferences have commenced, and there are lots of useful insights to be gleaned—including the latest freshman admission profiles from this past year (Class of 2019).

We've tabulated the findings for you in this post. Two things to keep in mind:

• The profiles are for California residents only
• The profiles are for admitted students, so they're likely to appear more selective than the profile for the class that actually enrolls

Click Continue Reading for the list.

The Fall 2016 application is now available for University of California applicants.  You can begin filling out the application now, but as always, you'll need to wait until November to submit it.

Click here to access the UC application website.

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. 

An update to College Kickstart 2015 has just been posted! 

This release features a new Plan Highlights page to help you get organized and track admission requirements for each school on your list.  We've also added two new MixFixer™ filters to help you find safeties, targets and reaches with greater ease, and updated our database with the latest admission rates for University of California campuses.  

Click on continue reading for the details. 

Hot off the press!  We've had a chance to review the Fall 2015 admissions data released earlier today 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 down and its getting tougher for California residents as the University of California focuses on increasing the mix of "full pay" out of state and international students to hedge against budget uncertainty.  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.

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.

We're pleased to announce the latest release of College Kickstart 2015!  You'll notice faster performance, updated admissions data (including 2019 admission rates for several top schools), expanded school coverage, and for College Kickstart Plus users, over 200 department-specific admission rates across 34 public and private institutions.

Click on continue reading for the details. 

The University of California recently introduced an online information center to increase transparency to UC admissions and other areas of public interest.  Though the site has not been updated with 2015 admissions data, it should prove handy for those of you interested in understanding how gender, residency, GPA and other factors influence admissions.  Note: it does not currently provide test score statistics, nor does it detail admission rate by departments or majors within a university.  

Click here for the press release, or here to go directly to InfoCenter.

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!

University of California President Janet Napolitano indicated earlier this week that the UC system will not expand enrollment of California freshmen and transfers this fall if more funds are not appropriated from the state. Furthermore, enrollment of out-of-state students at UC Berkeley and UCLA will be capped.

Click here for a Los Angeles Times report on the topic.

Preparing your first college tour and not sure where to start?

Here are some suggestions for schools to visit, grouped by region, to get you rolling. Each list includes 5-6 schools that offer a range of sizes, settings and selectivity to help imagine the possibilities.  We also suggest others worth considering and why.  

Cities currently covered include Boston, New York City, Syracuse, Washington DC, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.  

Click on the Continue Reading link below to see our suggestions, or try our College Tour Planner to build your own custom campus tour itinerary.

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.

University of California admission decisions have started rolling out in earnest.  Here are the official dates for both freshmen and transfers: