U.S. News & World Report released their 2019 college rankings earlier today.  Over 1,800 schools were covered nationwide and evaluated on multiple measures of academic excellence and outcomes to produce the final rankings.

Social mobility indicators were added this year, while the acceptance rate was eliminated as a factor and others like expert opinions and test scores were reduced in weighting.

Princeton retains sole possession of the top spot for National Universities, and Williams College tops the list of Liberal Arts Colleges.  

Click on Continue Reading to see the rankings changes. 

Here's our latest list of regular decision notification dates for the Class of 2022.  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!

Here's our latest list of early decision and early action dates for the Class of 2022.  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 where available, as well as last year's notification dates for reference.   

Case Western is set to announce today at 8pm ET (both EDI and EA).  Colorado College (EA), Kalamazoo and the University of Michigan are on tap for Wednesday 12/20.

With ED/EA decisions released for virtually all of the schools we track, we'll call this 38th update our final one this season. 

Good luck, seniors!

If you're in the hunt for merit scholarships, be sure to stay on top of explicit deadlines a school on your list might have.

In some cases, like Boston University and the University of Richmond, it's a hard deadline that you have to meet in order for you to be considered at all.  In others, like Indiana University and many other public institutions, it's a "priority" deadline that maximizes your chances of merit aid before the money runs out.  Either way, merit aid continues to be an excellent way for good students to defray the cost of an education.  

We've compiled a list of selected schools in our coverage universe with explicit deadlines, along with some stats to help you gauge the size and breadth of the institution's merit offerings.  We've also included links to each school's scholarship page for easy access to the details.

Most of these schools automatically consider you for merit scholarships without the need for an additional application.  

Click on Continue Reading below for the list.

U.S. News & World Report released their 2018 college rankings earlier today.  Over 1,800 schools were covered nationwide and evaluated on multiple measures of academic excellence and outcomes to produce the final rankings.

Princeton retains sole posession of the top spot for National Universities, and Williams College tops the list of Liberal Arts Colleges.  

Click on Continue Reading to see the rankings changes. 

Here's our latest list of regular decision notification dates for the Class of 2021.  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!

Here's our latest list of early notification dates for the Class of 2021.  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 where available.

Good luck, seniors!

Here's our list of reported overall admission rates for the Class of 2020. We've included results for nearly 100 popular institutions, including American, Amherst, Babson, Bard, Barnard, Bates, Boston University, Bowdoin, Brown, Bucknell, Butler, BYU, Caltech, Carleton, Carnegie Mellon, Claremont McKenna, Colby, Colgate, Colorado College, Columbia, Connecticut College, Cornell, Dartmouth, Davidson, Dickinson, Duke, Emory, Oxford at Emory, Fordham, Franklin Olin, George Washington, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Grinnell, Hamilton, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, Kenyon, Lafayette, Lehigh, Macalester, Miami - Oxford, Middlebury, MIT, Mount Holyoke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Oberline, Occidental, Pepperdine, Pitzer, Pomona, Princeton, Rice, Scripps, Skidmore, Stanford, Swarthmore, Tufts, Union College, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, University of Chicago, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Maine, University of Maryland, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Richmond, USC, University of Virginia, Union College, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Washington and Lee, Washington University in St Louis, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Whitman, William & Mary, Williams and Yale.  

Click Continue Reading for the list.

Given how sophisticated colleges have become in recruiting applicants, it's dangerous to rely on old admissions data.  

We've taken a look at our coverage universe and identified schools with notable admission rate differences between the Class of 2020 and the Class of 2019. In addition to providing the admission rates, we've included some commentary to explain why as well as a link back to the source article.

Relative to last year, the number of schools with notable changes is more muted.  Unfortunately, the news from the majority of schools listed is not in your favor, and depending on how you categorize schools, the change may be enough to turn a safety into a target or target to a reach.  On the flip side, we have also identified a few schools where rates have gotten more favorable overall, or for a particular segment of applicants.  Regardless, take a moment to review the list—the last thing anyone needs at this point is a surprise.

College Kickstart subscribers: Class of 2020 admission rates are available for nearly 80 institutions and departments within those institutions in the latest release of College Kickstart.

Click Continue Reading for the list.

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. 

Here's our latest list of regular decision notification dates for the Class of 2020.  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.

Good luck, seniors!

Should my safety school be an out-of-state public university?

This article from the Washington Post provides good evidence of the trend towards admitting more out-of-state applicants at many of the nation's most prominent public universities.  While some of this shift may be attributed to "increasing campus diversity," most of it is attributable to maximizing tuition revenue as state budget support for public universities wanes.

Click here for the article.

A group of 80 higher education institutions called the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success will be introducing a new alternative to the Common Application in 2016.  Designed to level the playing field for college admissions, the Coalition will deliver free tools to increase transparency around admissions and financial aid and promote awareness and engagement prior to senior year.

Details to come later this year, with more insight expected at this week's NACAC Conference in San Diego.

Click here for the press release or here for the related article from the Washington Post.