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 sampling of 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.  

College Kickstart subscribers: full listings of 2019-20 explicit merit scholarship deadlines and schools with generous merit aid are already incorporated into the product.

Click on Continue Reading below for the list.

U.S. News & World Report released their 2020 college rankings earlier today.  Over 1,400 schools were covered nationwide and evaluated on multiple measures of academic excellence and outcomes to produce the final rankings.

Approximately 13 percent of institutions were reclassified to changes in the underlying Carnegie classification system in 2018.

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. 

In search of great liberal arts colleges with engineering programs?

Here's a list of popular liberal arts colleges offering engineering as part of their curriculum. Some like Swarthmore and Bucknell offer traditional engineering majors, while others offer joint "3/2" programs with other institutions to let you combine a great liberal arts education with an engineering degree over five years.

Affiliated partner engineering schools include Caltech, Columbia, Dartmouth, Washington University in St. Louis, RPI, and more. Two of the most frequent programs seen on the list are offered by the Columbia University and Dartmouth College. The Columbia program, typically a five year program in which students are at Columbia for the final two, gives liberal arts college students the opportunity to earn a BS degree from the Columbia University Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. In addition, most programs offer the option for students to complete a MS degree at Columbia in 6 years as an extension of the existing 3-2 program.

At Dartmouth, students have the opportunity to study at the Dartmouth College Thayer School of Engineering as part of a 2-1-1-1 program. Students will attend Dartmouth in their third and fifth years and will earn a BE degree in addition to their BA degree. Participating students may also have a secondary option to partake in a 3-2 program instead of the 2-1-1-1 program.

For each liberal arts college identified in the list, we've included the type of program offered, admit rate, mid 50th percentile test scores and a link for more details.

Click on Continue Reading for the list.

For those of you that have been waitlisted at one of your top choices, here's a list of 2018 waitlist statistics for several popular private and public schools, along with notification dates and latest status where available.  

Our sample of waitlist statistics from 138 private and public institutions paints the following picture:

• On average, 11 percent of students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted

• 71 percent of the schools admitted 10 percent or less of the students accepting a place on the wait list last year

• 57 percent of the schools admitted 5 percent or less

• 24 percent admitted no one

There are several factors driving the low rates, including the size of the waitlist (often very large), and how well a school anticipates its admissions yield. 

Click Continue Reading for the list.

Here's our latest list of regular decision notification dates for the Class of 2023.  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 updated list of early decision and early action dates for the Class of 2023.  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.   

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 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 reported overall admission rates for the Class of 2022. Results are now available for American University, Amherst, Barnard, Boston College, Boston University, Bowdoin, Brown, Carleton, Chapman, Claremont McKenna, Colby, Colgate, Colorado College, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Davidson, Denison, Duke, Emory, Emory (Oxford), George Washington, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Hamilton, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Johns Hopkins, Lafayette, Lehigh, Macalester, Middlebury, MIT, Northeastern, Northwestern, Notre Dame, NYU, Olin, Pepperdine, Pitzer, Pomona, Princeton, Santa Clara, Scripps, Stanford, Swarthmore, Trinity, Tufts, Tulane, Union, 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 Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Richmond, University of Rochester, USC, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Villanova, Virginia Tech, Washington University in St. Louis, Wellesley, Wesleyan, William & Mary, Williams 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.

For those of you that have been waitlisted at one of your top choices, here's a list of 2017 waitlist statistics for several popular private and public schools, along with notification dates and latest status where available.  

Our sample of waitlist statistics from 132 private and public institutions paints the following picture:

• On average, 13 percent of students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted

• 63 percent of the schools admitted 10 percent or less of the students accepting a place on the wait list last year

• 51 percent of the schools admitted 5 percent or less

• 16 percent admitted no one

There are several factors driving the low rates, including the size of the waitlist (often very large), and how well a school anticipates its admissions yield. 

Click Continue Reading for the list.

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.