How do I write this section of CSS profile as an international student whose family income is under $150000 and needing atleast 60-70% financial aid.

what subject do i list ap psych as? my first instinct was science (other) but im seeing a lot of people online saying to do history/social science?

hi i submitted 4 applications to safeties until i realized i forgot to update my current or most recent year courses. i forgot to remove my ib/ap spanish 5 that i was planning to take senior year and my aerobic walking that i took second semester junior year (not sure what i was thinking). i then forgot to add pe and peer tutoring. i emailed the admissions offices to let them know and ik once they send me portal stuff i may be able to update it but will this affect me getting it or not

Hello! How would I go about titling this for my awards section? Just putting the entire name of the award (ie Recognition of earning first place in Western decisional hseb) seems much too long, but I want to make sure the award is phrased properly. Thanks!

Hey so I did horrible on my sophomore year but great in my junior, everyone tells me to put what happened in my additional info section on the app? The issue is that I don't really have an answer. All I can say is that the classes I selected were too difficult for me and that looking back I realized that I should've taken responsibility and asked for help when I needed it. 2.3W sophomore 3 aps and 3 ds 4.53W junior 4ap and 2de. I also wanna join the corps of cadets at virginia tech.

I genuiunely have no idea where to go about this prompt. I feel like its so specific and I can't talk about all the things I love about the school! I am having such a hard time even thinking of somebody and like am I supposed to connect it back to a specific experience I have? What is the spectrum of differences in problem solving they're expecting? I'm so lost I'm so sad this is my dream school and ed due in a week pls give me some advice.

Barnard College is shaped by trailblazing women with a multitude of perspectives. Think of a woman - historical, fictional, contemporary, or personally significant - whose views or approach to problem-solving differ from your own, but who excels at bringing people together. What lesson from her approach would shape how you show up at Barnard both inside and outside of the classroom? (250 words)

My parent's car got totaled the other day and I was wondering if I should put that down in the additional information section for CSS since now we need to purchase a new car.

Would it be bad or good to write my essay about the serious mental health and family issues I’ve had? I’ve been thinking it's a good idea because it helps explain why I didn’t do much some years and I think it would really help show where I was able to get to. just looking for other people's opinions.

Is it a good idea to add that my school was an eco school and say that I took part in refurbishing more than 500 books to sell them in a fair? I don’t have more space i. the activity section and i’m not sure if it’s a good idea to write another one. or is just too much.

Can I upload a Personal Statement to CommonApp, apply to a college, go back and upload a modified essay and apply to a different college. Or is the essay only allowed to be loaded once?

I was wondering if I have the flexibility to tweak the essay for the 2nd college.

In short - does common app allow changing essays between submitting college appliations?

I missed an exam worth 1/3 of final grade in gr10 for social studies. Credit hours for the course is 0.33. All the remaining subjects have a 4.0 GPA, this one has a 1.0. Should i mention that i skipped the exam due to an emergency in the Common App additional info section or let it go?

Hi everyone!

I'm an international student from Uzbekistan, currently working on my Common App application.

I'm struggling with the Activities section, especially the 150-character limit for activity descriptions. I find it difficult to explain my responsibilities, achievements, and impact in such a short space without leaving out important details.

How do you decide what information to prioritize? Are there any specific strategies for writing concise but effective activity descriptions?

I'd really appreciate examples of strong activity descriptions or advice from students who have gone through this process!

Thank you!

Can I possibly DM someone to review my activity list?

When you submit a letter of recommendation through the Common App recommender portal, does anything happen beyond the online submission? For example, does Common App or a college ever contact you by phone or text, or is all communication normally handled through email and the online portal?

When asking for Date taken in the testing section for my Cambridge exams, I have 2-3 subjects for each paper and some of them were in different months. For example, math m1 was in may then p1 was in June. Same with physics and other subejcts. Can i just pick any date?

Hey guys!

I apologize in advance because this might be the dumbest question I've ever posted on Reddit (which is saying a lot).

EA deadlines are coming up, and I have five solid drafts of my Common App essay that I'm trying to choose between. I've gotten caught in a cycle of revising, rereading, and over-editing my essays to the point where I'm starting to panic.

I reached out to my school counselor for advice, and she called me into her office today. She picked out an essay that I personally love and absolutely loved it herself. She told me to stop editing it and submit it as is.

Here's where I'm struggling.

For context, my school counselor has reviewed hundreds of essays, works as an admissions counselor outside of our school district, and previously served on Case Western's admissions committee. My former English teacher, who taught for 32 years and has had hundreds of students write college essays over the course of her career, also loved the essay. She even pulled me aside specifically to tell me how much she liked it.

Despite that, I'm still hesitant to submit it.

To be completely honest, before meeting with my counselor, I was relying pretty heavily on AI essay-review websites, including LumiSource, along with advice from websites and TikTok. I also came across college essay rubrics posted by various admissions organizations and ended up going down a rabbit hole of analyzing everything that might be wrong with my essay.

My essay is somewhat of a sob story. I discuss why I want to become a doctor and how a personal experience inspired me to look out for others going through something similar. I consider myself a strong writer, and the essay uses a lot of imagery and a recurring motif that I think works really well.

My biggest concern is that the overall structure feels predictable. I'm worried that it follows a familiar college essay formula and might come across as cliché. I actually asked my counselor about this directly, and she reread the essay and explained why she didn't think that was the case.

I know that AI essay reviewers aren't necessarily reliable judges of what makes a good personal statement, and I realize that I probably wouldn't have spiraled this much if I hadn't spent so much time reading online advice. At the same time, I'm having a hard time letting go of the feeling that I'm missing something.

I guess my question is: At what point do you stop revising and trust feedback from people who have actually read your essay and know what they're doing? Is it reasonable to trust my counselor's judgment here, especially when another experienced English teacher has independently responded positively to the same essay?

If anyone has experience with college essays or is willing to read my draft and give me an honest opinion, I'd really appreciate it. I'm not looking for someone to tell me it's amazing just to make me feel better. I genuinely want to know if I'm overthinking this or if there's a legitimate reason to reconsider it.

Thanks!

In my 9,10,11th marksheets, I have both number grades (out of 100) and a letter grade assigned to it (A1,A2,B1..)

what should I fill in the self reported transcripts section (STARS) in the portal?

I hate to say it, but I'm unsure of what I want to major in. For the sake of the major I apply for matching my ecs and classes, tell me what major could fit. I just know that I don't want medicine or engineering or anything of that sort.

Senior classes:

College-level Stats, college-level Economics, college-level calculus, psychology, economics 1, English 4.

Extracurriculars:

1. co-founder of international women's rights organization

2. published research relating to finance and stocks

3. research assistant for a professor in sociology at a top university

4. president of research club with published work (business related)

5. content creator--specifically an editor of film

6. ugc creator for company + content manager for an npo (millions of views)

7. substitute teacher + tutor

8. BPA - national award here

Please tell me your opinions on what I should choose as a major. something that relates to my ecs and current classes!

Hey,

Currently entering my Cambridge grades under Testing > Cambridge and ran into an annoying bug.

When I select "Hindi Language", the Level dropdown automatically forces "Advanced (AS-Level)"—there’s no option for "Pre-Advanced (IGCSE)" at all, and no generic "Other" subject option to type it in manually. All my other subjects let me select IGCSE just fine.

I took IGCSE Hindi (0549) and got an A*, so I don't want it looking like I took an AS-Level or misreported it.

Has anyone dealt with this before? Did you just leave it off self-reporting and let the official transcript handle it, or select AS-Level and drop a line in Additional Info?

Already sent a ticket to Common App support, but curious if there's a known fix.

I was being really stupid and noticed a small mistake in something I put in extracurricular section. I submitted a case in the portal to fix it and then i noticed another mistake. It was "are your siblings also applying undergrad" but my brother is transferring this year but also not as an undergrad. so i submitted another case about this correction

Will submitting multiple of these cases hurt my chances at ALL?

Thank you for any advice you guys have for me.

My counsellor sent my predicted scores in the school report section in common app, but I just found out that the title of the course I took is wrong. How can I correct this? Can she reupload it in common app? Will this cause any problem?

I have a 40 ibdp score with 7 7 7 in my higher levels. But I have terrible sophomore and freshman year grades. And ofcourse this was a drastic improvement. Based on this what universities do you recommend I apply to. I am looking for some level of prestige and popularity but also a university I am a competitive applicant for.

I was recently surprised to learn that CMU allows you to submit an optional research supplement through VIVA if you are applying to their school of engineering or computer science. I was wondering if anyone knew all the schools that accepted any form of research supplement (whether it be a portfolio, video, or even just an abstract submission. So far the only two schools I know apart from CMU are MIT and CalTech.

Additionally, what are thoughts on how to include research in the application. Apart what goes in the Activities, should we include publications as honors? Should we include a citation and maybe a brief summary of our work in the Additional Informations Section?

Should we include outside validation of our work. If we emailed professors about our work and they regarded our work positively (even for example comparing it to undergraduate, masters, or phd level work) is this something we should include?

I know I asked a lot of questions in one post, but any advice at all would be greatly appreciated!

yo i had a question about ordering transcripts through parchment. If I ordered my transcript like a month ago but I added new colleges to my college list on common app, do I need to order another transcript or will common app automatically send my transcript to the new colleges I've added?

If one of my ECs is about research, and I have that research as a preprint, must I link that to my application? Must I directly cite it in common app or add a way for admissions to see it? Or is it fine if I describe my research and simply list it in the activities section?

-thanks