CPE

“So, tell me a little bit about yourself” – How to Answer in a College Interview

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Welcome to application writing crunch time, a rite of passage for HS seniors! The vast majority of college-bound seniors are deep into writing, reviewing, and polishing applications, and many are in mid-interviewing season. I’ve offered advice about how to answer the most commonly asked supplement essay and interview question both in a prior blog post and in my new book, The CommonApp Handbook, “Why do you want to go here?” In this post, I’d like to offer some advice about answering another very commonly asked question, often the first question right after you sit down for a campus or alumni interview: […]

Clarifying SAT Dates for Early Apps to College

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If you’re planning to apply ED or EA to college this or next month (and in almost every case it makes sense to apply early to give yourself a better chance to get in!) and you assumed that the November 7, 2026, SAT is too late for you, I have good news. The APPLICANT’S decline may be Oct 15 or Nov 1, 2026, but scores reported shortly thereafter historically have still counted at many top schools, as they are reported well before committees even start thinking about making final decisions. This year, for example, Harvard REA and Penn ED both accept the Nov. 7 SAT […]

How Many Colleges Should You Apply to in 2026? The Math Behind a Smart List: Numbers Don’t Lie

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Let’s start with a little Algebra 1, a kind of word problem similar to those you might encounter on the SAT or ACT. No, wait — don’t go! You can handle this. I promise. Say your goal at the gym is to do a certain amount of work on the bench press. You lift 135 pounds through a vertical distance of 16 inches (0.406 meters), three sets of 10 reps, 30 reps total. The mathematical “work” in your workout, where Work = Force × Distance, comes out to: 135 lb × 4.448 N/lb × 0.406 m × 30 ≈ 7,300 […]

To Use or Not to Use AI on College and Grad School Applications

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As is often the case with questions offering a false dichotomy of answer choices, the answer to the trick question is a snarky yes! But if not cornered into snarkdom by a presentation of black and white answers amid so many shades of gray, a better answer might look like this: It is better NOT to use AI at all than to ask a generative AI tool (like, say, ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini) to produce a response to an application question from scratch. Such a request will be tempting and happens thousands of times a day in 2026 because […]

9th and 10th Graders: DON’T WAIT TO GET INVOLVED IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

 tagged admissions / CommonApp / extracurriculars by

Attention 9th and 10th graders! One of the best parts about being a freshmen or sophomore is that you have more time than juniors and seniors to try new hobbies and activities. By the time you get to 11th and 12th grades, you’ll have harder classes and more demanding teachers; more standardized tests with higher stakes; and college visits and applications to contend with. So enjoy your relative freedom while you can and take advantage of opportunities to try new things. What new things, you ask? Good question, glad you’re paying attention. Start with your hobbies and interests—what we in […]

Two Ways to Choose a College Essay Topic

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For many students, the hardest part about the whole dreaded college essay is choosing a topic. While it’s true that HOW you present your essay is important—that is, your writing style, mechanical correctness, personal voice are all formal qualities that generate the overall impression your essay makes—WHAT you say does matter. In choosing your topic, consider the two most important substantive features (i.e., as opposed to the formal features noted above): For some students, it’s easier to think of an anecdote or two they’d like to relate in their essay, some highly memorable or meaningful experience, a moment of passion […]

How Much Should I Study for Standardized Tests?!

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Great Question–glad you asked. As those of you who work with us know, at CollegePrepExpress we’re not big fans of the two major college entrance exams, the SAT and the ACT.  Marathon length, high stakes tests for teens are not our idea of a good time.  It would be one thing if there were some redeeming quality to these exams–for example, if they were decent predictors of some desirable or meaningful life outcome–but there isn’t.  SATs and ACTs won’t tell you how smart you are, how well you’ll do in college, what profession you’re well suited for, what your future net worth […]

Catch the Back-to-School Wave

 tagged academics / grades / school by

One of my favorite things to do is bodysurf.  I remember when my dad taught me in the south Florida Atlantic back in the early, gulp, 1970s.  He explained how good timing is everything: it enables you to harness the full force of the swell just as the whitecaps begin to break at the crest of the wave.  If you jump too early or scramble to catch up, you’ll miss it: all the puny human exertion you can muster against the wave’s weighty power proves useless if you try to fight it.  The trick is to catch the wave just right […]

On Writing Well: 3 Tips for Getting the Words Right, featuring AmLit hero, E. Hemingway

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Since it’s college application Sweet Spot season for many rising high school seniors (see Writing College Applications in the Sweet Spot), we thought it a great time to re-post a student favorite for more than a decade… The most important skill for college-bound students to acquire in high school is also the most difficult: WRITING. Not many students will disagree that moving ideas from their heads onto paper (or into pixels) is extremely challenging. I love Gene Fowler’s quip: “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your […]

Writing College Applications in the Sweet Spot: July & August

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Many college-bound students make one of two critical mistakes when it comes time to thinking through and writing college applications: they do it too soon, or they do it too late.  Too soon, you say? Clearly you haven’t met my mother. Is there really such a thing? Yes, there really is. Emphatically so. Many high school teachers and administrators, both public and private, do their juniors a disservice when they stress them out about writing college applications during the spring of junior year. It’s one thing to go through the personal essay prompts and even write a MOCK essay for the […]

Working with your HS Guidance Counselor: Creating a Foundation to Maximize Admissions to College

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by Dr. Yo, with contributions from Anthony Faulise For better or worse, college counselors play a significant role in every U.S. high school student’s journey to college, influencing many aspects of the entire application process, from the selection of schools to admissions committees’ final decisions.   College counselors have substantial administrative responsibilities both for their school’s particular guidance program and for each of their individual students’ applications, including coordinating letters of recommendation, sending official high school transcripts and mid-year reports, arranging information sessions with regional directors and other college representatives, helping to run college nights and other counseling events, and, in […]

4 Reasons Why It’s Important to Tell the Truth and How It Can Get You Into College

 tagged admissions process / applications / college essay by

Let’s face an unpalatable truth together, shall we? We ALL lie. Yup, when occasion suits our needs, even those of us who are honest almost all the time and pride ourselves on our integrity are still prone to exaggerate, understate, omit, prevaricate (go ahead, look it up), or explicitly speak what we know not to be true. Human beings have emotions, and to paint in broad stokes, we prefer the good ones to the bad ones; so sometimes we delude ourselves that telling a white, or sometimes black, lie will feel better than suffering the short-term pain that telling the […]

Dr. Yo’s NEW Bag O’ Trix, Shortcuts, and Workarounds for the Digital SAT

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Who doesn’t love tricks and shortcuts when it comes to high-stakes tests like the SAT? Practically no one, of course. So here are Dr. Yo’s favorite tricks, shortcuts, and workarounds for the Reading & Writing and Math sections of the Digital SAT. Reading & Writing Math If you’re going to sit for another exam down the road, you might consider some private tutoring with Dr. Yo or registering for one or more of his Design Your Own SAT Prep Class Schedule. We’re here to help!

David and Goliath: College-Bound Students vs. the SAT

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Before Rocky ever stepped into the ring, there was David and Goliath—the original underdog story. The story of David and Goliath is the ultimate underdog tale: a young shepherd defeats a seemingly unbeatable giant—not through size or strength, but through courage, preparation, strategy, confidence, and a simple sling. During a recent sermon on the subject, I couldn’t help thinking throughout the pastor’s impassioned homily about David’s courage, preparation, and focused determination, that his words applied equally well to the imposing challenges of facing either Goliath or today’s Digital Adaptive SAT. The prospect of facing either foe lies somewhere on the […]