While each college and university has its own deadlines for application submission, deadlines mostly depend on the application scheme you are applying under. Many institutions allow applications through the CommonApp portal.
Under the Early Decision scheme, students can apply to one, and only one, school. If admitted, the student is legally obligated to attend that college or university, and must withdraw all applications to other schools. There are two rounds of Early Decision. In the first round, applications are usually due in October, and outcomes are usually released in December. In the second round, applicants can switch the Regular Decision application at one school to Early Decision in January. Most schools offer round one of Early Decision.
Under the Early Action scheme, students can apply to multiple schools. If admitted, the student has until May 1st to reply to each school whether to attend. Applications are usually due in November, and outcomes are usually released in January. Not many schools offer this scheme.
Under the Regular Decision, students can apply to multiple schools. If admitted, the student has until May 1st to reply to each school whether to attend. Applications are usually due on January 1st, and outcomes are released by April 1st. Most schools offer this scheme.
Under the Rolling Admission scheme, applications are continuously processed and outcomes are released according to the date of application submission. This scheme is usually offered at schools where admission is less competitive, usually public universities.
Merit scholarships applications, at both private and public institutions, are usually due in December.
To access the CommonApp website, follow this link.
In contrast to the straight-forward university admission process in Singapore, many institutions in the United States require applicants to submit quite a number of documents as part of the holistic admission process. Handling the paperwork with individual institutions would cause students, teachers and school counselors great inconvenience.
The Common Application portal was created to handle this issue. Students only need to submit portions of the application that are similar across colleges–e.g. teachers' recommendations, the counselor's report and the personal essay– once to the CommonApp portal. Some individual institutions will require complementary questions to be answered to complete the application. The CommonApp portal also help students keep check of which document has been submitted to which college.
Not all universities and colleges accept applications through the Common Application portal.
In Singapore, the United Kingdom and Australia, the university admission process is largely merit-based. In other words, the most important factor when assessing a candidate is his or her academic caliber. Co-curricular activities and personal qualities are considered, but are not overriding factors.
Many, mostly private, institutions in the United States employs the holistic admission process. A candidate is assessed based on his or her academic caliber, out-of-class achievements and special talents, personal qualities and beliefs, and socioeconomic background.
While required application materials differ across institutions, usually the following are required:
More competitive institutions often ask for the following additional materials:
It is easier to understand the holistic admission process if we understand its purpose: building a diverse, well-rounded freshmen cohort, while meeting institutional requirements.
Diversity is not narrowly defined in terms of academic and extracurricular interests, but also encompasses personalities (e.g. introverted versus extraverted, rational versus emotional), thinking patterns (linear versus lateral), perception of the world, personal values and beliefs, etc. Diversity is greatly emphasized as it is a central part of the liberal arts education, where students are encouraged to explore complexities of the world from each other as much as from instructors.
In Singapore, diversity is a largely an outcome of a large student intake. E.g., Nanyang Technological University admits roughly 4,000 new freshmen annually, and the National University of Singapore, 6000. Such large groups of students are bound to be diverse. As such, the university admission process need not be designed with diversity at the center. In fact, Singaporean meritocracy demands that local universities give priorities to the most academically able.
In contrast, in the United States, many elite universities have annual intakes hovering around 1000–2000 students, and liberal arts colleges, 300–600. The lower the freshmen intake, the more a score-based admission process manifests its inability to ascertain diversity. Moreover, countless American institutions do not believe test scores to be a good indicator of future success to begin with. In such context, it makes for sense for a school to hand-pick from the applicants pool a group of students with varied attributes.
Generally, the admission committee will try to pick out the best group of candidates that satisfy the following conditions:
In other words, schools generally avoids admitting "too many of the same kind," in order to create diversity. This is the reason why many outstanding applicants, with stellar test scores and cocurricular achievements, get rejected: his or her profile did not fit well with the group that were accepted. E.g., let say that John was an exceptional swimmer, an inspiring leader of the guitar club, and a devout community servant, while still consistently ranking among the top academic performers. Yet, John could well be rejected because:
Because universities and colleges are trying to maximize diversity as well as satisfy internal, institutional needs, someone who is admitted this year might not neccessarily get admitted the next or previous year. The haphazard nature of the holistic admission process makes it difficult to predict the application outcome of any particular student without some knowledge of other applicants to the same institution in the same and well as previous admission cycles.
Nonetheless, successful applicants are those who are well conscious of their strengths and weaknesses, personalities, opinions and dreams, and able to portray their image and identity clearly to the admission committee through essays and interviews. This process is often likened to a journey of self-discovery.
More articles on holistic admission could be found here.
The personal essay is the protocol for each student to demonstrate his or her uniqueness.
Due to the 650-word limit, the essay is recommended to focus on one single moment, incident, or story, with ample details, illustrations and reflections. It is not recommended to cram too many events or ideas into one single essay with insufficient elaboration. Assuming most admission officer will be burdened with a ton of essays, ideally the essay should be able to give a lasting impression of you to the officer after just one read through: he or she should be able to summarize the essay into a one-sentence remark about how you are special.
The scope of CommonApp essay prompts are very broad and students can effectively write about any subject they desire. However, stylistic elements aside, the narrative in the essay should zoom in on one area of substantial value, for example:
Whatever the focus, the essay should be personal, i.e. it should be heavily tinged with personal circumstances and reflections, and ideas discussed should be contextualized into your immediate setting. E.g., if you discuss tenacity, you should illustrate how you define it via specific actions, how it manifests in your personal situations, and how your version of being tenacious is different from someone else's, etc.
Most well-written essays make use of the "show, not tell" approach, where ample details and illustrations are used to vividly paint out a point, instead of bluntly spelling it outright.
Some reference essays are published by:
Yes, at most institutions.
Only a few elite institutions claim to be need-blind—meaning they do not take financial circumstances into consideration during the admission process, and promise to grant sufficient financial assistance so that whomever they choose to admit can attend.
Most institutions that grant need-based financial assistance are need-aware. This means that the number of aid-requesting applicants they can admit is limited. Some schools will choose to admit only a handful of internationals but grant them very generous aid packages, while some other schools will choose to admit a larger number of students, but grant them lower financial aid amounts. However, at most institutions, international students that can afford the full fees will have higher priorities.
International students should ask their prospective universities and colleges what percentage of foreign undergraduates receive need-based financial aid, as well as the average aid amount.
SAT and ACT scores are only of minor importance when "selective" institutions consider which applicants to admit.
However, SAT and ACT scores do act as a good indicator of the general academic ability of the student population at a specific institution. Hence, if your standardized test scores fall on the 75th percentile of a school, you should be able to cope relatively well in academics at that school.
It is recommended to choose academically-matching schools to apply using SAT and ACT scores, instead of grinding those tests to get marginally higher scores to apply to more prestigious institutions.
Sometimes an institution might require students to submit a conversion of foreign high school score reports and certificates to the United States equivalency by a third party. Most schools that Singapore students apply to do not have this requirement, but the requirement itself is legitimate and not a scam.
World Education Services (WES) is among the oldest organizations that offer this service. An official copy of GCE O and A Levels results need to be purchased at the MOE HQ and sent to WES by MOE in order to be recognized and evaluated. WES evaluation guidelines for GCE O and A Levels could be found here.