I will be attending NYU on a Dean's Scholarship + Presidential Honors Scholar. My biggest weaknesses were: GPA (most who get into T10 schools at my school have ~95/100); ECs (kind of all over the place, no clear narrative, few significant awards); not updating my schools about senior year accomplishments in February/March before decisions (got into a selective summer program, national awards, internship, research); waiting until the last minute to write my essays Advice: Don't take on more coursework than you can handle and do well in. T10 schools, by and large, don't care if you don't take every single AP or honors class your school offers as long as you challenge yourself and have a reasonably rigorous courseload. Also, don't spend a ton of time worrying about how your college resume looks. Pursue what you love doing without holding yourself back from opportunities for fear of failure. And start writing your essays the summer before senior year. Do *not* apply to more than 15 schools if each has supplements -- you will regret it. If your EFC is too high, APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIPS, starting at least in junior year. You will thank yourself when you don't have to take on massive amounts of student debt or are able to afford your dream school. This site was both really helpful and really stressful during my college application process. I hope I can give y'all some idea of what to expect during senior year or am helpful in some way. Good luck to all the seniors!

I'll be attending NYU in the fall, and I hope this is helpful for everyone applying this year and beyond. Not sure what the magic in my app was but I definitely got into schools that I didn't entirely deserve to, stat-wise. I got a lucky result, and some of my friends got unlucky results. My advice: it's a crap shoot.

NYU waitlisted

Stern