What do colleges care about? What do they want to see in our students’ applications? Usually, people say “it depends.” But that’s not helpful to applicants like our students.
What does it depend on?
Today, I’ll share how to figure out what matters to colleges.
Step 1 in helping your student stand out.
Let’s investigate University of Washington in Seattle and Washington University in St. Louis. It’s a case study! While both institutions have “Washington” in their names, their priorities in admissions are very different.
What does University of Washington look for?
First, we’ll look at UW (nickname for Washington state’s flagship university). What does this university want to see in its applicants?
University of Washington cares most about rigor of secondary school record, academic GPA, and application essay.
UW does not consider recommendations or applicant interest (read: demonstrated interest).
Wait. How did I know that?
One of my favorite ways of looking at this is by searching the Common Data Set, usually found on the university’s admissions website, and going to section C7. The 2020-2021 Common Data Set for UW shows
