Blogs & Latest News

What You Need To Know About Brown University

Regularly ranked as one of the top colleges in the United States, it’s no wonder that thousands of eager students apply to Brown every year. With an acceptance rate of around 5% most are going to be disappointed. This article will give you lots of key information about the college, its courses and application requirements, helping you to decide if Brown is going to be a good fit for you.

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What’s an Extracurricular Spike?

When I meet with students to review their extracurricular activities for the first time, many are curious about whether or not they should focus on a single activity until they apply to college. I think for anyone considering an application to US universities, this is an important aspect to consider given the ‘holistic’ nature of the admissions processes, that is, thinking about how diverse your ECs should be.

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Public Vs Private

Attending a public university can be really affordable if you qualify as an in-state student. Even international students do not need to spend exorbitant amounts of money as opposed to what they would at a Private University. The reason again being that private unis run on student tuition and heavy endowments.

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Whats A Deferral And What Do You Do About It?

When you apply to your top choice college in the early application round you will get one of three responses, accepted (yippee), rejected (boo) or deferred (what?). In this article, I’m going to explore what it means if you are deferred and more importantly what to do about it.

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What Do Graduates Do?

I have been spending some of my time, in between meeting students, reading through the most recent edition of What Do Graduates Do? The annual publication looks at what graduates from UK universities are doing fifteen months after they graduate. This year’s publication focuses on those students who graduated in the summer of 2020 and provides a wealth of information on what those students were doing. As well as telling us what graduates are doing the publication also provides an insight into the prospects of those due to finish their degrees and useful information for those making decisions on what degrees they aspire to apply for.

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Planning for College – Winter

Grade 9 and 10/ Freshman and Sophomore.

The winter break is a good point to take stock of what you have been doing over the last few months and make sure you are prepared for the remainder of the academic year. It is also time to make some longer-term plans.

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A Guide to the Types of Colleges and Universities in the United States

Now is the time of year when those students who will be applying for college in 2023 should start to think about building their college list. While every college is unique nearly all can be categorised into a type, often offering great advantages to their students. In this article, I will list some of the most popular types of colleges you should get to know as you narrow down the colleges and universities on your college list.

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Improve Your GPA: Nine Strategies to Improve Your Chances of Winning Your Dream College!

I discussed Grade Point Average or GPA, how it is calculated and how it makes an important contribution to the profile you present to colleges at application time. If colleges consider your GPA to be important, then you should too. In this blog, I will show you how the key to academic success is not dependent on being smart; rather, it is about being disciplined and efficient in your study habits. These nine strategies will help you raise your GPA without getting stressed and working at all hours.

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What are AP Tests and should I take them?

Here at Ivy Central, we get many questions about AP Tests, are they needed or useful in the US college application process? How many should you do? Are some subjects more valuable than others? This article will help you answer these and other questions you may have about AP Tests.

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Understanding College Rankings

September is college rankings season. Across the world, websites and newspapers publish stories about the rankings of colleges and universities; some focus on specific countries like the US and UK, while others claim to tell you which are the ‘best’ in the world.

While there are many other factors that students should use when making final admission decisions, college ranking lists are a resource that students and parents should use, so in this blog, I’m going to help you understand college rankings.

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Should you apply Early Action?

Early Action, or EA, is offered by many public universities and a few private universities in the US, whose deadline is typically in November.

It is often thought that Early Action (EA) is a ‘non-binding’ application to colleges and universities in the US. Typically, this means that you can apply to other universities simultaneously – something that the Early Decision or ED disallows you from doing.

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