College Kickstart Productivity Tips

We've designed College Kickstart for simplicity, but there's plenty more under the covers for those looking for more.  In this blog post, we'll take you through five "hidden" features that can improve both your productivity and understanding of how College Kickstart does its thing:

1. Bulk loading schools to your list
2. Improving your list grade with MixFixer
3. Finding additional school ideas with MixFixer
4. Using popups for greater clarity
5. Putting commitment checkboxes to work

1. Bulk load schools to your list

Looking for a faster way to add a group of schools to your list, like the University of California campuses? Take advantage of the list filter and Add All button to get it done quickly.    

Simply type "University of California" in the text box above "Available Schools" and the list of available schools will filter accordingly.  To add the schools to your list, click on the add all button.  Once they've been transferred to your list you can reorder them however you like.  Note: the text is case insensitive and can be any part of the school name.

Other useful filters include "California State" for Cal State University campuses, "Boston" for Boston College and Boston University, "State University of New York" for SUNY campuses, "institute" or "tech" for technology schools (except MIT).

2. Use MixFixer to quickly improve your list grade

Not happy with your list grade?  No worries, take advantage of MixFixer to improve it in a pinch.  

MixFixer makes it easy to act on the recommendations College Kickstart makes about how to improve your list. For example, say your grade is a C+ because you don't have a safety school. Simply click on  in the List Check tab to get started; MixFixer first combs through our database to find all of the schools that would be considered safeties for you, then gives you the opportunity to add one to your list and rerun the analysis. It's a great way to move from a D- to an A in no time.

3. Use MixFixer for additional school ideas

Looking for additional school ideas?  You can also use the prebuilt filters in MixFixer to narrow down schools with interesting characteristics, like those that offer non-binding early action, or those that don't require extra Common App essays or short answer prompts.  Just click on the filters you want to apply and we'll do the rest. 

4. Keep your eye out for popups!

Keep your eye out for the popups that are embedded throughout College Kickstart, they're designed to provide additional color on particular topics, like how schools are categorized, or what various types of early admission programs are.  The categorization popup shown above explains how each school is categorized into a safety, target, reach or unlikely based on school selectivity and relative academic performance.  

To activate a popup, just click on the highlighted text.  Here we have three popups available: the categorization popup ("categorize"), a popup on admissions selectivity ("admissions selectivity"), and another on relative academic performance ("academic performance").  

5. Use the commitment checkboxes only when you're absolutely certain

The commitment checkboxes present below the school picklist are there for situations when you're absolutely sure you'd attend your top choice school (or second choice) if accepted.  

Why?  Because it helps us understand when binding early admission opportunities are appropriate for you.  Depending on the early admission options offered by the schools on your list, it can also materially impact the admission strategies we select for you and the resulting action plan.  

The above screenshots show how the early admission strategy changes materially based on how the commitment checkboxes are checked. In the leftmost example, with no boxes checked, College Kickstart looks only for non-binding early action opportunities and finds them at Colorado College and Boston College.  In the center example, with commitment indicated for the top choice school only, early decision is recommended at Bowdoin and early action at Colorado College.  Finally, if strong commitment is indicated for both the top and second choice schools,  early decision is recommended for both Bowdoin and Colorado College.