In search of schools that do a great job of keeping your interest and getting you graduated?  

Look no further, here's a list of 50 public and private institutions that do just that. To make the list, each institution has to have freshman retention and six-year graduation rates of 90% or better. 

Many of the schools listed will come as no surprise, but others—in particular the public institutions—will!  We've also included admit rates and mid-50th percentile SAT and ACT ranges to help you narrow down your choices.

Lots of big-name schools post their decisions over the next 48 hours, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, Rice, University of Pennsylvania and Yale.

Continue reading for the updated list of regular decision notification dates for several popular private and public schools. Good luck, seniors!

In this Los Angeles Times article, Carla Rivera writes about the rising number of college applicants taking advantage of early admission programs to remove stress and uncertainty from the admissions process.

The article also looks at early admission from the school perspective, and why/why not schools choose to participate.  

With admission rates falling and the number of early admission programs on the rise, we maintain that every college applicant needs to at least consider the possibility of applying early.  It may not always be appropriate, but when it is, it's a valuable way of maximizing odds and minimizing wasted motion for simply applying 60 days earlier than normal.   

Read the early admission article now

Early admission results continue to roll in.  Here's a summary of what's been reported as of 5:00pm PST December 20:

Brown accepted 617 applicants to the Class of 2019 under early decision.  

The total number of early decision remained steady at 3,016 this year, resulting in an early admission rate of 20%.

A total of 1,968 applicants were deferred to regular decision and 408 were denied admission.  

Click here for the news release.

Need-blind schools do not take financial aid into consideration when making admissions decisions.  Knowing these schools can be invaluable for making sure you or your teen's application is getting maximum consideration with regard to financial aid.

Here we've compiled a list of private schools that practice need blind admission for full-time, first year, U.S. citizens and permanent residents.  Please note that not all of these schools offer financial aid to meet 100% of demonstrated need. Note also that the list isn't exhaustive—it's meant to cover the more competitive 4 year institutions in the nation.

This list is integrated into the latest update to College Kickstart. 

Need-Blind Schools

Are Ivy League schools overrated?  William Deresiewicz, who taught at Yale from 1998 to 2008, sure thinks so: 

Click here to read his article in the The New Republic, entitled "Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League."

Brown announced today that it made 2,619 offers of admission for the Class of 2018. This represents 8.6 percent of the 30,432 students who applied.  Brown anticipates an incoming class of 1,560 in the fall.  583 of the 2,619 admitted were admitted in December through early decision.

Click here for the news release.

Early admission results are now rolling in.  Here's the latest as of 5:00pm December 21:

The number of applicants for early admission are now starting to be reported by major colleges and universities. Here's the list as of December 10th:

Thought you'd find this September 2013 entry from the Harvard Crimson Admissions Blog of some use.  In it they interview seven recent applicants and their reasons for taking advantage of early action and decision programs.  Note: only one of the students speaks of Harvard and not all of them end up attending the school they applied to early.

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