One of the most common questions that college counsellors are asked is “How do I get accepted by ????? University?” There is not a straightforward answer, each college or university in the USA will have their own peculiarities in what they are looking for, but there are some things that are common across just about all of them.

If you look on the websites you will often find something about how they make their admissions decisions, schools may rank them differently in order of importance but in this article I share some of the key qualities that colleges and universities will look for in your application.

When you are building your college list you will often come across people recommending that you have a mix of reach, target and safety schools in your list. What you are less likely to find is a description of how you can decide which colleges fit into which category, so that is what I am going to do with this blog.