QUANTUM PREP INSIGHTS

ED? ED2? EA? REA? RD? Wondering what these mean? Here’s a helpful guide to understanding the different options and how they impact your application.  Let’s start with the most commonly thrown around term: ED. ED refers to Early Decision. ED, as the name suggests, is when a student applies to a school early and finds out whether they were successful early. The ED deadline for most schools is November 1, but some schools may extend until mid-November. Most schools offer

‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ is a question that everyone gets asked a lot. This question was especially hard for me as a teenager because of my wildly varying interests and talents. I heavily considered doing medicine, science or music for my degree and this is the story of how I picked Chemistry as my major. Before I went to the UK for my A-levels, I considered studying medicine very seriously. In order to understand

‘Complete this problem sheet before the next tutorial.’ This is one of the very first things that my professor told me in Oxford. We, first year chemists, had no idea about what was about to hit us as we casually flipped through the problem sheet. It was surprisingly short. It wasn’t until we walked out of the meeting that we realised we had no clue on how to complete even a single one of the problems. We went to the

As part of the Independent Educational Consultant Association (IECA), I have been regularly attending webinars with various college admissions officers since September. In these Zoom sessions, admission officers give independent consultants insights into what they are looking for in a student — below are a few of my most important takeaways:   1) Forget about the “wow” factor, show us your authentic self! The Yale admissions officer nailed this point on the head. When we directly asked her what “wow” means

Picking a major can be a stressful task. I remember scrolling down an endless list of majors and getting the urge to just enter them all into a random result generator. However, sadly, that method almost always leads to reckless decisions. It took a while for me to figure out that I wanted to read English at the University of Cambridge, and I went through a long process of self-doubt before I got to that conclusion. Initially, I had no

Being able to apply as an undecided major is a unique feature of US colleges and universities; it is also something a lot of students want to choose. Applying as undecided takes away the stress to have to immediately choose a program of study. One thing to point out, though, is that applying as undecided should be a choice, and not a shortcut to making applications easier. It should not be treated as the default option when a student does