Tanner Bozant:

Tanner Bozant (12) plans to attend the University of Tenn. in Chattanooga (UTC) after graduating from White Station High School. He will major in biology, leading into veterinarian medicine. Bozant applied to the school, along with four others, through Common App.

College choice: “[UTC is] in Tennessee so, you know, I get all the benefits of being in-state. But also I went and toured all of my colleges I thought about going to … [UTC] was a lot smaller, it was a lot more compact. I didn’t wanna have to go to like a huge university … so that’s just kind of what spoke to me about it.”

Reaction: “[UTC] was kind of my number one spot, so when I got the letter I was pretty excited about it.”

Advice: “I’d say definitely start [on the college process] earlier than you think you should, ‘cause there’s a lot of deadlines. And, a lot of colleges have different deadlines for each sort of step, so you know different ones will have different sort of early acceptance deadlines. Some want you to fill an application for scholarships, some just look at your scores and FAFSA (Free Application for Student Aid) and all that, but definitely staying on top of that and not letting deadlines slip you by ‘cause they can come pretty quickly and you’ll just not realize that they’ve slipped you by.”

Yirui Tang:

Yirui Tang (12) is planning to attend Washington University (WashU) in St. Louis. She wants to major in neuroscience on a pre-med track. Tang applied for 13 schools, 11 being through Common App, and the other two through their own systems.

College choice: “WashU has a really good med program, and when I was at St. Jude [for an internship] … the vice president of St. Jude, he was telling us about WashU’s Ph.D. program and I just really liked their campus.”

Reaction: “I was pretty excited ‘cause I had gotten a couple rejections. Like UChicago (University of Chicago) was my dream school, but I was rejected. But then I got into WashU which was my second choice, and so I was pretty excited. I didn’t like film it or anything ‘cause I opened the website before the time that they said I should open it and it was already out, so it was like a surprise.”

Advice: “I would say get started on your essay earlier, like don’t wait until like September or December to start finalizing your essay because you should start thinking about like the prompt and what you’re going to write about and just start brainstorming your college list and like your answers to like supplemental essays in like July.”

Mikey Graves:

Mikey Graves (12) is planning on attending the University of Edinburgh in the 2024-25 school year. Originally, he was deciding between Northwestern and Trinity College Dublin. He plans on majoring in film.

College choice: “For Northwestern, it’s mainly because it’s like number seven in the US right now, which is like crazy. But for Trinity, I got in for their film and histories dual major and that is really what I’m interested in for the future, but also I love Dublin. I love the idea of being able to get out of and stay out of the [US] after college. The potential of getting dual citizenship sounds really good to me, and based on Irish law it’s a bit easier than you would think to get EU citizenship through Ireland if you go over for college and stay over there.”

Reaction: “I was about to go see a movie with my friend. I get an email from Northwestern and I go, ‘Okay, they’re clearly sending me a rejection email … I will open this and read it during the previews for the movie,’ … and I open the letter and … my friend goes, ‘Dude, it cannot be that awful to get rejected from Northwestern,’ and I said, ‘That’s the problem, I have not been rejected from Northwestern,’ and then we both ignored that until the movie was over.”

Advice: “You’ve pretty much gotta write your Common App essay down to the word. Use every word that you’ve got for all of the essays that you’ve got and make sure that all of your words that you’re using further what you’re saying … [and if] you can afford to apply to all the higher level schools, all of your reaches, apply to all of them because you want a fair number of safeties and a fair number of targets … but then don’t cut a reach because you never know what reaches will take you.”