The Kolly Journal.
Honest notes on getting into top schools — written by the founders of Kolly.
School admissions guides
23 articlesAdmission Requirements for Harvard University
Harvard rejects more than 96 out of every 100 students who apply. That math is the easy part. The harder question — the one this guide answers — is what…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for Stanford University
Stanford is the rare school where the brand and the application actually match. The campus sits a bike ride from the venture capital firms funding the next…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for MIT
MIT is one of the strangest applications you'll fill out. It refuses the Common App, asks you five short questions instead of one big one, and was the only top…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for Yale University
Yale is one of the most selective universities in the world, but it is also one of the most misread. Applicants tend to flatten it into a generic Ivy with old…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for Princeton University
Princeton University, established in 1746, is renowned as one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions within the Ivy League. With a history stretching…
The Kolly Founders · 6 min read
Admission Requirements for Columbia University
Columbia is unusual among the Ivies. It is the only one stitched directly into a global city, the only one that still requires every undergraduate to read the…
The Kolly Founders · 8 min read
Admission Requirements for Brown University
Brown is the Ivy that asks you to design your own education. No distribution requirements, no general education checklist, no "you must take two semesters of a…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for the University of Pennsylvania
Penn is one of the trickiest Ivies to read from the outside. It looks like a traditional liberal-arts powerhouse, but the application is structured around four…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for Cornell University
Cornell is the Ivy that breaks the mold. It is the largest of the eight, the most public-facing, and the only one where you do not really apply to "the…
The Kolly Founders · 10 min read
Admission Requirements for Dartmouth College
Dartmouth is the smallest Ivy, and it knows it. While Harvard and Columbia compete on prestige and scale, Dartmouth competes on something stranger and more…
The Kolly Founders · 10 min read
Admission Requirements for Caltech
Caltech is the most unusual school on most students' lists. Roughly 2,400 undergraduates total. Acceptance rates that hover near 3%. A test-blind policy that…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins occupies a strange and specific place in the American academic landscape. It bills itself as "America's first research university," and that's…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for UChicago
UChicago is the school that asks you to write about what can actually be divided by zero, then expects you to mean it. If most elite admissions feel like a…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for Duke University
Duke is one of the strangest schools to apply to. It looks like an Ivy on paper, plays like an SEC school on Saturday, and reads applications with a Southern…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt is the rare school that takes academic seriousness and sheer fun equally seriously. People sometimes call it "the most fun Ivy" — not an actual Ivy,…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for NYU
NYU has changed faster than almost any school in the Common App. A decade ago it was a strong, accessible private university with an acceptance rate near 35%.…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for UVA
The University of Virginia is a public school in name and a Public Ivy in practice. It admits roughly 16% of applicants overall, and the OOS pool is admitted…
The Kolly Founders · 9 min read
Admission Requirements for UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley is one of the strangest schools to apply to in the country, and most students don't realize it until they're halfway through the application.…
The Kolly Founders · 10 min read
Admission Requirements for UT Austin
UT Austin is one of the most misunderstood schools in the country. People hear "30% acceptance rate" and assume it's a comfortable target. Then they apply for…
The Kolly Founders · 10 min read
Admission Requirements for Wake Forest
Wake Forest is one of the more misunderstood schools on the application list. People look at the size and the location and assume it's a regional safety with a…
The Kolly Founders · 8 min read
Busting Top 5 College Application Myths
In the journey of higher education, the college application process is a critical milestone. However, with a myriad of details and nuances, it's no surprise…
The Kolly Founders · 8 min read
Extracurriculars Ranking List
Extracurricular activities form a key part of any student's college application, often serving as the platform to demonstrate skills, passions, and commitments…
The Kolly Founders · 12 min read
Reviewing my Harvard Admission's File
Hey! I'm Khoi Nguyen, one of the co-founders of Kolly and a current Harvard student! Venturing into the world of university applications can often feel like…
Khoi Nguyen · 15 min read
