Blog - JRA Educational Consulting

As of May 2026, Tulane, UGA, UVA, and the University of Washington have all eliminated supplemental essays for the 2026-27 application cycle.

On May 22, 2026,

By March 1, 2026, students had submitted 9.4 million applications to Common App member institutions, a 5% increase over the prior year (Common App 2025-26 March Deadline Update). The students who handle senior year well aren't t...

When Marc came to JRA, he had a profile that ten years ago would have been a near-lock at most of his target schools: 15 APs from a top South Florida private school, a 1540 SAT, near-perfect AP scores, and a portfolio built squarely for computer science. He applied to Duke, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Harvard – without usi...

Short answer: usually no, except in Florida. At top-twenty colleges, the AA reads as a rigor signal but rarely as advanced standing.

Florida is the exception. In-state students with an AA get a structural second look at every State University System school under a

The May 1 college commitment deadline is approaching, and thousands of families across the country are staring at the same question: How do we commit to a school when we still don't know what it will actually cost?

If your student has been selected for FAFSA verification, this question hits even hard...