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ILUMIN Blog

Helpful tips about college admissions, test preparation and just being a better student, leader and person from ILUMIN Education.

Filtering by Category: Hot Topics/Trends

Webinar Transcript: The Digital SAT vs. The ACT

Elton Lin

This is a transcript of a webinar from August 2024, a recording of which you can find on our YouTube channel. Thank you again to Ivy Method Tutors for co-hosting this webinar with us!

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Is Early Admissions Evolving? UChicago’s Early Early Decision and Others

Elton Lin

This past summer, The University of Chicago announced their binding Summer Student Early Notification (SSEN) application option: high school seniors students who have previously completed one of UChicago’s summer programs can now apply to the university between September and mid-October—earlier than the ED1 timeline. This development adds to UChicago’s wide range of early application options; the institution already offers ED1, EA, and ED2.

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What Does the Supreme Court’s Ruling Against Affirmative Action Mean for Your Student?

Elton Lin

The status of affirmative action in college admissions, or admission policies that consider the race of applicants in order to admit more students of underrepresented and historically-discriminated groups into higher education, has been in question for years

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Why ChatGPT Won’t Help You Write Your Perfect College Essay

Elton Lin

Chances are good that you’ve heard people wondering how ChatGPT-influenced essays will affect the college admissions process. It’s guaranteed that the available resources — everything from the advancement of AI to official guidelines from the universities themselves — will always turn over new updates for the most effective strategies. As for now, we’ve experimented with different ways that using ChatGPT can benefit or harm a student’s college application essays.

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Webinar Transcript: 2023 Admissions Trends: What’s Changed?

Elton Lin

We're tackling a pretty interesting topic tonight – because now that summer's here (happy June!) we're going to look back at this past 2022-2023 admissions cycle, and talk through some of the trends we've been seeing in college admissions.

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Is Standardized Testing Back?

Elton Lin

Was “test-optional” just a COVID anomaly?

The idea of ditching “standardized” testing isn’t new. Test-optional policies have been around long before COVID-19. All that the pandemic did was push many schools to put it into practice – a live “test run,” if you will.

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Should UC Berkeley Have a Max Enrollment?

Elton Lin

Colleges across the board are getting more and more competitive – especially among the big names. This graph shows just the past ten years:

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What is Yield Protection?

Elton Lin

It’s the beginning of the new year, which means many seniors have just recently turned in their last few applications and are now eagerly awaiting results. But in the back of their minds they might recall hearing odd results from previous years, such as students getting waitlisted or rejected by their safeties. Is that a sign for bad news to come? Or is there something deeper going on?

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Class of 2026 Early Admissions: Results and Trends

Elton Lin

It’s mid-March, which means that across the world, students of the incoming Class of 2026 are waiting to hear back from colleges about their Regular Decision responses.

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The new, digital SAT

Elton Lin

Over the last several years, the SAT has undergone some phenomenal changes. For parents who took the test themselves to get into college, and are now hoping to help their children do the same… unfortunately, it isn’t that easy. This guide will catch you up to where the SAT is in 2022.

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