2026 Admissions Results

Admissions Results: 2025-2026

We’ve just concluded another college admissions cycle at Big Green College Prep, and here are some of the key results and insights for the 2025-2026 cycle.

Enrollment

This year, we helped 26 students apply to college. In addition, 14 students enrolled in our SAT test prep program, and 18 students participated in our Candidacy Building program for students in grades 8–11.

Demographics

Our students came from across the U.S. and around the world. The most represented regions were the Northeast (#1), Midwest (#2), and Texas (#3). We also worked with international students from China, Romania, England, Brazil, Turkey, Guatemala, India, and Canada.

Admissions Results

Of the 26 students we helped with college applications: 17 students (65%) were admitted to their first-choice college, 22 students (88%) were admitted to a Top 30 university, and 100% were admitted to a Top 50 university.

One of the most popular “dream schools” this year was UPenn. Three students applied ED, and all three were admitted—one to the College of Arts & Sciences and two to highly selective dual-degree programs with Wharton: the Jerome Fisher M&T Program in partnership with Engineering and the Life Sciences & Management (LSM) Program.

Where Our Students Are Enrolling

Here’s where our students are planning to enroll Fall 2026: Harvard (1), Yale (1), MIT (2), Penn (3), Columbia (1), Dartmouth (1), Stanford (1), Brown (1), Duke (1), Northwestern (1), Berkeley, (1), Cornell (1), Notre Dame (1), USC (2), Michigan (1), Boston College (1), Emory (1), Haverford (1), NYU (1), UNC-Chapel Hill (1).

Here are our results from the past five years: Harvard (4), Yale (5), Princeton (4), MIT (6), Penn (8), Dartmouth (4), Stanford (3), Brown (4), Duke (6), Amherst (2), Northwestern (6), Cornell (7), Columbia (4), Berkeley (2), Michigan (7), Georgetown (4), Caltech (2), Carnegie Mellon (5), NYU (7), Boston College (7), Claremont McKenna (2), Johns Hopkins (4), UCLA (3), Georgia Tech (2), WashU St. Louis (5), UVA (5), Emory (6), Tufts (2), Swarthmore (1).

SAT Test Prep Results

14 students enrolled in our SAT course. The average improvement from start to finish was 195 points. 10 of 14 students (71%) scored above 1500. 7 students (50%) scored 1550 or higher. Two students earned a perfect math score (800), and one student earned a perfect verbal score (800). The most impressive increase was a student from California who started with a score of 1280 (600 Verbal, 680 Math) and finished with a super score of 1550 (760 Verbal, 790 Math)—for a total increase of 270 points.

Year-End Takeaways

One trend became especially clear this year: although extracurricular achievement remains essential to elite college admissions, GPA continues to be one of the most important factors in the process.

Across the board, our students admitted to Ivy League and other Top 20 universities typically earned near-perfect grades throughout high school—generally an unweighted GPA in the 3.9–4.0 range. We saw several strong students with compelling extracurriculars and excellent essays—but slightly lower GPAs in the 3.6–3.8 range—fall short at some of their top-choice schools.

The takeaway is this: top universities are now inundated with tens of thousands of highly qualified applicants. With that level of competition, admissions offices can afford to focus primarily on students with near-perfect academic records while still assembling exceptionally talented, interesting, and well-rounded classes.

The lesson is simple: we’ve entered a hyper-competitive era where even a few B’s on your transcript can reduce your chances at the most selective universities. Be strategic with course selection and take the most rigorous courses in which you can excel—the key phrase being in which you can excel.