By Greg Kaplan for the Los Angeles Times.

There has been a lot of discussion about Chat GPT in the news. For those who aren’t familiar with Chat GPT, it is a platform that is often referred to as a “language machine” or chatbot that uses statistics, reinforcement learning, and supervised learning to generate words, phrases, and sentences. What does it mean for college applicants?

Our approach to college counseling is to help students identify the right educational paths for them to achieve health, happiness, and financial independence. We are firm believers in students applying to colleges that feed into strong job markets for their fields.

With AP and IB classes it is important to focus on what matters the most with the classes: the underlying grades.

The College Board recently announced that they will be revamping the SAT in 2024. The new SAT will be offered on the computer in testing centers. The test will be shortened from three hours to two hours and allow a calculator for all math questions. The test will also be dynamic, meaning that the questions will change depending on whether a test taker answers questions correctly or incorrectly.

The number of applications submitted to highly selective public and private universities continues to climb, which also is leading to already low acceptance rates falling even further. The University of California recently released statistics for the Class of 2022 application cycle. This year the UC system received a record 210,840 applications from prospective freshmen, which marked a 0.5% jump from Fall 2021 when a then-record 203,700 applied. UCLA remains the most applied to college in the nation, with just shy of 150,000 people applying. UC Irvine logged the biggest increase in applications in the UC system, with almost 120,000 submitted.

The University of California System (“UC”) announced that they reached a settlement with applicants and enrolled students to drop the SAT or ACT from the application review process for Fall 2021 and beyond.

This all-or-nothing perspective on the college admissions process has spurred individuals to take extreme measures in the pursuit of getting into brand-name colleges.

Many students are keenly aware that participating in extracurricular activities such as internships, community service, and school clubs are great ways to build their academic resume in preparation for college, but part-time work is sometimes passed over as an interruption from the business of earning admission to a selective school.

The vast majority of colleges have released their admissions decisions for the Class of 2021. In analyzing our Seniors’ results, it is evident that with schools that accept test scores, scores that are strong for that school’s applicant pool are beneficial. While it is unclear the role the SAT/ACT will play for the UC system, we are encouraging our students in the Class of 2022 and 2023 to assess their test prep plans.

There are several ways that an applicant can convey their value to the university community outside of cut-and-dry grading or scoring data, and letters of recommendation from teachers are an excellent measure to highlight a student’s strengths through what colleges consider an objective assessment of the applicant.

Ongoing levels of community spread of COVID-19 in Southern California call into question whether the SAT or

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, many predicted that there would be fewer applicants applying and that it would be easier to earn admission to college. This is not the case. To the surprise of many, the number of applications to