Guiding Success: College Admissions with Sarah Harberson

Our Take: Is This Advice Trustworthy?

Short answer: yes, with a few caveats. Her authority is real and independently verifiable, not self-branded — she was Associate Dean of Admissions at Penn, then became the youngest Dean of Admissions in the country at Franklin & Marshall, and later ran the college counseling office at the Baldwin School, an elite private high school. That combination — having sat on both sides of the admissions desk — is genuinely rare among private college counselors and is her strongest credential.

Net take: a credible, well-qualified source worth taking seriously — use her framework (testing timeline, rigor, list-building) with confidence, and treat her more opinionated absolutes as one experienced perspective among several, not settled fact.

On This Page

Introduction

Sarah Harberson opened with a story about her own son — a high school sophomore she'd been encouraging for months to reach out to a school administrator about an opportunity. He kept refusing, until a guest speaker, a total stranger, told him the exact same thing at a school event. It finally clicked.

"So I was thinking about how all of you must be feeling about the college admissions process. Even though I may feel like a stranger at this moment, by the end of tonight's session I hope you'll get a better sense of how I approach the college admissions process — and of my expertise. Tonight is about getting on the same page so we're all giving students the same, best guidance."

The session ran just over an hour, covering every piece of the application a student is responsible for, then closing with how to build a balanced college list.

📝 Standardized Testing (SAT/ACT)

Sarah opened with test scores deliberately: "they matter a lot more than colleges and universities let on." The session focused on the ACT and SAT specifically, since those have the most admissions data available (Florida also accepts the CLT at some schools).

Since the pandemic, average ACT/SAT scores nationally have declined — but at highly selective colleges and Florida's most popular schools, the average score of the admitted pool has actually gone up. That's a real signal of how heavily these scores are weighted, regardless of what schools say publicly.

The Data: Florida's Most Popular Schools, 2019 vs. 2025

Harberson compared middle-50% admitted-student ranges before the pandemic (2019) to the most recent full cycle (2025) across UF, Florida State, USF, UCF, Florida Atlantic, and University of Miami. Every one of the six saw scores increase over that period. University of Florida specifically:

Admissions officers don't need AI to use test scores — a name and a score tell them immediately how competitive an applicant is. It's the fastest way to filter a pool. Students admitted below the middle-50% range are the exception, not the rule: typically recruited athletes or students from underrepresented backgrounds or states.

Her Advice

Use the summer to prepare and test: the ACT is offered in July, the SAT in August, and both in September — and students often post their best scores in the summer or early fall of senior year.

• Free: Khan Academy (SAT) and the official Blue Book practice tests; free ACT practice materials directly on the ACT's site. Works best for a highly self-disciplined student.
• Books: The Princeton Review for an all-in-one SAT guide; the official ACT Prep Guide for the ACT.
• Tutoring: the strongest results come from a class or one-on-one work with an expert test-prep tutor — Harberson personally recommends Franklin Yard, which she's used both for her own son and with Application Nation families for over a decade.

📋 The High School Transcript

Test scores are quick to read; a transcript takes real time — every high school uses a different template, curriculum, and sometimes grading system. Florida transcripts often run several pages.

Colleges focus on 9th–12th grade and specifically on five core academic subjects: English, math, science, history/social studies, and a world (or ancient) language. Rigor matters as much as grades — for a school like Harvard, a 4.0 in a general college-prep track isn't enough; they expect the most advanced version available (AP or IB) of all five core subjects. The most common mistake Harberson sees: students easing off senior year. Staying in all five core subjects through 12th grade correlates with stronger outcomes.

The "5×4 Plan"

Her course-selection framework: five core subjects, all four years. Don't aim for the school's or a college's stated minimum — give colleges what they actually want to see. A strong senior schedule still leaves room for an elective, even a study hall (which doesn't carry a grade or appear as a red flag — admissions officers won't know or care it's there).

Reviewing the Transcript

Transcripts are available through Skyward in August or September. Recommended steps:

• Print it and check it carefully — mistakes happen (wrong grade, missing class, incorrect rank), and a parent or guardian is often the only one who catches it.
• See exactly what colleges will see — Florida transcripts can include middle-school classes, immunization records, class rank, and every grade from 9th–12th.
• Keep it accurate for self-reporting. A growing number of schools skip the official transcript and instead have students self-report grades through STARS (Self-Reported Transcript and Academic Record System) — UF, Florida State, USF, UCF, and Florida Atlantic all use their own version. An accurate transcript on hand keeps the self-reported data correct.

🎾 Activities & Extracurriculars

Harberson deliberately says "activities" rather than "extracurriculars" — she wants students representing everything meaningful they do outside class. A common misconception: that students need a resume. A few schools want one (Florida State, but only through its own institutional application, which has no activities section) — otherwise, if a school accepts the Common App, use it. Admissions officers read the Common App's activities section, not a separate resume.

"Activities" is a wide umbrella: school or club sports, a religious youth group, community service, an independent hobby, research, a job or internship, even significant family responsibilities.

Making It Stand Out

It has to stay honest and accurate — never inflated. But it isn't a resume, and doesn't have to be sterile. Each entry gets a position, an organization, and a 150-character description — not words, characters. That's two or three short sentences at most, which is exactly why voice and specificity matter.

One tip: students often lose focus on their last listed activity. But admissions officers — speed readers — spend real time on the first few, skim the middle, then look closely at the last one. Don't waste it.

Building the List Over the Summer

Right after junior year ends is a good time to sit down and list everything since 9th grade — students almost always discover they have more than they thought. Common App allows up to 10 activities; that's a ceiling, not a target — it's about quality, not quantity. If there's a real gap (no community service, nothing showing evidence of an intended major), summer is the time to fill it.

✍️ The Main Essay (Personal Statement)

The Common App main essay is capped at 650 words — roughly one single-spaced page plus a few lines. It's not a five-paragraph essay and doesn't need a thesis statement. What it needs is a genuinely special topic — that matters more than anything else, even flawless grammar. After 27 years of reading applications, Harberson says she often forgets a student's name but always remembers their essay topic.

Topics to Avoid

• An activity — the obvious choice, and exactly why it's the wrong one; that space already exists elsewhere in the application.
• Sports — interest tends to drop the moment a reader sees a sports mention, even in passing.
• Privileged experiences, like a fancy vacation.
• A student's own mental-health struggles — essays about someone close to the student dealing with a mental-health issue can land beautifully; essays about the student's own struggles tend not to, in Harberson's experience. (Her explicit caveat: there's still real bias in admissions, and this is her honest read, not a universal rule.)

The strongest essays center on something not already mentioned elsewhere in the application — small, specific, and revealing. A few real topics from this year's Application Nation seniors: a weekly ritual of wearing a necktie every Tuesday; friendship lessons from a grandmother's garden club; being "lead musketeer" for two younger cousins; a family's multi-generational smokehouse renovation; the red clay soil of small-town Georgia. None dramatic — all specific and self-reflective.

📄 Supplemental Essays

Not every school requires them, but many selective ones do — sometimes one, sometimes several (Stanford requires eight). Length ranges from 50 to 650 words. They matter as much as the main essay, and they add up fast: applying to every Ivy could mean 25–30 supplemental essays on top of everything else.

Example — University of Florida: UF's required 250-word supplement asks for "your most meaningful commitment." Most students default to writing about an activity — but UF admissions officers have told Harberson directly that students who write about something else tend to submit stronger essays. Real examples from this year's applicants: a future environmental science major writing about the bucket that catches shower water in his home ("a symbol of my family's commitment to sustainability"); a student writing about always leaving her bedroom door open for her siblings; a student describing a recurring, informal cousins' club meeting.

🗺️ Building the College List

Harberson starts by talking directly with the student. The questions, in order, and why each one matters:

• Geography — usually the first thing mentioned, and worth gently pushing on. A student who says "I want to go south to avoid winter" often hasn't actually thought about whether they'd miss having four seasons.
• Size — students often say "a big school" without knowing what that means; nearly every college is bigger than their high school, so it's worth clarifying what "big" actually looks like to them.
• Competitiveness — test scores and transcript rigor give an immediate, objective read.
• Fit — the more subjective piece. Meeting a student and hearing how they describe themselves (academically driven vs. social-scene-focused, family values, political leanings) shapes the list meaningfully — the worst outcome is a student who arrives on campus and feels like no one there is like them.
• What matters most, first — whatever a student says first when asked what they're looking for tells Harberson the most, even though it can change later.
• Schools already on the radar, and what they've visited — often just the school nearest home, which is a genuinely good starting point for visits. She weighs disliked schools as heavily as loved ones: knowing exactly what a student hated helps screen that quality out of future picks.

Balancing the List

By senior year, Harberson aims for 9–12 colleges, split roughly evenly across three tiers:

• Reach — genuinely more competitive for that student
• Target — squarely inside the school's middle-50% range
• Likely — scores/grades sit above the middle-50% range (she avoids "safety" —"there are no safeties left in college admissions")

Early Decision, Early Action, and Rolling Admissions

• Early decision (ED) — binding; decisions by mid-December. Acceptance rates typically run 2–4x higher than regular decision. Florida State just announced it will offer ED starting this year.
• Early action (EA) — non-binding, same fall timeline. Florida State confirmed a real gap: 38% EA acceptance vs. 19% regular decision.
• Rolling admissions — applications open August 1st; applying early (Aug–Oct) meaningfully beats applying January–March.

A student who applies ED can generally still apply to non-restrictive EA programs elsewhere. It only gets complicated with restrictive EA programs — a short list: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Georgetown, Notre Dame. If admitted under ED, a student must immediately withdraw every other active application.

💬 Q&A

See also: the Complete Common App Walkthrough and Essay Writing Guide for this site's own step-by-step versions of several topics covered in this webinar.