Steven Academy

24/07/2025

On August 1, just one week away, the new Common App and the University of California app will update with new essay topics and application questions for the Fall 2026 application term.

Most questions stay the same from previous years, but make sure to check!

University of Michigan Ann Arbor, for example, has changed one of their two essay topic questions, as announced here:
https://admissions.umich.edu/apply/first-year-applicants/essay-questions

07/07/2025

The AP scores of tests you TOOK this past May are coming out TOMORROW, July 7th!!
Happy Independence Day, America!

"AP Score Release: Coming Soon
Students: Scores for 2025 AP Exams will be available starting July 7."

College Board is a non-profit organization that clears a path for all students to own their future through the AP Program, SAT Suite, BigFuture, and more.

31/05/2025

If you do find that all the College Board SAT testing sites are filled at your nearby testing centers,
1) check back regularly as cancellations can pop up at any time, but most commonly right before or after an earlier testing date,
2) many schools have their own closed testing centers (although you'd know about this from your school by now).

I'd recommend not signing up for consecutive testing dates, as the 2-3 week delay in scores being available will hinder your studying for the next testing date effectively. I recommend for rising 12th graders, for example, Aug 23rd, Oct 4, Dec 6:

a) Aug is a great date to take riding off of a summer of prep,
b) Oct still makes it into early notification deadline universities, and
c) Dec is not a date many serious test takers take, so maybe easier curve?

Sincerely,
Steven Huh
Steven Academy Pres

28/05/2025

The College Board 2025-2026 test dates are now open, so sign up now for the best testing centers near you and preferred test dates!

I apologize for not posting for so long, but I'd lost access to this account after our front desk had passed this account from one to another and then getting lost in the meanwhile ㅠㅠ

I'll post news about us and our new location in San Francisco! ^^

31/10/2017

The Common Application Deadline:
The Common Application server is down as of this writing, 1pm Nov 31 KST Seoul, Korea, and is scheduled to be down for another hour and a half. The Common Application posting about deadlines is as follows, and basically means that midnight Nov 1 KST, Seoul, Korea time is the deadline, NOT midnight of the timezone of the university, although whatever is written in the university website supersedes whatever Common Application would say or write:

"To meet an application deadline, you must submit your application materials by 11:59 pm on the deadline date posted on your Dashboard. The end of the deadline date is in your local time zone, not the college's time zone. Keep in mind, all timestamps are recorded in EST (US Eastern Standard Time). It is always better to submit well before 11:59 pm to avoid last minute issues with your computer or internet access that might cause you to miss the deadline!
Example 1
You live in New York and have an application with a deadline of January 1. You have until 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time on January 1 to submit your application.
Example 2
You live in California and have an application with a deadline of January 1. You have until 11:59 pm Pacific Standard Time on January 1 to submit your application.
Example 3
You live in Shanghai and have an application with a deadline of January 2. You have until 11:59 pm China Standard Time on January 2 to submit your application."

Relevant websites:
https://appsupport.commonapp.org/link/portal/33011/33013/Article/35/When-is-the-deadline-for-my-application-submission

Next is the posting by Common Application about the downed server, as of 1pm Oct 31 KST Seoul, Korea:
https://appsupport.commonapp.org/ics/support/kbanswer.asp?deptID=33013&task=knowledge&questionID=2762

To meet an application deadline, you must submit your application materials by 11:59 pm on the deadline date posted on your Dashboard. The end of the deadline date is in your local time zone, not the college's time zone. Keep in mind, all timestamps are recorded in EST (US Eastern Standard Time). It...

10/10/2017

Not unlimited SAT I and SAT II testing:
There is a limit of six scores each for the SAT I Reasoning Test and the SAT II Subject Test, and that is "discussed" in the link as below. But, the reference is very short. The link is a pdf file and the quote is from page 20 of the pdf file, third paragraph. Honestly, I did not know about this, since I don't know of anyone taking the test this many times. Looking this up from the College Board's website took some searching too, but it is as below.

Cumulative Score Reporting to Students and High Schools:
"The student's score report contains scores from up to six previous SAT and six previous SAT Subject Test administrations, along with the most recent score. These scores are also sent to the student's high school."
http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-advising-and-admission-handbook.pdf

So, if a student takes any more SAT II tests beyond the limit of six, the oldest scores will be erased, one by one to accommodate the newest SAT II test scores added by your most recent newest test. So, if you are taking the SAT II Math 2 test and yet you already have six SAT II scores on your College Board profile, the newest SAT II score you have added will erase the oldest score among the ones you have left. I have no idea, and this link doesn't say, whether cancelling a seventh SAT II score and the seventh SAT II test is enough to keep the oldest of your SAT II test score alive, however.

Again, the same for the SAT I Reasoning Test: only six scores will be usable and saved by College Board, and if you exceed that sixth score, the oldest ones will be replaced with the newest ones, to maintain the stable of six scores total.

Sincerely,
Steven Huh
President
Steven Academy

06/10/2017

Applying EA and ED:
Below are the EA/ED policies of the 5 top 50 Early Action program universities, and the two pdf file links are a complete list of all US ED and EA school policies with an abbreviated statement in summary of their ED vs. EA policies.

In short, THREE of the five EA universities explicitly state that students may NOT apply both Early Decision to some other university and also apply to them Early Action, but of the two EA universities (University of Chicago and Northeastern University) the former stating that applying both ED somewhere and applying EA to it is allowed and the latter stating nothing about that, University of Chicago had been the most shrill and vehement about NOT allowing students to do that, in the years past, and had black listed at least one student, whom I know of personally, for applying ED somewhere else (Dartmouth College) and to University of Chicago.

So, if it were my son or daughter, I wouldn't risk it and apply both EA and ED, but as you can see, the policy is there and your decision is entirely up to you. Be careful, therefore, and I highly recommend you do not apply both Early Action AND Early Decision at the same time.

However, applying to public universities Early Action or Priority Decision or Rolling Decision or whatever they want to call it at the same time applying to a PRIVATE university Early Decision is fine and not even frowned upon.

Sincerely, Steven Huh
President/Chief Executive Steven Academy, Co. Ltd.

Georgetown's Early Action policy:
https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/yp9g5d9kwb4sgainpj4ff6mrxkz4l9jo
Page 3, 1st paragraph
"In keeping with this principle, students applying under the Early Action program may not apply at the same time to binding Early Decision programs since they then would not be free to choose Georgetown if admitted. Students are welcome to apply to other Early Action programs or other Regular Decision programs while at the same time applying to Georgetown's Early Action Program."

University of Chicago Early Action policy:
https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/apply/application/application-plans
2nd paragraph under Early Decision I mid-way down the page
"Students may only apply Early Decision to one college, but may apply to other schools through non-binding admission plans in addition to an Early Decision application."

University of Notre Dame's Early Action policy:
http://admissions.nd.edu/apply/early-regular-decision/
1st and 2nd bullet points of page
" * A student applying Restrictive Early Action to Notre Dame may apply to other Early Action programs.
* A student applying Restrictive Early Action to Notre Dame may not apply to any college or university in their binding Early Decision program."

Boston College Early Action policy:
http://www.bc.edu/admission/undergrad/process/freshman/deadlines.html
3rd bullet point under "Understanding our Early Action Policy"
"A student applying to a binding Early Decision program may not apply Early Action to Boston College."

Northeastern University Early Action policy:
https://www.northeastern.edu/admissions/application-information/faq/ -want-to-apply-early-decision
Under "I want to apply Early Decision or Early Action, what should I know?"
However, the site and that paragraph says nothing about applying early action and early decision to two different institutions.

ALL "Fall 2017 schools with EA plans"
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yvuf5y43y7iikn6/fall%202017%20schools%20with%20EA%20plans.pdf?dl=0

"Fall 2017 schools with ED plans" as applies to EA
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bowpxfbrjp3dinq/fall%202017%20schools%20with%20ED%20plans.pdf?dl=0

24/07/2017

Common Application 2017-2018:
The new Common Application is going to be up August 1st and will be off-line (probably while they revamp and renew for the new year) on July 24th. So, if you had any application inputs before that, they will all be erased with the August 1 release. Make sure too that all the college supplement essay topics haven't changed from the last year to this year's ones!

07/06/2017

College Application Anonymity:
Like the article below, colleges are rumored to be and have had instances of checking applicants’ internet presence before deciding to accept, deny, or waitlist. I don’t think colleges have a formal policy of checking applicant’s social network posts, but I think individual college admissions officers do try to search for an applicant’s internet footprint, on their own volition. However, I believe that teenagers in high school are guilty of indiscretions or at the very least should be afforded a private playground to let loose and just be a youngster, without worry of prying eyes, especially of college admissions officers. Also, too, I was once stunned in class when the conversation turned to a person’s internet footprint and someone looked me up on a site like pipl.com and told me all about my personal life. I was stunned to speechlessness for minutes. So, there is a way to control your privacy, as applies to college admissions, but I do hope you don’t have any hateful or bigoted tendencies that really should be outed. 1) When inputting into your application, use a brand new email address, like gmail or yahoo, that isn’t used anywhere else to sign up for accounts or is linked to any other site. Put it into a fishbowl and leave it there, unconnected to anything. 2) Change the public name of your YouTube channel and change the photo of your ID picture to something that isn’t your face or any identifying depiction, 3) Change all of your FaceBook posts to Friends of Friends, and not Public. Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram are other social networking sites that often show up on such a search, although I’ve not seen SnapChat so much yet. (I would recommend the same for later job applications, since personnel offices definitely check a new applicant’s social networking and internet presence before hiring). 4) And, link the email address to your current one in an email forwarding service that most big internet email providers have. If you’re really paranoid, don’t link at all, but make sure you check that email account after applying to university regularly, since universities will notify you of news, missing application information, and online application tracking systems, and such. Do this at least for the duration of your application process, but the first step of using a new email address will take care of a lot of such privacy problems. Well, happy college hunting!

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/06/06/531591202/harvard-rescinds-admission-of-10-students-over-obscene-facebook-messages

Several would-be freshmen in the class of 2021 lost their spots when they posted offensive material in a group Facebook chat. College officials and high school counselors are reacting to the news.

30/05/2017

Sign up now for our summer intensives!
Instead of waiting for the first day of summer intensives, avoid the lines and the rush of the first day, June 5th, a Monday, and sign up in advance. If your parents have a BC credit card, classes can be signed up over the phone. If you or your parents want to ask questions, do so via Kakao Talk and look us up at . Even the next Mondays after that, June 12th and June 19th, are very busy too with long lines. Especially, if you are signing up for "exotic" classes in our schedule, which may or may not open depending on how many have signed up before the first day of class, do so now. If the class hasn't started and you or your parents request a refund, for whatever reason, we will do so for the full amount, excepting credit card fees. Your early registration will insure that the class opens, if we have minimum number of students to start the class. This can be particularly the case with some uncommon AP and IB subject classes, since we offer so many as very affordable, very well taught, scheduled classes. Come in today!

15/05/2017

The Wait List:
You may hear from your wait-list schools that you are now accepted (although I know of this happening to only two students in my 20 years of experience). If this happens to you, this is what is usually done: 1) You will have already given notice to your accepted school "A" that you will attend and will have paid the enrollment deposit there (usually $200 to $500). 2) After getting your acceptance letter from school "B" off of the wait-list, inform school "A" that you got accepted to school "B" and that you will be enrolling with school "B." (It's usual practice and courtesy to give the name of the school you will be attending instead). You can usually do this in an email to school "A," although I would back that up with a phone call too, since a miscommunication about this could lead to school "A" getting really upset and causing you all sorts of problems. 3) You will go through the regular enrollment process with school "B" (like sending your final transcript for 12th grade 2nd semester grades, choosing a dorm room, paying school "B" enrollment deposit, setting up a school email account, and getting embedded into their records system with some kind of computer ID and password for school "B." 4) After informing school "A" that you are cancelling your enrollment, you will lose the initial enrollment deposit you paid it, the $200 to $500 you had sent before May 1 this year. There is no way for you to reclaim your enrollment deposit at school "A," as losing that deposit is the nature and function of a "deposit."

You may have some difficulties at school "B" because you are being included into their network system late, so make sure you don't miss any deadlines, by checking with their website for new students. The university computer system may not remember to include you in new student email reminders, for example. Almost all universities or colleges will have an online enrollment checklist of things to do as a new student, so make sure you are doing all of those things on time. And, that should be it!

If the word "double deposit" sounds familiar to you, but you don't know what that is, search on this FaceBook account wall for that entry. It's very important that you didn't "double deposit," enroll at two universities/colleges at once.