College application season has started. And despite the urging of your parents, the majority of you have not started on your essays or done in-depth research on your potential schools. Here's a bit of advice on what is important to look for when researching and determining your potential admittance rate into a particular school.

When doing research for schools, I looked a lot at how selective a certain school was. If a school, like Harvard, was more selective, like five percent, I thought I would have a basically negative chance of getting in.

But my parents kept telling me to apply anyway, because: "you never know." There's always that glimmer of hope inside all of us, that thinks, "yeah, why not me? I should just try it!"

To be honest, Ivy-league schools such as Harvard or Princeton receive an unbelievably high amount of applications. Last application season, Harvard received 39,044 applications. To read every essay of every applicant would be an arduous process and impossible to complete in those few months. Usually, Harvard or other highly selective schools will first narrow down by a student's statistics before reading the essays and other supplements like recommendation letters. If a student's statistics (like SAT scores and GPA) are not in a certain range, the school will not even read the rest of the application. RIP my desperate hopes.

So to avoid situations like these, make sure you do smart research about your schools.

When college acceptances are in a certain range, usually around 20% to 40 or 50%, the college acceptance rates really do not matter. Focus on more looking at the statistics of the admitted students, what the school's mission is and if you have done extracurriculars or have an essay that fits it.

Many prospective college students make the mistake of looking exclusively at acceptance rates and trying to decipher if they can get in. Rather than looking at that, I would look at the ranking of a school. Everybody has a different "range" of target schools, safety schools, and reach schools.

Acceptance rates are extremely subjective by school, and more than just selectivity goes into that number. For instance, Northeastern University has an acceptance rate of 28%, which is one percent lower than Boston University's acceptance rate. Here's a partial reason as to why: both schools are on the Common App (a gift sent from the heavens). However, at least when I applied to Northeastern, there were no supplemental essays, whereas BU did require supplements, making Northeastern easier to apply to. With more applicants, but the same number of spots, the acceptance rate drops.

Here's another example of subjectivity of college acceptance rates: Emory University, also known as the Harvard of the South, has an acceptance rate of 23%. It is a top notch school, consistently ranking in the top 20 of US schools. Admitted student statistics are: 3.7-3.95 for an unweighted GPA. The range of SAT scores are 2020-2260. Schools like Bates College and Hamilton College are a lot smaller and have less space than Emory, making their acceptance rates the same, despite Emory being a higher ranked school.

Another reason to look at more than just the overall acceptance rate is that acceptance rates can be different for in-state and out of state public schools. However, University of Texas at Austin has around a 40% acceptance rate, but give an extremely large advantage to instate students. The out of state acceptance rate is around 10 to 15%.

Every school has a different target market of students; for instance, University of California at Santa Barbara has a different vibe and culture that attracts a different group of prospective students than Northeastern University. Those attracted to the culture at UC Santa Barbara have different statistics than those wanting to go to Northeastern. Each group that the school attracts would have a different group of statistics and their acceptance rate is that amount accepted from that group.

Finally, keep in mind that just because a school has a lower acceptance rate than another one, it does not mean that it is a better school. It could just mean they have fewer seats because it is a smaller school, it doesn't have a supplement essay so applications are higher, or a myriad of other reasons.

Hopefully that helps you do smarter (and quicker) research on potential colleges. Good luck with all of your college applications!