Dan Godlin is the Founder & CEO of CollegeCommit, a NYC-based boutique college admissions consulting firm serving high-achieving students worldwide. Over the past 14 years, he has guided 600+ students to top universities, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and USC. Dan holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors from NYU, where he studied psychology with a focus on emotional intelligence and human behavior, and now leads a team of senior strategists and mentors who provide highly personalized, data-driven admissions guidance.
Showing genuine interest in a college can influence how admissions offices perceive your application, and NYU is no exception.
Knowing how to show interest in NYU means understanding what actions the university tracks. It also means knowing how those actions compare with grades and test scores. Finally, it means seeing how they fit into your overall application plan.
In college admissions, demonstrated interest means clear actions a student takes to show they truly want to attend a school. Colleges use these signals to predict which admitted students are likely to enroll, a metric known as the yield rate.
Getting strong teacher letters of recommendation comes down to three things: choosing the right person, asking at the right time, and giving your teacher the right materials.
A personal statement arc is the structure that carries an applicant’s story from a starting point to a moment of change, built around six stages: exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
A strong overcoming challenges essay centers on what a student did after a setback, not on the setback itself. Admissions officers read this essay to see problem-solving in action.
Writing a strong extracurricular activities essay means picking one specific activity, choosing a structure that fits your story, and spending most of your words on what you learned rather than what the group accomplished.
Most schools ask this question through a specific prompt: describe a time you worked with others toward a shared goal. A collaboration essay is a college application essay. It shows how a student helps a group. It does not focus on the group’s final result.
An identity essay is a personal essay that explains one part of who you are. It might focus on your culture, your family, or a personal experience. Colleges use this essay to see the real person behind the grades and test scores.
A supplemental application question about a student’s background or identity is often called a diversity essay. It asks the writer to explain how one part of their life shaped them. This part may relate to culture, economic background, family structure, or another personal factor.
An identity supplemental essay asks you to explain how an important part of who you are, such as your culture, beliefs, community, or background, has shaped your perspective and how you might contribute to campus life.