Our CAO scholarship recipients have gained admission to a wide range of leading US universities, including Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cornell, Princeton, UPenn, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Duke, UChicago, NYU, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, Tufts, Bowdoin, UC Berkeley, and many, many more!

We're looking for students that meet the following criteria:

• Demonstrate strong preparation and the potential to thrive in a rigorous academic environment. This means challenging yourself throughout your educational journey and maintaining an outstanding academic record that reflects your commitment to excellence and growth.
• Demonstrate strong extracurricular involvement, leadership skills, and academic honors.
• Demonstrate financial need — specifically students whose families can contribute less than 30,000 USD towards their education per year.
• Demonstrate strong English proficiency
• Are ambitious, driven, and enthusiastic about reaching their dreams at a US university.

CAO supports students from every country and nationality. We encourage you to apply no matter where you are located!

Students completing their junior year (or international equivalent) are encouraged to apply, to receive support in their senior year (to start university the following year), if selected. We also welcome students on a gap year who intend to start university in the fall term, after another year.

Please note: we do not accept transfer or younger students.

Applications open on February 1st. The priority deadline is on March 1st, 2026, and the final deadline is on April 12th, 2026. We are, unfortunately, not able to extend the deadlines.

Our application is like a mini-version of the Common Application. As a part of the application, we will ask about your grades, any standardised test scores, your activities, your honours and awards, your financial circumstances, and we will also ask you to submit essays and a video/audio response. The application is rigorous, but we promise that it'll be worth it! You'll also be able to use lots of your work in your college applications, which will ask you similar questions. Make sure that you draft your application questions on a separate document first, both so that you can save it for your future applications, and so that you can ask someone to give you feedback before you submit it.

No, there is no minimum grade requirement. However, we look for applicants who have continuously excelled and challenged themselves academically. That means that we are looking for students who have been placed in the top ranks of their school.

We look for students who demonstrate leadership and initiative in their communities, both in and out of school. We also look for students who have excelled and demonstrated talent and clear interests in certain areas, and that have stayed committed to several activities for longer periods of time. While there isn’t a required number of activities that would qualify a student for CAO, our accepted students tend to have 8+ activities (out of 10 possible) filled out on the application. We look both at quantitative and qualitative factors when evaluating the activities, and there are no “right or wrong” activities. Students also get to report 5 honors and awards. In that section, we are looking for students who have demonstrated a high level of achievement.

The essay prompts are meant to give us a better idea about your interests, personality, motivations, and life experiences. We are looking for independent, original thinkers with the ability to engage critically with the world around them. What we are looking for is students who can express their thoughts and experiences authentically and coherently. Essays that focus on personal development tend to be especially impactful.

You will be able to elaborate on that in the additional information section of the application.

No, this program will only provide students with Crimson’s admissions support services for free. Applicants are expected to find means to cover their application-related fees (including standardized tests). Moreover, although the program will support CAO students with applying for financial aid, the CAO program and services included do not imply a guarantee of admission to any colleges or the availability of financial or merit scholarships upon admission. Crimson Education services will only cover college admission support and cannot be held liable for the admission outcomes.

All results will be released in mid to late May. Applicants do not need to follow up on their application results, they will receive their results over email.

Selected candidates will be required to respond with a confirmation of their acceptance of our offer by the deadline specified in their letter of acceptance. If a selected candidate fails to respond by this stipulated time, their spot will be given to a candidate on the waiting list.

Due to the high volume of applications globally, we are unfortunately unable to provide individualised feedback on unsuccessful applications.

The programme starts in early June. During the onboarding process, students will be introduced to each of the experts helping them in their application process and guided on accessing Crimson’s extensive array of resources and important points of contact for their queries and feedback.

Please email us at cao@crimsoneducation.org and we will respond to your email within 5 working days.

While applicants will be asked to indicate if they are interested in being considered for both programmes, accepted students will not be able to choose which programme they want to participate in - they will receive an offer to just one of the two programmes.

Yes, students can get support on their QuestBridge application through CAO.

No, CAO only supports students with applications to the US.