"The eight Ivy League schools — Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale — had a total of 281,060 applicants for the class of 2021. Of those applicants, less than 10% got admissions offers. Harvard had the lowest acceptance rate out of all the Ivies, at just 5%.
Clearly, getting into any Ivy League school is an impressive achievement. So, how do people do it?" …
In case you didn’t know …
Overall, a pretty good summary.
I think the head line should read “Here’s what it takes to get consideration by the Ivy’s”. A student can do all of the things mentioned in the article and will still have a better chance of not getting than being accepted.
I’m attending an Ivy in the fall, so I think I can provide some insight. The biggest thing not mentioned in this article, to me at least and to everyone I’ve talked to who doesn’t have the legacy or $$$ or the connections to “buy” their way into the Ivy League, is your application essays.
Essays are huge. Essays are paramount. Essays get a a guy with a 28 accepted to MIT, girl with a 26 ACT accepted to Stanford, a girl with a 23 ACT into Columbia, a guy with a 20 ACT to UChicago. Write an essay that brings the reader into your world, showcasing not only your ambitions, but your life as well: one that has them laughing and cringing and crying with you. Do that, and you have a pretty good shot at the Ivies.
that explains the booming ‘essay and life-stories crafting for US colleges business’ in china and india …
Even more impressive for middle/upper-middle class non-Jewish white and asian people.
Our system of relying on essays for top schools is insane, and one of the reasons STEM education is declining in this country. Make standardized tests HARD, like in other countries. Test kids trying to get into strong engineering programs on calculus, analytic geometry…or at least look at AP/IB calc and physics scores. Strong STEM kids typically don’t write all that well, so get massively penalized. A friend of mine tells me in India, college entrance exams are graded to 3+ decimal places. Applying to a U.K. was eye opening as well. Their focus was very heavily on AP exam courses and scores (and only 5s would do).
I feel this is 'One Size Fits All" admission process when STEM and Humanities students are totally distinct in their thinking and analysis.
This guide is very superficial. There’s really nothing you can do to significantly boost your chances of admission unless you’re a recruited athlete, legacy, gold-medalist, or minority with the stats of an ivy league-caliber Asian applicant.
Just try your best in school, learn for the sake of gaining new and exiting knowledge, and cross your fingers. At the end of the day, colleges are a business and do not guarantee a successful life. You do that yourself.
@Proteus77 I completely agree with you, I wish the system was like that. The current standardized exams (SAT, SAT subject tests, APs) are much too easy and not heavily weighted at all. But that’s because US is unique in its “holistic” admissions process.
And there’s another reason US colleges are not going to implement harder exams anytime soon. Can you guess what ethnicity of people would be HEAVILY represented in top schools if that happened? And that’s a no no in the US because diversity is one of the most important values. Essays and EC’s give “other” people a chance.
@Proteus77- I do agree with you, but the truth of it is an average engineer who can write/communicate well is going to get hired over an excellent engineer who writes poorly. A huge part of STEM jobs are written communication.
There isn’t a whole lot in the guide that actually gives any insight… It’s just rehashing the obvious
there are many ethnic, religious and cultural groups that value education highly and typically do well. As long as schools correct for, and aim for diversity in sociology-economic status, the system should remain fair, even with heavy emphasis on test scores and grades.
@Mandalorian, there’s a big distinction between creative writing and technical writing. One can be a VERY good technical writer without a creative writing bone in their body.
Assuming that all is equal, no legacy, not URM or an athlete, has committed passionate ECs, portfolio of academic rigor, SAT scores 99th percentile, AP scores all 5s: the essay expressing humor, character and personality is the only tangible part of the application to connect an admissions officer. It is also very subjective and likely depends on the individual reader, time of day, mood, etc…
The system does not “rely on the essay”. There are not enough spaces for qualified applicants, so the top tier schools create their classes out of large pools of equally qualified applicants.
At the next level down, schools compete for these same students with merit aid.
I have to question the “helpfulness” of legacy in the ivies. I have been constantly shocked by kids with double legacies and great stats rejected by the ivies in recent years. It may help a tiny bit, but definitely should not be mentioned in the same breath as “athletic recruit” or URM.
a puff piece for sure, but like someone else said, the article points out necessary but not sufficient conditions to get into an ivy. Doesn’t even mention the interview which is mandatory at Brown, and highly recommended at other places. And totally ignores the URM, legacy, athlete, first to attend college in their family, hooks, maybe because they’re controversial. CC has know about this for a while, in the chance section the format asks for hooks, race, ethnicity in addition to academics, ECs, et al to evaluate an applicant.
Hmm, I think interviews are rather unimportant at most places. I know MIT is an exception, and you mentioned Brown.
Except for MIT, D did not do any interviews. However, she did meet with professors in almost every school she visited so she could discuss the medical research she helped perform the previous two summers. And she then referenced those discussions in the “Why us?” essay that most universities have.
Moderator’s Note: I deleted the posts which prompted TheGreyKing’s post below but it still is good advice.
ED
There is absolutely no place for ad hominem attacks on this website. They are inappropriate.
Let’s all refrain from commenting on people’s ethnicities in a belittling manner AND from name-calling and/or attacking people.
I would really like to know what Brown didn’t like about me. I like to think I have a rigorous schedule, and I got plenty of extracurricular activities on my application, with a very creative essay. My father went to brown, and my brother currently attends Brown. I am really thinking about writing an essay asking why did I not get accepted.