Does anyone think I can get into an ivy. East asian male from midwest, good stats and ecs. My previous results were:
Accepted:
UCLA
UC Berkeley regents scholarship and other scholarships
All other UCs (UCSD, UCI, UCSB, etc…)
Georgetown EA
USC EA
WL:
UChicago (Hard to get RD, I was kind of expecting it)
WashU
CMU
UC DAVIS
Rejected:
JHU
Really losing hope after JHU rejection. Please. Can I get one ivy at least.
Sure, if you applied. If you didn’t then no.
Why be afraid ?
You have great admits. You’re going to a great school.
Are any affordable ?
Ivy is an athletic league. And they are simply schools like any other.
Your life will be fine no matter where you attend, Ivy or otherwise.
Good luck.
a rejection from one school is not a tell if you are going to get into an ivy league, or any school for that matter. all schools are different and admit people on different pretenses. with your previous acceptances it looks like your applications were great, and so there is no reason for you to lose hope. even if you don’t get in to any ivies, you have a great list of schools to choose from. the world will not end if you don’t get into one. good luck!
You have a solid chance.
Even if you don’t, you already have admits to schools that are no less.
Good luck for Ivy Day. Please do post here if you get in. I’d be looking forward to you sharing great news and celebrate with us.
Just because I think it is important for kids to hear this from adults like me who in fact attended one of these schools:
The Ivy League is just an athletic conference, and while all the colleges in that athletic conference are very good colleges, only a fraction of very good colleges in the US are in the conference. Like Cornell is in because it was a reasonable bus ride for football teams from Harvard and Yale. That doesn’t mean Cornell was intrinsically better than other similar research universities, just closer.
And once you are at one of those colleges, you quickly realize they are in fact just colleges. Again, good colleges, but they are not a magical golden ticket. And in fact, later in life you will inevitably be surrounded by professional peers who went to a wide variety of colleges. And even in the short term, when kids who were peers in HS compare notes on their various college experiences, the kids who went to the most selective colleges in their peer group will not necessarily be having the best experience, getting the best grades, looking at the best internships, or so on. It really doesn’t work that way.
So really this is a matter of fit, like with any colleges. Maybe one of these colleges actually is a good fit for you, and they will think the same, and then cool, you could consider attending. Maybe, however, the best fit for you among your available choices will not be any of these colleges, in which case whether or not you are accepted ends up unimportant. I know it may feel really important at the moment some kids are bragging about their acceptances, but trust me in a year, virtually no one will actually care. It will be all about how you are actually doing in your actual college.
And then this whole Ivy Day thing is pretty annoying to me. I know they do it primarily to make sure they don’t compete against each other in terms of notification date. But it feeds into this notion in certain circles that it represents the peak of the acceptance season.
Again, for the record, it is just another day, and these are just colleges, and for any given kid the best colleges for them might not be in that athletic conference anyway.
I also went to an Ivy (and am an adult).
The Ivy schools are all fantastic institutions, obviously. Many others are also amazing including UCLA, Berkley, Georgetown, etc. which you are already in! And, depending on what you want to study/experience those are likely much better. If you want to study film, you are better off at UCLA or USC than Cornell, etc.
That all said, I wish you luck and think there is certainly a chance you get into an ivy. It is incredibly hard to predict for any candidate, but your current acceptance history certainly doesn’t rule you out. The odds are against literally everyone though.
You have gotten in to some great schools. I cannot understand having any fear or anxiety with the results you already have.
As a side note, you cannot base your personal worth on what happens with admission to ivies. I understand there are school and family cultures that encourage this but if admission results are really causing you to be afraid, seek counseling and a fresh perspective on what makes us humans valuable!
Agree with the others. You have fantastic college options already so there is no reason to be “scared.”
And also 100% agree with the sentiment that your self-worth should not be defined by an admissions officer who reviews your application for 10 minutes or
The fact is that at the hyper-competitive colleges there are more worthy applicants than spots available.
I wish you luck. But please take a moment to appreciate the fortunate position you have already put yourself in.
Also I should have added, like others
I get why you are a bundle of nerves- that seems normal! But 100% don’t need to be scared! Amazing amazing choices you have already - please try not to have fear- excitement and nerves - sure:)
Best wishes and if you work hard in college as you obviously did in HS, you will be a success from anywhere IMO.
I think youll get into 2 of the 8. I’m assuming you applied to all 8.
My guess is Columbia, U Penn.
Congrats on acceptances so far!
Also, prediction from the YCBK podcast is that there will be more waitlist action this year so sme of those may turn into yeses.
While I agree that it’s possible to have a successful career without attending an Ivy League school—or even without going to college at all—it’s natural for ambitious high school students to aim for the most prestigious institutions. Gaining admission to an Ivy League school is a testament to the focused hard work they’ve put in throughout high school. No matter what anyone says, attending an Ivy League school offers a level of recognition like no other. It’s no wonder that the best and brightest strive for a spot there.
The decision about where to study is complex, and ultimately, it depends on what works best for the individual. However, the reality is that the thrill of being admitted to an Ivy League school is unmatched for many high schoolers. A Toyota Corolla will get you from point A to point B, but if you can afford to make the journey in a Ferrari, why not?
I am a graduate of TWO Ivy league universities and I’m calling hogwash on this.
You are going to argue that getting into Cal Tech or U Chicago- neither an Ivy- does not require “focused hard work”? MIT? JHU?
“level of recognition like no other”? Huh? Stanford commands LESS recognition than Dartmouth? In what world?
Best and brightest according to whom? The most talented kid in my town a few years back got into West Point. And fortunately for us-all of us. Having the best and brightest aspire to a leadership position in our military is a wonderful outcome. Every couple of years, someone locally gets into Julliard. Different skill set. The last woman who got in- you wouldn’t want her leading a platoon-- but you wouldn’t want the West Point guy playing Chopin.
Posts like yours feed the VERY unrealistic view point that the purpose of working hard in HS is to validate your efforts with bragging rights. Or that ONLY by getting into one of the schools that many people have never heard of means you’ve made it.
Do you know how many people have never heard of Brown? Lots and lots. Ask me how I know. Do you know how many people think that U Penn is the “second tier” public U in Pennsylvania because Penn State is the recognized flagship? Lots and lots. Dartmouth is barely in the public consciousness as a U at all, except for fans of Animal House.
I really cannot disagree more vehemently with what you have posted.
So I don’t want anyone to think I am suggesting kids can’t actually be excited about where they are going to college. Indeed, in my ideal world every kid would be excited about where they are going to college. Ivies and non-Ivies all included.
But there are just a long list of obvious observations that I feel are necessary to make when people suggest the eight colleges in that particular athletic conference are somehow a breed apart from all others.
First, even if you take the concept of “prestige” seriously (and in fact in every serious conversation I have been a part of about prestige, it turns out there isn’t even anything close to an agreed definition of what that would mean as applied to colleges), I don’t think it can be seriously argued that colleges like Stanford, MIT, and so on are not prestigious. And yet, they are not in the Ivy League. So we know right away that there is something wrong with using membership in that particular athletic conference as synonymous with institutional prestige.
And then if we are being blunt about it, I don’t think it is at all obvious that every college in the Ivy League is the same as each other in terms of whatever people mean by prestige. Indeed, again even assuming you took seriously the concept of “prestige peers”, I think for different colleges in that athletic conference, different other colleges would count as their closest prestige peers.
OK, then the idea that admissions to ANY highly selective holistic review college in the US is about how hard you have worked is very unfortunate. The fact is admissions to these colleges is a matter of what you can do for them as a student, and possibly as an alum as well. And they have all sorts of complex institutional priorities, sometimes competing ones, and they try to enroll a class that strikes a good balance between these different institutional priorities.
And how hard you have worked is not a particularly important question to them. Indeed, if anything, often if they were looking at two kids with a similar amount of success in terms of academic and non-academic outcomes, they would prefer the one who had to work less to get those outcomes. Because that kid is more likely to be able to sustain and indeed build on all that in college, as opposed to running into a wall and possibly burning out.
Finally, the thrill of being admitted somewhere is simply not a lasting benefit. Usually it quickly fades, indeed you can see that every year in social media cycles. There are kids who in advance swear they will be incredibly happy if they could just get into X, they get into X, and days later they are now expressing concerns about whether they should have gotten into X, or whether maybe they should have applied to Y, or why didn’t they get into Z when they got into X, and so on.
And then soon enough, you are actually at X, and guess what? Every other person around you also got into X. And human nature is to compare yourself to peers, and since all your peers also got into X, there is no thrill in that. It is instead on to the next types of peer competition, for grades and internships and research positions and so on.
OK, so what should you be excited about? Well, the opportunity to get a great education. The opportunity to meet lots of cool new people. The opportunity to do a lot of fun new things. The opportunity to evolve and change, potentially in unexpected ways. College can be really great!
But if you are thinking that can only happen at one of those eight colleges, that is obviously not true. And while maybe one of those eight colleges would be a good choice for you, maybe none would.
Indeed, if the best vehicle for you would be a pickup truck, buying a Ferrari is in fact a bad idea. No matter how thrilling it might be to buy one at first, that thrill won’t last if it doesn’t actually work for you and your needs.
Relax folks, no need to get so aggressive and worked up over a benign POV.
I didn’t say only Ivy schools provide recognition. Neither did I stake claims on the ROI from an Ivy education or its superiority.
The selectivity numbers speak for themselves.
Right or wrong is each person’s own prerogative, priority and values.
Edited by Moderator to comply with ToS
Focusing on the “thrill” of acceptance and the value of name “recognition” are exactly what the veterans on here are commenting about as unfortunate reasons to be anxious about Ivy admissions.
College is about the experience in those years, not how you can feel when telling your friends you got into Harvard or wherever. I had two at Ivies and wish one of them had gone elsewhere but it was free. The best darn reason to go to selective schools is the financial aid.
I would add that many Ivy League classes are large lectures with grad students running sections and doing grading. The name recognition can help, yes, but it can also work against you- causing attitudes from bosses and co-workers and higher expectations of performance. That is why people say they went to school in “Cambridge.” Clubs tend to be competitive and being around ambitious peers has pros and cons. Etc.
Also, I hope you can understand this is a cooperative site and people were focused on the original poster and not trying to upset you. I won’t debate so this is my only response here.
Reminder that CC is not a debate society and supposed to be a welcoming and friendly place.
Please get back to the OP who is essentially asking if he has a chance for their remaining schools.
Thank you for your understanding!
how’d it go?
I didn’t get in 