I am a foreign student, and will start the application process next year (I am 16) and wanted to know what people did to get admitted. What set you apart from everyone else? How good were your essays and scores?
I paid $75 and then clicked submit.
Why I got admitted is the big unknown. My secondary school grades were good, but not perfect. My SAT scores were good, but not perfect. I had solid ECs. but not the cure cancer variety. I was told that the committee really enjoyed my essays, but I don’t know that that was the clincher.
There is no magic formula. Whatever unknown thing worked for me may not work for anyone else.
@skieurope What colleges did you apply to and which ones did you get accepted by?
That sounds amazing, and I hope I am lucky enough for that to happen to me too!
Thanks for your reply!
Be the best you that you can be and apply and see what happens.
Spend more time worrying about safety and match schools you would be delighted to go to.
I encouraged my daughter to be true to herself and demonstrate her strong “voice,” specificity, and unique interests in her essays. She has a strong GPA, high SATs, and a track record of rigorous coursework and extracurriculars.
The best thing you can do is be yourself. And definitely have match and safety schools. The whole application process and decisions can be very unpredictable. Good luck!
There are many different ways to get into Ivy league schools, if you head over to the forum for each college you can look at the results pages. You’ll notice the rejected students look pretty similar to the accepted ones.
My kid got into one Ivy League college by doing what he loved. He discovered computer programming in second grade and played with programming for hours every day for the next ten years. He worked, did volunteer programming for a couple of med school professors, did a game mod that won an award, and helped seniors learn how to double click among other activities. He was also part of a very successful Science Olympiad team and Academic Team. He got good grades and good test scores with minimal work.
He got rejected from four top universities and into two. He got merit money at his two safeties. That was quite a while ago, but it’s only gotten harder. By the way he did not go to the Ivy League College because it did not have as good a CS program as the one he attended.
Ivy League colleges have different strengths and weaknesses and atmospheres. The person who likes Dartmouth is unlikely to love U. Penn. The Ivy League is just a sports conference that was set up in 1954.
If there was a secret formula to get into Ivy and equivalent schools someone would be bottling and selling it.
IMO you should focus on being the best “you” possible.
–Work hard academically- do as well as you can in the most challenging curriculum you can manage.
–When the time comes study for standardized tests.
–Get involved in activities you care about and work towards making meaningful contributions to those activities.
–Be a kind and considerate person – enjoy time with family and friends.
I worked hard. I pursued what I loved. I visited teachers as often as I could to get the best recommendations I could. And I researched the institutional history of each college I applied to so I could write a letter tailor made for them and what they were looking for.
I had a low gpa, bad test scores, and weak extracurriculars, btw. So it’s by no means impossible for students who aren’t at the tippy top to get into an ivy. It just takes some extra work.
I do alumni meetings for my alma mater (one of the Ivies). The one commonality of the accepted non hooked students that I see repeated yearly is that they were clearly able to articulate why they would be an asset to the university. They understand what makes the school unique, and how they will not only fit in, but enhance the student body. There is usually a good fit between the school’s mission and that of the student.
I second what @Aspiringacademic says about researching each university and your program of interest thoroughly. In that way, you can eliminate schools which are not a good fit and articulate in detail what makes you specifically suited for and interested in the other colleges.
“The one commonality of the accepted non hooked students that I see repeated yearly is that they were clearly able to articulate why they would be an asset to the university. They understand what makes the school unique, and how they will not only fit in, but enhance the student body. There is usually a good fit between the school’s mission and that of the student.”
A critically important point that so many applicants to the Ivy League, MIT, Stanford, etc. overlook in their zeal to get into their “dream” school. In my 5 years of interviewing the applicants to one of the Ivy’s, none of them was able to articulate in response to my question, “why THIS university?” Their stumbling answers all pretty much boiled down to: “well, because it’s one of the best universities in the world.” None of them had a successful admission result. There are way too many dreamers but their dreams die soon because they don’t know why they dream what they dream about. Too many “just because it’s Harvard,” “just because it’s Stanford…”
When my son was establishing a list of colleges to apply to, we paid a lot of attention to those schools that we felt were best fit for him after months of research. We ended up with the list that consisted of about half ideal and half back up. When the admissions results all came in, we quickly noticed a very interesting pattern: he was accepted to the majority of schools that were on his ideal list while he was either waitlisted or rejected by the majority of those schools that were on his back up list. It was as if the schools that were on his back up list knew that my son wasn’t an ideal fit to their schools – and vice versa. So, I can vouch for momofsenior1’s statement that, “There is usually a good fit between the school’s mission and that of the student.” But good fit goes both ways. When my son was crafting his essays, he not only discussed how he can contribute to the university but how he could benefit from the university’s programs and resources in specific details.
find the best feeder school you can get into. This school in one class had 6 go to MIT, 5 to yale, 4 to Stanford, 12 to duke etc. in the same high school class. There are a relatively small number of public magnets and privates that send way too many kids to these schools to be random.
https://www.ncssm.edu/news/2016/07/23/where-the-class-of-2016-is-headed-to-college
@TiggerDad, my son knew he could flourish at lots of universities. He told his Harvard interviewer he thought MIT was a better fit. The interviewer spent the rest of the interview trying to sell him on Harvard. My kid’s approach was “This is who I am, take me or leave me.”
My other kid, who was not as stellar a student and who’s activities were unusual, but not earthshaking, did make more of an effort to sell himself, and fairly successly. He did not have a dream school - he found something to love in every school he applied to.
More truth in TiggerDad’s post than many realize.
I wouldn’t say none are able to articulate, but that too many can’t. It’s nuts. And you wouldn’t believe how many can only say “because it’s one of the best universities in the world.” Or, a version of that. Not impressive. Generic. Good chance you won’t make finals.
“I wouldn’t say none are able to articulate, but that too many can’t.”
You say that often but it’s less and less true. Many unhooked kids can articulate well what and how they can contribute, and how the university can benefit them. The students that get into MIT or Princeton or Yale have good enough essays but not for Stanford or Harvard, or is it that they don’t meet an institutional need (legacy, athlete for Harvard, first-gen, urm for Stanford, e.g.)? If these kids were getting across the board rejections, sure, but they’re not, if they get into Yale, I’m assuming they have higher order thinking you talk about.
? I comment on what I’ve seen. And I try to avoid absolutes, by using phrases like, "…too many can’t. "
CC talks about chances. Sure, enough can. I didnt say none. But it’s deadly to not be able to, no matter what else.
I also agree that the vast majority of students I meet with have vague answers to “why school x” that could be applicable to any T20, and shows zero understanding of the school. Kids who are prestige hunting are easy to spot.
Outside the recruited athlete, who was also a legacy, that I met with in the ED round, I only spoke to one other student this cycle who really understood and could speak to the uniqueness of the school and why it was a good fit. One.