<p>Simply being associated with people who have done something is no substitute for actually doing it yourself. I have already completed the process successfully. You have not. It is that simple. I am not suggesting that he obsess over it. I am saying that he must keep it in mind. It is not often that people who have taken the adequate time to prepare themselves burn out. I can almost guarantee you that those friends of yours, who were accepted, did not wake up one morning during their junior year and say “I think I want to go to an Ivy League school”. Early on they took the appropriate steps and prepared themselves in order to prevent a burnout. They did all of this WITH A GOAL IN MIND. I’m just saying that these things do not happen by accident. As Louis Pasteur once said “chance favors the prepared mind”.</p>
<p>Being a junior/rising senior, I can tell you that I’ve gotten to where I am without being in a single-minded pursuit of the Ivy League. Yet I’m at the top of the class and have great stats. MANY people WHO I AM CLOSE WITH were not so lucky. One girl wanted absolutely nothing other than to get into Brown. She’s just finished junior year with me (so she didn’t “complete the process” like you keep condescendingly saying yet still learned the lesson) and now she’s getting quite a few Bs and many of her ECs coincided and she got overloaded and had to drop basically everything just to do well last quarter. And that’s just one example.</p>
<p>So at this point in junior year, having gotten to this point myself and also being close to a lot of kids who wanted to go to Ivies and/or are now about to start Ivies, I can most certainly say two things:
- You can get into an Ivy without single-minded pursuit of it and only beginning your focus of it in junior year.
- You do have a chance of burning out if you go into your first day of high school already deciding that you want to dedicate the next 3.5 years of your life to gaining admission to a supremely highly selective school.</p>
<p>You just don’t get it do you, born2dance94? You have probably never even opened the Common Application or seen a college’s supplement form. Oh wait, maybe you sat in as your “friends” filled out their applications in order to gain “experience”. I suppose you sat in on their interviews too. Either way, any information that you can give at this point regarding the college application process is, at best, secondhand. Secondhand information fused with your apparent ignorance and naivete is a dangerous combination. I believe that your input will be more meaningful and worthwhile once you have applied to colleges and been accepted to a few places. You can debate what I have said only after YOU (not your friends) have accomplished something. If a student wants to go to an Ivy League school, it would be foolish of them not to focus on that goal. You seem to confuse dedication with obsession.</p>
<p>Guuys chill the crap out.
oystershelleatme- You sound like an intelligent, motivated individual. You’ll do fine in high school, but for the moment, I’ll agree with born2dance. You’re a rising freshman and you shouldn’t be worried about college, let alone whether or not you’ll make it into an Ivy League school. Honestly, you could do everything right and be the perfect applicant and still end up rejected. (Not at all saying that you will be, but I’m putting it out there that there will always be the possibility.) Those schools get too many qualified applicants and so there can be no guarantees. For the moment, go out and enjoy high school, make friends, and do your best. I guarantee that by the end of junior year, you’ll have a completely different perspective on things and you’ll end up going somewhere great. Just don’t forget to do your best and make sure you make some of the right decisions. College isn’t everything, it’s what you do there and what comes afterwards that matters. Thats a lesson that my parents have pounded into me which I have come to realize is incredibly sound advice. Find what you’re passionate about and enjoy it. I wish you the best of luck. :)</p>
<p>It’s fine that you aim to be accepted into an Ivy League school, and you can keep that as your goal. Use your four years in high school to prepare yourself well for college. Just don’t become so obsessed that that becomes the only thing you care about.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the rising seniors are simply resigning to the idea that admission to an Ivy League school is impossible. It is not. Telling people that qualified applicants are turned away each year does not help them. The only sound advice is to the best that you can.</p>
<p>thanks jhkmyun, probably best advice so far!!! I mean all of you guys think that I obsess over going to an Ivy League!! At the current moment, I really don’t care, because I’m already busy with other things. When I posted, this thread I was just bored one night, and I was just thinking about the future, and asked this website for help! And help it gave me… :)</p>
<p>All we are telling him is to not become too focused on it, because it will cause undue stress. It’s great to have goals, but he’s just going to be a freshman and should focus on doing well for his own sake instead of for colleges at the moment.</p>
<p>And actually I have seen the common app (both last year’s, the year before’s, and the extended preview of this upcoming year’s). And I have seen quite a few supplements. But whatever, I don’t really want to argue.</p>
<p>btw, i’m a she :)</p>
<p>I am glad that you don’t want to argue born2dance94, because you can’t. Case closed.</p>
<p>Do you honestly enjoy pi$$ing off people on the internet? Stop being rude, battleship23. No one here had any cruel intentions, but were merely giving opinions. As was the point of *her<a href=“sorry%20about%20that%20btw,%20I%20wrongly%20assumed%20you%20were%20a” title=“he”>/i</a> posting this in the first place. So stop pretending to have power on the internet and let us give our opinions.</p>
<p>@Everyone, including oystershell…: I feel as if battleship23 has taken you on the right approach. Life is about setting goals and reaching them. If you want to go to an Ivy league school, great. Set that goal, work your hardest, and get there. born2dance94 and others claim that you can start thinking about colleges junior year. That is most definitely true. But there is NEVER anything wrong with being ambitious and saying you want to go to X University (ex. Harvard, Yale, etc.) early on. That is what ambition and drive are. Put your best foot forward–if I had more guidance on course selection and the in’s/out’s of college admissions freshman year, my application right now would be more competitive. Do everything in your power to give yourself the best starting foot, so that come your senior year, it is obvious your pre-planning is putting you ahead of everyone else. </p>
<p>I wish you the best of luck in getting into wherever you want to go. Push yourself to be the best; you can succeed. When you graduate from high school and move on to the next adventure (college), you will think back to all that you have done and how it has led you to be a success. Why not start now to make sure that the last day of high school is just as great, successful, and enriching as the first day?</p>
<p>Thank you, hardworking21. Finally, someone who gets it.</p>
<p>Well this is all great advice, and I see both sides of the argument: It’s not good to obsess of what college you’re going to go to but it’s not okay to be to laid back about it. When I posted this thread, I didn’t know it was going to be such a debate!!! I think born2dance94 and battleship23 both have made good arguments and I took both points seriously and considered them throughly.</p>
<p>overall there was some really good advice!!</p>