<p>Do I have to win national awards in order to get into an Ivy League</p>
<p>No. While national awards can help in demonstrating drive, committment, and passion, there are other ways to do this.</p>
<p>No but they help a lot. But basically beyond stats you need something that stands out. Whether that be an award, helping homeless, some amazing EC etc.</p>
<p>They should help, but international awards are sure to help.</p>
<p>Do you have to win national awards? Of course not. I’m willing to bet most people in ivies haven’t.</p>
<p>Hopefully you are focusing your attention on schools beyond the Ivy League, where the education can be 99.99% as good but you have a better chance of admission.
Seeing all these posts from kids so *desperate *to get into Ivy league schools is really depressing. So much unnecessary stress and anxiety!
The chances of getting admitted to Harvard last year was 6%! The others are pretty similar. Think of your application as if it were a lottery ticket, you buy the ticket with no expectation of a happy outcome. 6 out of 100 will be pleasantly surprised (though some of them were expecting it because they are a legacies/Olympic athletes/development cases).</p>
<p>Of course not. Think about it. The combined undergrad enrollment of the eight Ivy Leagues colleges is about 60,000. There couldn’t possibly be enough national awards to go around to support that many students.</p>
<p>They don’t hurt, but they are in no way necessary.</p>