I think its the whole package. So high SAT and GPA opens the door but doesn’t get you through it at ivies. That said, essays are key, but so is the whole app including ECs and leadership roles. I read an article that ivies want leaders who will change the world. If your ECs demonstrate that or if your essay can show it, or if you have a talent (music or otherwise) or athletetic talent or some other attribute like diversity (geo or URM or LGBTQA+), it will make a difference. This is what’s behind the “holistic” approach to admission decisions.
The other thing that is not talked about a lot is how the college counselor or guidance counselor who writes the letter compares your student to other students at his or her school, or in his or her community. This is very much a black box in that its not talked about. What I’ve read is that your child may not need to be the star of the East Coast but just head and shoulders above the pact at his or her own school.
When we approached our student’s college counselor in charge of her letter, she remarked she didn’t see our student as ahead of the pack. But when I started to outline how in her own terms (using the school’s signature programs) how indeed she pulled away from the pack, her GC admitted she saw the light. This is very important. Make sure you sit down with said GC early in the process and make sure your GC sees your child as outstanding from the rest of the pack.
lot of myths on here, first on the ivies looking for leaders, they may but they miss a lot of them, of the 100 CEOs in the fortune 100, only 30 went to ivies or selective (e,g mit, stanford), most others went to public schools or other smaller privates. On government, where our leaders are, there is no correlation between where they went and how powerful they are. One exception would be presidents, Obama (Occidental, Columbia), Trump (Fordham/Penn), and supreme court justices.
Valedictorians do pretty well for themselves, ours didn’t get into his top two but did well where he went, and got into Johns Hopkins med and is a successful doctor. Even if they don’t get into their top choice in undergrad, they’re still smart, hardworking and talented and have gotten into the top grad schools, where (apart from b-school), there’s no hook.
Also it’s not like valedictorians don’t do ECs, they do a lot since they know that being one is not unique. In my day yes, a lot of them just studied, but now, that’s not the case. Also valedictorians now and then are very strong in all disciplines, even if they go into STEM, they’re excellent writers, if they go non-STEM, they have excellent math and science skills. This serves them well.
Yeah, a lot, including a few by you in the rest of this sentence.
First, who says that being a CEO is a measure of success/leadership. Second, who says that the school is the sole factor (or even the major factor) in someone becoming a CEO. Third, “only 30”!!! How many would you expect them to have?!! Considering that what, fewer than 1% of the population goes to Ivies, the fact that 30% of these CEOs did, that’s an amazing success rate for the Ivies!
It seems that the consensus is that essays are very important but that interviews (with a few exceptions such as for competitive scholarships, Georgetown, Wake Forest, etc) are not really that important. Why is that? Don’t essays and interviews potentially show the same attributes of a person? Is there an incorrect assumption that interviews favor the well-heeled but essays do not? (Actually, I would argue the other way around. While evaluating an essay or interview is subjective, it is way easier for a student to cheat on an essay compared to an interview). Or could it be that for many schools, the interview is fairly meaningless but the interview process is just a way to keep alumni involved albeit in a meaningless way? Unis could easily arrange now for kids to do in person or Skype interviews with applicants. I found out recently that DD had the highest score on the interview of any of the London kids for a certain Ivy this year, yet she did not get in, despite great essays, perfect grades, etc. At the end of the day, if these schools either do not want your demographic or have filled up on it during the EA/ED process, then chances for admission are slim.
Every bit is important. A small aspect can create questions. You have a full app, then supps. The questions aren’t there to fill time. You aren’t filling in blanks for your teachers, who know you. The interview is eyes-on, an important view, can reflect some spark the app didn’t catch- or no spark, despite the resume. But the alum interviewer is just dealing with a slice and is not a decision maker.
Leadership is more than big titles, any title. That’s limited thinking (and in a context that asks for better thinking.) After stats, this is so qualitative.
The first flaw is thinking a record, itself, is all it takes. Plenty of kids miss the point, no matter their grades or what clubs they ran.
And then the insistent advice to just follow passions, with no discerning what, how, where, etc.
This is high stakes. You can’t go in with high school level assumptions or assurances.
@TiggerDad Agree 100% with what you said about the role of interviews. Last autumn there was a meeting of our local Harvard Club at which Fitzsimmons spoke. The interesting thing was that of the alumni interviewers present, fully half stated that not a single person they had highly recommended had been admitted. Most spoke about having one candidate every “5 or 6 years” admitted. Fitzsimmons admitted that they used interviews largely to discover information that would not otherwise have been known. The “rating” itself was less important.
I spent a number of years in admissions at another Ivy and in my experience personal statements can very occasionally have a major impact on an admission decision. Each year there were a handful of personal statements that were read to the entire committee. They tended to address something very unique and I still remember one or two very clearly. In other cases, the essays highlighted something that we then discussed with high school counselors etc. So while I agree that they are not as important as other factors, they can be, especially at very highly competitive universities like Harvard.
My experience is how often the PS is so off track that it stops the reader. Not good.
You never want to go through thinking, “yes, yes, yes, Oops.” Worse is, “Ugh, oh, okay, sigh.”
@lookingforward Many PS’ are indeed banal but adcom’s expect that. In a few cases, however, they were very influential. Indeed, we spent most meetings of the full admissions committee discussing those PS’ that were referred by sub-committees. And to this day I remember one statement in particular when members of the committee actually clapped. It was astonishing. The student might not have been otherwise admitted. They went on to do famously well. Gave me faith in the system.
It’s also a fact that we rejected many applicants with extremely strong applications on the basis of their PS alone. A poorly written PS can easily negate supposedly great test scores.
I am a URM with a 32 ACT and 3.81/4.2 gpa. I think my essays (common app and penn supplement) were huge parts of why I got into Penn. I was contacted by the director of the writing program at Penn saying they were contacted by the office of admissions because of the strength of the writing in my application, which basically affirms that essays are SO important!! I knew how important they were, especially given that I was not a perfect applicant and I believed it could push me into the “accept pile”, so I spent 3 months “perfecting” my common app essay. I made sure that I wrote CREATIVELY in every single one of my essays; I told a story. I used figurative language, metaphors, similies, allusions, etc.
@exlibris97 I agree. I have a friend who interviews for an Ivy and has not had anyone accepted in over 10 years. I just think that for the Ivy League in particular, they now have little interest in the unhooked middle-class London kid who attends a top 10 British school. Also, it is not as if these kids are typically chucking in banal essays, my kids and their friends have been working hard on writing creatively since they were 8 or 9 years old.
Unless interviews are done in several rounds by a committee, the usual practice of investment banks and consulting firms, they are of very limited value due to their inherent subjectivity by one single interviewer.
My three children all went to Ivies. I really can’t point to a reason why they got into those schools. They had no college consultant or test prep. They worked hard in their academics as well as their extracurricular activities. They gave up some popularity at our average, suburban high school since being a top student was not looked on too favorably by their peers. They were mature and saw the big picture.
Yes, it is to some extent a creative writing assignment. Look at the Common App prompts. It is asking the kids to take a real life situation, idea, issue, etc and write a coherent and interesting essay around the topic. Maybe I should have used the term “coherent” but you get my point. The main point is that despite sending in smart, well written essays, London private school kids are no longer flavour of the month and not getting into Ivy League schools despite their superior academic accomplishments compared to the vast majority of American high school kids.
I don’t agree about the chances of British kids getting into the Ivies. Harvard, and the Ivies, accept mainly unhooked British applicants and are increasingly focusing on non-public students. That was especially evident this year. If anything, what is happening is that it is getting far, far harder to get into any Ivy from a British “public” school as they target other schools.
For Americans living in the UK, the largest number of admits continue to come from the American School in London.
^ I have done an unscientific survey this year and I cannot find one kid who got into an Ivy (although I am sure that the are some) this year from a London school unless they were URM, a sports recruit or a development case. Also, the number of ASL kids are primarily driven by legacies as let’s face it, the average ASL kid has a less rigorous curriculum than a London public school kid. I got a list of US applicants from DD’s school and the percentage of those kids getting into Ivies was over 75% from 2010 - 2012. Last year was 50% (all URMs) but this year her school went 1 for 13 in Ivy applications with the only acceptance from a recruited athlete. As a comparison, over one-third of her class is going to Oxbridge or medical school next year.
You are right about the vast increase in applications from the UK over the past few years. This is driven largely by the top London schools actively encouraging many more kids to apply to the US, hiring dedicated US counsellors, providing SAT revision courses, etc. At some of these school most everybody takes the SAT or ACT. These London schools have had their Oxbridge intake cut significantly due to affirmative action so the schools are trying to get top students to look at the USA as an alternative. Unfortunately, (and I think this is driven by the parents) these kids are generally applying only to the Ivies and approximately 5 other schools. This creates a logjam at the Ivies as many of these kids are somewhat indistinguishable, so it is the URMs who are getting accepted despite that many of them are from wealthy families.
The one good trend out of this is that the top US schools are, as you mentioned, reaching out beyond London to find top students. These schools and charities like the Sutton Trust are finding smart kids from lower SES backgrounds and getting them scholarships which is fabulous.
As ever, one needs to distinguish between causation and correlation. And the CC pitfall of taking one aspect and trying to imagine a whole picture from it.
I know it’s somewhat unpopular to say, but great stats don’t exclusively make a great candidate. And great isn’t about diversity, to the extent so many think.
Too many kids know too little about the colleges they apply to. CC talks about great ECs, without discerning, many reject broadening experiences as padding. The focus is often more on what made a kid great or special or unique in his hs, forgetting the need is kids who will be great at that particular college, in its community, with its identity.