Even people with perfect grades and scores are rejected. No one is guaranteed to be accepted in IVY leagues.
@Jr12317 Exactly why I am stressing over my grades and SAT prep
@Homeless2Harvard If someone did A) then he/she wouldn’t need college…
@ndemazita Ok, when I say “my life is a failure” , I am exaggerating. It’s important to me, but not as important as life as a whole.
@Homeless2Harvard Yeah now i know there isn’t a formula. People just try to search for one since the competition is impossible.
It’s important to get a good education - and that’s only possible at a school with sports teams in the Ivy League???
Well, I guess all the state universities in the country may as well just shut their doors. No point in wasting resources on a hopeless endeavor. And before you even begin to argue with me, read this quote from a recent [New York Times article](Opinion | How to Survive the College Admissions Madness - The New York Times) by Frank Bruni:
*Midway through last year, I looked up the undergraduate alma maters of the chief executives of the top 10 corporations in the Fortune 500. These were the schools: the University of Arkansas; the University of Texas; the University of California, Davis; the University of Nebraska; Auburn; Texas A & M; the General Motors Institute (now called Kettering University); the University of Kansas; the University of Missouri, St. Louis; and Dartmouth College.
I also spoke with Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, one of the best-known providers of first-step seed money for tech start-ups. I asked him if any one school stood out in terms of students and graduates whose ideas took off. “Yes,” he responded, and I was sure of the name I’d hear next: Stanford. It’s his alma mater, though he left before he graduated, and it’s famous as a feeder of Silicon Valley success.
But this is what he said: “The University of Waterloo.” It’s a public school in the Canadian province of Ontario, and as of last summer, it was the source of eight proud ventures that Y Combinator had helped along. “To my chagrin,” Altman told me, “Stanford has not had a really great track record.”*
Obsess all you want, but the more time you spend obsessing about what some unknown admissions officer expects of you, the less time you spend discovering who you really are and, along the way, what you’d want to do with that great education for which you’re so desperately yearning.
You can also go look up the undergraduate alma maters of the chief executives of the top 10 corporations in the Fortune 500 yourself! 
@dodgersmom alright good point, but the first step of discovering who I am is to find out how well i can do in academics.
Well, apparently you can recognize logic when you see it, so that’s a good start. 
But really, the best way to get admitted to college is to discover your passions and pursue them. If you’re too busy trying to follow someone else’s script, you won’t ever get the chance to do that. And there’s more to life than academics.
I don’t think four minutes gave you enough time to “question your assumptions” about the importance of Ivy.
@dodgersmom Yes yes of course there is more to life than academics, that is completely understandable, but this is not a philosophy forum.
I simply just value academics very highly, but this does not mean that academics are the only aspect of life that I cherish. Anyways, thanks for the advice I will try to put it into effect
@JustOneDad More accurately, I value a good education. And brand worshiping is important, because, like someone else has already said, at the end of the day, employers are brand worshipers too.
There is no secret formula for Ivy acceptance. The problem is that you are putting way too much weight on an Ivy acceptance --an Ivy acceptance or rejection is not a referendum of who you are as a student or as a person – it is simply an admissions decision which is based on a ton of different factors… There are many fantastic schools out there and the Ivy’s represent only eight of them. You need to mature a bit, see the whole picture and stop thinking that admission into one of eight hyper-competitive schools will make or break your life.
@Homeless2Harvard Warren Buffet is actually very economical; he lives very humbly, so the smallest of donations could make him cringe actually 
Some employers are, some aren’t.
@happy1 ok. it’s just that many of my relatives went to the ivies or other super competitive schools, and i am kind of put on the same level
@Rigid123 They aren’t though…
@JustOneDad Employers that actually pay you good money and who are part of a well working company are almost always going to be worshipers
@ayprcwbjmy Employers are 99% of the time brand worshipers. Otherwise why would everyone want to go to an ivy?
@Rigid123 so you have that in your blood haha. There are so many good schools besides IVY leagues. I can name most of them, but I am sure you know them as well. You will never have something sure with IVY leagues even with schools like MIT, Stanford, and others.
@Jr12317 No lol I am not saying “Intelligence is in my blood”. I am saying that my family expects me to go to a competitive university due to the fact that my relatives all went to one.
Yeah i know about MIT and stanford and all that. My title should have been “how to get into a prestigious university”
Most of the people are hired from different schools. You will see in your job people from different schools without the same prestige and they will be earning the same as your salary.