I was already planning to apply to more than one Ivy League school, but I want to see if it is a smart move to apply to all 8 Ivies, even if I might not get accepted to most or all of them.
Is it just a good idea in general to apply to as many schools as you can that you wish to attend?
Why do all 8 Ivy League schools appeal to you more than any number of other schools? Sure, if you want, apply to a bunch of low-acceptance rate schools (but make sure you’ve got your safeties and matches lined up), but I can’t imagine there aren’t lots of other great schools that are a better fit to you than at least half of the “Ivys”.
Many would say on this site, if you wish to attend any of the Ivy League schools, you don’t know about them.
Not if you want to go to an Ivy League school just for the sake of going to an Ivy League school. It’s quite unusual for the same person who would be happy at Dartmouth to also be happy at University of Pennsylvania or Columbia. The schools are quite different, and if you can’t firmly and convincingly articulate why you are interested in a particular school, your application will not be very good.
IMO you would be wasting your time and your money. As mentioned above, the Ivies differ dramatically in everything from size to location, not to mention academic strengths. You want to target your applications to the schools that fit best with your strengths. Too wide of a net to apply to them all (again, my opinion).
You have asked basically the same question in other threads and senior posters have all suggested that you adjust your expectations and search for schools that would be better matches for you.
When a student asks this question it is painfully obvious that you are only looking for a name
The idea of expanding your scope to 8 disparate universities that are all an extremely long shot just doesn’t seem useful or constructive - do some more constructive homework
Applying to all 8 would illustrate that you are not the person for any Ivy. ( In the sense that most Ivy leaguers are wise enough to know what they want and what they DON’t want.) If you are applying for the prestige only, I’d doubt you will get in. A few do, but most cannot slip by as there path has already been paved by others trying to do the same. Be original. Think of what you want to do and where YOU want to study.
A few comments:
–Applying to all 8 Ivys tells me that one is more concerned about perceived prestige than fit. It is highly unlikely that the same person who falls in love with an urban school like Columbia would be equally happy at a much more remote location for Dartmouth etc.
–Each application for a top tier college has supplements that should be completed to the best of one’s abilities. IMO one is best off focusing time and energy on the schools one is truly interested in attending instead of rushing to get a ton of supplements completed in a half-baked manner.
–One should not apply to every school they “want” to attend. It is important to consider what colleges one is qualified to attend. Having tons of mega-reach applications is a huge expenditure of time and money. One should select a range of reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable.
–You have multiple posts asking about getting into top tier college with a 3.6 GPA and every time you are told it is unlikely. http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/2087947-do-i-have-a-chance-of-getting-into-top-schools-with-a-3-6-uw.html#latest Sure it is perfectly reasonable to put in a couple of reach applications but it is time your refocus your search and stop obsessing about Ivy/top tier schools. No matter how many times, in how many different ways you ask the same question the answer won’t change. Please recognize that people who come to CC volunteer their time to try to help people through the process. There is no need to keep asking the same question in different ways.
–Recognize that Ivy and equivalent schools, which typically have under a 10% acceptance rate, must be considered reaches for every unhooked applicant – and when an important part of your application is below standard then they become even more of a reach.
–I’d recommend that you start doing some research on different schools and stop posting the same basic question in different forms on CC. Try to get your hands on a good college guide book or two (if you don’t want to buy them look in your library) such as Fiske, Princeton Review and start reading. Look at websites of schools that interest you. If your HS has Naviance and you can access it, see where your academic stats put you relative to some different schools. You need to expand your horizons and recognize that there are many wonderful schools out there where you can have a great 4 year experience and get where you want to go in life.
I wish news reports would stop reporting kids who got accepted by all 8 ivies as some sort of “achievements”, those kids have issues imho.
What is it about all 8 schools that makes you want to attend… other than perceived prestige?
Most top students have limited time. Between senior classes, ECs and a life there just isn’t much time left over for college apps. If you use that limited time to write really targeted, wonderful essays for 1-2 colleges I think that gives you a lot better chance than writing OK essays for 8 colleges.
If you have limitless time, maybe a shotgun approach would help. But the reality is you don’t, so each essay and app you add to the list takes away the time you have to do the others well. Again, sending out a few perfectly edited, well targeted and precisely written apps gives you a better chance than sending out dozens of OK, generic apps where you’re cutting and pasting the college’s name.
@makemesmart generally the kids accepted to all Ivies are minorities. I have seen some of the news stories too.
Although I agree with all of the above posts, all 8 Ivies offer communities of brilliant, highly motivated students, prestige & are recruited by very desirable companies & firms. All 8 Ivies also have tremendous resources due to hefty endowments & successful alumni. And all 8 Ivies offer a wide variety of majors taught by outstanding professors.
Even though I would prefer to have attended a National University rather than an LAC, because of the intellectual talent & degree of motivation found at the top LACs (Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Swarthmore, etc.) I think that they would have been great environments for me even though small. My point is that I can understand the reasons that one might apply to seemingly incongruous schools if important common threads exist among the group of varied schools.
Agree with @Publisher that it is quite possible for an applicant to genuinely have schools as divergent as say Columbia, Brown and Cornell on the top of their list. Many, if not most, teenagers have no clue what is optimal to them, and in fact may be simultaneously attracted to a “Core” curriculum like Columbia’s and a relatively unstructured system like Brown’s, or the bucolic nature of Cornell’s campus and the bright lights of Manhattan. However, applying to all 8 Ivies because of some notion that this is like a lottery where each app marginally increases your chances is foolhardy IMO. If your app is already marginal in terms of stat’s, the only way to distinguish yourself is to somehow convince the school that the school will be uniquely valuable to you and you to the school. The essays and short answers in each college specific portion of the Common App are different enough that mass cutting and pasting are not going to get the job done. The cost is not just mediocre Ivy app’s, but potentially mediocre match apps. Focus on putting together a few thoughtful, highly quality apps for safety, match and a limited number of reach schools first. If you want to play the lottery after that and don’t mind blowing the application and test reports fees, go for it then.
What career do you have in mind? What major? Some Ivy schools are very good for preparing for a PhD. Most are good for law school, but some better than others. Some Ivy schools have better connections to top business programs, perhaps (Penn, Harvard and Dartmouth? ) Some Ivy schools are much better in the sciences than others.(Princeton, Cornell, Penn, Harvard would be my choices for physics for instance ) Some Ivy schools offer strong engineering at the “MIT level” with top job connections on the west coast: (Cornell Engineering and Penn Engineering with Princeton Engineering a bit less well known ) , and others are weak in engineering, so for the sciences and engineering, fit matters more.
There are majors that are strong at all the Ivy schools, mostly on the humanities and social sciences side. I know a boy with national level debate awards, who wants to be a US Senator apply to all 8 Ivy schools, for instance. He got into Harvard and Penn only, and he majored in political science and economics at Harvard and now got admitted early to Harvard Law. He was very clear that he wanted to become a US Senator, had the high school debate experience to back up his career goal, perfect stats, very high writing ability, and a career goal, where most Ivy League schools are a fit. (US Senator)
If you wanted to be a materials scientist, I would recommend Stanford and MIT over all the Ivies.
If you want to be a computer scientist, I would probably recommend CMU, Stanford and MIT over all the Ivies, but Cornell and Harvard are particularly strong in CS with Penn and Columbia good too. Brown is great in applied mathematics.
So your career goals matter in choosing a best fit college.
Mom advice: Be smart, be strategic, be practical.
There are a LOT of great schools. Seriously. You might miss your dream school, the place where you find your tribe and flourish, by focusing solely on the Ivies. True story: an extremely bright and talented student from this year’s grad class (with my D) was a superstar. She took far more APs than anyone in her grade (signed up for extra class each semester – crazy!) She had solid scores (I’m guessing 1500 or so). President of this, Captain of that. Honors and awards locally. She applied to all the Ivies and everyone thought she’d get in somewhere. She didn’t get in anywhere. NOT ONE. We’re on the west coast, and perhaps she had no connections to any of the schools (yes, the ol’ boys network still plays a role) nor did this student have a “hook.” Foolish approach. Advice is that you apply to a RANGE of schools – a few reaches (so cull down that list of Ivies, my dear), majority matches (look at schools on Naviance to see where you’d fall for admit) and a few safeties. A bunch of stellar students are heading to our state flagship – many of whom did not get into their top choices (called reach for a reason!), and chose to stay instate because of debt/cost. oh, and that state flagship is a fantastic school and hard to get into.
Be smart, be strategic, be practical. There are other schools out there where you will soar and thrive. Make sure you apply to a few of them along with your dream Ivy.
Your essays are going to be very important and you are going to have to convincingly show that school how you could contribute to the school community and why they should choose you. This takes a surprising amount of time to do. Our guidance counselor said she thinks the ideal number of applications is 10, and if a kid applies to more than 12, she worries about the quality of the applications because there just isn’t enough time to do justice to each and every one. Every year she sees kids who try a shot-gun approach get rejected from everywhere except schools that admit just by stats because they just didn’t spend enough time on the application to show the school why they should want them.
So, if you accept that advice of limiting yourself to 12, you need to think about how many applications you are going to put into each group of schools (likely, match, reach). One piece of invaluable advice we received is don’t apply to any school (even your safety) if you can’t afford it or don’t like it, because then it’s not a safety. I think this aspect, of finding likelies and matches that you really like, takes a ton of time.
As you are compiling your list, you can think strategically about using rolling admissions, early action and early decision to control your list. For example, for your likely schools, if any of them have rolling admissions and you get in early on in the admissions cycle, you don’t have to apply to any of the other likely schools you like less, and in fact you might be satisfied with this school and not submit any more applications in the likely category. For the EA schools, this gives you a little information about 15 to 20 days before regular decision applications are due. So if you get rejected from several EA schools in the match category, you know that your applications aren’t going as well as you hoped, and you need to focus more on the matches and likelies than on the reaches, and you should put in more of those applications… This will be hard to do well in the limited time you have left, so you need to have already given a lot of thought to the other potential applications.
When you are putting together your list for matches, don’t forget to take into account how ED impacts acceptances. If you apply to a school that makes heavy use of ED and you apply RD, your chances of getting in are lower than what you would otherwise think.
If prestige was very important to me and I had a 3.6, I would forget about the ivies, and apply ED to a top 30-50 school as being my best shot to get into the highest ranked school possible. I’d also realize that my grades were on the lower end of the spectrum for these schools, so I’d have a number of applications to match schools lined up.
Applying to 8 ivy league schools doesn’t increase your chances. If all of them have a 5% chance of getting in, your chances are still 5%. It doesn’t hurt to apply, but don’t put your homes and dreams on them. They’re high reach schools. Put your hopes and dreams on your “hopes and dreams.” A real dream transcends the school you go to and converts into fruitful accomplishments later in life. You have tons of options, including scholarships.
Each tippy top has it’s own particular wants and expectations. To successfully apply to ANY, you need to know what THEY want to see. Not just what you want.
It’s like any contest. You don’t advance for wanting them, rather for being what they want. Brown wants something sightly different than Columbia. If you don’t see that, look for it, have it…how do you expect to put out a solid application? None of them want to be confused with the others or lumped into one category, “top colleges.” That sort of thinking is a big oops, can get you sorted out.
And the essay has a particular purpose. It’s not the singular heart of the app. Everything has to line up, for that college to want you.
OP said, “if you think you have a shot at one?” I’d ask, what makes him think that? It’s got to show, in the ways they want to see it, not just be personal confidence. Or dreams. Certainly not the fact that the Common App lets you scattershot.