<p>It seems that students who get into the ivy leagues or "first teer schools" all have a tremendous amount of special qualities like #1 teen violinist in Massachusetts. Are these standout abilities needed or can your track record and extracurriculars take care of it.</p>
<p>Top tier schools want people to contribute to their community. Sometimes these are “pointy” students – kids who excel at some specialty (athlete, super math whiz, accomplished actor, published writer, etc.) But a good number are just “average” high achievers who have demonstrated leadership, influence and a hunger to learn and grow.</p>
<p>Ask yourself this: are you a stand out in your high school? Are you known by the teachers and principal as one of the top kids of influence in your school? Top scholar? Maybe a top student leader? If so, then you’re on the right track. If you blend in with the crowd, you’ll blend in with the tens of thousands of applicants to the top schools – and fare poorly.</p>
<p>“But a good number are just “average” high achievers who have demonstrated leadership, influence and a hunger to learn and grow.”</p>
<p>This may be true at many of the top tier schools, but is not true for HYPMS any more. If you don’t have a hook, you probably need something special to stand out. Stanford had 34,200 applicants this year for less than 2,000 spaces (even fewer if you remove spaces for ‘hooked’ candidates). Average high achievers don’t have much of a chance.</p>
<p>Other than very good grades and a couple high positions in extraciriculars (literary magazine, yearbook, Model UN, student government) do you think staring a club that is focused towards cancer research would set me apart. Becasue I have been working on that club for a while now.</p>
<p>It depends on whether you actually accomplish anything with the club and whether you’re able to express in your essays the work you’ve put into the club and what you have achieved and hope to achieve with it. It has the potential to set you apart if you’ve done something meaningful with it.</p>
<p>you have to standout from people in your group/race. in ivies, you are more competing against people in your race then everyone. make sure you don’t fall into the stereotype. show time commitment of at least 3 years when you volunteer. just make sure you standout. for example: if you are white, go learn chinese. if you are asian, go learn arabic or german. if you are hispanic/aa/na, show interest in science and get good grades/test scores. There was a guy in my school two years ago who got into yale; he was asian and was really interested in african culture so he taught himself swahili (I still dont really believe that but no one could prove that he didn’t).</p>