^^^^ The above prepscholar.com is way over-written. I have given you the simple formula: SPORTS: crew, hockey, or squash. Ivies for white people are all about sports, sports, sports. Those that resist this explanation have been suckered into thinking it’s all about ECs, grades, test scores, etc. Men’s and women’s lacrosse, as well, the new sport the Ivies love. YOU WILL GET INTO THE IVIES IF YOU PLAY SPORTS WELL. Get your act together around 8th grade and go to the Ivy summer camps for your sport and you will get in. You will get in. You will get in. You will not be on this site moaning and groaning and reciting your violin skills, which are wholly irrelevant (there is always an Asian better than you in violin or any other instrument, believe me!). .
Someone better tell the top rated college I go to that Im a white person not doing sports…I’m sure they’ll want to revoke my acceptance…
But in all seriousness, while being a recruited athlete is a nice hook, it’s not by any means required. Top tier US schools care heavily about extra curricular activities not just academics. They get hundreds of perfect grade and good SAT score applicants. Without more to your app rejection is honestly expected. Even with an impressive app it’d be arrogant to expect to get admitted to a top tier US school. Applying to all 8 Ivies doesn’t increase your chances at any one of them.
@makennacompton Interesting approach. Unfortunately it’s far too late to do anything about that now, but that is certainly a plausible strategy.
@Lagging Yes, I did expect to be rejected to be rejected looking at statistics, but many people have commented on ivy league admission as being like a lottery, and I believed that I was a qualified applicant. It’s difficult to distinguish between whether it was misfortune or under qualification.
It’s misfortune you didn’t get into these particular schools. It’s poor planning you didn’t get into any top school. (A top Nescac/little Ivy would have been within the realm of possibility for example.)
MIT has great advice for teachers how to write recommendation that is helpful to the admissions office. http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs You might want to ask your school if they have seen it. Did you apply to MIT? It’s got a very good undergrad business/economics program and good math. Not an Ivy, but just as prestigious and rigorous!
Most successful applicants who get into the super selective schools have something to offer besides academics and scores. They’ve got jobs, or have done interesting research, or have interesting volunteer experiences. Academically they may have gone well beyond whatever their school offers. They are self-starters. (For example my comp sci kid taught himself enough computer programming to take the AP as a freshman. Then he worked his way through some of MIT’s opensource courseware, he learned about the Linux operating systems and worked in programming during the summers learning whatever progamming languages he needed. In addition he did a couple of modelling projects for some med school professors and in his spare time he modded a game which got an award from a Gaming Magazine.)
@makennacompton, you overestimate the sports angle. The Ivies have high GPA/scores requirements for their athletes. A few years ago, the #1 under-18 player in the US in a sport very big at the Ivies, was told not to apply to several of the top Ivies because his stats were too low (His GPA was in the 3.2-3.5 range). His younger sibling, a MUCH lower-ranked player in the same sport but an excellent student, was encouraged to apply, and got into HYPC.
I have a family member who was an Ivy sports recruit. She had a 4.0 and good SATs – but in order to make her an admissions offer, the school said she had to retake the SATs and raise it by a specific number of points. In contrast, one of the top California athletes in the same sport, and a URM at that, was told by recruiters her stats weren’t good enough for any of the Ivies. She ended up at a large West Coast public.
So being an athlete isn’t enough, sorry. You still have to have the grades and the stats.
@katliamom, yes, Ivy athletes still need to make the numbers (which are in different buckets depending on how good a player the coaches think you are), but a recruited athlete just needs to make the numbers, which is not true for someone unhooked.
Oh, absolutely. But those “numbers” aren’t terribly low. Like I said, a top US player in an important Ivy sport – who went pro after college – didn’t have the numbers with a 3.2-3.5 GPA (don’t know his SATs.) He went to a good but not Ivy private, taking his school to national championships 4 years in a row - the first time a non-Ivy won that championship. So he was good. They would have wanted him. Instead, they took the weaker sibling because the sibling had the numbers.
This is more important than you might think. What stands out to me about the (non-hooked) HYPS students that I know is that they have notable achievements across the board. So top GPAs, top test scores, APs in a non-native language, STEM subjects and humanities, varsity + club sport(s), high level performance art, high level student leadership roles- plus something impressive every summer. From the colleges pov, this translates into a student who has a lot of motivation, a lot of self-discipline, and gets along well with both other students and adults. And there are a surprising number of applicants like this.
In general, the US system (esp at the top) rewards all-rounders > asymmetry. The UK system works the other way around. Says the mother with children in both systems- horses for courses!
You are lucky. It is tremendously hard for an American kid with a US education to get into Oxbridge… Also like a lottery. For my child who is on a waitlist for an ivy it boils down for someone with her “profile” not to accept the spot offered, and for a spot for someone with her profile to open up. She got a very nice letter - they could have filled 6 classes with qualified applicants - and could only offer her a spot on a non-ranked waitlist of 1500 kids. Having said that - I imagine ethnicity, background, major, etc - all are factors - but we really don’t know what categories exactly she would fall under… so now it is up to luck - in the meantime we are evaluating some other great options she has earned, and are extremely stressed out about everything.
I have known many kids get into Ivy League schools. While many have “hooks,” some have not. What I would say about the ones without hooks is that they have something, other than strong academics, that stands out and that they have not limited themselves to activities at their schools. Thus, the kid who loves politics might be a member of Model Congress at school, but has also volunteered in several local or state political campaigns, is a member/leader of a teen organization that promotes civic engagement and possibly has spoken before his town or even a county or state committee about a subject of concern. They are generally doers with long-standing interests and a record of achievement.
The poster above is correct, I am sure. A boy in our high school got into Harvard this year. He is exactly what @midatlmom is describing above, in fact so closely, that I am wondering if we know the same kid! He is of course an excellent, intelligent student, but had no hook at all. He did apply ED, which no doubt helped. I think if he had applied RD, he wouldn’t have been accepted.
You are coming from a purely merit-based system. If a kid with your stats had applied to Oxford, he would probably have been accepted. This is because everywhere else in the world. universities look only at a student’s academic qualifications. But in the US, schools look at a lot of other things, including academic qualifications. This is what makes predicting admissions so difficult. Were you qualified for any of the Ivies? Of course, but so were the other students with your stats. For some reason, though, the schools chose some of those other students because there were other things in their application that seemed a better fit. But you can be assured that academically, they probably weren’t any better qualified than you.
The bottom line is that you did nothing wrong.
RE: “So being an athlete isn’t enough, sorry. You still have to have the grades and the stats.”
Except if you are applying to Stanford.
@Massmomm, it’s more that, for most slots, the definitions of merit are different.
Oxbridge and the other English unis are looking for scholars in a field. Oxbridge interviews are conducted by the profs in the subject you will study and are very important.
In the US, yes, there are hooked applicants, but otherwise, the elite privates are looking for future leaders and kids who will contribute to their campus.
So given 2 candidates, Mr. A who is a math genius but has trouble holding his own his own in cocktail parties and is offkey in essay writing and Mr. B who is good at math but won’t be coming up with famous proofs anytime soon (ever) but is keen about and good at acting and seems wise beyond his years to adults, Mr. A would do well in Oxbridge admissions but not so well in RD to the American tippy-top unis and vice versa for Mr. B.*
- Caltech, which seems closest to Oxbridge/Imperial in admissions philosophy of the American elites, may be an exception.
I think with Mr. B you describe your average student government president and his achievements will get him into the honors college at his local state school, and a partial scholarship from a Syracu or GW.
Mr. A would be fine except for the off key essay writing which if his parents were wise they would make sure someone was editing them. No one cares about ivy interviews unless you come off as an entitled white kid. Even then if you are an athlete or otherwise hooked, no one cares as long as you are not a psycho. I heard an anecdote about an experienced interviewe who hated a candidate so much he walked his report into the admissions office and personally spoke to them about the candidate. Kid was an athlete and got in anyway no idea if it is absolutely true but my friend claimed to know the person doing the interviews.
Assuming A’s parents cannot and do not pay for someone to edit him then hopefully he thinks to apply to Oxbridge or Cal Tech or maybe Cooper Union or some other engineering school.
Mr. C is the one who is personable, might find a new element one day and whose Toshiba/intel/Westinghouse did not win because it was so sophisticated the judges did not understand its utility but did get honorable mention and Mr. C turned the explanation into a Ted talk attended by the head something or other at someplace who asked to purchase the invention. He will get in. Good luck to the other two.
@SeekingPam, HYPSM takes in 8K or so each year. There aren’t 8000 18 year-olds with inventions that will be purchased.
And the rest of the Ivies&equivalents (if you count privates only) take in another 17K or so. And that’s not even counting JHU, Georgetown, Rice, ND, etc. 10K+ there. A couple thousand at equivalent LACs. Another 6K or so OOS at Cal/UMich/UVa.
Though, granted, Mr. B does have to be a good (preferably memorable) essayist and passionate about stuff outside the classroom (which he is).
Precisely why there are so many lottery tickets ehem applications purchased by people with good enough scores, who have not invented anything but are pleasant all around people with a small spike in something but hardly going to write a bestseller. They figure some of those 34/35/4.0s are getting in, why not them!
There may not be 8000 unhooked superstars but there are several thousand legacies, development, athletes, URM with 34-36s (I include geographically diverse in that).
@SeekingPam, it’s not the scores, though.
Those that get in tend to have multiple spikes or passions. Likely also fit their uni in their own way.
Our high school is highly ranked. 10% of the class is NMF, lots of perfect GPAs, etc. About 10 students got into ivies, and without exception you can identify why. One girl is just absolutely stellar at everything - perfect scores/grades, started her own charity (a real one), teaches a unique instrument to underresourced kids - I could go on and on - she’s basically perfect and 3 of the 5 ivies to which she applied thought so too. She is the only one without a hook The others include legacies, URMs (all of whom can easily afford full pay), 1 athlete, 1 with a grandmother who was the first female to graduate from the med school, and one whose parents have been close family friends with the admissions rep for our area for decades. The others were shut out. All got into amazing schools, and will do extraordinary things in their fields. Frustrating for the un-hooked students but a life lesson. Sometimes it’s just who you know and your family situation. Just like real life. But I didn’t see the process as random at all.