<p>Applying to a college like an Ivy, do you need an extracurricular that makes you really stand out? Or is good grades and scores, a few extracurriculars, and a good essay enough? </p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>They don’t call Ivy League admissions a crapshoot for nothing. Go to the Ivy threads and see for yourself. However, if you don’t apply you’ll definitely not make it.</p>
<p>You don’t need to stand out to apply to a very selective school. But it helps if you want to be admitted.</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>like J’adoube said, its a complete crapshoot. And, of course, outstanding extracurriculars will help you more so than average extracurriculars.</p>
<p>You really need to stand out. A 2400 and being Valedictorian are not enough. You need to demonstrate that you are productive individual who will contribute to your community.</p>
<p>I would read this thread, particularly the third post:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/210497-those-ecs-weak-so-whats-good.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/210497-those-ecs-weak-so-whats-good.html</a></p>
<p>If this scares you, remember this is only for Ivies - you can thrive at another great university with EC’s less than this.</p>
<p>I disagree with some of these posters who are making admission into an ivy more difficult and random than it may seem. For the lesser ivies (Cornell excluding engineering, Penn excluding Wharton, etc.) all one needed to get in from my school was like a 3.7 UW GPA in honors/AP classes, some volunteering, good test scores (near perfect in most cases), a couple ECs they did on a regular basis, and decent to good essays. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are different stories, but at my school if you are the valedictorian, you are basically guaranteed acceptance provided you aren’t a complete bore (which generally isn’t the case, at least in the past few years).</p>
<p>Granted, my former HS clearly kicks ***, but this proves that admissions to top schools isn’t always a “crapshoot.”</p>
<p>I disagree with some of these posters who are making admission into an ivy more difficult and random than it may seem.</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>That’s true to a point. You have to remember that CC is a self-selecting group of people and therefore there’s going to be a disproportionate number of people that got rejected from Ivies posting their objective stats (EC’s, GPA, class rank and SAT/ACT) when they may have had a poor essay, recommendations or one or more errors in their application (typos, whatever).</p>
<p>I guess what I was saying before is that numbers can only take you so far - the top colleges look at students as multi-dimensional and holistically and, as overused as the term is, you really need to be well-rounded.</p>
<p>Senior0991, what high school do you go to?</p>
<p>a good one. Arguably the top public in a large state (at least top 3). The only way that a top five student in our class would not be admitted to a lower ivy is: the ivy practices yield protection or the applicant f-ed up in a major part of the application (terrible recs, essays, whatever). For these students, safety schools are the lower ivys (our valedictorian ONLY applied to five schools: Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Princeton).</p>
<p>No offense, but I really think your valedictorian lucked out…</p>
<p>Yeah, even at a tip-top public school, lower Ivys are <em>not</em> safety schools for anybody, and applying only to Columbia, Yale, Harvard, etc. is a dumb, dumb move. TONS of valedictorians get rejected from such schools every year, and many of them are from very, very good schools.</p>
<p>Some valedictorians are more valedictorian than others.:)</p>
<p>omg, some of you guys don’t get it. The top student or two the past few years has gotten into every lower ivy they’ve applied to. These people (and their peers/parents/GC) would be thoroughly surprised if they weren’t admitted to the lower ivys, hence the safety definition for me. Being the valedictorian (or close to it) in a class of 1000+ in a very wealthy suburb is a big deal. This isn’t some rural high school of 100 students where the valedictorian may have a perfect GPA, but has low test scores and few challenging classes (generalizing here, but you get the idea). </p>
<p>Granted, most of the top few students apply to surefire safeties (generally Umich, Cal, and lesser privates). But this student didn’t want to apply to anything without the ivy name, because he/she couldn’t imagine themselves anywhere else.</p>
<p>^Senior0991, perhaps your high school is unique, but I caution others against considering any Ivy League or other elite school a “safety.” Your limited anecdotal evidence demonstrates only a string of extremely good luck.</p>
<p>My son’s high school is generally considered the best in the state, and all of the 20+ top seniors attending elite colleges next year were rejected by at least one school (except for a few successful ED applicants). One Harvard kid was rejected by Stanford, one Harvard kid was rejected by Columbia and Brown, the MIT kid was rejected by Columbia, etc. My evidence is also anecdotal, but I suspect it more closely mirrors the norm.</p>