There are many different ways to get into Ivy league schools, if you head over to the forum for each college you can look at the results pages. You’ll notice the rejected students look pretty similar to the accepted ones.
My kid got into one Ivy League college by doing what he loved. He discovered computer programming in second grade and played with programming for hours every day for the next ten years. He worked, did volunteer programming for a couple of med school professors, did a game mod that won an award, and helped seniors learn how to double click among other activities. He was also part of a very successful Science Olympiad team and Academic Team. He got good grades and good test scores with minimal work.
He got rejected from four top universities and into two. He got merit money at his two safeties. That was quite a while ago, but it’s only gotten harder. By the way he did not go to the Ivy League College because it did not have as good a CS program as the one he attended.
Ivy League colleges have different strengths and weaknesses and atmospheres. The person who likes Dartmouth is unlikely to love U. Penn. The Ivy League is just a sports conference that was set up in 1954.