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The 3 Dos and Dont’s to get Accepted into America’s Most Selective Colleges

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There is so much misinformation out there regarding how to get into America’s most selective colleges, and sadly, a lot of it comes from high school counselors themselves.

Luckily, by reading on, you will get some of the best advice that many high school-based counselors are unable or unwilling to give their students.

Here are the 3 Dos and 3 Don’ts to help you get accepted into America’s most selective colleges:

1. Don’t be well-rounded. Do be well-lopsided.

Why well-rounded students get skipped

It almost doesn’t seem fair. You work hard throughout high school, joining clubs and sports teams, focusing on getting good grades, trying to be the most well-rounded student you can possibly be – and then comes time to start applying to colleges.

For years, you have dreamed of attending some of the more selective colleges in the nation: Duke, UC Berkeley, Michigan, perhaps some of the Ivies, like Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. You have put in the work, built the resume.

Applying to college can be an exciting yet stressful time in a high-schooler’s life. After all, this is what all the hard work was about. This is why you packed your schedule with extracurriculars. This is why you stayed up late studying for those exams.

But before you begin submitting those applications, there is something important you should know: college admissions officers are not looking for well-rounded students.

On the surface, that might not make much sense.

Let’s take a deeper dive into why well-rounded students get passed over and what admissions officers are really looking for in high school applicants.

Well-rounded student vs. well-rounded class

If you are a well-rounded student, don’t take this personally. But consider this a fair warning: college admissions officers are not looking for well-rounded students.

If you’re going down the path of well-roundedness and you have your eyes set on a top college, you need a change of course – before it’s too late.

Many students might find this confusing. After all, you’ve been told time and time again by teachers, parents, and counselors that you need to join a wide variety of clubs, try out for some sports teams, volunteer, get involved however possible.

“If I can show colleges that I can do a little bit of everything, then surely, I’ll set myself apart from the rest of the competition.”

Unfortunately, this sort of thinking couldn’t be further from the truth.

The reality is that admissions officers are not looking for well-rounded students. They are trying to put together a well-rounded class. The mistake that so many college applicants make is trying to be a jack of all trades, which inevitably leads to being a master of none.

With this in mind, you likely only have one question to ask: then what does it take to get accepted to highly selective colleges?

What admissions officers are looking for

The simple truth is that if you want to go to a top college, you can’t just blend in with the crowd—you have to stand out among the other applicants. That may seem like straightforward advice, but it’s far more difficult to put into practice.

Virtually everyone applying to the Ivy League has good grades. Many played sports. Many were involved with the same types of activities and organizations: choir, National Honor Society, and Student Council. On their own, none of these activities will make your application stand out to top colleges.

To college admissions officers, you must be able to prove that you are an applicant who deserves their attention, interest, and ultimately, consideration.

And with many top colleges only spending eight minutes or fewer on any given application, you need to spark their interest – fast.

Brainstorm what sets you apart, what differentiates you from the mounds of well-rounded students who also want one of the select few spots in the upcoming freshman class.

In one of his popular blog posts, Allen Cheng, a Harvard alumnus and co-founder of a college test prep company, notes that there are two things that elite college admissions officers are looking for from applicants; they seek those “who are going to accomplish world-changing things” and those “who are going to contribute positively to their communities while in college and help other students accomplish great things as well.”

Understandably, neither one of those traits are a walk in the park. But with your application, it is your job not to demonstrate how much of a well-rounded student you are, but rather to demonstrate how you are the right applicant to accomplish such remarkable things in the future.

At the end of the day, being a well-rounded student may lead to modest successes in high school, but when it comes to applying to the nation’s most sought-after colleges, be sure you are demonstrating what sets you apart. The members of the next generation who will change the world are almost certainly not well-rounded – they are masters of their trades.

2. Don’t dabble. Do focus.

Why the best college applicants are the most focused

Focus is key.

You’ve already learned that the first key to acceptance into schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford is abandoning the image of a well-rounded student, and instead highlighting what sets you apart, and what makes you the type of student who will go on to change the world someday.

We know that alumni of many top colleges are often well-known for their astonishing contributions to the world – Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, Olympic medalists…But long before that, while they’re still back in high school, working hard with their minds set on attending one of those schools, how do admissions officers pick them out? What is it that sets these future leaders apart in high school – and on their applications – that so clearly speaks to what their long-term success will look like?

The secret is that the best college applicants are also the most focused candidates. Let’s dive a little deeper into what it means to be hyper-focused and what sets those students apart from the rest of the crowd.

The best college applicants don’t dabble

Being a well-rounded student is usually just another way of saying that the student dabbles in a multitude of activities, often without mastering any of them.

Students who find they have strived their entire high school careers to get involved with as many activities as possible to “round out their resume” should heed this advice. The truth is that if you are preparing to send a competitive application to top colleges, you need to hone in on a select few skills or pursuits. That’s where you should be focusing from here on out.

All those other activities, the ones you are doing half-heartedly or just for a participation trophy – those are simply time-wasters. Take some time to identify those activities now and abandon them.

This is not to say that there was no value in dabbling at a younger age. After all, you need some time to develop your skill sets and identify where your talents lie. But as you progress through high school, and especially as you prepare for college, you should be narrowing your focus and eliminating the activities that simply serve as distractions.

The best college applicants are hyper-focused

Take a moment to think about the people who are the best at what they do in the world. Think about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and NBA superstar LeBron James. No one talks about Zuckerberg’s ability to play basketball, and no one discusses James’s web development skills. You know why? Because those things don’t matter. It’s not what makes them great. What matters are the skill sets each of them uniquely garners that make them truly great.

It’s a safe bet to say that these top-performers cultivated their skills through focused attention and work.

That’s the same type of hyper-focus high school students should use to become the most competitive college applicants.

Focus, as defined in a Psychology Today article, “involves the ability to pay attention to things that will help avoid distractions that will hurt your work efforts.”

It’s really as simple as that.

Discard the activities that are time-wasters and spend your time and energy on your true strengths. Some might call this your “spike,” “pointiness,” personal brand, or elevator pitch – whatever the term, it’s the overall theme that you’re trying to convey to admissions officers.

So what does it look like to harness the type of hyper-focus that will lead to admissions success? There are several tangible steps you can take.

One of the most significant leaps you can make is to eliminate unhelpful extracurriculars and instead focus on the ones that highlight your best skills. So many high schoolers are encouraged to take up as many extracurriculars as they can – sports, music, clubs, volunteer work. But, admissions officers are going to look at this list and judge you based on whether or not they require any special knowledge or skills to succeed, or whether or not you are a leader or just another run-of-the-mill teammate or club member.

If anyone could do it just by dedicating some time, it doesn’t stand out on applications.

Consider also auditing your free time outside of schoolwork and extracurriculars, and determine if you’re truly spending it wisely. We live fast-paced lives, and, of course, high school students have social lives to live. The advice here is not to completely disregard your social life or the small pleasures of everyday life.

Instead, it’s to be conscious of where you’re spending your time, and to refocus when you find yourselves straying from your long-term goals.

This type of hyper-focus is what differentiates average applicants from the “must-admits.”

3. Don’t give up. Do be gritty.

If you want to successfully compete for a seat at a top college, you need a certain mindset. After all, years of dedication, hard work and high performance culminate with these college applications.

The college application process, and all the work that leads up to it, is enough to burn out many students. But the most successful college applicants have one other thing in common: they are gritty.

Why gritty students have the best chance for admission

Angela Duckworth is a leading researcher who, literally, wrote the book on grit and its impact on success, called Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She defines the trait as “passion and perseverance of very long-term goals.”

According to Duckworth’s research, the most successful students are not necessarily those with the highest IQ or exam scores. Rather, she notes in her book, “the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, but they also had direction.”

Duckworth is someone worth listening to when it comes to grit’s role in being accepted into elite colleges, herself having earned degrees from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Oxford. Her research uses grit as the greatest predictor of long-term success, rather than talent.

Becoming a grittier person will not happen overnight. It’s a trait that you develop in the long run, with benefits that you reap lifelong.

This is to say, students who are gritty and can clearly demonstrate that grit on their applications have the best chance for admission to top colleges. There is a long list of talented applicants on the desks of Ivy League admissions officers. But those whose story is one of grittiness — a relentless pursuit of a select few strengths and overcoming of obstacles — those applicants consistently dominate the admissions game.

Making a Calm College Decision

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This is typically the week many high school seniors are a little tense about their college plans.  The last few colleges are sending out decisions this week, and they tend to be the colleges where the admit rates are a little less than getting struck by lightning, so the hopes are high, while the odds remain low.

Now that the big week is finally here, here’s a quick list of things you should focus on to make a quality decision for life after high school:

What you do with the college experience matters more than where you go.  Most counselors save this advice for the end of articles like this, but these are unusual times. Chances are, if you’ve applied to a highly selective school, you have what it takes to do well there—it’s just that the college runs out of room before they run out of great applicants.  This means that the talents, habits, interests, and way you look at the world has prepared you to do great things wherever you go.  The college you attend won’t automatically make you a success; that will still be up to you.  So your future will still be in your hands, no matter what the colleges have to say this week.

It looks like another record breaking year. There are fewer students graduating from high school this year, but that isn’t keeping many colleges from seeing new highs in applications—and some that are seeing declines are still admitting less than 20 percent of their applicants.  Combined with an increase in the number of students many colleges took through early action and early decision plans, that leaves precious few seats to give out this week.

Yes, No, or Maybe, read the entire letter.  A student I am close to—OK, it’s my son—was so happy to read he was admitted to his first choice school he didn’t bother to read page 2 of the acceptance letter.  I did, and it’s a good thing, since it included information on the merit scholarship that made his attendance their possible.  Other yes letters have information about when deposits are due, and those are important as well.

Letters that waitlist you are even more important to read, since staying on the list may require you to do something—email, send back a card, update your application—by a specific date.  Even the letters of denial could give you information about transfer options that may now come into play.  So read the letter from start to finish, and have a parent do the same.

Read, and update, your financial aid information.  There’s a good chance all your colleges are going to be sending financial aid packages this week.  These are based on the financial aid information you gave them two months ago, when the world was a quiet place, before the stock market lost 30 percent of its value—and possibly before you or your parents lost their job.

The only way a college will know your financial picture has changed is if you tell them, and this is college—so it’s not time to be shy.  Pick up the phone, call financial aid, tell them your new story, and be ready to send supporting documents.   You’re this close to making the dream real.  Keep working.

File financial aid for the first time.  It’s certainly true most colleges have given all their aid away to students who applied for it in February, but many of those students turn down packages, or go to a different school.  If you now need help paying for college, get the forms in yesterday—check the college’s website to find out all the forms they need, and where you should send them.  Calling to ask is an even better idea.

Ask for an extension to the May 1 deposit.  Many colleges understand that this spring isn’t exactly normal, which is why they are moving their deposit deadlines to June 1 or later.  If your college isn’t doing that, you can still call and request an extension for personal reasons.  They might say no, but the only way they say yes is because you ask—kind of like the only way they admitted you is because you applied. Make. The. Call.

Apply to more colleges.  Except for the Top 50, every college in this country is still taking applications for fall admission—and, as mentioned before, some will still have financial aid to offer you.  If you’re looking at changing your college plans due to all the changes in the world, lots of colleges are eager to hear from you for the first time…

Consider transferring …and thanks to some pretty strong transfer options, you could still end up graduating from your dream school, even if you can’t start there.  The best way to plan a transfer is to call the college where you want to finish, and ask about transfer options.  Building the plan from the end means you know where to start, and what classes are best to take to minimize the credits you’ll lose when you make the shift.  Ask for transfer admissions when you call.

Talk to your counselor.  One upside of all of this is that counselors now have more time than ever to talk college with you, since they don’t have to do lunch duty.  I know, I know—they have 8,000 students on their caseload, and they might not know you well.  They will once you tell them who you are, and what you need—and that window is now more wide open than ever before.  Most schools have sent students direction on how to reach out to counselors.  As is the case with most things in life, what you do with that information is now up to you.

College Counseling: The Year in Review

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There are many years in the college counseling world that come and go without a lot of fanfare, but this certainly wasn’t one of them.  Thanks to America’s ever-growing fascination with the college application process, counseling received more than its share of the limelight in 2019.  Here are the highlights:

The Scandal Known as Varsity Blues  Leave it to a small group of parents with way more dollars than sense, and a con man feigning to be an independent college counselor, to create even more angst over selective college selection than ever before.  Since this story involved Hollywood, money, and some of the three schools the New York Times considers representative of the world of college admissions, way too much time and energy was devoted to understanding what this kerfuffle meant to college admissions as a whole. The average high school senior takes the SAT once and goes to college within 150 miles of home.  Varsity Blues meant nothing to them.  The same should have been true for the rest of us; instead, this issue is now running neck and neck with Popeye’s Spicy Chicken Sandwich for the year’s Story That Wasn’t Award.

Change to NACAC Ethics Code It made fewer headlines, but the Justice Department’s investigation into NACAC’s Code of Ethics could prove to have far more implications to the college plans of seniors than Varsity Blues could hope to.  With colleges now allowed to offer incentives for students to apply early, and with colleges able to continue to pursue students who have committed to another college, the May 1 deposit date is still in effect, but may prove to have significantly less effect.

 College Testing and the University of California  The value of the SAT and ACT popped up in the headlines all year, as even more colleges decided test scores no longer had to be part of their application process.  At year’s end, the test optional movement got a big media splash, as the University of California announced it was reviewing its testing policy.  Combined with a lawsuit filed against the UCs claiming the tests are discriminatory, it’s clear that business as usual in the college application process is on its way out.  Will more changes ensue?

The Harvard Case and Race  Affirmative action advocates celebrated a legal victory this fall when a court ruled Harvard’s admissions procedures do, and may, use race as a factor in reviewing college applications.  The case drew national attention in part because it was initiated by a group claiming Harvard didn’t admit enough students of Asian descent.  It’s likely to stay in the headlines when the decision is ultimately appealed to the US Supreme Court, a group that, as it currently stands, has been known to be highly skeptical of race-based programs—meaning this year’s lower court victory could be pyrrhic at best.

Improved Research on College Counseling  Academic research has never gotten its due in the world of school counseling, and that’s certainly true in the more specific field of college counseling.  That trend may be changing, as a report from Harvard lays the groundwork for a more data-based approach to measure the difference counselors make in their work.  The findings include an indication that counselors tend to be more effective in college counseling if the counselor was raised in the same area where they work, and, as a rule, are more helpful providing information to the student about the college the counselor attended.  The report suggests this may be due to undertraining in college admissions as part of counselor education programs– to which most of the counseling world replied, no kidding. Look for more to come here.

Billions More for More Counselors, But Who Cares  It’s hard to remember the need for more counselors was one of the favorite topics of the media just two years ago.  A sign of American’s true indifference—or short attention span—rests with a congressional bill that provides up to $5 billion for new school counselor positions, a bill that is currently languishing in committee.  Is this bill a victim of an absence of school shootings, impeachment, or both?  Given what it can do, is there really any reason this bill can’t be a focus of action in 2020? That’s really up to us.

 

 

Will Ivy League admissions deans blame the Russians next?

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With Ivy League early decision and early action statistics for Fall 2019 slowly but surely coming into focus, a trend is becoming clear: overall demand for venerable “elite” colleges and universities is on the wane, and in the process, “elite” American colleges are becoming ever so slightly less selective than they very recently were.

In addition to Penn, which earlier this fall revealed that it experienced a plunge in Early Decision applications, Harvard is reporting a higher acceptance rate for this year’s early application cycle than last year’s early application cycle. Harvard’s Restrictive Early Action acceptance rate ticked up to 13.9% this fall after clocking in at 13.4 percent last year. Overall, Harvard saw a nearly eight percent drop in REA applications compared to last year. The aforementioned Penn saw its ED acceptance rate rise over one percentage point to 19.7%. Yale got roughly four percent fewer early applications this fall (which resulted in a slightly higher early acceptance rate) and Dartmouth received a whopping sixteen percent fewer ED applications this fall compared to last year (and this was after many years of year-on-year increases in apps).

Princeton is suddenly shy about reporting its Single-Choice Early Action acceptance rate (and even the total number of early applicants); though basic online research shows that Princeton accepted 791 students this fall compared to 743 last fall – at minimum an increase in raw numbers of accepted students if not an increase in acceptance rate (TBD). Yet, it’s always wise to watch what these colleges do report in their press releases versus what they don’t. The omissions tell the tale. Columbia still hasn’t reported out any stats for this year’s admissions cycle. Outside of the Ivy League, other colleges with traditionally Ivy-level acceptance rates are also uncharacteristically demure and uncommunicative this December on the topic of their ED and EA application numbers and acceptance rates.

Meanwhile, Cornell’s Early Decision acceptance rate rose to 23.8 this year from 22.6 last year and was one of two Ivies that received more ED applications this year than last year. The biggest outlier so far this cycle, Brown University, which has always had a looser association with academic quality and accepting students based on academic merit (as opposed to immutable characteristics) compared to other Ivies, saw its ED acceptance rate fall to a new low while also receiving eight percent more ED apps this year compared to last year. Did Brown applicants not experience the California wildfires?! LOL…not at the wildfires; at that ridiculous line of reasoning. Will Ivy League admissions deans contrive to blame Russian interference next?

While it has clearly become de rigueur in “smart” circles to blame Fall 2019’s drop in early application numbers on California wildfires or changing high school demographics, more likely explanations exist by exploring the pervasive ridiculousness of the current college admissions process at America’s most selective institutions and the increasing skepticism many have about the value of what passes for higher education these days relative to the costs. According to Gallup, 51% of U.S. adults now consider a college education to be “very important,” down from 70% in 2013. Don’t expect Ivy League admissions deans to meaningfully engage in conversation on this topic.

It certainly doesn’t bode well for demand for American higher education generally when even a college like Harvard, which doesn’t depend on the vile racket that is the student loan-debt slavery industry, can’t squeeze out a lower acceptance rate year on year. Marketing can only take these hedge funds that dabble in play school (and major in network-building) so far. Demand is simply dropping and demand is likely to continue to fall until these schools tap new markets by changing admissions requirements (lowering them) by some chicanery like removing their SAT-ACT requirements or eventually just turning the whole thing into a literal lottery through which students only have to submit their names, addresses, and demographics in order to have a shot at admission. How far these selective schools will go in their race to the bottom regarding objective student academic/intellectual qualifications remains to be seen.

Alternatively, “selective” colleges could reform their education or pricing models; yet, you can bet that these institutions will tinker or outright disassemble their current admissions models before they touch the holy grail of actual education reform within their walls in order to make their value propositions to students/families more attractive. Though, pricing reform is certainly doable for the richest of these institutions (the Harvards and Yales of the world could offer free tuition for all undergraduates to drive up demand – for at least a few admissions cycles).

All in all, some sort of major reform or change will come from the drop in demand for an Ivy education. What this reform or change will look like remains to be seen. One thing is certain: those who run the Ivies like to be in control…of at least the narrative; therefore, whatever changes are made will be undertaken in an effort to spin the public on these institutions’ continued relevance and trend-setting reputations in polite society. Stay tuned.

How to get into the Ivy League – Ethically

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So much of what you read, watch, or hear in the media is there to make you feel like it’s impossible to get into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale without cheating your way in or using some unsavory connection to worm your way in.

Yet, a successful – and ethical – formula for getting into Ivy League colleges does exist and is pretty straightforward.

Below, I share the simple four-step formula for getting into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, or Yale, which has helped 100% of my students who have followed it get into one or more Ivy.

Step 1: Take Rigorous High School Courses and Get As in Them

Notice how it didn’t say “be smart” or “pursue your academic passions.” Such entreaties sound lovely, but they’re beside the point. The foundation of your campaign to get into an Ivy League college depends on you willingness and ability to consistently take the most rigorous courses at your high school and then earn A grades in all such courses as well as whatever other courses you are also taking. If your school reports A grades via a range (such as A-, A, A+ or 90-100), work your hardest to get the highest As possible (A+ or 97+). If your school grades on a different scale than those mentioned so far, simply aim for the top of it.

Every high school is different, but in many cases, taking the most rigorous courses at your high school is synonymous with one of the below three scenarios (or some combination or permutation thereof):

A. Running the table with as many Advanced Placement courses as you can take each academic year and taking all of your other academic courses at the highest levels on offer

B. Taking the most challenging courses offered to students in your high school during your first two years in high school, then becoming a full-fledged International Baccalaureate® (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) student at the start of your junior year, and finally completing the full IBDP with both predictions and final cumulative scores aligned in the 40-45 range

C. Taking as many Honors, High Honors, Gifted, and/or Dual Enrollment courses as possible throughout your four years in high school

In no grade in high school should you take fewer than five academic courses (though I prefer six if you can swing it), and if you are being strategic about things, no matter the exact curriculum on offer at your school or official names of courses available at your school, at minimum, your four-year academic course load in high school should include the following:

Freshman Year:

Most Rigorous English Course Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Math Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous History Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Science Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Foreign Language Available to 9th Grade Students – 1 Credit

Sophomore Year:

Most Rigorous English Course Available to 10th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Math Available to 10th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous History Available to 10th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Science Available to 10th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Foreign Language Available to 10th Grade Students (Same Language as Last Year) – 1 Credit

Junior Year:

Most Rigorous English Course Available to 11th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Math Available to 11th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous History Available to 11th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Science Available to 11th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Foreign Language Available to 11th Grade Students (Same Language as Last Year) – 1 Credit

*Or, if an IBDP student:

-Three HLs in areas you are most passionate about and that are likely to align with your potential college major(s)
-Three SLs in areas you are also deeply passionate about
-Of your six IB courses, only one (max) should be arts-related unless you plan to major in one or more art in college
-If your school offers Mathematics: analysis and approaches HL, you should take it and get an A (or Predicted 5+ minimum) in it

Senior Year:

Most Rigorous English Course Available to 12th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Math Available to 12th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous History Available to 12th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Science Available to 12th Grade Students – 1 Credit
Most Rigorous Foreign Language Available to 12th Grade Students (Same Language as Last Year) or Double Up on English, Math, History, or Science, but only with an Advanced/AP/IB/Honors+ Course – 1 Credit

Or, if an IBDP student, continuation of * detailed above.

Notice how I didn’t mention elective/arts courses. They are nice to take too, especially if you need to or want to pursue your passions through them and have the horsepower to do so, but to be completely honest, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale are focused on your academic courses, not PE, Health, Arts (except for AP or IB), Personal Finance, etc. courses.

Remember, the above academic course progression is only a minimum goal; you can always do more, and that would be great – just keep earning As if you take on more rigor/courses than the progression outlined above.

Step 2: Score Very Well on the SAT and/or ACT

To be blunt – aim for 1450 on the SAT or 33 on the ACT minimum. For most people this requires a great deal of studying and a history of actually being a serious student in school. Do students get into Ivy League colleges with lower scores than those stated above? Yes. You should assume that you are not going to be one of them.

– Time Out –

Before we move on to Step 3 and Step 4, I should note that many students around the world are able to beautifully accomplish the aforementioned Step 1 and Step 2; yet, the majority of such students will not get into Ivy League colleges even if they try. This is for the same reason that most professional baseball players have no problem hitting a double but very few will ever hit an inside-the-park home run: they are unable or unwilling to go past second base. Below you will learn how to go beyond second base and return to home plate without being called out.

FUN FACT: the majority of students, parents, talking-heads/influencers complaining about how hard it is to get into an Ivy League college are doing so because they don’t want to or don’t know how to put in the effort necessary to complete Step 3 and Step 4 below.

Step 3: Strategically Differentiate Your Life

Everyone wants to win the lotto these days (hit the jackpot without the effort). But, again, if we are being real, very few billionaires just fell into their money. They or their predecessors developed a plan and executed on it in order to make it big.

The same idea applies to getting into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, or Yale. You need to sit down like a young adult, think critically, develop a plan, and execute on it if you are going to give yourself the best shot of getting into an Ivy League college.

What should the plan look like? It should not look like any other student’s plan, that’s for sure. That’s why sitting down like a young adult and attempting to think critically all alone is often not enough for many teens with Ivy League dreams. Most teenagers with big goals really do need to sit down with at least one older and wiser strategic thinker in order to game plan out a strategy that can be tactically and earnestly implemented.

Sadly, many students only turn to a mom, dad, sibling, friend, or teacher who means well but doesn’t know much about what Ivy League colleges are really attracted to in students. Other students go to their high school’s college counselor hoping he or she will be the “older and wiser strategic thinker” that they are so desperately looking for in order to give themselves the best shot of Ivy League college admission. Pretty soon most students figure out (if they do at all) that even if their college counselor is well-meaning and knowledgeable (the student would actually be very lucky to find these characteristics in his or her college counselor), very few high school-based college counselors have the time, interest, and/or ability to provide the personalized and highly strategic college admissions coaching students with Ivy League goals need.

For example, so many students go to their high school counselors looking for advice on how to get into Ivy League colleges and their counselors summarily advise them to consider other colleges all together because, “fit matters more than rank, Johnny” or, if the students are lucky, maybe the counselors will advise the students to become extracurricular leaders! Woopdidoo!

Both scenarios make my blood pressure rise, though at least in the latter case the counselors are respecting students’ questions and goals. Yet, as attractive as student leaders are to Ivy League colleges, there is a very important characteristic that trumps leadership in the eyes of Ivy League college admissions officers:

The earlier in high school you can sit down with someone who actually knows what he or she is talking about and has the time and interest to get to know you and your goals well the more likely you will be able to strategically differentiate your life choices over the course of your high school career while also aligning your life choices to your unique value system. This in turn will allow you to stand out for all the right reasons to Ivy League admissions committees and ultimately reach your full college admissions potential.

Step 4: Communicate Like a Teenager from a Bygone Era

There has been a complete implosion of English instruction in K-12 education. As I have alluded to before: most students capable of getting straight As in high school English classes can’t write well or speak well. This is because most students capable of getting straight As in high school English classes have never learned how to think critically, which is a prerequisite for eloquent writing and speaking. Many students get As in English – even AP-level English – without actually being able to think, write, or speak that well.

Layer on top of that travesty the advent of smart phones and other forms of electronic communication, which have corrupted teenage minds and writing skills over the past twenty years, and you have a nightmare scenario for the future of humanity.

Yet, in this living nightmare there is an opportunity for those high school students who have actually – miraculously – been taught how to think, write, and speak clearly – like mere peasants, high school dropouts, and ragamuffins could in 1938. I mean this seriously. I was looking through an English test that my grandmother had to take in eighth grade in a Baltimore public school, and it was far harder than any English test I EVER took in high school or college. As a point of reference: in the last twenty years I’ve earned an MA in Education Administration and a BA in History (the latter from Penn no less). Maybe I would have been better off being born in 1922 and simply graduating high school in 1940 (as long as I survived the war)? I digress.

If you are in high school and open to actually learning how to think clearly and write and speak articulately, the world is your oyster. Frankly, the Ivy League would be luck to have you – and their admissions officers know it. Thus, if you pull off high level thinking and communicating in your application to an Ivy League college, you are going to set yourself apart from the average Ivy League applicant.

Many students (and their parents) realize that they need help in the communication portion of their college applications. That’s why every year in late spring I start getting calls from rising high school seniors and their parents begging me to help edit college applications – specifically extracurricular resumes and college application essays.

Frankly, I find providing developmental editing, substantive editing, copy editing, proofreading, and constructive critiquing for rising seniors increasingly tedious and often painful because it’s pretty time-consuming and emotionally draining for me to fix over a several-week period what took twelve years to do to you, namely, destroy your ability to communicate effectively. That’s why I much prefer meeting with students early in high school in order to start the important process of teaching them how to think deeply and write and speak well. This is also a reason why I developed the How to Build and Extraordinary Extracurricular Resume short course; creating a good resume is pretty much a science, but it’s a repetitive one.

To meet your full potential on college application essays, only personalized coaching can get you there – especially if you have not benefited from the rare instances of proper English instruction that still remain in this anti-intellectual age. As such, I do still take on a limited number of clients each year for college admissions coaching services (college list development, extracurricular resumes, essays, interview prep, total college application review, etc.) even though such work becomes harder each year because of the daily devolution of institutionalized K-12 education.

Long story short, the earlier you become a master communicator the more likely you will actually be able to share both your own voice and a voice worth listening to on your college applications and in college admissions interviews.

Conclusion

It’s really that simple. If you can tackle the four steps above with grace and gusto (and dare I suggest, gravitas), you are extremely likely to get into Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, or Yale. Yet, even more important than getting into any Ivy League college, if you can accomplish all of the above, you will have learned a lot and grown a lot as a person and remained ethical in so doing.

Princeton University

Never Say This During an Ivy League Admissions Interview

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If you have the opportunity to interview with a representative of an Ivy League school make sure you steer clear of saying…

The Most Essential College Admission

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He was on his way home from just having dropped all his classes at the local community college.  Having graduated from high school sixteen months ago, every one of his postsecondary plans had failed to come to fruition, and the drive home from campus gave him time to ponder what would come next.

As it turns out, he didn’t have to ponder long.  He came across a home construction site on the route home, and had always had an interest working with his hands.  He swung his car up to the site, got out, and asked the first hard-hatted worker just what it might take to get a job like this.  The worker turned out to be the contractor, who said that anyone who had the guts to pull up and ask was worth taking a chance on.  Find yourself a good pair of boots, he was told, and come back tomorrow.

That was the beginning of a postsecondary plan that stuck.  At age nineteen, he took on a job that paid $42,000, less than the median household income for his state, but far more than he would have earned working at the local sandwich shop.  His brief stint at community college left him little debt to be concerned with, and while his short-term plans doubtlessly included continued residency with his parents, it wouldn’t be long before he could afford an apartment of his own—and after that, his own home.

This is a remarkable story for several reasons, but what’s most noteworthy is the response this story receives from the school counselors and college admissions officers who hear it.  To nearly a person, they are convinced this young man has thrown away his future.  Citing countless personal and professional histories, they speak with clear certainty that he will regret his choice by the time he’s twenty-eight, only to find himself saddled with a mortgage or the well-being of a young family, unable to go back to college on a full-time basis, and therefore destined to be trapped in a job that appeared to pay well in his youth, but will limit his opportunities later in life.

This story comes to mind as we are weeks away from headlines that decry a different kind of postsecondary story:  the headlines of another round of record applicants to a handful of the most selective colleges in America, where statistics suggest admission is less likely than being struck by lightning.  Every seat in these colleges will be filled this fall by a promising, eager student, but the headlines turn their attention to the vast majority of exceptionally bright students who also had the potential to do great things at these colleges—except the college ran out of room before they ran out of quality applicants.

The way most stories tell it, these hapless applicants are victims of the postsecondary wheel of fortune, destined to try and make do at a college that likely is still highly regarded, but not quite as highly regarded, forced to devote part of their lives to perpetually looking back, and wondering what would have been if they had been one of the fortunate few whose cell phone had played the school’s fight song when they opened their emailed admissions decision.

Much has been written about the need for reform in America’s higher education system, and while there is ample agreement that the current system has need of correction, there is no clear consensus what that correction should look like.  Not surprisingly, testing companies insist the answer is more testing at an earlier age, while advocates of test-less admissions policies are convinced their approach is the only one that will open the gates of higher learning to a wider audience.  Others advocate for stackable college credentials that measure a semester’s worth of work as the only way to make college affordable, while developmental purists fret this approach would reduce the developmental benefits young people receive in the delayed gratification that is part of the four-year college experience.

These arguments make for interesting intellectual exercises, but they do little to help the students who had to “settle” for studying at the honors college of a four-year public university, or the students whose knowledge of geometry put college out of reach, but made them experts at framing walls and cutting pipe.  Our current system of higher education has many challenges, but the biggest one lies in changing the perception that there can only be a handful of winners once high school is over.  Different talents and different needs require different plans, and honoring those differences doesn’t require us to sacrifice the quality of the unum, simply because we honor the talents of the pluribus.

Our country is supposed to be a tent of opportunity.  Let’s advance that idea by seeing all our high school graduates as residents of the big top.

Analysis: Ivies’ Inconsistent Need-Blind Review Policies

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For years, the eight institutions that make up the Ivy League have loudly touted how they review undergraduate applications in a need-blind manner, which gives many families the impression that a family’s financial circumstances will play no role in its student’s chances of admission into one of these very selective institutions.

Yet, the Ivies have need-blind policies that are not so black and white. In fact, if families read the fine print, they will find that many members of the Ivy League engage in a hybrid of review policies depending on students’ citizenship or U.S. residency status. Five out of the eight members of the Ivy League review first-year applicants in either a need-blind manner or need-aware manner depending on an applicant’s citizenship or U.S. residency status. The other three are need-blind for each and every first-year applicant.

Below, Admissions Intel provides a breakdown of the distinct review policies for the eight members of the Ivy League.

University of Pennsylvania
Penn offers probably the most interesting need-blind review policy. An applicant to Penn will be reviewed in a need-blind manner if the student is a citizen or legal permanent resident of the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. Why Canadians or Mexicans are reviewed on a need-blind basis is not explained, though of course these countries share borders with the U.S. Canadian and Mexican taxpayers certainly don’t fund the millions of dollars worth of research that Penn engages in each year; American taxpayers do. Students living in the U.S. illegally (if they are honest about their status and not from Mexico or Canada) are reviewed in a need-aware manner. As are students from all other countries so far unmentioned. One could make the argument that Russia (close to Alaska) and the Bahamas (close to Florida) have reason to complain to Penn that Canada and Mexico get special treatment but they don’t.

Cornell University
Cornell is one of four Ivy League colleges that actively reward illegality with its need-blind admissions policies. Cornell is need-blind for all U.S. citizens and permanent residents and for those with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status. That last group includes many teenage children of parents who entered the U.S. illegally when their children were younger. While the children are also officially illegal residents of the U.S. the Obama administration created DACA to “bring out of the shadows” individuals brought to the U.S. illegally by their older family members. All other international applicants to Cornell are reviewed on a need-aware basis.

Brown University
Brown takes Cornell’s policy one step further by reviewing not only all U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and DACA recipients in need-blind manner; Brown also reviews all undocumented students in a need-blind manner. This raises the question, why would a student who wants to go to Brown but who doesn’t have the financial means just cross into the U.S. illegally through the Canadian or Mexican border before applying to Brown? Brown’s admissions committee rewards law-abiding international students with the gift of being reviewed in a need-aware manner.

Columbia University & Dartmouth College
Both Dartmouth and Columbia are need-blind for U.S. citizens, undocumented students, and eligible non-citizens residing in the U.S. This latter group includes:

-U.S. nationals (includes natives of American Samoa or Swains Island).

-U.S. permanent resident with a Form I-551, I-151, or I-551C (Permanent Resident Card, Resident Alien Card, or Alien Registration Receipt Card), also known as a “green card.”

-Individuals who have an Arrival-Departure Record (I-94) from U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) showing:

>“Refugee,”

>“Asylum Granted,”

>“Cuban-Haitian Entrant,”

>“Conditional Entrant” (valid only if issued before April 1, 1980), or

>“Parolee” (you must be paroled for at least one year, and you must be able to provide evidence from the USCIS that you are in the United States for other than a temporary purpose with the intention of becoming a U.S. citizen or permanent resident).

-Individuals who hold a T nonimmigrant status (“T-visa”) (for victims of human trafficking) or your parent holds a T-1 nonimmigrant status. Your college or career school’s financial aid office will ask to see your visa and/or certification letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

-Individuals who are a “battered immigrant-qualified alien” who is a victim of abuse by your citizen or permanent resident spouse, or you are the child of a person designated as such under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

-An individual who is a citizen of the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, or the Republic of Palau. If this is the case, you may be eligible for only certain types of federal student aid:

>Citizens of the Republic of Palau are eligible for Federal Pell Grants, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and Federal Work-Study.

>Citizens of the Federal States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands are eligible for Federal Pell Grants only.

-To qualify for federal student aid, certain eligible noncitizens must be able to provide evidence from the USCIS that they are in the United States for other than a temporary purpose with the intention of becoming a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

-Certain Native American students born in Canada with a status under the Jay Treaty of 1789 may also be eligible for federal student aid.

All other applicants to Columbia and Dartmouth are reviewed in a need-aware manner.

Harvard, Princeton, & Yale
This Holy Trinity is need-blind for everyone! That’s right, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale don’t care if you are Brazilian, Burmese, Byelorussian, or Baltimorean. You’re all going to be reviewed on a need-blind basis. Congrats for keeping it consistent Big Three.

Important Final Note
The above discussion only applies to how these eight schools determine whom to review on a need-blind or need-aware basis. Once a student is accepted, the Ivies make every effort to meet 100% of demonstrated need. The trick, of course, is getting in first, thus the discussion above.

Good luck!

Yale finds creative use of technology opens new possibilities for admissions

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Yale University.

Yale University is experimenting with the role digital media can play in college admissions. Using technology advanced last year by the Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success, Yale’s admissions readers in some cases became admissions viewers and experienced what will likely become a third dimension in college admissions—the creative use of media to present the case for admission to a highly selective institution.

Staying on the cutting edge of technology is challenging in any field, but changes in college admissions since the introduction of the electronic application are almost beyond description. Stacks of manila folders tucked into walls of file cabinets have been replaced by application “platforms” configured to align with enrollment management software, which oversees a process that is increasingly data-dependent and data-driven.

 

And the work has become less cyclical and more continuous as applicants have the luxury of starting applications earlier by entering information that “rolls over” from one year to the next.  Marketing begins with the administration of the first PSAT, with even the earliest scores sold to colleges anxious to get their names before potential applicants. There’s hardly a moment to reflect on successes and failures before it’s time to gear up for the next group of recruits turned applicants.

But as almost anyone involved in college admissions would agree, something isn’t quite right with this picture—the entire college admissions process is due for a major overhaul. And a handful of deans and enrollment management experts are ready to try.

“Technology has transformed how we process applications and how we read applications, but not how we create content for these applications,” commented Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale’s dean of undergraduate admission.

Like many others charged with overseeing admissions, Quinlan felt the time had come for Yale to experiment with application content that responded to the pervasiveness and availability of digital media.  While the Common Application set the standard, others saw a market ripe for innovation.

“I really felt we needed to make a change. We were looking at more and more essays that felt like they had been written by 47-year olds and not 17-year olds,” said Quinlan. “We thought we needed more material—different material—in the review process.”

Enter the Coalition application. Born out of concern that reliance on a single electronic application was a risky proposition and developed with a view toward attracting a wider, underserved audience, the Coalition application as built by CollegeNet looked for ways to integrate creativity and give colleges the kind of basic flexibility they wanted in an application platform.

“After the fall of 2013, we needed to bring more options into the application space,” Quinlan explained. “We thought giving students a choice of applications would be better for colleges and better for applicants.”

One of over 90 colleges that originally joined the Coalition and 47 that actually launched applications for 2016-17, Yale viewed this as an opportunity to design a substantially different set of application specifications from those contained in the Common Application.

Students applying to Yale could choose to write two additional 200-word essays (beyond the personal statement and other short-answer questions) for the Common Application or they could choose to write one 250-word essay and provide an upload related to that essay on the Coalition application.

While many Coalition members chose to simply replicate requirements laid out on the Common Application, Quinlan decided to offer alternate but not totally different requirements on Yale’s Coalition application. He kept the prompts the same for both applications, but used the Coalition application’s functionality to support links to digital media.

“It was critical to our review process that we not give preference to one application type over another. Our results from the first year bear this out; the rate of admission for students who submitted the Common Application and for students who submitted the Coalition Application were nearly identical.”

Nevertheless, the results were exciting. While only about one percent or 300 of Yale’s applicants used the Coalition application, the advantage of providing students with a choice of how to present themselves was clear. In some cases, the online media helped “separate” a student or verified some element of the application that didn’t come through strongly enough in a recommendation or through a student’s writing.

“We found certain situations, for example, where a video component made a difference—showed examples of kinds of characteristics we’re looking for.”

To illustrate his point, Quinlan talks about an application Yale received from Justin Aubin, an Eagle Scout who lives and attends high school in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Justin’s recommendations were excellent, and he was an outstanding student. But Yale has lots of those applicants.

What made Justin stand apart was a video his older brother filmed to document the construction of Justin’s Eagle project. In this distinctly amateurish record of decisions made as the work progressed, the Yale admissions office could easily see how Justin managed and supervised younger scouts and how he exhibited compassionate leadership, which inspired respect from the group as a whole.

The additional essay Justin provided put the video in context. But most importantly, he presented information that highlighted and underscored character traits Yale values and wants to bring to campus in the classes they admit. Other information on the application suggested this was possibly the case, but the video nailed it.

Justin Aubin was eventually admitted and will be attending Yale in the fall as a member of the class of 2021. And Quinlan credits Justin’s creative use of digital media—submitting the video—as making the difference

In all fairness, Yale isn’t the first institution to allow videos and other digital media to be submitted as part of an application for admission. Goucher College in Maryland and George Mason University in Virginia and others have video options available through institutional applications.

And it’s not all that unusual for colleges to offer several different application formats with differing requirements. In fact, smaller colleges make clear that their institutional applications are often more popular than the standardized Common Application.

In addition, last year’s applicants could use ZeeMee, an online resume promoted in questions on the Common Application, or SlideRoom—a Common App partner—to provide more visual support for their talents and interests.

But the difference for colleges using the Coalition application was that they could design their own questions and media integration. They didn’t have to rely on a third-party website that might encourage more “freeform” or off-message responses.

Yale’s new application was no more difficult for staff to review than the two-essay Common App version and could be scripted to allow for comparable responses across applicants using either platform. Linking the digital media to an essay prompt was key to the success of the experiment.

“Staff enjoyed doing something else. It was a way to experiment with new ways of interpreting new kinds of application content.”

Quinlan has a great deal of respect for the Common Application and has no interest in changing that relationship, which has worked very well for Yale. But he does want to offer students a choice of application platforms.

“We want the two applications to be different so students can be thoughtful about which they use and what they decide to present to us.”

While he expects to “tweak” the essay prompts offered in the Yale supplement, Quinlan will continue to provide the digital media option in the Coalition application. “We will maintain the two applications for next year with the same set-up.”

And students will be free to choose the application platform that best presents their credentials and makes their case for admission to Yale University.

For the record, the Coalition application will make available new functionality on June 15. And for the coming year, the roster of institutional members will grow to 135.  After July 1, colleges can open individual applications according to their own timelines.

This One Characteristic Trumps Leadership

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Don't Copy; Be Original

Forget about the leader-follower paradigm, which argues that to get into a top college you need to be a leader and not a follower. There is something that is even better than being a leader if you want to give yourself the best shot of admission to all the colleges and universities on your list.