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Now Open: Application for New UC Berkeley 4-Year Haas Business Program

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The time has finally come.

For years high school students interested in engaging in a traditional four-year undergraduate business program leading to a BS in Business Administration have had to look beyond University of California, Berkeley and its world-renowned Haas School of Business. Well those days are over.

The Fall 2023 admissions cycle is the first admissions cycle when UC Berkeley will be considering first-year applicants for Haas’ new Spieker Undergraduate Business Program for which the first four-year cohort of students will enroll in August of 2024. It’s named in recognition of a $30 million gift from Haas alumnus Warren “Ned” Spieker, and his wife, Carol, and its launch will give future Haas undergrads an additional two years of deeper learning, including career development, study abroad opportunities, entrepreneurship programs, capstone projects, mentorship engagements, and internships.

Previously, the only ways a first-year student could enter Haas earlier than junior year was through the school’s specialized Global Management Program (GMP), a direct-admit program leading to a concentration in global management for students interested in learning about business from a global perspective, and its M.E.T. program, for students who want to learn at the intersection of engineering and business and in the process earn degrees from both the College of Engineering and the Haas School of Business.

“A four-year undergraduate business experience will provide remarkable new opportunities for students,” said Ned Spieker, who is also a Haas School Board member and founder and former Chairman and CEO of Spieker Properties, one of the largest owner-operators of commercial property in the U.S. “My hope is that this gift will help build a program that’s second-to-none in the world, cementing Haas as the top undergraduate business school for generations to come.”

“This is a historic, game-changing investment in undergraduate business education,” said Berkeley Haas Dean Ann E. Harrison. “We are so thrilled that Ned and Carol have made a commitment to Haas toward building the next generation of business leaders.”

Up until this year, students have exclusively applied to the Haas Undergraduate Program as sophomores and enrolled as juniors. While most Haas undergraduates will enter as freshmen in the future, those students already at UC Berkeley and transfer students may continue to apply for acceptance to the program as sophomores for the time being.

Now, let’s get into the mechanics of how applying to Haas’ Spieker Program will work for first-year (mostly high school senior) applicants.

First, such applicants can begin working on the UC application now (it opened on August 1) and must submit the application during the unique two-month window between October 1 and November 30. For the uninitiated, the UCs do things their own way with their own application (no Common App accepted here) and an application submission window that ends at the end of November. UC Berkeley is generally considered the most selective of all the UCs, though UCLA, which has different undergraduate strengths and often attracts different types of undergraduate students, is quite selective as well.

Second, and only after submitting the UC application, applicants must also complete and submit the Haas supplemental application (back in the day many more selective colleges had two-part phased applications). Applicants will receive an email from the UC Berkeley Office of Undergraduate Admissions within five to seven business days after submitting their UC application with information regarding how to start their Haas supplemental application, which includes an essay question and a video interview upload. If prospective students don’t submit a complete the Haas supplemental application by January 5, 2024, their admission to Haas and UC Berkeley will be automatically denied.

Finally, admissions decisions will be released by the end of March and admitted students will have until May 1 to accept offers of admission.

The Berkeley Haas Undergraduate Program was founded in 1898, the same year the business school (then called the College of Commerce) was established. Haas is the second-oldest business school in the United States behind University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, which American entrepreneur and industrialist Joseph Wharton established as the world’s first collegiate school of business in 1881.

The launch of Spieker at Haas will surely put Wharton (Penn), Mendoza (Notre Dame), McDonough (Georgetown), Marshall (USC), and Ross (University of Michigan), among others, on notice while attracting some of these same universities’ applicants to take more seriously the Bay Area of California as a strong-fit undergraduate destination.

Penn unveils new supplemental essay prompts for 2023-2024 admissions cycle

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University of Pennsylvania has released its 2023-2024 supplemental essay prompts for first-year applicants.

All first-year applicants to Penn will complete several Penn-specific short essays; yet, for the first time, the exact prompts students respond to will depend on the school within the university that they are applying to.

2023-2024 Penn Supplemental Prompts

Required of All Applicants:

1. Write a short thank-you note to someone you have not yet thanked and would like to acknowledge. (We encourage you to share this note with that person, if possible, and reflect on the experience!) (150-200 words)

2. How will you explore community at Penn? Consider how Penn will help shape your perspective, and how your experiences and perspective will help shape Penn. (150-200 words)

Required of College Applicants Only:

3. The flexible structure of The College of Arts and Sciences’ curriculum is designed to inspire exploration, foster connections, and help you create a path of study through general education courses and a major. What are you curious about and how would you take advantage of opportunities in the arts and sciences? To help inform your response, applicants are encouraged to learn more about academic offerings within the College of Arts and Sciences at college.upenn.edu/prospective. This information will help you develop a stronger understanding of how the study of the liberal arts aligns with your own goals and aspirations. (150-200 words)

Required of Engineering Applicants Only:

3. Penn Engineering prepares its students to become leaders in technology, by combining a strong foundation in the natural sciences and mathematics, exploration in the liberal arts, and depth of study in focused disciplinary majors. Please share how you hope to explore your engineering interests at Penn. To help inform your response, applicants are encouraged to learn more about Penn Engineering and its mission to prepare students for global leadership in technology here. This information will help you develop a stronger understanding of academic pathways within Penn Engineering and how they align with your goals and interests.

Required of Nursing Applicants Only:

3. Penn Nursing intends to meet the health needs of society in a global and multicultural world by preparing its students to impact healthcare by advancing science and promoting equity. What do you think this means for the future of nursing, and how do you see yourself contributing to our mission of promoting equity in healthcare? To help inform your response, applicants are encouraged to learn more about Penn Nursing’s mission and how we promote equity in healthcare here.  This information will help you develop a stronger understanding of our values and how they align with your own goals and aspirations. (150-200 words)

Required of Wharton Applicants Only:

3. Wharton prepares its students to make an impact by applying business methods and economic theory to real-world problems, including economic, political, and social issues. Please reflect on a current issue of importance to you and share how you hope a Wharton education would help you to explore it. To help inform your response, applicants are encouraged to learn more about the foundations of a Wharton education here. This information will help you better understand what you could learn by studying at Wharton and what you could do afterward.

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Penn also has additional essay requirements for first-year applicants applying to its highly selective special programs, which include DMD: Digital Media Design Program, DMD: Digital Media Design Program, Huntsman: The Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business, LSM: The Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management, M&T: The Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology, NETS: The Rajendra and Neera Singh Program in Networked and Social Systems Engineering, NHCM: Nursing and Healthcare Management, Seven-Year Bio-Dental Program, and VIPER: The Roy and Diana Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research. 

As most high school seniors applying to Penn do so through the Common Application, most Penn applicants will also need to respond – and respond well – to one of the Common App’s main essay prompts in order to be considered for admission at Penn.

Good luck to all those students applying to join Penn’s Class of 2028. Start drafting!

Meanwhile, the 2023-2024 supplemental essay prompts for students applying to be first-year students at fellow Ivy League institutions Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale have now also been released. Only Princeton has yet to release its supplemental essay prompts for the 2023-2024 admissions cycle.

What’s in a name? Penn or UPenn?

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The Quad at Penn.

Today’s reader question comes from Marlena in Tulsa, Oklahoma:

Question: Why do some people call the Ivy League college University of Pennsylvania UPenn and others call it Penn? Which is right?

Answer: Oh my Marlena! You’ve touched my third rail. While both “UPenn” and “Penn” are colloquially used to refer to the University of Pennsylvania and both nicknames are considered correct by most normal people, I am not a normal person. Not just because I went to the University of Pennsylvania myself; I’m also not normal because I work in the world of college admissions, and after editing thousands of college essays, I am somewhat a stickler for detail (understatement). Therefore, I will say that I’m always pained when a student or parent or really anyone calls my alma mater “UPenn.” I want to scream out, “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” but I grin and bear it.

It doesn’t help that the university’s official website is upenn.edu; for a time penn.edu also re-directed to this same site, but no longer. This leads me to believe that the individuals who work in Penn’s IT department are, dare I say, obtuse and/or trying too hard to impress their friends and are therefore failing miserably.

“UPenn” is an abbreviation that emphasizes the university’s full name, while “Penn” is a shorter, more informal version of the name that is commonly used by students, alumni, and members of the local community. I find that people often use the former to impress or because they don’t know much about the university. Maybe they are trying to draw a distinction between my beloved Penn and Penn State? Who the heck knows, but it sounds all wrong to me. I’ve never known anyone who really lived Penn to call it “UPenn.”

So, in summary, the use of “UPenn” or “Penn” often depends on the context and the audience. For official university communications, “University of Pennsylvania” is often used, while “UPenn” may be used in more informal settings amongst those ignorant to the lived experiences of Penn students, employees, and alumni, as “Penn” is ubiquitously used by students, alumni, and others who have a close association with the university.

Regardless of the terminology used, both “UPenn” and “Penn” are widely recognized and understood to refer to the University of Pennsylvania but to those in the know, an individual uttering “UPenn” is always a red flag. Therefore, if “Penn” is ever considered wrong, I don’t want to be right, and I’ll never say “UPenn” aloud.

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.

Penn Receives Far Fewer Early Decision Applications in 2019

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Penn’s Early Decision acceptance rate rose to 19.7% in 2019

The University of Pennsylvania only received 6,088 Early Decision (ED) applications for its Class of 2024 — down from 7,109 just last fall — a more than 14% drop from last year’s number of ED applications. This news was first reported in The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper, on November 13, 2019; yet, adjusted numbers were released from Penn’s admissions office on December 16, 2019 (see below). Before the sudden drop this year, the number of ED applicants to Penn had been rising for years.

While some may argue that an uptick in fires in California or the lack of a recent SAT score re-centering are to blame, one actual reason for the sudden drop in Penn’s ED application numbers is likely Penn’s choice to break its long-time one 650-word supplemental essay question into two shorter essays (still totaling 650 words in all) this application cycle. Enough students make application choices based on perceived effort to complete Common App supplements alone; therefore, seeing two distinct essay prompts scared off up to 1,000 high school seniors – who clearly were not all that invested in applying to Penn to begin with – from applying to Penn Early Decision this fall.

Just goes to show, many students are not as focused on perceived college fit as they are on perceived college application fit.

Penn’s Former Supplemental Essay Question:

How will you explore your intellectual and academic interests at the University of Pennsylvania? Please answer this question given the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying. (400-650 words)

Penn’s Current Supplemental Essay Questions:

How did you discover your intellectual and academic interests, and how will you explore them at the University of Pennsylvania? Please respond considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected. (300-450 words)

At Penn, learning and growth happen outside of the classrooms, too. How will you explore the community at Penn? Consider how this community will help shape your perspective and identity, and how your identity and perspective will help shape this community. (150-200 words)

As one can see above, the change in Penn’s supplemental writing requirement was implemented in such a way as to provide two direct – and more specific – leading questions to Penn applicants in order to give Penn’s admissions team members the information that they really always wanted but were clearly not getting enough of by using Penn’s old 650-word essay prompt alone. Sadly, too few students must have been capable of organizing their thoughts clearly and articulately in the old 650-word responses. But even fewer were even willing to try answering two questions on Penn’s supplement this admissions cycle. Thus, by creating more concrete language in two prompts, Penn upset the equilibrium of its apple cart.

December 16, 2019 Update: Tonight, Penn put out the following information:

On Monday, December 16th at 7:00 p.m. ET, the University of Pennsylvania will announce admission decisions for Early Decision applicants to the Class of 2024, the institution’s 268th class.

The University of Pennsylvania received 6,453 applications under the first-choice Early Decision Program for the entering class of 2024. From this group of highly talented and compelling students from around the globe, 1,269 students were offered admission, approximately 53% of the expected enrolling class in the fall of 2020.

Nationally, 46 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico are represented in the class with the highest concentration of admitted students from Pennsylvania (189), New York (162), California (136), New Jersey (132), Florida (51) and Texas (45). Fifty-nine students reside in the city of Philadelphia.

13% of the class are international students based on their citizenship, hailing from 50 countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe.

54% percent of the admitted students are female, 52% of the U.S. Citizens/Permanent Residents self-reported as a member of a minority group, and 10% are first-generation college students. 24% of the admitted students had a parent or grandparent attend Penn in prior generations. 13% are estimated to qualify for a Federal Pell Grant.

Admitted students have pursued a most demanding secondary school curriculum in a range of educational settings. Their middle 50% testing ranges are 1450-1550 on the SAT and 33-35 on the ACT.

So, either Penn’s student newspaper was completely in error in what it reported (only 6,088 ED applicants) or Penn somehow found 365 additional ED applications after November 13 (twelve days after its ED deadline). Were all of them QuestBridge students? If not, where did the other applications come from?

Even taking Penn’s latest news release at face value, Penn experienced at minimum a nine percent drop in ED applications in 2019 compared to 2018. Accepting Penn’s latest numbers also means that Penn’s ED acceptance rate for Fall 2019 rose to 19.7% after hitting 18.5% in 2018 when Penn accepted 1,279 ED applicants. Penn has now accepted over half of its Class of 2024, which Penn expects to total 2,400 students, via Early Decision.

Penn’s higher ED acceptance rate this fall tracks with softer demand at various Ivies. For more information on that, click here.

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

Penn reveals new supplemental essay questions, other admissions changes

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Penn’s campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania announced today that its supplemental essay question in search of a 650-word response by applicants is no more. Students applying during the 2019-2020 admissions cycle for Fall 2020 admission will be asked two new questions instead:

  1. How did you discover your intellectual and academic interests, and how will you explore them at the University of Pennsylvania? Please respond considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected. (300-450 words)
  2. At Penn, learning and growth happen outside of the classroom, too. How will you explore the community at Penn? Consider how this community will help shape your perspective and identity, and how your identity and perspective will help shape this community. (150-200 words)

Students are still able to write up to a grand total of 650 words in their responses to these questions; yet, with the changes, applicants will now have the challenge and opportunity to deliver two distinct messages in response to two distinct essay prompts.

Also announced today is a new policy that would have kept both U.S. President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump (who both transferred to Penn’s Wharton School of Business as juniors) from ever attending or graduating from Wharton.

“From cycle year 2019-2020 forward, Wharton and Engineering will no longer accept external junior transfers. The College and Nursing will continue to accept junior transfers…We have made this change in consultation with our academic partners across campus. The curricular pre-requisites for transferring into Wharton or Engineering as a junior are both specific and extensive. As we reviewed Wharton and Engineering transfer applicants, we consistently saw that most applicants were unable to take the coursework necessary for a seamless transition into these schools. We hope this change will help applicants focus on the schools and programs that best align with their interests and preparation, and that allow them to successfully transition to our campus.” wrote Eric Furda, who currently holds the title of Dean of Admissions at Penn.

Ironically, earlier this month this site pondered how Ivanka Trump got into Penn back in 2002 and whether or not she would get in again today. It’s clearly a sore point with the powers that be at Penn these days that the current president of the U.S. and one of his top assistants both graduated from Penn. Whether or not this Penn admissions policy change has anything to do with the university’s current “resistance” to the leader of the free world is purely a matter of speculation.

Additional interesting tidbits shared by Furda this summer include:

-Penn will allow applicants to self-report test scores – as long as they are not athletes or international students. This means that certain students will simply be trusted to honestly report their highest scores on their applications and only send in official corroboration of their scores if they ultimately get into and deposit at Penn later in the admissions cycle.

– Penn is passive-agressively encouraging its IB applicants to take Math Analysis HL instead of other new math offerings rolled out recently by the IBDP.

– Penn will offer both regional and virtual information sessions during the year ahead and all of these will be listed here.

How did Ivanka Trump get into Wharton?

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Recently, Tucker Carlson of Fox News asked on his evening program, “How did (CNN host and child of a former Democrat Governor) Chris Cuomo get into Yale?”

The answer to this question is important for all Americans to know for the reasons Tucker Carlson explains in his monologue.

Yet, just as important, if not more important, would be for Americans to get answers to the following two related questions:

  1. How did Ivanka Trump (who is obviously the most powerful woman in America right now by virtue of her personal and professional proximity to President Trump) get into Penn’s Wharton School of Business in 2002 – as a transfer student no less?
  2. Would Ivanka still have gotten into Wharton with the same qualifications if she had submitted her transfer application after her father made his famous escalator speech announcing his run for president in 2015?

As thousands of rising high school seniors around the world embark on completing their college applications for “selective” American colleges over the weeks ahead, the answers to the above two questions would be clarifying and important for these young people to know.

Update: The powers-that-be at Penn changed their admissions policy just a couple of weeks after this post was published. The change, had it been implemented in years/decades prior, would have meant that Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump both would have been denied admission to Penn. Learn more here. 

Ivanka Trump and family pose between Locust Walk and Jon M. Huntsman Hall on Penn’s campus in May 2004