How do I get into an Ivy League university?
It's likely everyone viewing this post will either think I'm a joke/troll or I'm crazy, but I'm seriously desperate. I come from a middle/upper-middle class family in an area with very high COL, so I'm not a trust fund baby and my parents don't have crazy amounts of wealth to support my life. My only choice is to get into a decent college and hopefully enter a high paying career.
The easiest way to accomplish this is software engineering. Coming from a family of engineers, my parents have pushed the ideology that unless you have an engineering degree, employment will be very difficult. This is exacerbated by the fact that arts/humanities majors only have an actual chance at life if they receive a degree from an Ivy League. Especially in this day, we're not in a tech boom (20 yrs ago you could claim you knew computers and get hired) and there are no particular industries that are booming with tons of jobs.
I'm very passionate in history, economics, and political science; however, these majors don't present the best job oppurtunities unless you're studying at an Ivy League. This begs the question: how do I get in an Ivy League? How did you guys do it? Once you get into college and/or start your career and look back, it seems so easy. But as a student in an area that is already over-represented in top colleges (tons of Asians), how can I stand out? I have a decent GPA (3.92) and average extracurriculars. I'm not particularly talented in any field. My GPA isn't even a 4.0 like many of my friends. I guess my only advantage is that unlike 90% of my school who are focused on engineering, I'm interested in the liberal arts. How can I use this to my advantage? What can I do to make myself stand out? At this point I'm seriously considering moving to some low-income town in Illinois or Georgia to increase my chances.
Advice appreciated. If you're not planning on contributing helpful feedback, please refrain from posting.
this is wso not collegeconfidential lol
Spend a lot of time doing something you like doing that is productive. A creating/working interest (get good at mountain biking, art, start a blog, whatever you like doing bro) instead of one where you are consuming. That's more interesting than having a 4.0. Arts majors have a chance at life if they spend a lot of time making art.
Depends on how much time you have left before you graduate. Less than 15% of incoming classes at Ivy League schools are 4.0 students, however 96% of incoming students are in the top 10% of their HS class. I imagine a similar story is true for SAT/ACT testing especially when you consider that some schools do "super-scoring." The point is, solid academics are table stakes for admission. My impression is that applicants compete against students in their socioeconomic and demographic "bucket," so how you differentiate yourself among your peer group will determine your competitiveness.
Do you volunteer? Do you work part time? Do you play sports? Do you play an instrument? Have you founded or joined a club/organization? Have you ever just done something because you thought it might be interesting to look back on? What about software engineering or tech draws you to it? Can you articulate any of those experiences into a cohesive statement of purpose? Can you identify with anything at the university you're applying to and work that into your essay as well?
They're looking at the whole picture. Ivy League schools aren't the only great schools, and you can still pursue an MS, MBA, JD or MD from a more prestigious university down the road too. I guess my takeaway for you would be: you can still be competitive among your peer group by pursuing different interests, but you do need to pursue them and you do need to be able to articulate them well.
Roka makes good points but just know that even "perfect" students get rejected. The sure-fire way of getting in is receiving admission for a niche sport like lacrosse or crew. Getting admission for a sport like basketball or soccer will be considerably harder. Of course if you pick up any sport in high school you probably won't be at the level for a scholarship so stick to getting an ACT score of 34+, having a 3.9+ gpa, taking the most rigorous classes at your high school, and participating in extracurriculars that are meaningful and which you can articulate the significance of later. For more college advice go to a site like r/applyingtocollege.
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I'm not from the Northeast, I'm from the Bay Area (west coast) where everyone is discriminated against rather than preferred, during admissions. Unlike the top prep schools (Choate, Exeter), my school is more known for the upper middle class boring children of Asian immigrant engineers who basically memorized the SAT. Slightly different connotations than a student from Exeter. Still, I guess I do stand out from the rest of my school because I'm not pursuing a STEM major.
Thanks for your advice!
This is very accurate. Dont game the system and fucking work hard. It's cooler being a successful young adult who might take some shit talk for studying hard than a "cool kid" in high school who ends up working at a gas station.
This is actually not as completely crazy as it sounds, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your experience does sound similar to mine. I went to a poor school (failing by state standards) in IL. If you can get top test scores coming from that environment, the best schools will be interested because you have a unique story. I agree with what you wrote about community college, etc. Of the 1/2 of my class who did go to college (excluding the >20% who dropped out or got kicked out) ariund 1/2 only made it to community college. In total 20% of my class made it to a 4 year school. More people went into the military than 4 year college.
In wealthy areas most of the top 10-20% students end up at Ivy or at least top 25 type schools, and nearly 100% of the class go to at least decent colleges. Some high schools send multiple kids to each Ivy League college. We had a black female track star who did go to Harvard (on the way they do real/not real athletic scholarships) and another kid go to Johns Hopkins. Outside of that most of the top 20 kids (not percent) went to UIUC or Purdue. I started at Colorado (as an athlete) and later transferred to UIUC. I ended up starting my career at GS and all has gone well.
What your strategy misses is that you literally might not make it out if you tried to move to a poor area in Georgia or Illinois. It would be like moving to a foreign country for you, and the violence/gangs/drugs/complete apathy about life would be hard for you to handle. I had a very unique situation as a farm kid who went to a poor urban high school because of districting. The life experience is incredibly valuable, and it makes for a lot of interesting political table talk when people want to talk poverty in the US when they’ve never seen it first hand. Being a good athlete got me by, but what most of the people on this board have experienced is vastly different than what a lot of America deals with.
Spot on.. Seen both sides (upper middle class status in elementary/middle school experience and low income high school experience). Can confirm every word of this P.O.V.
Hey, can I PM you?
Soooo I'm a recent college grad and can give some input/advice that I hope you find helpful. This is not relevant to everyone but this is just my personal story.
So I had above a 4.0 (possible with AP classes when I was in hs) and applied to some of the "lower tier" ivy's and the nescac's. I ended up going to a nescac that gave me a full scholarship which was great because i was from a working class family and made some lifelong friends but bad because OCR was a fucking ghost town for us, Not ideal for a finance career but I sent it and got into LevFin so whatever. I also got into several Ivy's and other strong Nescacs.
The first thing, as I said above, was to have a strong high school gpa. This can be affected by a ton of things, but doing well in AP classes was definitely big. Getting high grades in average classes is not as good as gettin B's in APs, from my experience.
Also, your SAT/ACT is fucking vital. I absolutely crushed the SAT (I'm not a super smart person, but am a fantastic test taker). This should help you a lot. Also be coherent in your essays because obviously not doing so will hurt.
Lastly, go to the networking/recruiting events. Hit up every tour and every event with college recruiters or whatever theyre called. This will show interest and help you out a ton.
Thats my basic advice. Economics can lead to career paths as/more fruitful than engineering, but honestly do what youre passionate about. It would suck being an Ibanker and hating every second of it. Good luck
Best advice is stop trying to "game" it like others have said, and do your best to stand out. What is it you like doing? Is it hiking? Hike as many trails as possible in your area, and maybe teach some people along the way as well. Maybe it's a blog for "insert hobby here". If that's the case, get it up and running and get it to as many views as possible. Schools in general, but especially ivies can get any kid with a great SAT score, you need to convince them that it should be you and that you add more value to the class than that. Figure out what makes you stand out and play that up instead of thinking like everyone else. (what score do I need? How does this test score affect my chances? What extracurriculars should be in?) Literally just be yourself. Adcoms can tell who's real and who's fake.
What I would recommend if you are not a straight A student who could get accepted into an ivy as an incoming freshman is to transfer into an ivy like Cornell or Dartmouth. I was accepted into ivy league colleges as a transfer student from a solid private university. Get a 3.9-4 freshman year and apply to transfer into an ivy.
Pretty easy to stand out from your typical Asians. Get decent grades and do something other than piano.
Everyone is ignoring a very obvious point. Even if you strike out with ivies during the first go-around, you can still get into a top 20ish school [i.e. Duke, Georgetown] and transfer in after a stellar academic year or two. I transferred into an ivy.
The bottom line is to apply to as many good schools as possible, and enroll in the best school you get accepted to. If you're dead-set on an ivy, you can always transfer in with great grades.
Going to a top ten school is one of the few things that's oversold on this forum but actually true - on campus recruiting markedly increases your chances for a finance career, or any ultra-competitive career.
I see literally 0 reason to leave some set of Duke/Georgetown tier schools for an ivy.
Ivy isn't needed, that's first. It won't be the end of the day if you don't go to one. It's just something that sets you into, basically, a social class. It's a nice asterisk on your CV, but there are many state and LACs that have strong recruitment, similar to Ivies. All of this is to say, that "top" schools are not reserved to just 8 schools in a single league.
And, if that isn't convincing enough, every person has an equal chance unless you're relatively dumb. I mean obviously more lower score kids from certain communities might get in to those schools, but that doesn't mean it changes your odds. Just stand out and show yourself as interesting or unique to some degree. Basically, just live life, and in your essays, etc., adcoms are smart enough to pick up on it. I know it worked for me for a not so good school, and have seen kids get into substantially better schools than me with better academics who took a similar approach.
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