To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
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Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#2It seems that the color of your skin is now important for college entrance to elite universities than is the quality of your academics.
Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#3It seems that the color of your skin is now important for college entrance to elite universities than is the quality of your academics.
The heft of your wallet hasn’t lost its mojo.
Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#4[deleted]
Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#5[deleted]
Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#6Who needs entrance exams these days? Just ramp up the drama on one's personal essay, all is good.
Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#7The application to elite colleges is more than just a straight numbers game. Essays are intended to help admissions get to know the applicant, to learn how they'd function in the college's community. The idea of spending that precious time to talk about why you made a pair of B's as a sophomore? Freakin yikes my dude.
"See, I have this history of anxiety and depression and perfectionism, and I desperately need for you to understand that some of my grades from when I was 14 don't define me"
I 100% guarantee each of those institutions admitted white non-donor non-legacy students with Bs on their transcript.
It's also a red flag to apply to all the Ivies. They're wildly different institutions, that offer different strengths, weaknesses, personalities, and development opportunities. The only real reason to apply to all of them is that you don't know what you want out of any of them.
That said, my heart goes out to this poor kid. Some douche canoe thought a WSJ profile of a strong student with unsuccessful applications would help her or something? I'm glad to be on the other side of college admissions. Elite institutions are more of a crapshoot than ever, and it's inevitable that some poor schmucks are going to catch a bad hop, especially if they didn't diversify their application pool.
Also, doesn't her class rank auto-qualify for UT Austin? Her fall-back is one of the best universities in the world? She started an accounting club, and she got default admission into the world's top-ranked accounting program? Lol. This is such a non-story.
Aaaaalso, because this WSJ nonsense is apparently triggering: she's some math prodigy, but she doesn't understand how percentiles work? "23rd out of 668, or in the third percentile, she said"
Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#8The student is
> ranked 23rd out of 668
students at a mediocre public high school [1].
[1]https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/texas/dis...
Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#9The student is > ranked 23rd out of 668 students at a mediocre public high school [1]. [1] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/texas/dis...
Agreed.
First mistake, if you want to get into an elite university, you need to be Number 1 because the other zillion applicants sure as hell are.
Second (big) mistake: didn't play a sport. Ivies need to fill Title IX slots, and not taking advantage of that is foolish when entry is so competitive. In addition, studies have repeatedly shown that colleges will bend the admission criteria if you are actively good at playing a sport at collegiate level.
Third (huge) mistake: trying to go in for "business" as a major. Had she chosen to come for a STEM field, she probably would have been admitted to at least one of those Ivies. And then she could have transferred to "business".
This is someone who didn't get very good (if any) advice on how to get into an Ivy.
Re: To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days
#10The student is > ranked 23rd out of 668 students at a mediocre public high school [1]. [1] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/texas/dis...
Agreed. First mistake, if you want to get into an elite university, you need to be Number 1 because the other zillion applicants sure as hell are. Second (big) mistake: didn't play a sport. Ivies need to fill Title IX slots, and not taking advantage of that is foolish when entry is so competitive. In addition, studies have repeatedly shown that colleges will bend the admission criteria if you are actively good at pla…
Unless it’s fallen into an abyss, Penn has Wharton, which is a highly rated biz school. Thus, students wanting to go into “business” have a number of majors to choose from. And in ancient times when I was doing chemistry the accounting and finance majors were down there with us with crap gpa’s and tired students.
Edit: there were also only a handful of chemistry majors as pre-meds avoided it like the plague as it required 4 more nasty chem courses to graduate. There were a couple of chem/chemE double majors that screwed up the curve.