Ivy League Admissions

So you want to go to the Ivy League, huh? As Pink Floyd says, "Welcome to the machine." Every year, multiple tens of thousands of highly qualified and not-so-qualified applicants knock at the admission doors of these eight great schools. There is much information about Ivy League admissions, but the best place to start is with the Web sites of these elite institutions. Visit these sites and carefully review them. There's a ton of pertinent facts, figures, and photos to be had here, so take note. Here they are:

Princeton Harvard Yale Columbia Dartmouth Brown Penn Cornell

The history of the Ivy League (it started as an athletic conference) can be found by searching for "Ivy League history" on Yahoo!, Google, or any other of your favorite search engines. Be sure to check out our own Ivy League College Discussion area, as well as our latest interview: Searching for Ivy Success: An Interview with Katherine Cohen.

Need still more? Here are some places that will give you the information you need:

The Princeton Review - college admissions site
US News - see their ".edu" section: Ivy League schools ranked plus their admission standards and statistics are listed
Kaplan - more admissions information
Peterson's - info about Ivy League schools

I'm sure that you're aware of how competitive schools like these are. Never forget that you must be constantly aware of the sometimes-arbitrary nature of college admissions. You may have read the posts in CollegeConfidential.com's discussion forums about the students who are rejected from their first-choice schools for no apparent reason. I mention this only to underscore the point that, in most cases with the top schools, and especially the Ivy League, there is no such thing as a "sure thing" when it comes to getting in. Just keep a reasonable perspective.

Last year was, without doubt, the toughest year ever for elite college admissions. Many seniors with 1550+ SAT Is and 770+ SAT IIs (etc., etc.) were either rejected or waitlisted. I find this situation almost unbelievable. I say these things not to discourage you but, rather, to prepare you for what lies ahead: a challenging admissions process. This year will be even tougher, especially among the Top-25 colleges and the Ivies.

Ivy League Admissions: You Make the Call - Who Got In?

I hope that you're getting a better or at least more realistic picture of the Ivy League challenge and hopefully adjusting your perspective away from your original misconceptions. To give you even more background, let's examine a few samples of the kind of applicants these schools judged last fall and winter. Here are the composite profiles of three Ivy aspirants for the Class of '05. See what you think of them.

First, a word about where this information came from: One of the services College Confidential offers as part of its admissions counseling division is called a Stats Evaluation. High schoolers who want a professional opinion regarding their chances at their candidate colleges can submit their Stats Evaluation form.

The form asks students to supply detailed information about their academic and extracurricular ("EC") accomplishments, awards and honors, and a writing sample. There is also a place to add any comments that may help to explain their motivations, goals, or special circumstances. From this information, we issue a written analysis of the student's chances, offering suggestions on how they might improve the likelihood of getting into their top choices. Then come the student's questions and our answers, followed by the application process and the eventual fat or thin envelopes.

The Ivy League admissions cycle is not an easy procedure. To test your current level of Ivy admissions savvy, let's see how you fare with your analysis instincts (no fair skipping ahead to see the results). Here are the data based on three actual Stats Evaluation forms we received last fall prior to the November 1 early application deadline. The students' names and other unique personal information have been altered to protect their privacy. I provide some brief introductory comments before each one for context. As you assume the role of Ivy League admissions officer, your challenge is to admit them or deny them. The actual outcomes follow the third student's stats. Next

Ivy League Admissions - Case Study #1
Ivy League Admissions - Case Study #2
Ivy League Admissions - Case Study #3
Ivy League Admissions - Outcomes & Conclusion