How to Get into the Ivy League

This year, six Ivy League colleges and universities including University of Pennsylvania,  Columbia University, Yale University, Brown University, Harvard, and Dartmouth  established record numbers of applicants (over 43,000 in Harvard’s case) and as a result all established record low admit rates.

To get in to an Ivy League college, you need more than pretty numbers

Given those numbers, how can you be sure that you are one of the few admitted to the Ivy League?

Be a change maker. What does that mean? Let’s break it down.

The Ivy League colleges and universities have always wanted to admit “the best and the brightest.” In all honesty, they originally wanted “the best boys,” but after they started admitting women, they focused more simply on identifying the best. However, because the Ivy League receives so many applications from students with stellar numerical profiles, the best is no longer determined by numbers alone. In fact, the best students are often identified as much by what they have done outside of school  as by what they have done in school.

How do you become a change maker?

Time magazine  recently showcased  young people who are making change, and each serves as a good model for students aspiring to the Ivy League. Here are just a few of the change-making young people the editors noted:

Kim Se-yeon, aka Geguri, age 19. Geguri, the only female member in the Overwatch League, has become a role model for other gaming girls and women through her work confronting gender bias in the male dominated world of professional e-sports.

Greta Thunberg, age 16. Thunberg, a climate change advocate, shook up the adult world when she addressed the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Poland in December of 2018 and then went on to berate billionaires attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January of 2019.

Ethan Lindenberger, age 18. Lindenberger took on the anti-science movement when he defied his anti-vaccination parents, got vaccinated, and then testified before the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in March of this year.

What do these three students share?

1. Audacity
2. A passionate commitment to a concern greater than personal scholastic achievement
3. Singular focus.
4. The ability to make things happen

Can passion and the ability to make things happen really increase your chances of admission to an Ivy League college? Ask nineteen-year-old David Hogg, the gun law advocate, activist, and one of the leaders of the March for Our Lives movement who got into Harvard with an SAT score reported to be 1270. 

Need help plotting your admission to the Ivy League? Call me! I’m always ready to help you.

Dr. Osborn works with students from all over the world to help them reach their independent, college, and graduate school goals. Through a personal, one-on-one approach, Dr. Osborn creates an individualized plan for each student based on the student’s strengths, passions, and career aspirations. Her holistic approach helps students perform well in school and secure admission to top colleges.