How to get into Ivy League Colleges | 2023 College Admissions Explained
We're talking highly selective and Ivy League admissions: Yale, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Amherst, Wesleyan, Wellesley, Swarthmore, Haverford, whatever it is. You’re probably wondering how you’re supposed to apply to colleges.
So much happened in 2022. We were told that because of test optional admissions, that SAT and ACT testing doesn’t really matter. MIT then said it definitely does matter and that they don’t know how to admit students without considering these test scores. Then we saw data from these highly selective schools that show that if you submit SAT scores, you’re up to 2.3x more likely to get into these schools. Hechinger Report that said many colleges have no idea how to accept students without test scores. Michael Bloomberg said if we want to be competitive in the global market palace and with other countries outpacing us, we need these metrics to help benchmark where our students are and where they need to be.
Your head is probably spinning with all of this new information; what to do, what not to do. So today, I’m going to talk about how to apply to college if you’re a senior and trying to get those applications in or if you’re a junior and starting to think about the college application process.
6 Things You Can Do To Boost Your College Application
#1 Write a Great Essay
The key to writing a great essay: there should be a before, a thing that changed, and the after effects of that change. So, basically the meat of your essay should be the way that you have changed. The before tells us what you were before, and the after is clear right? The way that thing changed you.
#2 Submit your SAT Scores
The number of things I have read that talk about SAT Scores and how colleges don’t know how to make intelligent judgements without them and how sometimes they bring in a third person to be the decision maker, lets’s make that a hard YES on your part by submitting your SAT Scores. Especially since we know that you’re up to 2.3x as likely to get in if you submit your SAT scores as if you don’t. So why not? If you’re looking for a way to do better on the SATs and your college deadlines are rolling or you have some later ones, the next SAT test you can take will be March 2023. I’ll be taking the March 2023 SAT, maybe I’ll see you there!
#3 Get Bulleted Recommendations From People That Know You
You’ve probably heard me talk a lot about bulleted recommendations. If not, this is a thing they talked about at NACAC a couple of years ago. Instead of writing prose or text recommendation such as, “I recommend this student because…”, they are now accepting recommendations that say “I’m recommending this student because:
x
y
z
So, if you’re thinking about it from the perspective of someone writing the recommendation, it’ a a heck of a lot easier to generate a list of bullets than to write a well-written letter. They reached out to 20 selective colleges and asked how they felt about bulleted recommendations and 19 of those 20 schools said they like them just as much or more than a traditional recommendation letter. So why do I advocate so hard for bulleted recommendations? You are much more likely to get your recommendation early to on time and you’ll have a better recommendation if the person writing it doesn’t see it as a tremendous chore.
*Here’s another tip: give that person a brag sheet. Many of you have probably been given a brag sheet from your counselor. It’s a list of all of the good things you do that the person can talk about in their recommendation letter. Here’s a tip to make it a little bit better: write down in bulleted form, the specific points you want your recommender to hit with backup evidence. So think about this: not only are you getting a recommendation letter, but you’re able to control the content of that recommendation letter. This means, for example, let’s say there’s an academic gap that you’re trying to make an explanation for. Let’s say you didn’t do well in math sophomore year but you did well in math junior and senior year. That’s an opportunity for you to get that person, the recommender, to explain that gap away. This is an incredibly useful moment for you to parlay into controlling the narrative in your recommendation letter.
#4 Financial Aid
If you need Financial Aid and lets be real, most people do, you should use: The Net Price Calculator for the schools you’re interested in and The FAFSA Forecaster.
The FAFSA Forecaster will tell you how much money you’re likely to get from the government and the Net Price Calculator will tell you how much money you’re likely to get from any school you’re interested in. Remember that the Net Price Calculator usually comes in a low, medium, and high. If I were you, I would be the most conservative and look at the thing that means you spend the most and plan for that eventuality. Best scenario is you look at the one where you have to spend the most and they end up giving you more money and then you don’t have to worry about this problem anymore.
Make sure you’re looking at how much the school actually cost. Also, assume you will accept the subsidized and unsubsidized loans from the government which total $5,500. The magic number that I hear most frequently (but different people will say different numbers), is $30,000. So if you can keep your debt under $30,000 in 4 years, you will probably be able to pay back that debt and not be crippled by it as an adult. When you get over that $30,000 mark, that’s when it starts getting a little crazy and hard to pay all of that back.
We also have a spreadsheet that allows you to do apples to apples financial comparison to all the places you’ve been accepted to. Click here to access this link. It’s a free resource, so enjoy it! I use this spreadsheet with my students when they’re looking at different college options and trying to compare them. It allows you to put all of the things next to each other that you need to compare that are the metrics for a good decision.
#5 Do All Extra Supplements
You’ll see supplemental essays all over the application for lots of different schools and they’ll say “optional”. Guess what? If you want to get in, they’re not optional! You HAVE to do them. As a person applying to college, you’re a number amongst many other applicants and they don’t know anything about you except for the things that you tell them. They know a GPA, an SAT Score, they’ve read your personal statement, they’ve read your letter of recommendation, and they’ve looked at your list of extracurriculars. But in terms of you jumping off the pages of a 3 dimensional person? The best way for you to do that is to do all of those extra supplements, to show them little bit more about who you are, what you believe, and what your story has been. Think of these supplements as an opportunity to tell them more about you and every time you tell them more, you become more multi-dimensional and multi-faceted. The more they know about you and the more you become a real person to them, the harder it will be for them to reject you, and the easier it is for them to think “you know, I really liked his story, the way he talked about it. I liked his grit, I liked his tenacity, let’s let that kid in.” So, remember, supplements are in your favor!
#6 Identify What Factors Will Distinguish You At The Places You’re Applying To
Most people don’t think of this one but it’s important. All colleges are different. Some colleges will have interviews that will be either in person, online, with an admissions officer, or with an alumni. Whatever it is, do everything that they give you the option to do. You might have something like a prospective students weekend - GO! They are paying attention to that. Can you reach out to a professor in a major that’s interesting to you? Or maybe there is a professor who’s doing research on something you feel interested in? If you can exchange a couple of emails with that professor, and then let the admissions office know (either through you or the professor), all of those things will show the admissions office that you’re really interested in attending. Interest is the way you distinguish yourself the most.
Other ways to distinguish yourself and connect: through an on campus club, affinity group, or you can call the admissions office for a status update on your application. You can find online which admissions representative is handling your location. Call that person and ask them if there is anything else you can send them to make your application more compelling. They will probably tell you, because very few people actually do that. Especially now that we’re living in an age where nobody wants to pick up the phone, their phone probably ring a heck of a lot less than they used to 20 years ago. Plus, they are significantly more interested in engaging with anyone who had the chutzpa to pick up the phone and make that call.
We also know that the application process is pretty random this year. We’ve read in the Hechinger Report what happens when colleges don’t have SAT information and they don’t know how to make that decision. So this year of all years, your best bet is to send them absolutely everything you can think of. Are you a musician? Send them a recording. Are you an artist? Send them something you made or designed. Whatever the thing is that you’re interested in, whatever your hobby is (and you don’t have to be amazing at it, none of those things matter), you just have to be interesting to them. You have to do something to distinguish yourself from all the other people who are applying. That is the name of the game here, that is your best bet. Just find a way to make yourself different. This dovetails with #5 (do all extra supplements) because as much information as you can give them, that’s the thing that makes you multi-faceted and that’s the thing that will make them accept YOU.
