What kind of students are the Ivy League colleges looking for?

Why do some kids with 2400 SATs and 4.0 GPAs get rejected from Harvard while others with 2100s and 3.8s get accepted? Why do colleges ask about your club activities, community service, and hobbies in the application process? How come minorities, athletes, and students with legacy have an easier time getting in?

What kind of students are the Ivy League colleges really looking for? What kind of students get into the Ivy League?

Imagine, for a second, that you are the president of a large corporation. What kind of employees do you look for when recruitment season comes along? Would you spend money paying for another computer programmer even when you already have forty of them? Or would you be more willing to hire a janitor to fill the shoes of the one who just retired?

Similarly, would you rather hire someone who has over twenty-five years of experience in graphic design or someone who has done a little of graphic designing, computer programming, and cleaning in his previous jobs?

Finally, as the president of the company, would it be more profitable to make acquaintance with a potential long-term investor or a world-famous taster of fine wine?

Despite their appearance, at the very core, every private college is a business entity. Every college needs a steady flow of tuitions, donations, and branding to stay successful. Therefore, they all have to make the same decisions as any other business during their recruitment season.

When plowing through the enormous stack of applicants, Ivy League colleges look for three traits in a student: uniqueness, passion, and value.

Uniqueness

Every college wants a diverse student body. Colleges do not need an army of students with high SATs and perfect GPAs with few other achievements or hobbies. Every student who is accepted into an Ivy League college fills a different role in the incoming class. Colleges want their students to learn from each other. As long as someone has enough uniqueness that lets him or her stand out from the rest of the applicants in some way, the college would want that student.

But how can you possibly separate yourself from the rest of the 150,000 Ivy League applicants this year? Do you need to be an Intel STS Finalist to get into Harvard? Do you need to be a National Speech and Debate champion to be accepted to Dartmouth? Do you need to be in the National Math Olympiad to get into Princeton? Do you need to be an award-winning pianist to get into Yale?

Of course you don’t! The students described above would certainly be high on the colleges’ lists but that does not mean that you cannot also stand out. Colleges do not only want students who are the best in one area. They also want students who are good at several areas. As long as the set of traits you possess have not already been fulfilled by someone else in the applicant pool, even Ivy League colleges would pay attention to you.

For this reason, being an athlete or minority also increases the set of traits you possess and helps you stand out from the rest of the pool. Their inclusion adds to the overall diversity of the entire student body.

So the first thing to keep in mind when you are applying to Ivy League colleges is to show them all the major facets of your life. Tell them about the set of skills, experiences, and traits you have that would be impossible to find in any other student in the country. Do you ballroom dance, play the tuba, head the debate team, and speak German AND Russian? Great, the Ivy League wants you ;) We’re all unique in our own ways because of the way we were brought up. Tell colleges what you have to add to the diversity of their incoming class. But also be wary of listing down everything you know or everything that has ever happened in your life. Colleges like their students to be diverse but they also want to see passion.

Passion/Focus

It is good for a student to have varied interests. It is bad, however, for a student to have varied interests with no clear focus. You have to show passion for the things you do. It should be clear to the colleges, after skimming through your application, of one or two main themes that pervade through your class choices, activities, and achievements.

If you want to show a passion for math, for example, you should mention the math competitions you participated in, courses you took over the summer on math, and research you had done in the fields of math. Take honors and college-level classes in math. Take the math SAT 2s and APs. Get a recommendation from your math teacher. Etc, etc. You want the college to be able to recognize you as “a math guy.” Only after you have established at least one such title should you begin to consider adding secondary and tertiary subtitles (e.g. “a math guy who plays soccer” or “a math girl who had worked at a pet shelter for three years”).

Activities you don’t show passion for would not add anything to your application and would only dilute the legitimate passions you do have. This is a problem that I see with many of the rejected students. 2100 SAT, 3.7 GPA, 680 SAT2 US History, 700 Biology, 650 Spanish, National Honors Society, worked a library for a summer, member of math team, and member of debate team.

Impressive? Maybe, but this is not the profile of an Ivy Leaguer. Sure, this student might have pretty nice numbers and participates in many activities, but he or she does not show passion for anything in particular. Colleges would not be able to give the student a title (except maybe a “a student with above average stats and ordinary clubs”). Without passion, you would not get a meaningful title from the college that would allow you to stand out from the crowd.

On the other hand, if you have developed your passion significantly enough, college could even promote you from just “a math guy” to “the math guy” or “the guy who does math, sings, and speaks German.” It is at this stage when the Ivy League college seriously considers your application and assesses your potential value for the school.

Value

We have to remember that at the very core of an Ivy League institution is a business entity. By considering whether to accept you, the college is deciding whether to make an investment in you. They are betting on whether, after you graduate, you will become successful and donate back to the school or make your name known and increase the school’s prestige. They have to consider your potential future value after granting you a seat on their campus.

This is the reason why students with legacy are taken priority over normal applicants. Colleges know that students with legacy have a higher chance of living up to their parents’ performance than someone without legacy (which brings less risk to the college’s investment). Families with legacy are also, of course, more likely to give a donation to the school. That is why students with legacy have very high value for the college.

But for the rest of us without legacy, how can we increase our value to the school? Simple: we show them our worth.

We have to show colleges that, even in high school, we are capable of holding a job or becoming distinguished. Specialized jobs and internships are a good way to show that you are mature enough to handle a position in the “real world.” Winning competitions and performing research can also show that you can uphold the college’s prestigious image.

One of my friends in high school took a hobby in creating Internet games—and he got really good at it. In fact, he was so good that several companies even offered to license his games for upwards of a thousand dollars each. His grades and standardized test scores were mediocre (in the ballpark of 2050 SAT and 3.8 GPA), but his ability to monetize from his hobby was a very attractive trait to universities. Therefore, it was no surprise that when December came, he was accepted early decision to his dream school: Cornell.

A final note on your college applications is to always tell the truth. Never fabricate any information on them, no matter how minor you think they are. If you have something you know would fit very well on your application and would make you stand out from the rest, you have to put in the effort to make that a reality.



Remember, the Ivy League colleges, like all private colleges, are businesses in essence. They do not only look at your numbers but they also want to know the person behind the numbers. How are you unique from the thousands of applicants with similar stats? How have you shown your passion for doing what you love? And how have you shown that you can use that passion to benefit the future of the school?

Colleges need to know what you can give back to the school if they give you a seat in exchange. Their seats are, after all, limited.