I was accepted to four Ivy League Schools and Stanford.

I know you don’t want all that fluff about “be exceptional” and “look both ways before crossing the street” and “pour your cereal before your milk”.

So here are five very practical tips that I used to earn my seat at a top school.

1. Make Your Freaking Bed

I was against this one BIG time. But why? There’s nothing wrong with it.

In the words of a former Navy SEAL, making your bed offers a couple of really important bonuses.

For one, you have already accomplished something in the first few minutes of the day. And for another, even after a long day in which you failed at everything, you’re going to have a made bed to come back to.

2. Work Like a Run-Away Train

One way I leveraged my time was that I just didn’t stop working. If I was in a class period and I finished an assignment, I pulled out a future assignment for another class.

“Did you even have a social life?”

Heck yea. I went to all of my high school parties. I made time for them because I didn’t spend those last 20 minutes of class doing nothing.

3. Read Everything

The fastest way to learn is to read. Congrats on getting this far in the article (you should write the name of a fruit in the comment section, so I know who is dedicated. Plus, everyone will be so confused – it’ll be, like, our little secret).

Warren Buffet says he spends most of his days reading. Bill Gates reads 50 books a year.

I am always reading. I read stuff I like, I read stuff I don’t know, I read because I’m curious.

4. Put Together an A-Team

Going to a top school is going to be much harder if you’re doing it completely alone.

I never did anything alone. I studied the mistakes of students who were applying before me and listened to people who had more experience.

After all, if you are with five people who are crushing it in life, odds are you will be the sixth.

5. Invest in Yourself

We all invest in Netflix. We all invest in Instagram. And we are investing more than our money, but our time.

But how many hours a week do you invest in yourself? Especially outside of academics?

I made sure to take a few hours each week and put it towards a new hobby, or idea, or interest of mine.

And guess what! Now, I can play guitar and write movie scripts.

This is what I have found very helpful in order to ACTUALLY get into an Ivy League school.

My GPA, resume, and essays didn’t really get me in.

It was all the work leading up to those that gave me an edge.

Photo Credit: Blogging Theologically, Financial Times, The A-Team, Limitless

When I was growing up, my grandmother often quoted a piece of advice that roughly translates to, “Slow birds need to fly first.”

What she meant by this was that when you aren’t innately good at something, you have to make up for it by giving yourself some sort of head start.

In my AP Calculus class, for example, it often took me hours to understand concepts that, to my math-savvy friends, seemed as simple as multiplication. So I made a habit of tackling each unfamiliar concept a little earlier than my classmates did.

Every week, I read a chapter ahead of the chapter we’d been assigned in the textbook, and worked out the first few practice problems at the end of the chapter. In class the next week, when our teacher asked if we had any questions, I already knew which aspects of the subject fascinated me and which aspects confused me, and every once in a while, I could discuss it like it was as simple as multiplication to me.

And of course it wasn't. It was horrifically hard. But when I sent my high school transcript to Ivy League colleges, none of them had any idea that I’d been a slow bird in AP Calculus.

I applied to Yale in the winter of 2013. The acceptance rate that year was 6.25%, and I’m sure I was considered against applicants who were far more talented than I was. I think one of the reasons I ended up getting in was that I'd already made a habit of assuming that the people around me had natural talents that I lacked, and that I’d never once let it stop me from enthusiastically racing them to the finish line.

Answered as part of my session on “Life as a Yale student”, August 2017.

I can only speak from my experience working in admissions. My students have been accepted to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, and Penn and have worked very intensively to get into Ivies.

First, every Ivy League school is different and has its own character and priorities. These priorities, if you understand and align with them, can help you achieve a spot or eliminate you from the running. The process of filtering applicants out and “weeding” of applications is significant for every Ivy. So, it is important to understand ways to avoid “weeding”. Once you get beyond the “weeding” which is mostly academic in nature, the next step is to consider the priorities of each school.

While you will see, as in my other posts, that I have shared so much here, it’s difficult to give you everything in one Quora post. I have tried to articulate ways of thinking that will help you get into the colleges that you are considering. If you feel you need more guidance, you can always opt for an admissions coach like those at Opus College Prep. Hope it helps!

Princeton University

1. Princeton (like Cornell) is most STEM focused of all the Ivy schools. For students who care about the hard sciences, engineering, mathematics, Princeton is a good fit and a large majority of its students are pursuing STEM-related areas.
2. Princeton will look at grades and expect perfection-even 1 or 2 B’s might filter a student out of the process.
3. Princeton will also care about your extracurricular achievements and how exceptional you have been in them.
4. They will look at your recommendation letters and weight them heavily in the process, too.
5. Princeton likes awards. So, try to win some important awards, or at least one.

Harvard University

1. Harvard (like Yale and Dartmouth) leans in toward Humanities.
2. Harvard, like Princeton, prioritizes academics (GPA and course rigor are deciding factors on whether your application even gets fully read-expect that 4.0 is the standard to be evaluated for Harvard)
3. Like Princeton, Harvard prioritizes students who have achieved major awards. Without going down the rabbit hole of all the awards they like to see here, you can easily imagine what these are in some cases—Regeneron/Intel, major math competition, etc…
4. Harvard will look at personal qualities and evaluate students heavily based on recommendation laters, assigning scores to those qualities
5. School support-Harvard will look for whether a student is supported by his/her school (often through rec letters and awards won at school)

Brown University

1. Brown University will look for free thinkers who have moved mountains through community service. Brown is known for its exceptional teaching and its community outreach organization is one of the largest groups on campus.
2. Brown cares immensely about community service and open-mindedness. Before you start tallying your logged hours to boost your application, that’s not exactly what we are talking about here. Working to make a major impact on your community can be helpful. Think in terms of people helped, the difference made and numbers that are impactful.
3. Understanding Brown and being able to articulate how you will spend your time here will also help you. Brown’s Open Curriculum and lack of distribution requirements means that students are free to choose their own path.
4. With that, Brown expects students to plan their pathway. Brown’s most popular programs are economics, computer science, engineering, biology, neuroscience, classics, applied math and geology.
5. Strong writing is exceptionally important to the Brown admissions committee (like all Ivy committees) and students need to highlight their writing strengths in the application essays.

Dartmouth University

1. The smallest and most traditional of all the Ivies, if you are a hiker, Dartmouth is a good place to apply if you are looking to align with its priorities. Dartmouth (like Princeton) will prioritize students interested in the great outdoors. The Dartmouth Outing Club is one of the oldest clubs of its kind in the country.
2. More similar to the NESCACS like Middlebury and Williams, Dartmouth will also lean into filling spots on athletic teams. So, if you are a top athlete and can get recruited, you might want to reach out early and often to Dartmouth’s many teams and their coaches for a leg up in the process. Beware for anyone who is not that sporty: a requirement of graduation at Dartmouth is a swimming test and a PE requirement!! Physical fitness is important to the university.
3. Dartmouth, above the other Ivies, will prioritize foreign language. So, if you are a polyglot and can show your passion for languages, Dartmouth might be a great place for you. The top programs at Dartmouth are economics, government, history, psychology, English, engineering, biological sciences, and computer science.

University of Pennsylvania

1. Like Cornell, Early Decision is the way to go at PENN. It helps to apply early and offers you a greater chance.
2. At PENN, liberal arts and pre-professional programs like nursing and engineering are fairly equal.
3. Like Dartmouth, having a sports background can be helpful in getting into PENN.

Cornell University

1. To get into Cornell, Early Decision is the way to go.
2. Doing your homework and showing a love for Cornell will help with getting into Cornell. Because of its remote location and unique “loner” standing among the Ivies, Cornell loves to see the love from students to ensure they will attend if offered a spot. While it’s easier to align with the MILLION institutional priorities that Cornell has, showing the love requires a lot of research into what makes Cornell special.
3. Cornell is the largest of all of the Ivies with a total undergraduate enrollment of roughly 14,500 in any given year. It is also the most egalitarian of the Ivies with the most socially mobile students.
4. Cornell is considered strong in engineering and architecture and its hotel administration programs are renowned.
5. There are more opportunities to get into Cornell because there is more going on at Cornell than at any other Ivy League school. It’s sheer size and mix of state and private funding create many opportunities for students to align and connect.
6. Cornell offers a mix of liberal arts, pre-professional programs and the diversity of possibility creates many opportunities for every student to be considered.

Columbia University

1. Columbia’s students are extremely hardworking and a bit more stressed than other Ivy students. There is a culture of competition at Columbia, which is odd considering students and the university pride themselves on intellectualism and a passion for the liberal arts and CORE program. Less pre-professional than PENN and much more intellectual, getting into Columbia requires highlighting a fit with one of two schools—Columbia College (Columbia’s school of arts and sciences) or the Fu School of Engineering and Applied Science.
2. Depending on which program you apply to, you will have to show a deep interest in the liberal arts and/or research to be considered by Columbia.
3. For NY students, it helps to try to align with Columbia by taking courses on campus or getting involved in some way with the university.
4. Columbia definitely favors certain schools as “feeders” over others. So, if your school is not a feeder and does not have a history of sending students to Columbia, you might be better to opt for another Ivy.

Yale University

1. Yale functions very similarly to Harvard and takes the same measures to weed through applications. There is a system of intense filtering out.
2. For students who want to avoid the filter, you need to focus on getting a 4.0 GPA and taking the most rigorous courses possible at your school.
3. Yale, like Harvard, leans into the humanities.
4. Yale’s most popular programs are economics, life sciences, poli sci, engineering, history, English, architecture and modern languages. For students applying to these programs, it will be important to show a strong background in research

Log off Quora. You already know what you have to do. Now do it:

• Good grades, really good grades.
• Be actively involved in a couple things you truly want to be involved. Do it from middle school through high school: Scouting, a sport where you’re not a star, photography for the school paper.
• Work (for money to help your family) at something unusual.
• Do something so well in school that your teacher has to say you were just unlike any other student.
• Be an outlier: the gay tuba player from Montana who also runs 100 yards at 10.0 seconds. (That is sarcastic, but I think you know what I mean.)
• Don’t do stuff everyone else does: the Habitat for Humanity thing in whatever Central American country is still safe. The project has its own rewards: Some family gets a house to live. And you work alongside cute girls or guys in tank tops (unless you go on a church-sponsored trip, in which case it’s T-shirts, not tank or halter tops. Choose carefully.).
• Have an incredible story about what you’ve overcome: single parent household, not a lot of money, an auto accident that made you learn to walk again. Thing is, other applicants have had something special that they’ve overcome, and you can’t come across sounding like you’re playing a sympathy music violin in the background.

Be prepared to be enrolled someplace else. Smaller undergrad school schools like Bowdoin are just about as good. Tufts, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan are as good and it’s just as hard. Nothing wrong with Colgate, or Union, Lehigh or Bucknell. Or SUNY Geneseo - thinking of schools in the area of the Ivy footprint.

Also: Small schools need students who do something else. If you play tuba well enough to be in the school band or orchestra, then you’ve filled a slot. Or if you were news editor of your HS paper or yearbook and plan to do that in college, then you’ve filled a slot. If you’re a jock, being a likely starter moves you to the head of the line (85% chance of acceptance at Harvard if you’re a recruited athlete) and/but at a small school (pay attention here to the math): Say the school is 2,000 students, has 20 sports (10 men, 10 women) and each sport needs 25 athletes, then the school needs 500 athletes who won’t embarrass the school academically. If you are good enough to make the team even if you don’t start, and if you are good enough to be able to maintain a personal GPA that boosts the team GPA, you are someone the school could use. Many sports need a manager. At an Ivy school (I know this section is about small schools), a HS football team manager who really wanted to help manage the university team, the coach used one of his wildcards to make sure the kid got in. Even if you get the coach to put in a good word for you, it helps with the admissions committee. If you’re a minority, well hot damn: You fill three slots at once - student, jock/tuba player/manager, and minority.

Some of the Ivies actively look for transfers who aced two years at community college.

Apply to Tulane right now if you’re from the Northeast. A top 50 school, still hurting from people who think Hurricane Katrina washed away the campus. Good students from the Northeast often hear by Thanksgiving. You’ve got a great school in the bag and you’re in great shape even if all eight Ivies and MIT say no.

You may also have work to do at home: If your parents believe only the Ivy League is what you have to attain or the family name is ruined, start preparing them now. The Ivies admit at best one in ten applicants and it’s approaching or past one in twenty at Harvard, Yale, Princeton (also at Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, so don’t think of Cornell as a safety school).

If your family is first generation American, maybe they’ve put too much pressure on you. Out of the approximately 4,000 colleges / universities in the US, there are fifty that give the Ivies a good run for their money. When I applied to college, I never would have considered BU and now there’s no chance I could get in. BU just blew by Boston College on the WS Journal ratings, and BC is no slouch either. My barber, who came to the US from Italy with not much, offers this:

Every school is a good one if you pay attention.

Last thing: Consider a gap year and do something really memorable, not just bum around the Caribbean tending bar.

Yes, but it depends on the rest of your academic profile. And you should be asking yourself a few different questions.

When did you get the B’s?

Freshman year grades are typically reviewed a little more leniently by admissions officers than your junior year grades. Schools understand that it takes some time to adjust to a high school curriculum, so a B or two in your freshman year won’t kill your transcript. Similarly, if your grades dipped one semester because of extenuating circumstances like an illness or a death in the family, then that can be explained in the Additional Information section on the Common App or by your college counselor. That being said, if you’re receiving all B’s in your junior year, then you’ll have a tough time getting into the Ivy League.

What types of classes did you get B’s in?

The strength of your curriculum is incredibly important. You need to show colleges that you have taken advantage of the resources (i.e. AP, honors, or IB courses) offered at your high school. Getting a B in Health Class is pretty different than making a B in Advanced Multivariable Calculus. Show that you have challenged yourself. Sometimes that results in a B, but as long as you’re mostly making A’s, it’s worth the effort of taking harder classes!

What are your test scores like?

Making a B in AP US History, but getting a 5 on the AP Exam and an 800 on the US History Subject Test is a great way to show that you have mastered the material. Think critically about where else you can show your aptitude for the subject -- even if your grades don’t immediately reflect it.

What are your letters of recommendation saying?

A great way to combat lower grades is to have your teacher from that class write your college letter of recommendation. If you worked really hard for that B, put in extra effort, met with your teacher after school, and demonstrated genuine interest in the subject, your teacher will be able to speak to those qualities in a letter! If you received a B because you slacked off…best to look for a recommendation elsewhere.

What are you doing outside the classroom?

Always remember that your grades are just ONE piece of the puzzle! Ivy League schools evaluate applicants holistically, so they’re looking to make sure that you’re not only a good student, but that you’re also a critical thinker, that you are a passionate learner, that you give back to the community, and that you have made an impact in some way throughout high school. Grades alone won’t get you into an Ivy League. Although, a few A’s definitely don’t hurt!

I got into MIT early with more than 4 B’s on my transcript and one C (in typing). The answer is that it absolutely is not an automatic barrier.

It is also true that most people who apply with a bunch of B’s and C’s do not get in. You need to be able to prove that you have the academic chops to be successful at a top school.

So for example, consider a student who applies with letters of recommendations from teachers which tell that it was hard to tear the student out of the lab, and that the student frequently “forgot” homework, and subsequently graduated with a transcript full of B’s and C’s, 1600 on the SAT, three patents and two academic papers accepted at prestigious journals. That student is highly likely to be attractive to top schools regardless of the transcript, because they have proven that they can do the work.

BTW, my mom insisted that I learn how to type, and I found myself in the only class I took in the vocational studies side of my secondary school, surrounded by a bunch of people aiming to become secretaries. I got a C in that subject, but that is the secondary school class that I use every single day, and it proved a huge help to me when I got to MIT. Best darned C ever.

This depends entirely on how many courses you have taken.

Assume 32 courses: 23 A's plus 8 B's plus 1 C.
[ (23 x 4) + (8 x 3) + (1 x 2) ] / 32 = 92 + 26 = 118 / 32 = 3.7

If you were doing the same calculation at the end of your junior year instead of at the end of your senior year:

Assume 24 courses: 15 A's plus 8 B's plus 1 C.
[ (15 x 4) + (8 x 3) + (1 x 2) ] / 32 = 60 + 26 = 86 / 24 = 3.6

If all of your other grades are A's, it would certainly help you to wait until you graduated to apply, or at least to make sure that the school had your updated transcripts each semester.

Post-merger addendum: Of course you can get in with a couple of Bs — and a great file. Quora User's answer to How will MIT (absolute first choice hands down), Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins think of me academically?

But even assuming that you have A's as all your other grades for four whole years, an unweighted GPA of 3.7 is not very impressive for the level of school of which you're speaking.

A GPA does not in itself exclude you, but the GPA that you're showing would certainly require an explanation. Beyond that, I recommend that you read Dr. Kenneth Hahn's answer Kenneth Hong's answer to What are the chances of a 3.92 weighted GPA student with a decent SAT score getting into any of the higher UCs?

There is nothing about the published statistics that suggests your statement is true.

Or that it is false.

Or even that it is meaningful.

First, let’s look at the facts (as reported by a bit of research, and I do not vouch for their absolute accuracy, but they’re close enough for discussion).

• Harvard: 3.2%
• Stanford: 3.7%
• U Penn: 6.5%

So even in by the original premise, it’s “harder” to get into Stanford than some Ivies but not others.

However, the statistics say nothing about how difficult it is to gain admission. They only describe the percentage of applicants admitted, which is not at all the same thing.

1. A different pool of students applies to each of these universities. If every graduating senior (discounting for now those from outside the US and Canada) automatically applied to every university, then these statistics might have some bearing on how “difficult” it is to gain admission. But consider the number of students who apply to Harvard simply because it’s Harvard, even though they have no realistic chance of admission. Or those who apply to Stanford because it’s a good local (Bay area) school, equally without hope of admission. Or those who don’t apply to Penn because they don’t really know much about it, even though it’s one of the Ivies and a very good school. In other words, there is no apples-to-apples comparison here, so there are no meaningful statistics to be derived from the basic available information. (Yes, you can do a lot of research in pursuit of actual statistics, as I’m sure admissions offices themselves do. I’m not going to do it for you.)
2. The waitlist. Harvard admits about 2.2% of those waitlisted. (They waitlist between 1000 and 2000 students a year.) But let’s assume a student’s first choice is Harvard and second choice U Penn. They get waitlisted for both. And both then offer admission. How do those numbers factor in? Do they say anything about difficulty?
3. Schools have different preferences in who they admit. Stanford, for example, likes to recruit and admit great athletes who are also excellent students, and they likely do so more aggressively than Harvard. (They certainly get better athletes.) Their fine-arts programs such as music may prefer different types of students. And so on.

So let me offer two conclusions.

1. There is no clear answer as to which is more difficult. It’s fair to say they’re both extremely selective.
2. It’s likely - and I’m speculating, but hear me out - that anyone asking this question is not a good candidate for either. Because everything I’ve written is very public information, very easily found, and the statistical concepts are really logic issues, not stats, and of a sort than any qualified student should already have figured out. Really, this stuff is child’s play for virtually all Stanford or Harvard (or Penn) students. They admit people who can figure out stuff on their own, who know how to do at least basic research, and who can spot fairly obvious logical flaws and fallacies. Obviously this is not dispositive, and there is no logic test for admission as an undergrad the way there is for law school. Still, think of the competition for these spots. These are the most brilliant high school seniors in America (and much of the Western world). Harvard admits 1600–1700 students a year. There are almost 28,000 high schools in the US, which grows to over 30K when we include Canada. Harvard admission is certainly a prize… but these numbers mean over 28,000 high school valedictorians aren’t getting into Harvard. (It’s more complicated than that, but as an order-of-magnitude estimate, it’s fine - over nine out of ten schools cannot place their best student in Harvard.)

The requirements for securing an admission in Stanford and other IVY League colleges after high school are following:-

1. SAT score - one should try to secure score above 1500 out of 1600.
2. Academics - people have a view that only stellar academic students get admission in these colleges. I disagree because all the colleges want to create a cohort of students with different backgrounds and different strengths. Therefore taking all the students with stellar academic is a very poor way to create diversity. Infact they would like to give admission to a student with average academic but a great soccer player..
3. Extracurricular activities - this doesnot mean that you collect 20 certificates and have no level of competency in a single activity. Rather be a master of one than jack of all trades….
4. SOP- This really plays an important role. It shouldnot be a dump of incoherent list of achivements. It should be a unique story of yours and your achievements which should be backed by evidences. It should be a true reflection of yours. This is the only document which helps them to understand you as a person and will help them to know how will you add value to the course and the class.
5. Recommendations - This also plays a great role. Even recos should not be a dump of praises of yours. It should be written in a very thoughtful manner in which the recommendee should provide evidences for the qualities he/she is stating. The recommendee should always give a brief background as in which context he/she interacted with you.

If all the above things are in place, I am sure you will sail through. Its a belief which really matters a lot. If you believe #EVENICANINTOANIVY then you will.

Maybe.

But you’re going to have to have something pretty compelling to offset lower grades.

My daughter (back in 2006) had straight A’s at the California Academy of Math and Science. She also had high SATs (Verbal 800, Math 760), third place in the Los Angeles County Science Fair, and had attended a very advanced math camp at Stanford Univerity one summer, and so on (orchestra, volunteer, etc.)

She was turned down by Columbia, MIT, and Stanford. (didn’t apply to any other Ivies, as I recall.)

She was admitted to UChicago, graduated with honors, and went on to also get an MBA there, and is living happily ever after.

So if your grades are lower than straight A’s, what do you have going for you that makes you a must-have for that school?

I got in undergrad, didn’t go and this is my perspective.

Getting in 10–20 years ago is a joke compared to today. The level of self-actualization to be worthy of admission -today- makes you so strong that it makes other faucets of life trivial. It’s like making the Olympic wrestling team and not going. You’re still formidable. But no one cares.

I think that Ivy League schools are idea factories and there’s really no better place to develop from 18–26. Especially if your life ends at 26.

You should work day and night getting in, and become self actualized enough to earn getting in.

But how many high school applicants know what management consulting even is? Who had goals like that while studying for AP Calc BC? We wanted to shoot rockets so they’d land on Mars. If they don’t get in, they’ll still want to aim for management consulting jobs etc, to imitate Ivy League results.

Once non-first world countries raise their standard of living their kids will push the undergrad admissions rate down to below 1%. Get in now and smile forever. Just like people who applied 10 years ago did.

For me, they didn’t take as many AP credits as I wanted. I didn’t want a hard time/responsibility. I didn’t fit in when I visited. I went to a silent film, fiddled with my thumbs and was asked to be quiet by an older gentleman. Then I left.

Going to my state school guaranteed a secondary school teacher job. Graduate one year early, that’s a Tesla. Two years early and that’s a Tesla and a house down payment.

And I didn’t have to take multiple regression analysis. And I wouldn’t have to get fired without good cause after a bit (schoolteacher tenure). And time. And not exactly the high stress of being a pediatric surgeon.

Go if you want to be the biggest battery version of yourself. If you just want to be a consumer, there’s easier ways.

And remember, if you were good at life, you wouldn’t need more school. (Ethereum creator was 19 and he slapped the need of a state in the face)

Stanford isn’t an Ivy League school. Stanford’s athletic teams play in the Pac-12 Conference, North Division.

Since you mentioned the Ivy League, is it safe to infer that you are deeply concerned about which NCAA athletic conference your university belongs to? Personally, I’ve always been inclined to rate universities by the quality of their academic programs but if collegiate athletics is what floats your boat, I won’t argue with you. I don’t expect everyone to share my preferences.

All eight of the universities whose athletic teams play in the Ivy League conference have excellent academic programs. If you’re looking for an Ivy League university that is similar to Stanford, I’d recommend Harvard. The two universities are comparable in size. The ratio of undergrads to graduate students is similar. The universities’ admissions selectivity — i.e., the quality of the student body — is almost identical. Each university is located within reasonable striking distance of an ocean. And you even get to wear a red sweatshirt in both places. Of course, Stanford has a much better football team.

Cornell and Penn are also similar in size to Stanford, although they’re not quite as comparable as Harvard is. Cornell will get you a red sweatshirt in a small-town environment. Penn will get you a red-and-blue sweatshirt in an urban environment. Neither university is located within a 1/2-hour’s drive of the ocean.

FWIW I did Princeton EE/CS undergrad (with a year at Brown) in the mid 1980s, then Berkeley law after a 7 year business career.

Let's start with getting in. This kid lived down the hall my senior year. Even though he was my age he was three classes behind because I skipped a bunch of grades but he chose to spin his wheels in high school, you know, cracking the Mayan language and training anthropologists down in Central America, winning a MacArthur Genius grant, and stuff.

Here are some other kids roughly my age who I ran into there.

(the man above is a Stanford professor and a real world prince, third in the line of succession for Morocco… and if you can't figure it out the others are Jeff Bezos, Michelle Obama, and Brooke Shields)

I'm obviously the underachiever of the group, but this is what they were choosing for, people who were likely to achieve big things on the world stage, make a positive contribution in life, and bring renown and money back to the school.

In the 1980s they rated applicants on a scale of 1-5 for both academics and for having a compelling life story. 1 was sub-par and 2 was good enough to hack things but nothing out of the ordinary. 3 would be who you'd expect to apply to a good school, solid A grades, eagle scout, captain of the debating team, student council, piano lessons. 4 was more like valedictorian, on the state champion football team, published author. And 5 would be, well, the people you see above: Olympic medalist, star of a feature film, best-selling author, child of a foreign head of state, won the Van Cliburn competition, something like that. If you scored a 1 or 2 in either category, or a 3 in one category without being 5 in the other, forget it, zero chance. A 4/5 or a 5/5 is almost automatic acceptance unless you say something really stupid and offensive on your application. The real issue was the 4/4 crowd, and about 20% of those were admitted (probably 10% now). If you're thinking of applying as a transfer, forget it. Some years there are no transfer students, other years there are a few because some people left or fewer freshmen accepted the offer than expected. And they start with the top applicants and work their way down.

So Serene Obagi is right, the hardest part is getting in. Nearly everyone who is accepted can handle the work and belongs there, so there's no mileage in flunking anyone. You have to do something spectacularly bad, or intentionally fail yourself, to get drummed out.

Yet the students worked very hard and things were intense, it's just that the motivation wasn't fear of failure. More like, fear of not being at the top. After working as hard as you did in high school to prepare yourself to get in, nobody wanted to get in and then have a C average. Something like 30-50% of the students were valedictorians at their high schools, they were used to being top dog, but here that just wouldn't happen. A while back they mandated massive grade deflation so that's probably egging people on even harder.

In my observation Harvard, Yale and Princeton were significantly more intense than the great majority of schools out there, and Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth weren't far behind. I have no data points on Columbia or Penn. The admit rate at all these schools is down by half since then (8%, down from 15%) and there are more international students so perhaps they're becoming even more competitive. Or maybe people just apply more widely now that you don't have to fill the whole thing out on a typewriter.

The classes themselves were taught at a high level with a fast pace and lots of homework. Professors expected a lot out of students, and the students got a strong dose of the material. I compared problem sets, textbooks, and tests with some of my friends who went to state schools or smaller liberal arts colleges and there was just no comparison.

There were not many older students, or people taking sabbaticals. You couldn't take a light course load or (easily) get on the 5-year program, no summer school, very few students commuting or living off campus, and you couldn't transfer in most credits taken elsewhere. There were no easy classes, but some were significantly harder (a few classes were infamously known as 30-40 hour a week classes). The athletes were expected to take a full academic course load with the rest of us.

There were some remedial resources and lots of fail-safes for students who needed help: counseling, mentoring, study sessions, and professors and grad students were accessible and willing to meet and discuss. But at some point you were expected to get with the program.

Some non-Ivies were at least this intense in their core areas and perhaps overall — you know, MIT, Caltech, perhaps Carnegie Mellon. Stanford wasn't quite as rigorous when I was an undergrad, perhaps it's caught up. Plus, no matter where you are you can make it as hard as you want if you're self-motivated. A student at Berkeley can take a heavy course load and learn a lot, but it's also easy there just to coast.

Having said all that, you're just young when you go to these schools. Older brains seem to do better in school than younger ones. When I look at what I wrote in college it looks sloppy, clueless and immature. I aced most of my college classes but I could do better now, maybe my professors were just patient, or thought of us as children. We were children.

Most graduate programs I saw were tougher than my undergraduate years — Berkeley law was harder to get into and more demanding once there than Princeton undergrad. But after being out in the real world for a while running companies, even that seemed pretty easy and stress-free, a 3-year vacation from life. Grinding away for a few check-marks and scores from a professor seemed like a walk in the park, really, nothing to lose. By contrast, running a law firm has lots of challenges and stress. I haven't tried many lawsuits but engaging in a no-holds-barred paper war with another law firm's top lawyers in order to rescue your client's business is harder than any school project, more is riding on it and you don't just get an A for effort or for results, you must win.

So how hard? Very hard, but not as hard as real life — whether real life means competitive business or just the normal stuff like having a family and dealing with the world.

For advice, my best advice is not to listen to what older people tell you, discover it for yourself. But one pointer, whether at an Ivy or the most resource-poor bureaucratic public school, you are at a place with tremendous resources and access to dedicated smart people who want to work with you, and mind-blowing, life-changing opportunities. That won't be nearly as easy to find later, so drink as much as you can from that fountain while you can. Oh, and to get admitted, game the admissions process (I think they call that hacking now). To get good grades figure out what the professor is thinking — not about the subject, but about grading. That's how life works, might as well apply that to school.

Simple answer, you need to:

• Take a very rigorous set of classes from your 9th through 12th grades
• Attend a strong secondary school that’s on the radar of all the Ivy League admissions committees
• Ace those classes and land on the top end of the class you are applying — these days a 4.5 weighted GPA or higher is a good bar
• Crush the ACT or SAT (or both) — 99% or higher
• Score 5’s on many AP exams or 800s on a good number of subject tests
• Prove you’re incredible (again, ideally the top 1%) at three or more of the following: extra curriculars, sports, community supporting organizations, artistic endeavors, scientific specialties, computer programming, writing and/or speech, debate, or any activity or endeavor the schools recognize or need
• Be a part of some ethnicity or underrepresented population that the Ivy you’re applying to needs
• Write the most compelling and meaningful personal statements and supplementary essays required by the institution
• Obtain a plethora of accolades by again recognized organizations like winning the national spelling bee or placing (ideally winning) in the Intel Science Competition
• Also, be able to obtain the best recommendations possible from your instructors over the years (so, you’ll want to cultivate very meaningful and sincere relationships with your teachers)
• Be some prodigy in an area like the theatre arts, music, the natural sciences, design, architecture, web development, engineering, business, or almost any subject matter that the university again will recognize
• Or anything else that can make you so “pointy” that a University will easily recognize your application against the tens of thousands of others competing against you for the limited spots
• And if you have wealthy parents or a long list of legacy alumni, your chances could be higher if they donated a large sum or sponsored some part of the school in a significant mannner. The legacy advantage is smaller than ever, but it can still help.

The other way is find an incredible and effective college consultant who can guide you through the process. They are paid to help you get in. And the good ones will definitely put you in a better position. Also, make sure they are able to spend enough time with you and aren’t loaded up with too many clients because they are mainly in it for the money.

Lastly, the earlier you start, the better.

Nothing specific.

Look, admissions are really a crap shoot. Most people who apply are basically well-qualified academically, but not everyone can get into every school. They can admit only so many out of thousands — tens of thousands — of applications.

So, you might have an admissions staffer who really likes a given applicant, but his counterpart at another school isn’t all that excited about him for any one of many possible reasons. Or maybe the student plays the oboe at a professional level, but gee, they’ve already accepted a top-notch oboe player, or maybe the orchestra at Stanford needs a French horn player, according to its conductor, and they’ve got an impressive application from one. So, sorry, oboe player; you’re not going to be attending Stanford.

Or maybe some member of the Stanford admissions committee was having a bad day when the student’s application was being debated and gave it a thumb’s down.

My point is that there are too many possible explanations, and you are never going to know which one is the correct one. Move on.

At the risk of repeating myself

This is a common question on Quora that usually reads something like – How can I get into …. I authored numerous answers to this question for the Ivies and Stanford aspirants. It seems to me that Harvard students know what they need to do to gain admission before they even apply.

If you can’t tell from my other answers, I am a big fan of the Academic Index to see if an applicant has a realistic chance at admission to an elite university or college. A high AI score doesn’t guarantee admission. But if you don’t have a score that is ballpark for admitted students, you probably can’t rescue your application with a clever essay or an impressive list of extracurriculars. After all, college is primarily about sitting in class, studying in libraries, writing papers and taking tests. If you are not up to the challenge of these tasks, your time will be wasted and you will be miserable.

The first thing you should do is see how you stack up according to the Academic Index that schools like Harvard and Princeton use, ostensibly to assess whether athletes applying are up to par academically. The AI uses your GPA/class rank, standardized test scores and SAT Subject test scores. Each grouping is allocated 80 points for a maximum index of 240 points. If you have an unweighted GPA of 4.0 and are a valedictorian, you get 80 points. Take your SAT score and multiply it by .1 and divide by 2 and you get your second set of points. A 1600 SAT score is worth 80 points. Take two of your SAT Subject tests, multiply by .1 and divide by 2. The average Academic Index for Harvard is 220 points. So you should at least have an AI near 220 to be a serious candidate for admission.

Next, craft a spike in your application. Everything that is part of your narrative including teacher recommendations, list of extracurriculars, essay response and written supplemental question responses should tell a story about a person who is so compelling, Harvard, Princeton or Yale would be foolish not to admit them.

Elite schools are looking to create a class that is well rounded with individuals who bring a unique contribution to the class. So figure out what differentiates you from the valedictorians who are captains of the football team with an Academic Index of 230 and you have a shot at admission to an elite university.

How can I increase my chances of getting into an Ivy League school?

Admission to an Ivy League school follows a fairly simple set of principles.

First, be an outstanding student. Maintain a high school GPA near 4.0 as possible in a course load that includes honors, AP and college courses. Get teachers who know you to recommend you highly with a notation that you are one of the best students they have ever taught with a passion for learning. It also doesn’t hurt to be the class valedictorian.

Second, score as high as you can on standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT and SAT Subject Tests. The closer to perfect you are in your scores, the more your chance of getting a deeper look grows.

Third, be passionate about something that takes you to a high level whether its music, theater, math, science or athletics. Hopefully you will have a number of awards that correspond with your passion.

Fourth, be a socially responsible leader. Be engaged in an activity that shows you are collegial, committed, and a leader. What impact have you had on your world. Is there someone attached to your activity that will stand up for you and urge your admission?

Finally, craft a narrative that makes you sound like someone who will bring value to the Ivy that admits you. Show, don’t just tell, who you are. Find a teacher who has read hundreds of essays and don’t settle on your essay until it doesn’t read like all the others your teacher has read.

Nope. Not at this point in your life. You had one job in high school, to learn. You didn't exactly fail at that job, but you certainly didn't succeed with flying colors, either. Sorry if that is a bitter pill for you to swallow, but it's best you learn from your mistakes and do better in the future.

You do have a couple of paths open to you for attending an Ivy League university in the future:

1. Become ridiculously successful at something over the next 5 to 50 years and then reapply to Ivy League colleges as an undergraduate candidate. When I was a freshman at Harvard, one of my classmates was in his 80s, if I remember correctly. I forget was he had done with his life, but it was something so astoundingly amazing that Harvard thought it had to make him part of the Harvard community.
2. Go to another college, show that you have learned from your mistakes, succeed in an awe-inspiring manner, then apply to an Ivy League graduate program.

Best of luck to you!

Sure you can. My unweighted GPA was 3.3 (weighted 3.9), I got a bunch of Bs in high school. That said, I was going to one of the most competitive public high schools in the country, was taking all AP / Honors classes (in most subjects “Honors” was the hardest version of the course they had), did better in a class the harder it was (I got bored easily), had been taking classes several years ahead of my peers since I was in 6th grade taking 9th grade math, and tested off the charts.

All that got me waitlisted when I applied during my senior year of HS. I was already working full-time at a tech startup (had met the requirements to graduate by end of junior year, minus one class that I took from a local college in the evenings), and continued working after graduating. The next year I re-applied, Early Decision, and a letter from my boss at the time was decisive - it basically spoke to my work ethic, which was the concern of the admissions officer the first time around. So, having grown up a lot that previous year and a half, they decided the positives of my application outweighed any previous concerns.

So yeah, you can get in even with a B+ average. But I wouldn’t suggest my route to anyone - it was stressful and high risk. Maybe if you’re at a top feeder school you can get away with more. But it’s far easier to take the most challenging curriculum available to you, get an A average (which still might have the odd B / B+, but not many), and also do special stuff outside of class.

Yes, you can still get admitted to most if not all elite private US colleges with a sprinkling of B grades on your transcript, and possibly with a C or two.

Your standardized test scores had better be very good.

You had better have glowing hot letters of recommendation that Gush about you as an academic, as a person, and discuss in detail what you did for extracurricular activities. This last part is the most important part, because valedictorians with perfect or near perfect standardized test scores have been Rejected because they didn’t do enough Quality other things that are supported in the letters of reference.

Probably not. Sorry.

If you had asked, “Is it possible to get into Stanford with 2 B’s?” I would have answered, “Absolutely.” Excellent grades are very important; very many students who are accepted into Stanford have a 4.0 or above. However, Stanford admissions takes into account much more than a student’s grades. They are looking for more than just computational machines, if you get what I mean. They are also looking for more than students who are only concerned about their grades, much more.

Everything we write and/or say expresses something about ourselves, as does how we write it, and what questions we ask and how we ask them. Your question above reveals something about how you think and how careful you are in forming your thoughts.

From your question, I would say that you are not thinking deeply enough to be able to get into Stanford. I may be wrong, of course. However, all I have to go on is what you have given me. From my knowledge of Stanford, I would say it is not enough.

Nonetheless, apply. What can you lose? The very process will at worst be a challenging exercise that will help you to better understand yourself and the admissions process. Reaching for the stars will help you to advance today, and will likely affect what opportunities you find within your grasp in coming years.

The short answer consensus seems to be you are facing a uphill battle. The longer answer is it depends. It depends on whether you can raise your GPA in your junior and senior years to a near 4.0. Colleges and universities understand that students mature at different times in their academic career.

It also depends on the rigor of your curriculum. Are you taking AP courses and honors courses and college courses in high school? Are you getting As in these courses. How did you do on your AP tests? Did you get 4 or 5s?

In your junior year you will take the PSAT. If you score high enough on that test, you might qualify as a National Merit Semifinalist. If you qualify as a National Merit Semifinalist, you might be selected as a National Merit Finalist. Prep for the PSAT. You SAT score suggests that with a little extra effort you might make Semifinalist.

In your junior year you will also take at least two SAT Subject Tests. You will want to score as close to 800 on these tests as you can. This will show Penn that you can cut it in college and that you have mastered a subject at the highest level.

I wouldn’t worry about your high school’s track record of sending students to the Ivy League. If you prove to be an exceptional student with a demonstrated love of learning, a capacity for leadership among your peers, and a dedication to something larger than yourself, where you go to school won’t matter.

Keep your eye on the prize and keep on moving up.

“Relatively easily” here also depends on how you define it. People who go to Ivies are almost always people for whom academics naturally come very easily - and they are comparing how hard they had to work to get into an Ivy. The average high school graduate, even the average straight-A high school graduate, would not find any Ivy undergraduate curriculum easy.

There are exceptions to how highly academically qualified Ivy students tend to be, such as recruited athletes, legacies, and students who are equally smart but less academically prepared because of an underfunded high school.

But often, competition for these schools (particularly HYPS) is so insanely intense that these students have been nearly ground to the bone, doing university-level, even near-professional level work for years before they even get to college. These schools’ admissions openly acknowledge there are far more students academically qualified to attend Harvard than there are spots. The people who do get admitted are often beyond qualified.

For a lot of them, achieving a 3.0 at an Ivy is a very reasonable, even modest, achievement. (It goes without saying that which school you mean, the major you choose, whether/how much you need to work for money, and the classes you want to take factor into this.)

Absolutely. In fact, this gives you an advantage. When you get called in for an interview, expect a “All As and one B… What happened?” question. You now have time to prepare a witty, thoughtful response that lets you redirect the conversation to something that tells a good, memorable story.

“Well, I didn’t grasp the material early on and got some help. I got it figured out through hard work and determination. It came to the end of the semester and I had to choose to spend lots of time on extra credit or focus on debate team prep with the team I lead to win the statewide competition… I chose to spend the time preparing my team…”

There isn’t any one answer for this since students who study in the Ivys generally show their excellence in different ways. However, there are a few general rules to follow. If you want to get into the Ivys, you should start preparing from the beginning of 11th grade. Anytime after that is too late.

First, always maintain good grades. This is the most crucial point. Your school marks from 11th grade onward is the factor that admissions officials will check first. If your scores are good, only then will they proceed into the bulk of your application. Always be in the top 10% of your class.

Second, plan your extracurriculars wisely. These are the basis for the essays you will have to write which form the bulk of your application. There isn’t any single formula, but try to do something that benifits society. They love that kind of stuff. If you have a particular hobby, say guitar, maybe create some sort of music class. Or play for the elderly. One of my seniors got admission into Wharton. He was school captain, the founder and president of two nonprofit organisations, started a Model United Nations and cofounded a web development company (that actually made quite a bit of money). See, the ECs have to be on point if you want to go to the world’s best. (but you don’t really have to be as good as this guy).

Third, start writing your college essays well in advance. These will be read very thoroughly as they are the most important factor in securing admission. They will contain all of your achievements and goals for the future, etc. There are plenty of websites available which give guidelines for writing these. My senior who is now in Wharton took two months writing and editing for four to five hours a day doing this. Also get good letters of recommendation from your principal, teachers, etc.

Fourth, Give the SAT and Subject SATs and score as high as possible. Don’t waste your time giving more than two attempts each. They aren’t as important as the other factors. It’s more of a formality. You should get a score of 2150 or higher as per the old SAT (I don’t really know what it is for the new SAT, but the college board does have conversion tables on its official website). Try to get full in the subject SATs. This is easier to do.

And most importantly, Do research. Read the official websites. Ask around. There are too many nitty-gritties to be explained in just one answer. Only extensive research can help you decide the best way to get there.

No pressure :)

I think you know the answer: I have no idea based on what you provided. (Actually, I have little idea even if I know your credentials: the adminissions processes are deliberately not articulated by these schools.) To be ruthlessly candid: I have to wonder how serious you are when you put so little thought into a question about your future. Top schools will be looking for people who think and communicate well.

I’ll say this, for everyone looking at college: Don't worry much about the school’s criteria. Apply to a range of schools and understand that many have acceptance rates of well below 10%. Then choose from the ones that accept you based not on the perceived value of their name, but on how well you think it’s a fit for you.

The top schools are better but not that much better. Don't get caught up in the “brand.” Just as you can drive to the city in a Subaru or a Cadillac, any college will get you there, if you know where “there” is.

In the Cornell alumni meetings (not interviews) we are told specifically to ask the student if they have anything in their application that needs further explanation, such as a low semester of grades. We simply report what the student tells us. So if there is a reason that your counselor documents it isn’t an automatic rejection. Of course there are plenty of students who got straight A’s while living in poverty or losing a leg to cancer or a bunch of other extenuating circumstances, so not only are you competing against the ones whose life circumstance didn’t affect their grades, it does say something about your grit or perseverance. While the F or C or GPA issue isn’t an automatic rejection, you also had better have something to compensate - a great quality that comes through in the rest of your transcript, your extracurriculars, your essays, recommendations or all of the above.

The college examines your whole transcript, not just the GPA. That the transcript is important is stressed by every college admissions officer I’ve heard speak (at least 30 at this point). So they are going to look to see what you want to major in and if you are interested in STEM and have all A’s there a low grade that you make up in History isn’t going to kill you. They are going to look at that anomalous grade in the context of your school (maybe kids in your school do great on the AP test so they might guess the course is very tough or the teacher a tough grader). They are going to look at it in the context of other applicants from your school (if any) or your school profile - maybe the C and F are more typical grades in your school and having a high GPA is rare (as opposed to prestigious HS where most everyone gets a high GPA and a low one would stand out) and whether you lived in the US your whole life (and have a leg up on US history) or not. If the overall “story” makes sense you have a better chance than if it doesn’t.

“Can” they? Sure. In practical terms, for “regular” very talented kids who don’t have former or current US presidents or billionaire grandparents, no. The stats are out there, easily found and pretty unanimous. Even if all the student’s courses were AP/Honors and eligible for a 1 pt. bump, they’re still facing slim odds. If they have some crazily unique extracurricular - they published a best seller or solo-sailed around the world while getting all Bs in their on-line course or something the school can publicize, maybe. But you have to ask yourself what is the value to the University to admit a student that has a negative marginal effect on their averages? One student doesn’t mean much in the swirl of data, so if you do bring a building or political connects or a cool might-go-viral story, ok. But if it’s a 3.0 student or the other kid from the same school who has straight A’s and geat ECs, why are they picking the 3.0? Reality is, they’re not.

In 4 years of Physical Education, and a term each of Drivers Education, Touch Typing, Cooking and Industrial Arts? Obviously Yes.

It is Not the GPA nor any one grade. It is the whole Package. It is You as a brilliant student in an area that is of interest to a Liberal Arts centered college like the eight in the Ivy Athletic league, and it is You as an overall Person who would contribute something special to that college’s undergraduate community outside of the classroom.

Stop focusing on the trees and look around at the complete Forest.

Also, when you are looking around, you may find that there are Many other colleges that are a Much better fit for you than those eight Preppy oriented and Liberal Arts Centered colleges that play sports together in the Northeast of the USA. There are Many forests across the entire USA.

Brandon, it depends on many things… what major you’re applying to, which Ivies you have in mind, you’re extracurricular activities, SATs, your courses, and which courses you got the C and Bs in - are they very relevant for your intended major, or not so much?

In general, if you got 8 Bs and one C throughout your high school education, that means you also got a lot of As too… assuming you had about five subjects per semester, perhaps 6, that would leave about 30 or so grades on a high school transcript, or 20 at the time of application, which means you had as many As as Bs, if not more so, which would make your GPA somewhere around 3.4 or 3.5, and sure, you can get into an Ivy with that GPA, but not into any major…. not necessarily into the very competitive majors, nor the most competitive Ivies, but in theory, you can get in, and in practice too, but there’s a lot of information missing… see your counselor, attend some information sessions for applicants, inform yourself in a fundamental way. If you’re asking now, that means you’re probably applying next fall because it’s late for fall of 2017, which means you need to take the SAT. Your results are important, prepare well.