Just because a school has more choices in picking students does not guarantee the wisdom of its pick. Steve Jobs would have been rejected by all Ivies today. But since the same AO has been picking students over many many years, we do see some pattern that reflects the AO’s taste in part.

I will answer this based solely on my prejudice, for what its worth. Take it at your own peril. (Don’t give me which school is not Ivy stuff - I know.)

1. Harvard: Model human beings with presentable stats and characters (yes, they are genuinely nice), with no evidence of glaring mental disease (see Yale and Princeton for comparison). Most balanced Ivy. The only Ivy with human mascot; all others are beasts. Earth’s answer to alien invasions. Must be, and look, strong across the board, but more importantly, must have no weakness, nothing controversial, especially on paper. Certainly a fox type, not a hedghog type. (“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing.”) Righteous and virtuous. Downside: Naive, bookish, unresourceful, unresilient, weak mental, carrying self-congratulatory smile. Often fall preys to determined and/or scheming underdogs. Diploma likely to end up being life’s greatest achievement. Real life is very different from school. Too risk-averse to try something that may be “unworthy” of alma mater; looking respectible becomes a burden after a while. Unable to reject expectation of others. Haunted by the self-question: “What is ‘me minus Harvard’ worth?” Bullied abruptly by bosses: “Let’s test how smart a Harvard guy is.” Bullied abruptly by spouses: “[You don’t even know how to turn off the dang faucet] - tell me, did you really go to Harvard?”
2. Yale: Creative, Passionate Artists with ADHD. Most artistic Ivy. Possess one big thing, lack others and proud of it. Ivy with greatest number of mathematically challenged - you can still succeed in life without understanding calculus. Certainly the hedgehog type (“All I need is making one big hole”) - an outlier with a nuclear punch. Flexible, witty, resourceful, irreverant, pungent, unique. Capable of counter-intuitive, original thinking. Social and gregarious like wolves (in contrast to the tigers that come below) and carry “secret club” antic to life after college. Think they can beat nerdy Harvard any time. Think they cannot beat Princeton, but rarely think of Princeton anyway. Downside: George Bush, George (another) Bush. Can be too creative for own good. Superficial and/or scheming (Many early CIA members were Yalies). Lazy underachievers - and proud of it.
3. Princeton: Rigorously Trained Tripartite Aristocrats (Gentleman+Scholar+Athlete) - with OCD. Most analytic Ivy. No weakness in reality (ie, not just on paper). Most hard working among HYP. Superachievers and fierce competitors. Mathematically comfortable. Motto: Only paranoids survive. Regularly beat both Harvard and Yale in almost everything. Prefer working alone, like tigers (why collaborate when perfection is attainable as solo?). Downside: Robot. Can be too perfect for own good. Serious, ambitious, studious, logical, wicked smart. Brutally efficient like Amazon dot com, lacking idealistic, romantic, human touch.
4. Stanford: Think Duck floating on a lake. But it aint your ordinary, garden-variety duck. For one, it is dressed in the most exclusive designer clothing everyone knows of. Further, its demeanor perfectly complements what it is wearing: With most graceful movements, it tries to look beyond the hills and forests afar, as if searching for long-lost ideals and romances. However, to your surprise, just underneath the water surface, you find its muscular legs are moving feverishly and with brutal efficiency. To complete your surprise, on closer examination, you find something is attached to its feet: it is wearing motor-driven, turbo-charged, state-of-the-art fins! And all of this is happening while the whole lake is glowing with warm sunshine. There you have the essence of Stanford put together: Harvard in packaging (clothing), Yale in spirit (duck’s top half), Princeton in reality (duck’s bottom half), MIT a bonus gear thrown in (snorkeling fins), under the gorgeous sun. Yes, S=(H+Y+P+M)*💥Sometimes it even works.
5. MIT: Too busy thinking anything other than weekly problem sets.
6. Caltech: Better than MIT. QED.

The Ivy League Schools are all different institutions with somewhat specific objectives when it comes to selecting students, so it would be misleading to say in general terms what they look for. They try to see if students, through the activities they have been a part of, the essays they write, the recommendations they receive, the performance (if offered) in an interview are a good match for the school. Each has a personality and each tries to bring in a somewhat different group of students based on assessing if a student will thrive in their particular climate. I think if you walked around each campus you would immediately get a feel of each school and then know that they are not generic, but do have distinct personalities. If you can't visit, even visiting the home pages or talking to alums and students and, of course, reading answers about the schools on Quora, would be helpful.

And yet: there are some things that they have in common. Given that virtually all of them accept less than 10% of those who apply, it should be clear they are looking for exceptionally qualified students. Almost all who apply could do the work. It is not a matter of selecting from those who can't from those who can. The applicant pools for each school are large and deep; most students who do apply have already self-selected to see if their stats match, at some level, with the statistics schools post in terms of average test scores,percentage of students in the top 10% of their secondary school class etc.. Unless you are in a special recruited category (athlete, legacy, under- represented student, development case, or have a special talent or have overcome tremendous hardship, you need to have superior academic credentials. Your academic program needs to about as strong as you could possibly take within the context of your secondary school. Your grades need to put you at or near the top of the class. Your testing should to be above 2100 unless English is not your first language and then your TEOFL needs to be well above 100. There are exceptions to this, but not many.

I think that giving you an example of what one Ivy says they look for might be useful. Harvard has a page called "what we look for" and here is what they say:

How Your Application is Considered
In our admissions process, we give careful, individual attention to each applicant. We seek to identify students who will be the best educators of one another and their professors—individuals who will inspire those around them during their College years and beyond.
As we read and discuss your application, many questions will be on our minds. Some things we consider:
Growth and potential

• Have you reached your maximum academic and personal potential?
• Have you been stretching yourself?
• Have you been working to capacity in your academic pursuits, your full-time or part-time employment, or other areas?
• Do you have reserve power to do more?
• How have you used your time?
• Do you have initiative? Are you a self-starter? What motivates you?
• Do you have a direction yet? What is it? If not, are you exploring many things?
• Where will you be in one, five, or 25 years? Will you contribute something to those around you?
• What sort of human being are you now? What sort of human being will you be in the future?

Interests and activities

• Do you care deeply about anything—intellectual? Extracurricular? Personal?
• What have you learned from your interests? What have you done with your interests? How have you achieved results? With what success or failure? What have you learned as a result?
• In terms of extracurricular, athletic, community, or family commitments, have you taken full advantage of opportunities?
• What is the quality of your activities? Do you appear to have a genuine commitment or leadership role?
• If you have not had much time in high school for extracurricular pursuits due to familial, work, or other obligations, what do you hope to explore at Harvard with your additional free time?

Character and personality

• What choices have you made for yourself? Why?
• Are you a late bloomer?
• How open are you to new ideas and people?
• What about your maturity, character, leadership, self-confidence, warmth of personality, sense of humor, energy, concern for others, and grace under pressure?

Contribution to the Harvard community

• Will you be able to stand up to the pressures and freedoms of College life?
• Will you contribute something to Harvard and to your classmates? Will you benefit from your Harvard experience?
• Would other students want to room with you, share a meal, be in a seminar together, be teammates, or collaborate in a closely knit extracurricular group?

Our admissions process strives to be deliberate, meticulous, and fair. It is also labor intensive. But it permits extraordinary flexibility and the possibility of changing decisions virtually until the day the Admissions Committee mails them. This is especially important since we are always receiving new information about applicants.

Of course, no process is perfect. Inevitably, some students who are not admitted will see great success, and even with a 97 to 98 percent graduation rate, some admitted students might have been better served at another institution. However, we do everything possible to make the best admissions decisions for each student.
Two additional resources you may wish to review:

• An overview of our admissions process in the New York Times
• An essay by Helen Vendler, a beloved professor of English at Harvard and former member of the Faculty Standing Committee on Admissions
• What We Look For

First, you have to have the metrics to be considered for admission. This means that that your unweighted GPA should be 3.75 or above. Your courses should include as many AP and honors courses as your school allows for. It doesn’t hurt to have some college courses as well. Your standardized test scores should be in the 9th percentile or above (32 ACT / 1470 SAT). You should have as close to perfect scores on your two recommended (read required) SAT Subject Tests.

Assuming you pass the academics threshold, you will need to show a genuine love of learning. Whom you choose to recommend you is important in showing this.

Ivies are looking for leaders who build up their peers. Are you the President of a club or better yet did you start a club to support your fellow students?

Students in Ivy League schools have demonstrated a passion for excellence that oftentimes results in outstanding achievement like national and international awards, published research, Broadway performances, published novels or books of poems.

You will find any number of college counselors who will tell you that your essay needs to be captivating and alluring in order to gain admission to an Ivy League school. They will try to sell you their services and help you craft a winning narrative.

They may be right but I tend to think that if you marry your narrative with your achievement while showing a capacity for building up your peers or your community, you will preserve your authenticity while showing the Ivies what value you add to their student body.

In other words, it may be interesting to write about how you came to be an artisan bread maker and what you learned about the magic of yeast, but it would be more reflective of what you have to offer if you wrote about the first time you stepped foot on a Broadway stage (if you really did act on Broadway) and what it felt like to reach for the stars and arrive.

From most important to least important, here is my personal ranking of the standard admission factors.

• GPA, both unweighted and weighted, and class rank, if applicable.
• Rigor of schedule — number of AP/IB/Post-AP/Honors courses taken. The more advanced the course, the better. Note that colleges have access to a specific school’s course offerings.
• ACT and/or SAT score

The combination of a student’s GPA and ACT/SAT score largely dictates if he/she moves on from round 1 (initial screening of all applicants) to round 2 (more serious consideration of applicants).

In round 2, here are the factors that the admission officers consider, in order.

• Awards won — the more prestigious and competitive, the better.
• Extracurricular activities and leadership positions — depth, commitment, passion, and high achievement in one or two fields always trumps mediocrity in ten unrelated activities. As the old saying goes, a king of one always trumps a jack of all trades.
• Application essays
• SAT Subject Test and AP/IB scores
• Interview

Note 1: I did not include the relative importance of hooks (i.e. legacy, URM, parent donations, recruited athlete, etc.). As we know, these hooks have the power to swing an application file that would otherwise be in the “rejected” pile to the “accepted” pile.

Note 2: You also have to take into consideration that Ivy Leagues look for diversity in their classes. They want students who can actively contribute to their academic and extracurricular communities. Each Ivy League college must have excellent trumpet/oboe players who can play in their orchestra, molecular biology research experts who can contribute to labs and publish papers, top-notch writers and editors who can join their newspaper, and so many other types of students. I know at least a few students who didn’t get all As or have perfect scores, but (probably) since their skillset matched what the college needed, they got accepted by H/Y/P. In summary, some (or maybe a lot, who knows) of the equation is not really in your control.

Hey!

you haven’t specified which field college you are looking for but still I’ll try to answer considering commonalities.

All that you need and the thing that the present is forgetting is the “Strong ability to think.”

We (Most of them) are caught up with the virtual world that we tend very less to focus on the inner strengths and attributes that builds us! I fall under the same category no excuse for me.

I believe the most admirable attributes that a world top university looks are:

• Independent thinking,
• Uniqueness (How different are you from others?), (What is your unique value proposition you offer for considering to the admission)
• Quick problem solving techniques,
• Obviously good scores in your UG or Schooling,
• Extra curriculars,
• A good SOP can always make a difference,
• The way you exhibit yourselves in the interview (Most of the top colleges take interview.),
• Good Common entrance test (GRE, GMAT, etc.)
• Good language proficiency test (TOFEL, IELTS, etc.)
• Sometimes good recommendation letters also add some value.

Well,

Think on those lines:

“How different are you from others?”

All the best.

I was lucky enough to get accepted to Cornell, UPenn, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, and plan on attending Harvard in the fall. Here is a complete list of the schools I applied to, and you can assume which are safeties, if you’d like. Personally, I could picture myself at any of these institutions, and applied to so many because I am a first-gen college student and wanted to keep my options open. Also, my SAT score changed from a 1460 to a 1520 in December, so I added a few schools then. Due to this, some of my target and even reach schools became “safety” schools, but I would not have applied to them if I did not like them.

Barnard College

Accepted, Biochemistry

Boston University

Accepted, Honors College, Biochemistry

Brandeis University

Accepted, Scholarship, Biochemistry

Brown University

Denied, Biochemistry

Columbia University

Deferred, Accepted, Biochemistry

Cornell University

Likely letter, Accepted, Presidential Scholar, Biochemistry

Harvard University

Accepted, Cellular and Molecular Biology

Johns Hopkins University

Accepted, Hodson Scholar, Biomolecular Engineering

MCPHS

Accepted, Scholarship, Pharmacy

Northeastern University

Accepted, Honors, Pharmacy

NYU

Accepted, Presidential Scholar, Biochemistry

Princeton University

Denied, Molecular Biology

Rutgers University

Accepted, Honors College, Pharmacy

Stony Brook University

Accepted, University Scholar, Biochemistry

Tufts University

Denied, Biochemistry

UCONN

Accepted, Scholarship, Pharmacy

UMass Boston

Accepted, Honors College, Biochemistry

UMass Amherst

Accepted, Honors College, BioTap Program, Biochemistry

University of Pennsylvania

Accepted, Biochemistry

Yale University

Accepted, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry

YES. But not for reasons you would think.

I was talking to a friend a few days ago and she mentioned how there’s an instant respect one garners when they say they graduated from Stanford or an Ivy League school. There’s a certain caliber that automatically gets associated with pedigree; especially when it comes to careers and universities. We’ve often seen some of the most successful women and men in the world come from these premier institutes; naturally that’s because they were always a cut above the rest right? WRONG.

Getting into a top school is to a very large extent purely based on dumb luck. There are tens of thousands of equally if not better qualified candidates who apply each year and don’t get in. But the lucky few who land those admits, their life changes in one very important way. The world around them starts seeing them differently.

When I was a student in a small college by the highway in India, graduating with no job in hand and a seemingly impossible dream of studying in a foreign country that I could in no way afford, people had written me off as a nut job. Not a day passed by when my parents were not taunted for raising a failure. But one day, it all changed. People started believing in me. The world started telling me I was special, that I was cut from a different cloth and was better than those around me. Little did they know that I was a completely terrified kid who had bitten off more than he could chew, who cried himself to (lack of) sleep every night not knowing how he was ever going to make it through to the other end. Every day I knew I did not deserve this opportunity and that I was not good enough for it.

One day however, when enough people told me enough times how I was special, I started believing them. It empowered me to let go of all the fear, the self-doubt, and, realize my full potential, to push my boundaries and learn and grow without inhibitions. Opportunities started making their way to me which any objective viewer would know I didn’t deserve if not for that one parameter. Life changed because the world around me afforded me the opportunities to change my life.

Does attending a prestigious university really matter?

YES. Because the world treats you differently, to a point where you start believing in yourself to do the things you never thought you could. And then you do, you do things that the world believes are reserved for the creme de la creme, because you believe.

It’s that time of the year when many of you will be receiving responses from universities over the next few weeks. My advice to you would be to pick the most challenging and prestigious opportunity you have, especially if you are coming from humble beginnings. The most important thing you will learn during your journey is to believe in yourself and really spread your wings and fly. Yes it’s going to be hard, yes it’s going to be brutal, each of you will have different reasons for your tears, but you will come out stronger on the other side, wearing your battle scars like medals of honor. Punch above your weight, be the smallest fish in the biggest pond you can access; when you’re surrounded by sharks, you learn to grow into one too.

Hanging out with one of my favorite lab partners.

In case we haven’t met before, I’m Rohan Kamath.

Thank you for reading. I hope I could help you ponder today. :)

As a current Harvard student – I am going to answer you honestly.

No, it doesn’t freaking matter if you attend an Ivy League school or not.

Dang, I feel like I am betraying the egos of every Ivy League school by writing that statement. Here’s the truth. Ivy Leagues are wonderful and amazing opportunities. If you are accepted to one, I highly recommend you take the acceptance.

However, the will and determination of an individual is what determines success. Ivy Leagues may be an indicator of success – but they do not just make it happen like Tinker Bell with Pixie Dust.

Let me tell you a story:

I went to a summer program with a girl whose dream was to go to an elite school – like Yale.

She worked her butt off and she really deserved to go to one.

Sadly, it didn’t work out for her. She was rejected from all her top schools.

So, she decided to take a year off before going to college.

What did she do with that time? Did she just sit and cry? Did she tell herself she would always be a failure? Did she give herself a year-long time-out in the corner of her bedroom?

Heck no!

Instead, she traveled the world (backpacking on a budget)

She learned how to code.

And she lived her best life for an entire year.

And guess what? A year later she doesn’t need an Ivy League to be successful, because now she is creating her own app and writes as a travel blogger.

The individual determines success, not the school they attended.

Who knows? Not going to an Ivy League might be the best thing to ever happen to you.

Photo Credit: Disney, Brown University, Hammock Universe

Each year, several well-intentioned but mostly naïve young men and women apply to to all 8 Ivy league universities. I was one of them, in 1994. Before I go into my personal story, I want to discuss the most important takeaway here: No one should be applying to all eight Ivy league universities. There’s no reason to, and if you’re doing so, you’re only wasting your own time and money. Each of the eight Ivies is unique in it’s own way. You should have some idea of what you want to study, and once you do, you should figure out which Ivy is best suited for that course of study. Other factors come into play like cost, available financial aid packages, if you’re a legacy, if it’s closer (or further) from friends and family, etc. Once you’ve done these things, you should be able to narrow your choices down to two or three at most.

And that’s a good thing - because Ivy League applications aren’t easy, and they aren’t cheap either. Application fees run around ~$75 per university, so applying to all eight means forking over around ~$600. Even in the best case situation where you get multiple Ivy acceptances, you can still only choose one - so applying to all eight doesn’t make sense and if you’re doing so, it’s either because you’re foolish or because you’re simply attention-seeking.

I was both, I guess. I was born in NJ, but moved to Florida for the start of my 3rd grade year. The public education in the Northeast is vastly superior to its Southern counterpart - I was easily a year ahead of my classmates, so I cruised through elementary and junior high. I loved reading, and had an ability to retain information, which made most subjects a breeze for me. I was a decent writer, and essays and reports were no problem. High school wasn’t much of a challenge either - I took the toughest curriculum I could, but never felt like I was giving 100%.

I had my heart set on going to the Ivy League. I thought I had what it took to make it. My grades were good, I had a ton of extra curriculars, worked a job all four years of high school, played varsity sports, had community involvement, etc. I also had a very overbearing mother (Tiger Mom type) who insisted I put in multiple applications. I think I applied to about two dozen universities, college, and service academies - including all eight Ivies, Stanford, Notre Dame, USNA as well as five different in state schools (FSU/UF/UM/Stetson and New College of FL).

Harvard, unsurprisingly, outright declined me. Didn’t even need to open the letter (remember, this was 1994/1995, so email wasn’t really a big thing then, and everything was done via USPS) because it was just so thin. I just tossed it on my desk and forgot about it. Three Ivy acceptances followed - don’t recall which order they came I - I believe it was Dartmouth, UPenn and Brown. Then came the one I was waiting for: Princeton. That one was a heartbreaker because I got waitlisted, and I just knew I was not going to make it off that waitlist. Acceptances from Cornell, Yale and Columbia followed after that. As I suspected, I found out later that I wouldn’t make it off the Princeton waitlist, so it was a decline there as well. So I went six for eight for Ivies.

Not bad, right? I should be happy, right? But I was stressed - because I had no idea where to go. I had acceptances to both Stanford and ND as well. I really wanted USNA, but I failed my medical exam (my eyesight was poor, and even though I offered to get LASIK at my expense, it was still a no-go). Stanford would be on the other side of the country form my entire family. ND, I really didn’t want four more years of Catholic education (I did Catholic school from 3rd-12th grade). I didn’t want to stay in-state either.

One major mistake I made was that I had never even visited any of the Ivy League campuses. Really dumb move on my part. Don’t be like me - if you seriously are thinking about going to an Ivy league school, arrange to visit the campus. Some of them even offer the chance for a prospective student to spend an a few days with a current student, and if you can do that, DO IT. You’ll get to experience what student life is really like - not just a guided tour, not having Mom and Dad there to offer their opinions. You can shadow a real student, attend a class, see what dining halls are like, maybe even a college party :) As a freshman and sophomore, I hosted about 2 dozen different prospective students. I’d say about 30% of them actually wound up coming to my university, which was awesome.

I wound up committing to Cornell - partially because I had a good friend from a different high school who was gung-ho about Cornell (and she was accepted/attended there with me!) but also because they offered me an amazing financial aid package (read as: not all loans). I had four AMAZING years there, 20/10, best decision I had made at that point in my life. It’s been almost 25 years since I graduated and I still talk with my friends there on a regular basis. Cornell offered me a real challenge - I walked in overconfident and cocky but quickly got humbled. Almost didn’t survive my first semester. For me, it was the perfect place, and it set me up for an amazing career. Today I’m happily married with kids and a job I absolutely love. Some days I almost want to laugh because I get paid very well to do something I truly enjoy. I owe all of that to Cornell. But I digress…

TL;DR: Yes, you can apply to all eight Ivies. I did. Not a smart move. Wasted time and money because I didn’t really understand how to approach college applications the right way. Figure out what you want to do. Find an Ivy (or really, any university, not just an Ivy) that’s well-known for that thing, and go. VISIT THE CAMPUS IF YOU CAN. Make sure it’s the right match (size/location/environment etc) for you. Last but not least, the Ivy league is not the end all, be all. Just because you can get in doesn’t mean you should go. There are significant advantages to being an Ivy graduate, but I know people who don’t even have college educations who have gone on to be very successful in the business world.

Is everyone who attends an Ivy League school an obvious genius? No. If you attend a school that is a notch below the Ivy League in terms of reputation, are you going to notice a profound difference in the intelligence of the student body? Also no.

I went to Princeton for undergrad and encountered a handful of people who were out-of-this-world smart, lots of obviously intelligent people, and some folks who were nothing special. But with that last group, you’re still grading on a harsh curve: a mediocre Princeton student was still probably close to #1 in his/her high school class, did well on the SATs, etc. That person would still likely be identified as “really smart” by his/her social circle, and if you tossed that person into a random space, he/she would likely be one of the smarter people in the room. So yes, the vast majority of Ivy League students are smart compared to people on average, or even other college-educated individuals.

Where people err, in my opinion, is in assuming that the Ivy League credential means that a graduate must be smarter than someone from a non-Ivy school. I am fortunate to work at a smallish law firm where every lawyer is really bright; I honestly doubt we have an attorney with an IQ of less than 140. But I’d also say that in a group that’s overflowing with Ivy League and similar degrees, the two smartest lawyers at the firm are graduates of LSU and the University of Houston. Does Harvard have a higher percentage of really smart students compared to LSU? Yes, it does. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t students in Baton Rouge who are significantly smarter than your average Harvard student.

This question is so pretentious it is mind boggling to me that anyone is taking it seriously — except of course certain alumni of certain of these schools, who not only believe, apparently, that the Ivy League are clearly the most elite universities in the United States, but that certain of these schools are recognizably more elite than the rest.

That is utter nonsense, the wet dream of certain obnoxiously insecure parents and their entitled offspring, all of whom are going through life trying to prove that somehow they are better than you and your children.

The Ivy League are among the best universities in the United States, but they are not objectively the best. There are literally dozens of universities and colleges in the US, both public and private, that have interchangeable faculty and student bodies, and many thousands of high school seniors who could easily excel in the Ivy League if they had been accepted.

Why weren’t they accepted, if they are so good? Because there are so few openings in any freshman class that getting accepted to the Ivy for the overwhelming number of students who do is tantamount to winning a lottery. And as there are clearly cases, such as Jared Kushner, where unqualified people were accepted because of family connections (or in Kushner’s case, a “gift” to the university endowment by his father), the opportunities for talented unconnected students shrinks dramatically.

Any student or faculty member from one of these eight schools showing up on another campus expecting to be treated as the preeminent intellectuals in America because they went to an Ivy (or as one post on this thread seems to believe, one of three of these schools — even more risible) would be unceremoniously laughed off campus.

I have an Ivy PhD, and I have spent the last 25 years on Wall Street. If the Ivy was the pinnacle of attainment and prestige then all the best performers would be from the Ivy League. They are not. There is exactly zero correlation between the “prestige” of where someone went to school and how well they perform. Going to an Ivy may help a graduating senior get their first job, but from that point on no one gives a damn where anyone went to school. As I’ve said many times, going to Harvard, Princeton or Yale for college is not going to prevent someone from losing a job if they don’t perform.

No one ever says, “You know, we really need to fire Joe, because he’s really underperforming. But we can’t. He went to Harvard/Princeton/Yale!”

Joe is getting fired in a New York minute, and the person who fired him went to Penn State.

An “Ivy League reject school” is:

1) a school that anyone admitted to an Ivy, outside of donors/recruited athletes/celebrities, would have a 80%+ chance of getting into

2) would definitely not be chosen over an Ivy as long as the Ivy is affordable barring extraordinary circumstances

3) is sufficiently different from the Ivies in terms of standardized test scores and acceptance rates

4) is ranked high enough to be on the Ivy League applicant’s list of colleges. All four conditions must be met. When I hear “Ivy League reject school” I think of schools like:

• Wake Forest
• Lehigh
• University of Rochester
• Boston University
• Holy Cross
• Colorado College
• Flagship state universities outside of UC Berkeley, Michigan, UVA, and UCLA

The other answers are way too harsh. You have to keep in mind that the Ivy League consists of more than just Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell are also in the Ivy League. Schools like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Pomona, HMC, Wellesley, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and Georgetown are definitely not “Ivy League reject schools.” They’re on the same level as the non-HYP Ivy League schools in selectivity and prestige, have similar students as some of the Ivies, and are top choices for many Ivy League-caliber college applicants even if they lose the majority of cross admits to the Ivies. They’re absolutely not colleges that Ivy League rejected applicants have to “settle” for.

I consider Georgetown SFS and Northwestern HPME to be at least as prestigious as Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell, possibly more prestigious because of their higher selectivity and ability to compete for cross admits. Johns Hopkins BME and Carnegie Mellon SCS are very close to that group. Everyone I know who got into Cornell and also applied to CMU SCS got rejected by CMU SCS.

There’s a number of somewhat dismissive answers here, focused around students to just want prestige or have been brainwashed to focus only on the ivies, or students who want to show off by getting into all 8. They talk about how “fit” is so much more important than pure prestige, reputation, and rankings.

Let me try to give a more reasonable and pragmatic answer.

First, choosing colleges is hard, and predicting fit is even harder. I remember when I was a high school junior, I had very little clue about what fit was, or what the best schools were for me. I didn’t have the resources to go and visit all these great universities, in order to discover which ones I was a better “fit” for. In fact, I don’t think I had a good understanding of who I was, and what I really wanted from a college experience. My guess is that many if not most college seniors are in a similar boat. It’s all fine to talk about “fit” like it was as easy as fitting a key into a lock, but at that young age, I doubt many students have any clue what would be a good fit, outside of simplistic features like proximity to a city and type of dorms offered. And even on these features, many of the ivies are similar. If you like Cornell for example, you’d probably like Brown and Dartmouth. If you like Columbia, chances are you wouldn’t hate Penn or Harvard.

Second, in this day and age, college admissions is unpredictable and extremely challenging. Admission rates are in the mid to high single digits for top schools, and there is a large factor of randomness in the decision process. The ivies make up 8 of what is probably a pool of 15 or so elite universities with extensive resources and world-class reputations. If you are a student with top academic credentials and scores, and want to increase your chances of a top school, it absolutely makes sense to apply to all of them. Having someone not apply to Brown because it may not be a “great fit” is extremely presumptuous, because it assumes you’re able to get into one of the other elite schools. And while there are many top universities outside of the ivies, I doubt any top student would turn down a chance to at least “consider” a place like Brown, even if they decide to go elsewhere for different reasons.

Finally, I think visiting schools before application decisions is a double-edged sword. Yes, visiting campuses will give you a great sense of how you’d fit into each school. But part of that process means building your own list of favorite schools, and finding out which school is your dream school. It’s wonderful to feel that attachment to a school, but it’s devastating to be rejected from that same dream school when decisions come out. In this age of extremely competitive admissions, I think it may be easier on the student to do some initial filtering to get the pool of applications set, and then wait until after admissions to do real visits. That way, you can feel free to fall in love with any school, knowing that each of them is already within reach.

That smart? Not necessarily; but smart, as a general rule. As in any college, there are smart fraternity boys who specialize in getting drunk, drones who ace everything but never come up for air, and students -- good, average, and fair. There are really smart people who got in for being really smart. There are okay-smart who got in because Dad teaches there. My best friend in high school needed about 100 points less on her SAT (two 800 point sections at that time) than I did, because her father was a professor.

What I saw as the joy of an Ivy League school, which I didn't learn until I chose a lesser law school, was the value of really intelligent, passionate, classroom discussion, and the joys of studying under great professors. When I went to Temple for law school, I could rarely find a person who cared what Aristotle thought of crimes committed while intoxicated. I cared; I'd written a 50-page paper on it at Penn. And at Penn, I had classmates who wanted to debate it.

It's the same reason I fell in love with Quora on Day One. (June 1, 2015.) I can use big words that I can't use on Facebook, or when I'm helping my ESL families (last year was Central America, this year is Africa; you figure out how to explain the phrase "lend a hand" to someone who speaks Swahili.) I can say "Intoxicated" instead of "drunk" and no one laughs and most people understand. Try saying "that's problematic" at a community college.

Better classmates and professors make for better learning. Ultimately that's why I chose Temple over NYU and Georgetown. I wanted litigation track, and before U.S. News started ranking specialties, the big name schools didn't put much money or effort into them.

I got great professors with at least good credentials. My litigation professor had been on 60 Minutes; my mentor had an LL.M. from Yale, and my next-best mentor had graduated first in her class from Columbia, won one of the biggest Labor Law cases in history, and written an article (which I worked on) that got the Supreme Court to reverse themselves on the definition of "confidential employee." I had coffee with the professor who was re-writing the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure, and spent many a lunch hour with the teacher of English Legal History. I had research assistant jobs with a professor who took (and won) the first Gay Rights case on the Third Federal Circuit (PA, MD, VA), and with the head of the Philadelphia ACLU. I got what I wanted; a stellar litigation and appellate track -- so good that on the "Same Sex Marriage" case I was able to predict the outcome and the hour the decision would be announced. I once got a Georgetown recruiter to stamp his foot and say "How do you always get me to say more than I intend?!!"

I got a great education. But I didn't have ten classmates with whom I could converse.

If I had to generalize in comparison to students at other non-Ivy universities, I'd say that:

1. They are more competitive about grades, and any area where you can measure achievement. This is the major thing.
2. They are more likely to be anal or obsessive-compulsive. This is a trait which often helps them to do a lot of school work; they have a greater need to be "complete".
3. They are more controlled in their behavior in most areas, and are more thoughtful.
4. But you're also more likely to meet someone with unusual idiosyncrasies, like they always sing the same song in the shower, and only a particular verse. Or they don't care if you take any of their other food, but if you take even a single Oreo, they freak out.
5. You're more likely to run into old money legacy students (in particular at Harvard/Princeton/Yale), and many of them really are spoiled brats who've never been told "no". They're not common, but your chances of seeing them at Harvard are significant, whereas you would never see them at, say, UCLA.
6. You're also more likely to meet someone who has no interest or connection to pop culture.
7. They tend to be more conscious of social issues and perceived injustices.
8. Despite the prevalence of #7, they still end up going to med school or finance.
9. They're more self-aware, but paradoxically have less fashion sense.
   
10. They're more likely to believe in the intellectual authority of the elites, whereas a student at a lower-tier school has a higher chance of being dismissive of an academic celebrity.
11. They secretly look down on other non-elite universities, despite never having attended one. Usually this trait tends to go away when they enter the real world.

This is very broad, and in truth there's substantial overlap between the students at public universities and the Ivies, and most students are quite normal and wouldn't look out of place at either a state university or an Ivy. But the distributions are not identical, and this is how I'd characterize the difference.

If you were to ask if many students who had applied to UC Berkeley had also applied to Ivy League institutions, and many of those hadn't been admitted, sure, the answer would be yes. But the idea that people admitted to UC Berkeley are "rejects"? That's just nonsense.

Note that I did not attend Berkeley, or any other California institution. I have only held a faculty position in California at my current institution, Cal State Monterey Bay.

There is nothing you can accomplish at any Ivy that you couldn’t accomplish at Berkeley, and with nicer weather. I don’t place much stock in rankings of any sort, but if you like rankings, then you should know that UC Berkeley has a number of department/program ranked well above the Ivies.

And in a beautiful city in a beautiful area where “cold weather” means the low 40s F (figure 6 C), and dear lord of course that’s not the daily high, and hot weather is anything above 80 F (about 27 C), and no that’s absolutely not going to be every day.

The claim that Ivy League schools give preference to applicants from underrepresented States is a recurring meme.

This seems unlikely, at least in a direct sense.

Enrollment in just about all colleges shows a strong regional preference. In a ranking of colleges done a few years ago, two statisticians created a ranking based on the choices made by students who had been accepted by more than one highly selective college (their result was not much different than the rankings found in USNEws&WR). To make the rankings comport to some obvious preferences, the statisticians had to add a fudge factor to account for the distance from the applicant’s home to the college. That is, a student from California who is accepted at both Stanford and Princeton is far more likely to choose Stanford than is an applicant from New Jersey.

Most of the highly selective collleges with which I’m familiar boast that they have students from all fifty States. The exception might be a small school that simply has too few openings to find a qualified applicant from all of the low-population States. CalTech, for example, enrolls only about 250 freshmen. The chances of finding a qualified applicant from, say Wyoming (which has just ~0.2% of the US population is small. If CalTech’s seats were allocated by State population, Wyoming would send one student every two years or so.

There is one consideration however. Ivy League schools are located in northeast States which all have multiple prep schools that feed their graduates into selective colleges. Some States that are predominantly rural do not always provide educational opportunities that are comparable to the best northeastern high schools. Some applicants from these States are judged more on their potential than their actual accomplishments. This can give the appearance that these students were chosen to fill a State quota.

At the margins, some applicants are undoubtedly chosen because they have less common backgrounds. In a class at Princeton a few years ago, nearly half the class came from New Jersey or New York. If a decision comes down to two applicants - another one from New Jersey or one from Idaho, the Idaho student would probably be picked.

Yes, they most definitely do and I'm the living proof: I recently got accepted to Harvard, Brown and waitlisted by Princeton.

To be perfectly honest, I applied thinking I was going to get rejected because although I have a perfect GPA and really good test scores, I literally have nothing else. I suppose my essays were decent (I didn't like them personally but other people claim that they were good) and I had a good range of extracurricular activities that showed passion for what I do. But other than that? Nothing. I am not an Olympic athlete, I didn't perform a head transplant when I was 12, I am not a musical prodigy by any means (if I start singing building collapse… I'm that bad) and on top of all that I'm also an international student. Can you see why I thought the odds were against me? Yet I got into these amazing schools. I keep asking myself how? Why me? But I guess they must have seen something… or maybe they accepted me by mistake. I have this theory that it was meant to be a prank for April’s fools day so now I compulsively check my emails because I'm waiting for the email that explains that they were joking.

So yeah, unexceptional students do get into Ivy Leagues, whether they succeed or not is a whole other story and I'll hopefully find out in 4 years time. In the mean time I'll enjoy my incredulity and my happiness in being accepted to those incredible schools.

Lots of people here are giving answers that seem rude… and wrong.

Some students who apply to all the Ivies might be applying to far too many colleges, or just care about “big-name” schools.

But it is also true that all of the Ivy League schools are strong academic institutions with many resources, beautiful campuses, a lot of history, and (this is important!) great scholarships for students who get in.

The simple answer to your question: A student who applies to all eight Ivies probably would be happy going to any of those schools. And some of those students do, in fact, get in. I have several close friends who applied to most if not all Ivies (and other elite) schools, were accepted by all the colleges they applied for, and would have been happy in any of those environments.

***

In some cases, I imagine that these students might also not have access to a lot of information about colleges. Students with “polished” applications tend to apply to a more “balanced” mix of schools, some of which are smaller and more obscure than the Ivies, but roughly as elite.

On the other hand, a student who has a single overworked guidance counselor and no fancy college consultants might just think: “I’ve heard the Ivy League is great, I’ll apply to those schools — they all use the Common App, anyway.” It might help that these schools have generous policies for waiving low-income students’ application fees.

***

To use a specific “all eight Ivies” example, look at Ifeoma White-Thorpe. She’s a good student who went to public school, wrote an essay that won a national award, and is choosing between schools in part based on how affordable they are after they make financial-aid offers. Also, she wants to go into a career in medical research and help sick people around the world.

When I see Ifeoma’s story, I don’t think “insecure and foolish”, “braggart”, or “desperate”. I think: “Good work! I hope you do great things in the field of global health! We need more ambitious students like you!”

Mostly normal - we are not an exotic species, you know!

However, here are a few types of people I knew at Cornell

1. Marching band players who were also BME majors, one of whom is black and bi and ended up working with NASA and always managed to have funny comments about the classes I hadn’t taken yet (and was also one of the friendliest guys out there)
2. Arrogant liberal agnostic/atheist backpackers who are also MechEs and sort of mean to their own siblings, who may have been crushed on by girls I’m pretty sure they never wanted to get together with
3. Catholic pro-life liberals who are English majors, maybe in choirs or also bio majors at the same time, yet also having a bit of a “mischievous” streak at times despite being very conservative on most personal life aspects (like drinking and sex). Yet also are dating atheists
4. Hindu Indian premed students who drink against their parents’ wishes and also are BME minors and could be sassy as hell
5. Black Christians who enjoy math, physics, and grad organic chemistry courses for fun despite wanting to go into medical school
6. White vegetarian BME grad students
7. Christian Naval ROTC guys who are also MechE majors and got married soon after graduation to presumably a high school sweetheart
8. Asian female CS majors who are on the fencing team
9. Christian physics majors who want to go into green energy research for grad school, whose mom had breast cancer
10. MechEs who grew up with four siblings and are really close to a grandmother and somehow are both prochoice and very economically conservative
11. Indian and indigenous ancestry people who played guitar in bands and studied performing arts
12. Women’s studies/government majors who may want to go into law school, particularly for immigration law perhaps, who also are Spanish minors and have a parent with Crohn’s disease
13. Conservative Christian frat partying guys who like to shoot guns and are business minors, BME majors, and can be a bit demanding
14. White/indigenous mixed ancestry atheist physics major guys who think people need to be more responsible about contraception as a fairly liberal prochoicer and who don’t want to drink at all, and who have a parent who dealt with kidney transplants
15. Polish (I think) BME majors who liked to learn Russian and got a pilot’s license somehow
16. Sarcastic Peruvian premed students who made amazing Tres Leches cakes
17. Gay (or bi) Asian English grad students who managed to find the funniest ways of complaining about the graduate work at times
18. Jewish MechE students who had to deal with lots of headaches from a concussion

Okay, not all of these are actually plurals - sometimes I only actually mean one person I actually personally knew to fall in these categories. But I think it is likely there is enough diversity to allow for multiples. I could probably go on with the examples, too, even if I didn’t include all the BME majors of my own graduation year (only one entry refers to such a classmate - adding all the BME majors is way too much extra ink).

Again, I didn’t actually like all of these people, though MOST were people I did actually like and pretty much all the rest I didn’t really like, I actually faked getting along with, like for practical reasons (one applies to classmates in a class, after all, and others may have still been people I saw a lot around my dorms).

I think, nonetheless, that there is a lot of diversity out there, and you cannot easily generalize who someone is just by knowing they went to an Ivy.

The top elite colleges (that are Not primarily technical like Caltech or MIT) want the following:

• Applicants from families that are Wealthy and Powerful (they love the perceived donations and the access to true power) Roughly 12% of the admitted freshmen will have some power/legacy connections.
• Applicants that can fill in the positions that are needed on their many sports teams. Roughly, 20% of the admitted students are ear-marked for an Intercollegiate sports team

Therefore, almost one-third of the admissions to an Ivy league like college are not constrained by the best of the best academics or a wide list of extracurricular activities.

NOTE the term Ivy League is for their Athletic league, and thus that should have been a hint to start with...........

NOTE All of those admitted students will be able to attend, work OK in their major and graduate. Those colleges have a very low drop-out or flunk-out rate. So, since they are Private and can choose their own Community, the rest of the applicants (not athletes or not rich/famous/legacy) will have to compete for the remaining 68% slots. So those 6% admission rates will dip to 3 to 4% for the rest......

Sorry, but that is Life in the Ivy League.........

If you can "put the puck in the net" and not flunk out, you can be admitted.....

I was accepted to 11 Ivy League or similarly selective schools in the spring of 2015. It is difficult to assure that you get into an Ivy League, and there are many factors of the process that you cannot control (ethnicity, parents' incomes and education backgrounds, school attended, and geographic location). However, the best you can do to get into a competitive university is to demonstrate academic excellence, leadership ability, recognition, uniqueness, passion, niche, dedication, character, and poise.

Academic Excellence

Academic excellence acts as the preliminary qualification. The schools need to ensure that you are able to handle an academically rigorous environment. Although a solid academic background demonstrated through SAT scores, subject test scores, AP/IB scores, rank, course rigor, GPA, school caliber, and essays allows you to compete with other applicants at the Ivy League schools, you will need more than just mere academic qualifications. Please remember that the Ivy Leagues vary greatly in their rigor and the average academic competence of their admitted students. Some schools may allow a lower score to be more easily overlooked.

SAT Score: Most people whom I have met who were admitted to the Ivy League schools, or similar institutions, had a 2150 or better (though some do have lower), and of course, a better score makes you more competitive. Additionally, you do not want to balance out a score by scoring exceptionally high in one or two categories and relatively low in another. Some schools allow for super-scoring, where you take the highest you scored in each category and combine it for your reported SAT score, while some prohibit it. Therefore, take the SAT enough times to feel secure with reporting your highest score in one sitting or your super-score.

Subject Tests: Most selective universities require two SAT Subject Tests. There is a debate on the importance of the subject tests with some arguing they help to separate the best students more accurately while others believe they do little more than assure the universities. Irrespective, the Subject Tests should demonstrate your competence in the subjects that you show passion for in your application (math, literature, science, etc.). Moreover, they seem to value versatility as some schools require that you do not take both subject tests in the same general subject. Although all students should strive to perform well on the subject test (which I considered to be in the top 10%), engineering students, in particular, should shore well as the subject tests are typically limited to a science and a math indicating that engineering schools are particularly interested in the subject tests.

AP/IB Score: These scores are frequently stated to be of no concern to the colleges for admissions purposes, and students often do not provide documents to validate the claims of their scores. Nevertheless, taking these college like tests, and classes, demonstrates a favorable academic maturity. Of course, you want to score a 4 or 5 (with particular emphasis on the 5) on AP exams, but more for credit than admissions.

Rank/GPA: Your GPA needs to be high. Students with a 3.9 or above have greater than average chances of being admitted at nearly all schools, and your rank should be in the top 10% to have average probability or greater than average probability of being admitted. At more competitive high schools, it is acceptable for your rank to be closer to 10% than 1%, but at less rigorous schools it would be expected that you are much closer to the actual top.

Course Work: At any school, you want to take as many AP/IB courses as you can to demonstrate your ability to handle college level work. Clearly, the more college level courses you take and do well in, the stronger your academic background. However, do not take so many that you are receiving lower grades. You really want to strive for an "A" in all classes.

Essays: The essays you write for admissions are not going to remedy mediocre grades and test scores, but you do not want to submit essays that are difficult to understand or demonstrate a poor, misinformed understanding of the world. The grammar and spelling should not belie your otherwise erudite presentation.

Leadership

Elite colleges want you to demonstrate some amount of leadership so that they know you will do more for the college than sit silently in the back, study, and stay in the dorm. Moreover, they need to see potential for you to take initiative and contribute without others needing to tell you what to do. Leadership is best represented through your extra-curricular sheet, essays, and teacher recommendations.

Extra-Curricular Sheet: Being a team captain or president of a club/ student are great ways to demonstrate that you have leadership; be sure to mention your position and years held. However, not all leadership positions involve directly leading others. Some leadership can be demonstrated by being the first to start an extra-curricular, or pursuing an extra curricular that is not well known and has no defined path.

Essays: Essays are to elaborate on the leadership and boldness that you displayed in your extra-curriculars, or leadership demonstrated elsewhere. For instance, you may note how you pressured your school to expand a class, or how you petitioned your city for a change in laws. Perhaps you have led a movement and want to talk about. If you pursued a path that is unpaved, talk about how you paved it. Moreover, if you are involved in a leadership position that many hold, such as president of Key Club, you need to say why you are different. What is it that distinguishes you from all other presidents. Did you expand the program exponentially; did you dramatically increase funding; did you take a leadership role in the national club that is not noted elsewhere? You do not have to write about your leadership role for the Common App essay if you believe there is something better to talk about, but the question of how you are a leader will likely come up in the supplements.

Recommendations: Your teachers need to state that you demonstrate leadership in the classroom through your thoughts and actions. They need to tell the colleges that you are not just a good student who works hard, but that you are also a person who starts discussions, leads projects, and brings new solutions or ideas to the table.

Recognition
It does not hurt to be recognized for your accomplishments at a national or state level, particularly if your extra-curricular engagements are more standard. There is a section on the application that asks you for any awards that you have been given. This is the place to mention your place at the Scripps Spelling Bee, your USAMO (or IMO) qualification, your research paper's accolades, your win at the National Hall of Fame, performance at Carnegie Hall etc. You may also mention NHS, AP Scholar, and other awards, but please be aware that they are so common that they will likely do little to boost your chance of admission. Be aware that many students will have no extremely impressive recognition to their names when applying.

Uniqueness/Niche
Selective colleges need to see that you are either a very unique individual, one that they do not see very often, or that you fit a specific niche to contribute to the campus. Your essays, extra-curricular sheet, and factors you cannot control will demonstrate whether you are unique or fill a particular niche. The uniqueness can be seen by writing about topics or ideas that few other applicants will, sharing experiences that are uncommon to other students applying, being an underrepresented background, participating in a rare extracurricular, or being well-known/connected. To fill a niche such as football player, literary magazine editor, or dancer, you need to demonstrate that you are among the most competent in that area. The admissions needs to see that once you arrive on campus, you will certainly fill positions needed by the university. In your extra-curricular sheet, you need to specify which extra-curricular positions you wish to continue in college so that they know where you fit in. You may also state this in the essays that ask why you wish to go to school X by stating you are intrigued by its strong participation in ______, or its rapidly emerging _______.

Passion/Dedication
Your application as a whole should demonstrate that you are truly passionate about something and dedicated to it. This shows the colleges that not only do you have something to contribute to the college, but the world. If you are passionate about feminism, you want to write an essay on it, be involved in the movement, show your interest in the questions that seem arbitrary (What is your favorite Youtube channel?). The same goes with teaching, mathematics, and any other passion. Moreover, your application should show that you have been dedicated to this particular interest for a while and not something you dreamed up shortly before applying. Your extracurricular involvement should go years back, not months.

Character/Poise
Often overlooked, you need to show that you have strong character and poise throughout the process in your recommendations, essays, and interviews. If your teacher/counselor writes that you have consistently bordered and crossed the line of academic honesty and human decency, your chances of admission will be lowered. Similarly, if your essays come off as arrogant, dismissive, or blissfully ignorant, you will not be looked upon favorably. If your interviewer confirms what your counselor, teachers, and essays all indicated about your poor character, your chance of admission will be severely damaged. People with low integrity or emotional intelligence do not contribute to environments of academic learning, professional development, and personal enrichment. Be ambitious and passionate, but humble in your thoughts and words. Do not make others hate you as too many bad impressions will reduce your likelihood for success on any college campus.

You may follow all the guidelines that I have set out, and still not get in to an Ivy League. There are plenty of amazing and qualified people who are overlooked for reasons that are not apparent. Moreover, almost no one who applies can truthfully say that they fully meet all of these standards (I know that I did not). However, you want to be well described by most of these guidelines and demonstrate it on your essays (this is perhaps the largest error I have seen on the applications of those not admitted).

Best of success!

Short answer: intuitive people (factor most strongly correlated with intelligence)
Long answer (based on resonses from about 100 admitted students at each university. I know these aren't all ivies but think it pretty much answers the question.):
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO (sample: 79)
Dominant types: INTJ (29%), INTP (13%), ENFJ (12%), ENFP (12%), INFJ (10%)
% represented in top three types: 54%
Dominant Binaries: I (62%), N (95%), T (60%), J (61%)
Dominant Function: N (56%), T (24%), F (19%), S (1%)
Conclusions: UChicago admitted students overwhelmingly prefer intuition (ideas, connections, abstraction) over sensing (details, single focus, concreteness), even in contrast to other elite colleges. In fact, intuition is the dominant function for the majority of students, meaning that they trust and rely on intuition more than any other function. All intuitive types are well represented at UChicago. Perceiving types especially will find greater company at UChicago than other elite institutions. An overwhelming number of accepted students are highly intelligent introverts (INTs), but by no means are extroverts concerned with the state of humanity (ENFs) uncommon

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA (sample: 134)
Dominant types: ENTJ (14%), INTJ (14%), ENFJ (12%), INFJ (10%), ENTP (8%)
% represented in top three types: 40%
Dominant Binaries: E (56%), N (76%), T (54%), J (71%)
Dominant Function: N (39%), F (26%), T (24%), S (12%)
Conclusions: In contrast to many institutions, all types have a place at Penn; Penn has a relatively diverse array of personality types. However, judging and extroverted types are more favored than at other universities. Like most elite institutions, intuition is favored, but sensing types will be in far better company at UPenn than at many other top tier colleges. There is a very large concentration of dreamers-doers (NJs), who become the diverse array of leaders represented in the top 4 types.

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY (sample: 83)
Dominant types: INTJ (21%), ENTJ (19%), INFP (10%), ENFJ (8%), INTP/INFJ/ENFP (7%)
% represented in top three types: 50%
Dominant Binaries: I (53%), N (80%), T (59%), J (70%)
Dominant Function: N (36%), T (32%), F (21%), S (9%)
Conclusions: Georgetown has a relatively normal distribution of introverts and extroverts when compared to the general population, in contrast to other colleges, which often favor one or the other. Judging types are generally more favored than at other elite institutions. Georgetown students use information-gathering and connection-forming perceiving processes as their dominant function more rarely than at other elite colleges. Instead, rational processes, especially thinking, are preferred. Expect to see a lot of goal-oriented leaders (NTJs) and a surprising number of artistic types (INFPs).

BROWN UNIVERSITY
Dominant types: INTJ (16%), ENFJ (15%), ENFP (15%), INFJ (11%), INTP (10%)
% represented in top 3 types: 46%
Dominant Binaries: I (53%), N (83%), F (54%), J (60%)
Dominant Function: N (45%), F (23%), T (22%), S (8%)
Conclusion: Brown exhibits a special sort of diversity of personality types: the dominant binaries put together do not form a type even in the top 3, meaning that nearly half of the students with most common types have a trait that is different form the majority of students. Notable is the higher percentage of feeling types as compared to other Ivies and similar schools, closer to the national norm. Expect a large number of people who are extremely interested in other people (EFs), and specifically many interested in the state of humanity at large (ENFs). However, introverts more concerned with logic are by not uncommon (INTs).

HARVARD UNIVERSITY (sample size: 125)
Dominant Types: ENTJ (16%), INTJ (15%), ENFP (9%), ENTP (9%), ENFJ (9%)
% represented in top three types: 40%
Dominant binaries: E (59%), N (76%), T (62%), J (64%)
Dominant function: N (38%), T (30%), F (21%), S (11%)
Conclusion: Harvard is significantly more extroverted and thinking than most elite institutions and intuition is less dominant than elsewhere, meaning that sensing types might find themselves in better company. Overall, there is more diversity in type than most instructions. About half the students rely on rational processes (thinking or feeling), half on perceiving processes (intuition or sensing) as their dominant function. Expect a large concentration of outgoing people with ideas (ENs), making Harvard students likely to be highly engaged with the larger world around them in various ways.

Wow some of these answers are way off-base. U Chicago, Georgetown, and Vanderbilt as “Ivy reject” schools? No, no, no! Those schools are way too selective to be considered “Ivy rejects”.

When I hear the term “Ivy reject” I think of schools that are considered “safeties” for students who eventually enroll at Ivy+ schools. I tutor/coach kids in NYC, and the popular safeties for these students (in no particular order) are: Boston University, Northeastern, NYU, Tulane, Trinity College, Wake Forest, and Lehigh.

Schools that are also on the lists of kids applying to the Ivy+ schools but probably too selective to be deemed “safeties” (even among kids who will enroll in an Ivy+) are Michigan, Emory, and Tufts.

The whole concept of “Ivy reject” is ridiculous though. Plenty of kids get into HYP but get rejected by less-selective Ivies and even the “Ivy reject” schools mentioned in this post. So just concentrate on going to the best school for you, and pay no mind to which schools are “Ivy rejects”. It does. not. matter.

How recent?

Prior to 1925, no college was selective. Admission was limited to those who could pay tuition and who could forego four years of income. Harvard began rejecting applicants in 1925 but, during the Depression, colleges had a hard time filling their seats, Harvard included.

Until the class of 1968 entered college, there was a shortage of college-age students. The Depression and WWII had seriously reduced the birthrate. Medical schools were actually concerned that there would not be enough qualified candidates. As late as 1960, Princeton accepted half its applicants.

The GI Bill, Federal Student Loans, the “pill,” dropping religious requirements, the Common App, coeducation, USNews&WR rankings all contributed to a feeding frenzy for eager high school students.

Oddly, after the Baby Boom generation passed through their college years, competition accelerated. By that time, there was a surplus of seats. “Getting in” was no longer an accomplishment. Anyone with a pulse could “get in” somewhere. Top students needed an acceptance from an elite college to ratify their accomplishments.

The Ivy League itself did not form officially until 1954. Since then, it has sold its image as the reference standard for academic excellence. There are at least as many other colleges just as selective and just as academically rarified but none have sold their positions as effectively.

Here is my understanding for the elite Private US universities:

The applicants are divided into two pools:

• US citizens, permanent residents and legal refugees
• International

There are professional full time admissions staff members who are assigned to each pool. The colleges typically have a self-imposed Quota on international undergraduate students, and each of the two groups knows the “target number” of applicants they can accept.

Then at least two if not three admissions staff members assigned to your pool will read your complete application. They will rate your application in some manner/form. They will have Rounds of review and keep accepting applicants until they have the number that they have preset. No one is rejected. They are merely Not admitted.

Once they have the number of admissions that they want, they will take the next “group” and place them in a Wait list category. However, the applicant must Agree to be in the wait list pool. For example some colleges will accept 1,500 applicants, place 400 on the wait list and then hope that 1,100 of those 1,500 accept and pay a non-refundable deposit. Then during May (typically) they will go to the wait list to nail that 1,100. Sometimes no one from the wait list is admitted. Other times 20 or 30 are admitted. So, always enroll in another college if you are on a wait list.

It is Holistic. More than Half of the applicants have more than the requisite academic prowess for those colleges and less than 10% are admitted. Therefore, the college Assumes you believe that the college is a good fit for You. Then the college looks for applicants that are a good fit for the College. And in many of those colleges, the admissions committee will make certain that the varsity sports teams get the number of athletes that they Need.

All the best.

Sometimes unexceptional students get into Ivy League schools, but unexceptional people rarely do.

As you likely know, the vast majority of Ivy League students had stellar high school GPAs, stellar standardized test scores, and focused, well-documented, passion in an extracurricular or two. But not all students fit this profile. Some students come to the Ivys with fine, but not exceptional, numbers. If you’re someone with, say, a 3.5 unweighted GPA and 1200 on the SAT, there needs to be a real reason for them to admit you over one of the countless 4.0, 1600 SAT applicants lined up at the admissions office. Some reasons why an Ivy admissions office might make an exception are:

• Family wealth pledged to support the institution. If your family buys the college a building or endows a scholarship so that hundreds of well-qualified students can attend at a lower cost, then they may admit you with slightly lower numbers than the typical applicant.
• Family prestige. The child of the school’s state Governor or Senator might be admitted as a goodwill courtesy.
• Athletic prowess, for example, an Olympic caliber athlete.
• Survivors of, or thrivers in, extreme hardship. A homeless person supporting their family by working full time while going to high school and also writing a collection of poetry about their plight may be given a pass on something like the SAT.
• Fame in a notable area. Have you won an Oscar, published a best-selling novel, or started a multi-million dollar company? You would fall into this category.
• Representatives of a particular geographic area or social situation. This might include students from a country that has never been represented at the school before. Or a refugee from a war torn area.

If the college is going to make an exception, you have to provide an exceptional reason for them to do so. Will you bring the college money? Favorable press? Access to an A-list graduation speaker? Will you provide some new or unique perspective to for your classmates? Is there some knowledge or information that only you can share with the faculty?

What is the reason your grades were low? Were you fighting an unimaginable battle? Did you do well despite having limited resources? Were you too busy writing your novel to study for calculus?

You should also know that being exceptional in one of these ways is no guarantee that you’ll get in. I personally know a 4.0 student with top notch extracurriculars from a multi-billion dollar family with a history of philanthropy who was denied admission to more than one Ivy.

And please don’t assume that Ivy students who fit the exceptions above (or similar) are necessarily poor students. By all accounts the majority of the famous or well connected students at Ivys are also extremely gifted academically. Some people are just winners in the lottery of life.

Also bear in mind that there’s only so far the schools are willing to bend. If you have a 2.8 and 1000 on the SAT, you’re probably not getting in even with a gold medal.