Introduction

Ah, the Ivy League. Its name evokes a kind of mythical vision of endless success, money, and happiness; fame and fortune; success or failure. I'll never get a good job if I don't go to an Ivy League school.… How many times have you heard the same refrain? Our son is very smart—he's applying to Ivy League schools. What well-heeled parents wouldn't kill for that Ivy League sticker for their rear windshield? After all, the Ivy League is the ultimate status symbol, the privileged club, the in conversation at cocktail parties. And then there are those families for which the very name Ivy League conjures up images of a privileged world or an exclusionary society that will, on the basis of some extra-academic criteria, issue an automatic rejection to their children. The unfortunate result of this bit of out-dated image making is that many bright students from modest backgrounds will eliminate themselves prematurely from a selection process in which they definitely have a chance.

On first view, perhaps the fear expressed by these families is understandable, since the Ivy League can be—and I must stress the superficial nature of this assessment—the hallmark of snootiness for the high-toned set. In an often-quoted cover story in New York magazine, one mother summed it up as follows: “There's almost a fetishistic sense of power, being able to associate your child with one of these schools … especially at one of these East Side dinner parties … the women don't work, so all they talk about is school. It's like belonging to the same country club or something.”,* Somehow, if your child goes to an Ivy League school, or so goes the theory, others will naturally assume you must be smart, too, for how else could your kids have done it themselves without a little help from the gene pool? Clearly, there is an aura imparted to those who venture forth into Ivy League territory.

Most people assume that the Ivy League originated as an intellectual alliance of the top universities in the United States. However, this view is far from the truth. While there are various opinions as to exactly when the term Ivy League was first used, most sources agree that the term was penned by a sports writer for the New York Herald Tribune in the mid 1930s. By 1945 this Ivy League football conference included what we now know as the eight Ivy League institutions: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. By standardizing eligibility requirements, academic standards, and financial-aid practices for athletes, the athletics directors of the Ivy League could maintain minimum standards for their athletes while preventing ringers from coming in and dominating on the gridiron, especially if they were unable to perform at a high level in their classes. By forbidding athletic scholarships, the athletic directors forbid coaches from “buying” their athletes. Instead, they had to attract student athletes who were interested in getting a solid education in addition to playing football.

The true Ivy League was founded in February of 1954, when the athletic directors broadened their rules to include all sports, not just football. Today, the term refers to the above-named eight institutions, which are still bound together by athletic accords regulating the acceptance of athletes for their NCAA Division I teams (with the exception of football, which is NCAA Division I-AA).

Throughout the years, more colleges were added to the list of exclusive colleges. The women's colleges, once affiliated with the original Ivies, are known today as Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Wellesley, and Vassar. They are also called the “Seven Sisters.” Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, and Wesleyan make up the so-called little Ivies, although not everyone agrees on the inclusion of all four colleges.

For the purposes of this book, which focuses on how to get accepted at a top-rated, or “highly selective,” college, I am going to use the term Ivy League both as a specific term that refers to certain admissions practices found only in the Ivy League and also as a general term that refers to the most highly selective institutions in the country. I am defining highly selective as colleges that accept 30 percent or less from the applicant pool. As you might imagine, there is quite a variety, even among the eight Ivy League schools, in terms of the selectivity factor. By selectivity, I mean the total number of students that are accepted divided by the total number of students that applied. If ten students applied to a college and five were accepted, the selectivity factor would be 50 percent—one out of every two students.

I suspect that some parents reading this will think back to the days when they applied to colleges. Most people applied to only a handful of colleges and were often admitted to their first choice without much competition. Even law school and medical school applications were much less competitive. The rules that applied in those days are no longer valid. There is an enormous difference between how the admissions process used to be prior to 1970 and how it is now. How and why did this process change?

Prior to 1933, Dartmouth actually had a list of private high schools from which it accepted applicants. These were known as “feeder” high schools because the college counselors would call up the admissions officers and tell them which students they should accept, thereby feeding their students into the specific college via a direct pipeline. If the counselors abused the trust put in them by admissions officers, they were sometimes removed from the feeder list. In the 1920s, these high schools included some of the prestigious New England preparatory schools, such as Phillips Academy at Andover, Massachusetts, and Phillips Exeter Academy at Exeter, New Hampshire, as well as such New York City high schools as Horace Mann. Dartmouth decided in 1921 to institute a “selective process of admissions” because of the increased number of applicants. Dartmouth is, in fact, considered the first college to have instituted such a selective policy, which was soon copied by other colleges.

Still, the selectivity factor was not comparable to today's levels. It took World War II and the glut of soldiers returning from battle to move the colleges in the direction of truly selective admissions. The proverbial “old boy network” was the modus operandi for decades, right up until World War II. The turning point in admissions procedures is generally considered to be 1945, in that the procedures instituted in the post-WW II years were very similar to those used today. As far as standardized testing is concerned, Dartmouth started requiring the SAT tests for admissions purposes in 1951, and later, in 1958, three achievement tests, or SAT IIs, as they are now called. During the 1950s, the influence of prominent alumni in admissions decisions decreased dramatically, while the Ivies also began to use waiting lists to accommodate the increasing number of applicants.

The process slowly evolved through minority recruitment in the 1960s in the wake of the civil rights movement, and steadily increasing competition, but not until the last five years has the selectivity increased to such a dramatic level. In order to set the stage for the following chapters, let me provide a list of the most highly selective colleges in the United States, along with their acceptance rates. First, there are the Ivies, in order of selectivity:*

Harvard:13%
Princeton:13%
Columbia:17%
Yale:18%
Brown:18%
Dartmouth:22%
(University of Pennsylvania:31%)
(Cornell:34%)

The other US. colleges and universities that fit into my artificially created highly selective category are:

USMA (West Point):14%
Stanford:15%
US. Air Force Academy:15%
US. Naval Academy:17%
Amherst:20%
Georgetown:21%
Williams:21%
Cal Tech:23%
Swarthmore:24%
MIT:25%
Rice:27%
Northwestern:27%
Duke:30%

I think it comes as a surprise to find that there are only twenty or so colleges (depending upon which year you use, the number will vary slightly) among the thousands of colleges and universities in the United States that are extremely difficult to get into, if we use my arbitrary cut off of 30 percent as the dividing line. All the Seven Sister schools are slightly less selective, ranging from 39 percent to a not-very-selective 65 percent, although one must remember that all-women's colleges are somewhat self-selective in the first place. It is no secret that certain Ivies are easier to get into than other Ivies, not so much because of the overall strength of the college, but more because of size, number of spaces in the freshman class, and number of applicants. The numbers vary slightly from year to year.

Every year, more than 110,000 students apply to Ivy League colleges, but fewer than 26,000 are accepted. How can you make sure you'll get one of those precious offers of admission to Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Princeton, or the rest of the Ivy League? This book is the only one available that reveals the actual Ivy League admissions process from a true insider's perspective.

In my case, I worked for four years in the Dartmouth College admissions office. Therefore, I feel uniquely qualified to write this book. The reader will have the benefit of all my insider's knowledge of the elite Ivy League process. I'll take you inside the daily routine of a typical Ivy League admissions committee as it sorts through thousands of competitive applications.

Reading this book will reveal to you the intricacies of that process and will greatly improve your chances of being accepted at an Ivy League or other highly selective college. Once you understand how each part of the application is read and interpreted by an admissions committee, you will learn how to best present yourself and make yourself stand out among the thousands of highly qualified applicants. You will also learn the secret formula used by all the Ivy League schools to compare students from different high schools and different regions. Learning how to use this formula will give you a much better idea of your chances of getting into an Ivy League school in the first place and how to improve those odds.

Even if you are only a middle schooler (or a parent or teacher of one), this book will be an invaluable guide to planning your courses and standardized testing schedule with an eye toward that elusive ticket to the Ivy League. I devote most of the book to a step-by-step look at the application process, going through the application section by section, explaining how each section is read, indicating what the admissions committee is looking for, and telling you exactly who “they” are. “They” know everything there is to know about you; this book helps you learn more about them and how to turn that knowledge to your advantage. Finally, I show how certain “tip” factors are used in the admissions process and how these colleges really treat legacies, recruited athletes, minority applicants, prospective donors, and other VIPs. You will find out how you can use these special categories to your advantage.

Not everyone has access to a knowledgeable college counselor, but anyone can become an expert on Ivy League admissions by fully understanding how different factors are considered. Even the best college counselors often can offer only general advice and do not have the resources to help every student. The vast majority of these counselors have never worked in an Ivy League admissions ndfice and therefore have a limited grasp of what really goes on in the Ivy League admissions process.

The big question remains: Can you get your child into an Ivy League school? I'm sure many of you are parents who picked up this book to see what the trick is, the quick fix. It is to you and your children, in particular, that I am addressing this book. The bottom line: You cannot get your child into an Ivy League school. Your son or daughter is the only person who can get into an Ivy League school. With perhaps some rare exceptions, neither position, nor wealth, nor an elite prep school, nor connections can single-handedly guarantee admission to an Ivy League school. In fact, some of these factors could work against the applicant in the Ivy admissions process. There is never anyone who is guaranteed admission. There are cases of valedictorians with double 800 SATs who are not admitted into their top-choice colleges, just as there are lowerranked students with mid-500 scores who are admitted.

My goal in this book is to explain enough about the admissions process so that any counselor, parent, or student can see whether it makes sense to apply to an Ivy League school. This book is not aimed at guaranteeing admission to an Ivy League school. However, it will teach you how to maximize your chances and show you how to present yourself in the best possible light. The rest lies in the hands of those who read your application. In chapter 1, I will examine exactly who those people are and what it means for you.