How to Get Into an Ivy League School

GLEN: Yep. Yep. Cool. All right, so let’s dive in. First, what is this Ivy League? Make sure we’re all on the same page. So you probably know, everyone here knows these are the eight schools that are in the Ivy Leagues. They’re etched in our brains as icons of what is a premier university, what is the best school in the world. But what you might not know as well, or maybe you do know and that’s why you’re here, is just how difficult these are to get into. These are the acceptance rates this last year of these schools, or for those who have published them from previous years. The point of this is that these are all incredibly low. They’re really hard to get into, but it’s also, it’s not zero, right? It’s not 1%. There is a possibility of getting into these schools. It should not be outside of anyone’s realm like, “Oh, I just don’t have what it takes to get into Ivy League schools.”

If you know some basics about both what they are and who you are, you can start to make those connections to actually become one of those selective 4%. And that’s our goal. How do we make you part of that 4% or that 3.6%? That’s our goal here. So we know those numbers. That’s the aim. To start with this, as we get further in this, this is like the good names, but what is it? Why is this Ivy League? An interesting thing to note is that the term really just first originally referred to a football league. It was in 1945 that the term was first officially used by the schools. And what they said in this original document is, when they created the Ivy Football League, it is “to preserve the values of the game while still following the basic purposes of each”—which we’re going to come back to—“each university’s academic life.”

And so it’s kind of interesting, like if we’re referring to the Ted Lasso show, Football is Life, it might’ve actually pulled it straight from the Ivy League schools because this idea that the values present in football and the values present in what is that strong academic life, there’s actually some intersection there. And that’s what we really want to unpack here. What are those basic purposes of that academic life? Because if we can understand that, we can understand their founding principles, we can help you to align to them. So, some things to note about what it is not, what the Ivy League is not, and we’ll get into this. It is not an exclusive marker of the top schools. There are tons of other incredible schools in the U.S. and abroad that are some of the best schools in the world. So this is not just them, this is just those eight. But it is some of the earliest schools in the United States.

And that’s important because the history by which they were founded does influence who they are today. So, they were founded with multiple missions. The first one here is this: values education. Values education basically just means your character. Part of their purpose is to develop your character as a human. Another thing that they’re curious about is this humanistic education. It’s not just that you understand the world, that you have these academic interests, but you also understand your relationship to it. And this is something that we’re going to come back to again and again because it’s actually pretty tricky and it’s what our coaches really specialize in. How do you connect to your academic interests? What is that relationship like? Which is hard. And then the third tricky thing is this social distinction. What they’re trying to get is like, “Oh, you went to an Ivy League? You have this marker of being a part of the best.” Now what does that marker actually entail? There’s a lot. We’re going to unpack that.

This was the original founding. It has since moved on to have these other goals, as well, that was founded 400 years ago. They’ve kept it, but they’ve added to it. This civic mission and this academic mission, which really, or economic mission, is really what it is. It’s connected to research, which we’re seeing in the news these days about how much the federal government is connected to these Ivy League schools. These schools share this mix of trying to get their students to be successful in their fields, but also leaders in changing issues. So to summarize all of this, the Ivy League is about these key three things, your academic excellence, the values that you have, and there’s some civicness to that, and this social distinction, those specific values that make you an Ivy League person.

So cool. Why I’m getting on in this history, and just to note, if you’re like, “Wow, Glen, you’re being a little nerdy right now, a little too academic,” this is as bad as it gets. It’s going to come down from there. Why this matters is because there’s this common expression when you’re talking about Ivy League schools, that they’re just businesses. If you want to get into an Ivy League school, you need to understand it’s a business where you are their products, their alumni are their products. You graduate from Harvard, you go forth, you make a lot of money, you make a big name for yourself, you donate to the school. That is part of what Ivy Leagues are considered. You hear this so much, and it’s not wrong. This is true. They do care about this. This is part of their economic mission, but it’s not the complete story.

GLEN: They also care about knowledge production. They also care about solving the world’s problems. And they also care about creating this social distinction. And the reason why it’s important to also include these things when we’re thinking about, “Okay, if I want to be an Ivy League student, what do I need to have?” If you’re not putting in your application things that show that these are what you’re about, you are hurting your chances of getting it because you’re not presenting yourself as the full picture of what they are looking for. So to get at these three things, they are looking for students who care about knowledge production, meaning they’re kids who love to learn. If you are trying to apply to the schools, you need to be showing that you eat up learning, that you just have Wikipedia up all the time and you’re just passionate about learning things.

That’s the type of things they want you to see, that you are going to be able to discover new theories, that you’re going to be able to do well in the research process. They just want to see that love. But it can’t just be knowledge for knowledge’s sake, right? It’s multiple things, which is why getting into the Ivy League is so hard. You have to show all of these layers. You also need to use that knowledge to improve lives. You see this in their mission statements and you see this in the personal statements, and we’ll get to supplemental essays, like, “What are you doing to end poverty?”, “What are you doing to address injustices?” They care about this. They don’t necessarily care what the specific injustice is, they’re not political in that way, but they do want you to be caring about something better than yourselves. If you are just saying, “Man, I want to go to Harvard or Penn because I’m going to make a lot of money and that’s what I care about,” you were missing their entire point of their mission. These are nonprofits for a reason. That’s why you need to have those values in there with that goal.

And then finally, this last piece, this social distinction piece. They’re really training the next generation of global leaders. AOs will talk, like they present at these schools. They present to their incoming classes, “Hey, you all got in. Many of you might have imposter syndrome and that you think you don’t belong.” They say they don’t make mistakes in the admissions process. You got in because you embody these values and we believe you are going to make the difference in industry, in science, in law. And so, the AOs are trying to suss out to determine if you actually have the values to fit in with that. Do you have the social norms and behaviors to belong to that selective group? So, that’s the sort of academic understanding of what the Ivy Leagues are, and this is going to show up into, well, “What do we do with, how do we actually help you to get in and fit that?” Kenn, is there anything you want to add or ask about?

KENNEDY: You have to have a really clear understanding of your “why”—that thing, that social issue, that something that makes you tick—and you need to go outside and really do something about it in a way that feels tangible, that you can quantify on your application, and obviously speak to and articulate in a really meaningful way in your essays. So there’s just clearly so much that goes into this and it feels like a really intentional process.

GLEN: Oh, highly intentional. They have the best minds designing these processes to really suss this out. Yeah, it goes way beyond just your test scores, way beyond your GPA. But we are, let’s actually dive into that. I think that’s a great sort of transition. What are they actually looking for here? So as you mentioned, you do need more than a 4.0. This is all framed also as “What is going to make the most percentages?” There’s always a bit of risk, but how do we maximize your chances of getting in? A 4.0 is going to be the best thing that can help you out with this, because that is showing that you can succeed in the classroom. But even that by itself is not enough. You also need to have a 4.0 in the most rigorous coursework available. And honestly, if you’re looking at the Ivy League schools coursework that exceeds what is available to the normal student at your school, you need to be a grade above.

I think the most common of this is what I tell students, “If you’re looking at CS and you’re not above, like you’re not in multi-variable calculus, don’t bother, in some ways,” or “You really have to show it in another way is the key thing. But if you want to get buzzed, you show it in another way and you have that.” You also should try and have above a 1560 SAT. That is the sort of benchmark of people because you are designated with that. You are showing to the AOs that you’re really smart and you know about academics, you can survive the classroom, which matters to them. And that “why” that sort of level across the entire everybody who’s applying, is why the SAT is coming back at almost every single Ivy League school. It’s just required now. They like to see it as just this benchmark. But they also require more than just raw academic ability.

Cool. You can be a savant in that. What you talked about, Kennedy, is this “why” within a field, and that’s very smart of you to point out because it is critical. They want to see that you are very good in a specific field. They really want to see that you can do what the Ivy League students are doing at their level already. That’s the best way that you can do it. So getting into what would be commonly thought of as stuff for undergraduates, stuff that you would normally be doing in college if this was 15, 20 years ago, so like are you doing research projects? Are you doing internships? And beyond that, it’s the depth that needs to show up in the essays. You’re doing these experiences, but you’re also understanding and demonstrating a familiarity with the concepts so much that you can write about it clearly. And I think that’s a sign of intelligence. You can take a very complex idea and distill it to somebody who doesn’t know a lot about it and can understand it. And that is a hard thing to do in the essays, but that’s why getting into the Ivy League is really hard. So yes, it is definitely more than just the GPA. It is that intellectual ability within the field.

KENNEDY: And I think this is challenging for a reason. Often I’ll speak to families a lot about this and they’ll say, my 16 or 17 year old has never actually had introspection in this way. Which makes sense because your average English essay for your AP course is asking you to write about a book. You don’t actually have to write about yourself or connect those things inside. So ultimately, I think that’s why having a coach becomes important to have someone who’s external to ask you those probing questions, to get those ideas out of you, tease it out and get it on paper in a way that’s going to be understood. And moving to the next topic, too.

The Q&A is open, so if anyone has any questions, please feel free to drop them in. We’re happy to answer anything as we go and, of course, at the end as well.

GLEN: Yeah, absolutely. Please ask some questions. And I think to give you an example of this, my student, and I’m going to come back to this student again and again in this presentation because they got accepted to multiple Ivy League schools and ended up choosing Stanford because there are other schools outside of the Ivy Leagues that are great, but to get at this depth, this was a CS student. They didn’t just talk about why they love CS. They got deeper than that. They talked about not just machine learning, which would be the next level depth, they talked about sentiment analysis in low resource languages. That’s what it was. But, it’s not just them then explaining what that is. They don’t care. They want to know why you care about it. And that level of detail to then connect to what you care about and what you’ve done with it and why it matters, and making it relatable, yeah, that’s hard. But it’s important if you want to get into these top schools. So, we’ll come back to that student and show how she got into multiple ones.

Beyond that, academics that we’ve hopefully not stressed you too much about, is the community contribution and leadership component. So, this really connects to that civic mission I was talking about, right? They have this idea that we want you to be leaders that are going to change the world, that you’re going to do more than just make money. They want good people, which is wonderful. Great. We want good people. They want good people. Everyone’s on the same side of this. We want people who care about other people.

But at an Ivy League, you can’t just care about people on the individual or the interpersonal. This is a nice little scale to show you the sort of depth that they’re looking for. They’re looking for you to really wrestle with the more complicated issues in the world, show that you know that they’re not that simple, like solving poverty, pretty hard, but that you have had experience with trying to do it at scale, at an institutional or at a societal level, and that you’ve already had some demonstrated success of it. Because if you can demonstrate that you are having success now in high school, they’re like, oh, you can do it then you can probably do it now, and you’ll probably do it in the future. It’s easy to talk about, much harder to do. But then when you do it, you then also have to be able to talk about why you did it and how you grew from it.

So it’s that demonstrated success. It’s that ability to come in conflict with challenges. Like, “Oh, I started to do it. It didn’t work out. Here’s what I did to adjust and here’s how I grew.” Which is why it’s really important to start this process early, to put yourself out there to start doing things purposefully, and then to have someone that you can reflect it with, like, “Hey, I’m trying to do this. This is the thing I’m coming up with. Oh, it’s not working. Cool, what do I do?” But also someone who you can bounce like, you can do that deep interpersonal reflection with. You did this, why did you do this? You came into this conflict with a person. How did you handle it? How did that feel? Because if you can get that, then you can start really making the good essays. Honestly, I think this is really important for our underclassmen to be doing because when I’m meeting with a kiddo, the first thing I’m doing at the beginning of the meeting is checking in with them like how are things going? It’s good for them, but also, I’m digging for these essays like, “Oh, there’s a challenge here. I know that’s a Harvard essay.” We’ll come back to that. And I’m making notes like, “Ooh, this could actually be something. Let me probe on this. Let me push them so that they can have a story for you,” because you don’t have the substance if there’s no “there” there, you don’t have a good essay.

Cool. And then the other piece is not only do they have to have substance, there needs to be that theory there. Some examples of this that I think worked. One of my kids created a new system for reporting sexual harassment in her school. Another kid created an EV charger in their small town. These are examples of these activities that work to get them into these Ivy League schools. When they were talking about their sexual reporting harassment policy, they created a policy for their school. It’s an institutional change. They talked about bystander theory. They talked about trauma-informed care and why they decided to use those principles in their essays. So you have to have the academic, but you also have to have the EQ. IQ and EQ at the same time, which is hard, which is why it’s hard to get into these schools.

So, this is a bit more of a summary. We’ve talked about these four initial things, but if you’re a parent who’s like, “Alright, I got a 9th grader, I want to make sure I got these values.” These are some of these values that you should be incorporating into what we hope to grow within them. We talked about those first four, the intellectual curiosity, the vitality, the goal-oriented and driven nature of actually doing something, globally aware of issues and doing something about them and understanding what they are, the civic-mindedness, again, connected to “I have a responsibility to do something,” but these last four we haven’t talked on. This is the sort of self-aware and reflective. One of our Yale admits this year for this one. In their essays, they talked about their journey with faith and how it connected to their life purposes.

And they interestingly said, they didn’t come to a conclusion about it. They’re like, “I am still very much in formation, which is showing how, oh, they don’t feel like they need to have a set answer, but they are aware that there is even a process here.” That can be a very interesting thing. And then talking about bigger things like life purposes. They’re aware that they don’t have to have all the answers. That’s a great sign to be able to show this interpersonally charismatic feature. The kids need to have some ability to interact with each other, which is why if your kid is just grinding away at academics, the Ivy League isn’t necessarily the best fit for them. They do have to interact with other people. How they assess this is through the writing. Do they actually have poise in their writing? Also, the interviews are becoming more and more important, and then the quality of their activities. Typically, if they have activities where there’s interaction, then they will see that, oh, they’ve had interaction. But this is again why it’s important to constantly be able to talk about these things. Every meeting that I have with a kiddo is honestly an interview practice. How are you able to talk about yourself? Because you’re going to have to do it with the AOs.

Harvard just requires it at this point. The other thing you need to see is that they’re joyful. One of my Cornell admits, what he did was he wrote about gardening with his mom. That’s not to do with anything about academics. That’s not to do anything with civic impact, but it is just like, “Oh, you enjoy the world.” This is important. They have this lightness to the world. It’s this piece of this social distinction. It’s not all about just doing the things that look good on a resume. And this is that last point, and it’s probably the most important point. They don’t accept people who are obsessed with being Ivy League grads, right? The idea that, I think the worst thing that kids do in these essays is they talk about, “Wow, Yale is the best school. Look at all these top things that it has.” They know that they’re Yale. They don’t even know how great they are. They know how great they are. Instead, what they want to see is that, “Oh, we share a similar sort of values. We share a similar goal.” They don’t want to see that you’re obsessed with it. Even when Ivy League graduates introduce themselves, so people ask them, “Where do you go to college?” “Where did you go to college?” They don’t say where they went, right? They’re not quick to brag. “I went to Columbia.” “I went to Yale.” They say “I went to a small college outside of Boston.” There needs to be this bit of lightness with them. Kenn, you’re an Ivy League grad. Anything you want to add?

KENNEDY: No, but you’re correct. The only reason I said it today is because this is a presentation. Had this been anything else, I think I might’ve just said, “I went to school in New York,” and if they say, “Where?”, like “upper Manhattan.” It’s probably…

GLEN: Yeah, that’s exactly what they say, “Upper Manhattan.”

KENNEDY: I usually do upper Manhattan and people fill in that blank however they want. Some will ask, others don’t, but it’s really up to them. The one thing I wanted to add here, based on what you said, I feel like one of my main takeaways and learning from this slide was that I think it really benefits students to be individuals throughout this process. You can’t be your neighbor’s kid who got into Harvard. You can’t be the same as anyone else because ultimately, I think the value of this process is self discovery, and the more that you can do that and understand who you are and what your place in the world is within your given niche, the better off you’re going to be. I think I hear this so much: “I did the same thing as X person who got into Yale, but I didn’t get in,” and the reason why is because ultimately that person did it. They were them, and you need to be you.

GLEN: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. They’re really trained to detect faking in that way. You have to be you and you have to develop that authentic voice, which as a parent is both wonderful to hear, right? You get to develop your student in this way, but it’s also, it can be a little bit stressful. So, you’re absolutely right about the authenticity. But yeah, we brought up Columbia. Let’s actually start to dive into the specifics of each school here. What is each school? And I said it in that thing, right? Each school’s academic purpose. So let’s get into that, each school from the founding document. But before we do this, I want to give a sort of caveat to this, which is exactly what Kenn you were talking about here. Each school is overall looking to build an entire class. They’re the Ivy League. They get to choose. They have their pick of the litter of the best in the world.

And keep in mind, everybody in the world is applying to these schools. So they are looking to build a cohesive class that fits together. They want to have students from different majors because those different majors feed each other and improve the learning. They want to have them from different locations, different experiences, help to shape ways of knowing, and thus, how do we get to better answers? Class background in terms of money, but also ideology, what their sort of beliefs of the world are, and archetype, which is important. Who are you as a kiddo? Are you the kid who is that deep passionate robotics kid? Are you the kid that is into low-language resources and machine learning within that? Or are you the pre-med kid who loves philosophy, but you’re that particular philosophy, Aristotle in philosophy, not like content or something like that. That is the type of archetype that they’re looking for because they’re trying to build this whole class that fits together.

It’s a puzzle. So these are called their institutional priorities because that’s what they care about, not necessarily what you were talking about. One kid gets in, but then eye-lined up, well, you didn’t line up in one of these other factors that wasn’t on the surface. And it’s also important to note that you can get accepted to all eight Ivy League schools without changing your activities or your sort of core stories. You don’t have to change who you are in order to get into multiple of these schools, but you can increase your chances by emphasizing certain values that align with these supplemental essays is primarily where you will make the changes.

And this is where I’m going to come back to that same student who got into multiple schools, and we’ll talk about how she changed each part of her profile to get into each of these. And I think this is really important to note again, Kennedy, what you were talking about. AOs are trained to suss out and determine, “Oh, is this kid lying or is this kid using AI?” To like, “Oh, they’re just coming up with a story and then they’re going to write about it.” They will look for this. And then it’s like an automatic denial if they’re using it. And it honestly doesn’t come off as authentic. So it’s like a lose-lose. And it’s also, if you’re trying to do that as a kid, it’s worse because you’re like, oh wait, I’m actually not good enough and I have to change everything about me. So it creates self-doubt and anxiety. So we don’t want kids to do this. We want to develop the kid as authentically as possible because then they are the best version of themselves, regardless. That’s our end result is they are more successful. And that’s actually how you get into school. That’s how you can increase your chances, is being as authentic to yourself as possible within these values. So, let’s get into the different schools, unless there’s any other question or Kenn, anything you want to add?

KENNEDY: No, we have a larger question about profiles as a whole, but I think it would be better served at the end once we’ve gone through more particulars on the schools and profiles at large.

GLEN: Cool. Let’s do it. Let’s get into the schools. The first one that we want to talk about, Harvard. And I do want to specify that these schools aren’t necessarily hiding all of this information. They’re not trying to be secretive with it. They’re putting it right in their essay prompts so that you can see it. It does require a keen eye to decipher it and figure out what it is, but that’s what we are here for. That’s what we are here to help you with. And more importantly, connect it to the student specifically what they are doing within it. So this prompt from Harvard, one of their main prompts, the Harvard prompt, is “Describe a time when you strongly disagreed with somebody about an idea or issue. How did you communicate or engage with that person? What did you learn from this experience?” The key thing that they’re looking for in this is that you are willing to have enough leadership, enough wherewithal to be able to stand up to ideas that you don’t agree with. Do you value truth? Which is literally their motto, right? I’m telling you, it’s not hidden. It’s in their motto. They care about truth and they want to challenge things that are false. It is why they’re doing what they’re doing now. But, how did you communicate and engage with this? They’re also looking for this social fluidity, this poise. You didn’t just tell them that they were wrong. You were able to then push the conversation in another way to demonstrate leadership to get some sort of change in that.

So this is what they are looking for in that; is that ability to actually challenge. And this is also why Harvard really values the interview process, as well. They’re the one that probably values the interview process the most out of the Ivy Leagues because they ask you about this, but then they want to also see, “Well, how do you interact with people? How do you challenge ideas? How do you interact with others?” Because that leadership, that poise, is so important at Harvard, which is different. I mean it’s connected, but Yale has a slightly different emphasis. Let’s look at one of their prompts. “If you could teach any college course, write a book or create an original piece of art, what would it be?” Yale is quirky. They like their little artists. They like them to be a little bit on a different path, to be a little bit less serious than the Harvard type.

And that’s important. They don’t want you to take yourself too seriously. So your answer to this prompt should have a bit of quirkiness to it. It should have a little play to it. It shouldn’t just be like, “These are the 10 things that I would do in computer science.” Something that is matter-of-fact, it should be quirky, it should have fun. And the reason why this is, is because they really care about your ability to interact with other people in learning situations. Yale, the housing is totally random, just like Notre Dame. You just get placed randomly in there and they’re like, well, we want you to learn from people that you don’t know and we want to see that you can interact from them, that you can build that interdisciplinary approach because here’s this kid in philosophy and you’re a CS major and you’re rooming together.

Cool. We want to see that. But they want to see that you are able to build those bonds over differences, and they think that that quirkiness, that lightheartedness, is how they do it. And so that’s what you would want to have for Yale. So for my kid that got into this one as well, what she really emphasized, even though she was CS, she emphasized this musical side of her and how she was able to build relationships through that in this, not on this prompt, but a different prompt. That is what she wanted to write about. This one, she did also emphasize it wasn’t about CS, it was about music, and I think that’s another side that you want to emphasize. So that’s Yale.

Moving on to Princeton. Princeton, their prompt here “has a longstanding commitment to understanding our responsibility to society through service and civic engagement. How does your own story intersect with these ideals?” You hear the tradition just sort of dripping off of that prompt. They take tradition and academic seriousness probably more than any other Ivy League school. They want you to have an impact in the world. They are like Woodrow Wilson, right? It’s there, which is the leader in civic education. They want you to have an impact in the world, but they want it to be well-grounded in this moralistic and philosophical understanding about why you want to do this. You can’t just be something based in, “I think this is the right thing.” What’s the theory behind it? Why is this the right way to go?

And this is also why Princeton has that graded paper. This is why, for my kid, we had them submit a research paper that it’s like an AP seminar class where they had to do some research paper. They want to see that you can do the research, that you have that theory behind them and that you can understand how that tradition can inform an impact. So it’s different, everyone cares about civic empowerment, but it just looks a little bit different at these different schools and those nuances are what you’d really have to be able to distill. There’s another way that these differences are.

Your alma mater, Columbia, one of their prompts that is the one we know the most, “List a selection of text resources and outlets that have contributed to your intellectual development outside of academic courses, including but not limited to books, journals, websites, podcasts, essays, plays, presentations, videos, museums and other content that you enjoy.” Columbia cares about their core curriculum. They want to make sure that you are wrestling with the ideas that have already been developed that are already out there, that you have this shared understanding of what knowledge is, but then you are building on it in your own unique, specific way. Get that core, build on it. That’s how their approach is interdisciplinary.

They also really care about this global awareness, right? It’s not that you need to be aware of the issues that are in the world and then how those intersect with your own life. And really then, what are you doing about it? That’s the other key thing, right? Everyone has a bit of a, I mean, you’ve got a little New York edge to you where you’re kind of hustling a lot, right? You kind of are doing a few things at the same time, but those things also have an impact. Just like New York, you can’t escape anything that is connected to the larger world. It is literally one of the nodes of global commerce, global thought, global culture. So you have to be aware of it. And that doesn’t mean you have to be an activist per se, but you do need to have maybe an entrepreneur, maybe an inventor, maybe a founder of something that connects with a piece there.

That’s the side that we focused on with her at this school, my student, was that entrepreneurial thing that she had started around CS, I should say. I missed this on the Harvard one, but what we emphasized with Harvard one with her was how she stood up to her companies wanting to make it a for-profit and she wanted to make it a nonprofit, and how she wrestled with that, which we’ll come to with, we didn’t emphasize on Penn, but we’ll get there in a second.

Brown. This one is kind of that opposite to Columbia in that they are not the core curriculum, it is the open curriculum, and they literally ask about this. Brown’s open curriculum allows students to explore broadly while also diving deeply into academic pursuits. “Tell us about any academic interests that excite you and how you might pursue them.” At Brown, they are not looking for you to write about how you’ll use the open curriculum to double major. You can do that at any school. That interdisciplinary is anywhere else. What they want to see is how you are using X, Y, and Z different subjects to come up with this brand new idea, this “imagine new possibility” that you can’t even think of unless you’re bringing these other ideas. They’re very creative there. They want to see how you’re using it, like for her what we did was linguistics. Yes, we want you to be taking linguistics. We want her to be taking computer vision. We want her to be taking data science, but also, we want her to take anthropology classes. What even is language? Why does language matter and how can we use that to inform questions about how we preserve low resource languages? So, it’s very different in that you really need to be as open as possible to new ideas and as reflective as possible. They’re overemphasizing on the reflectiveness and the introspection here. All of the schools need that, but Brown is to the next level here with that and imagining those new possibilities which can come from that introspection.

Penn, which I alluded to, was coming up here. This is from the Wharton, but it’s also throughout their entire larger ethos. I mean, Wharton just plays such a big role in the ethos of Penn. “Wharton prepares its students to make an impact by applying business methods and economic theory to real world problems, including economic, political and social issues. Please reflect on an issue of importance to you and share how a Wharton education would help you to explore it.” Right? This is this thing. You’re starting to do it. Here’s how you can do it even better through Wharton. This is where it’s like, “Oh, we’ve started this company. We’ve started this organization that is about low resource languages and helping to develop the technology.” She didn’t talk about the nonprofit versus profit at all. She was just like, “Here’s what we’ve started. Here are things that we’ve done.”

Because they’re very doers there. What are you already doing? How have you embodied that Philly spirit? If you’re just like grinding at it. So that startup here is really important. Showing how you already have done something within it is very important for Penn.

Cool. Now two more. Sinking the time. Dartmouth. I can’t use her example on this one because she didn’t apply to Dartmouth, and I think that’s important to note is that if you’re applying to all the schools, you’re probably not necessarily aligning to all of the schools because they are a bit different. She did her research before and was like, “I don’t need to apply to all the Ivy Leagues just because they’re the Ivy Leagues. This one doesn’t actually fit for me.” This one is Dartmouth. Here’s the prompt here, “‘Be yourself,’ Oscar Wilde advised. ‘Everyone else is taken.’ Introduce yourself.” Dartmouth, they’re just a little bit weirder in the same way. They are a little bit flippant is the word that I think is the best to describe them.

They love their tradition, but they’re able to hold that tradition and that irreverence of that tradition, which are two opposite ideas at the same time, which is the sign of a very intelligent person. Can you value something and be irreverent at it? If you can, wow, that’s incredible. And that’s what you have to try and show that through your essays with here. The thing about them is that they are very close-knit and social. If you want that environment, you need to be able to show how you can excel within that. And the kid that I did get in here talked about the outdoors. They talked about how that outdoors helped them to actually connect to their past ancestors and then how that helped them to connect to closer relationships with people who are still present, but they had this deeper understanding of the outdoors and how one could grow from them that was both irreverent, but also like, “Wow, I have a deep respect for those who’ve gone before me and my connections to the past” as Dartmouth material eats it up.

And then the last one, noticing our time here, is Cornell. The poor, often forgotten. Cornell, fundamentally, engineering is the application of math, science, technology to solve complex problems. Why do you want to study engineering? Cornell is really caring about your impact. That’s what they care more than anything else is like “What are you doing to make a difference within the world?” And so this one, her thing I said was on low resource languages. We needed to say, “Well, who cares about low resource languages? Why does that actually matter to the larger planet?” Not just knowledge-for-knowledge sake, and we had to use these ideas from New Zealand and these terms from that to say we actually lose senses of knowledge by losing these very specific words and here’s why we need to preserve them, here’s all the hard work that I’ve done and here’s how it’s going to impact. So it’s like the same kid. They didn’t do anything different. We were just emphasizing different pieces in different supplemental essays.

It’s like, “how do you best approach this?” But it is hard because each school has its own unique values and you have to also deeply know that kid to find out what are those stories, and then to get them to write about it. And it just takes lots of time. It takes time to try to figure out what that story is and then how do we develop that story? That’s the eight.

KENNEDY: Yeah, that’s the eight. And they’re all so different. I think for me, when I look at all these prompts, it feels like each of these schools really value students’ ability to push the envelope in some way. And that obviously requires you to care deeply about something. And I think that that’s why it becomes so important to have an admissions coach, to have the person to guide you in the right direction to actually do that, because it’s completely unnatural to have a lot of interest, ones that might feel like they’re competing, and you don’t necessarily know what to pick, but ultimately it’s important to care about something. So, you actually have the substance to answer these questions well because they’re so important, and I think it’s really what makes the difference between a good application and a great one. And with that, I’d love to kind of move a little bit more towards the program specifically. Then, we’ll maybe hop back and do admissions trends, just so if anyone has to drop off, we make sure we answer any questions about Prepory and how we work with students more directly. Cool. You can go to the next one. Yeah. Thank you.

GLEN: Next one. Oh yeah, yeah,

KENNEDY: Yeah. Thank you.

GLEN: More appropriate.

KENNEDY: Yeah. With our program specifically, how we work, is students are assigned a coach. This is the person who’s responsible for really getting to know them and guiding them in the right direction. For our underclassmen students or our younger ones who are not yet applying, the work is more so on candidacy-building. So thinking research opportunities, internships, exploring colleges and understanding the ones that are the right fit for you, and also thinking about things like your course selections and what clubs you’re going to join in school or the passion projects that you’ll start. And then by the time we’re in junior year spring, the focus shifts more towards the writing and actually getting this on paper like what Glen was discussing today. How do we then position you as a fit for these schools that you’re excited about and reflect the right values for each institution on your list?

Throughout the program, we do a number of group-level reviews. So, our team of former admissions officers from top schools like Penn and Berkeley, for example, actually review the entirety of our students’ profiles. For our underclassmen, this manifests as our Annual Profile Review. This is a space where they essentially submit a snapshot of their profile, including their transcripts, any test scores they might have, in addition to a writing sample, since you want to practice the skillset early, so we’re ready for the real college essays and their resume as well, for our team to react to it and provide additional guidance about areas that they should continue to enhance and develop throughout their time with us.

Additionally, this also happens in the senior year fall, twice, once before the early and regular decision round for students just to ensure that their applications are top-notch prior to submitting. We also do unlimited essay and resume reviews throughout the entirety of our program for our younger students, that more so relates to summer opportunities and the Annual Profile Review. And of course for our older ones, the actual college applications. And so parents can remain aware and involved, we also do a number of parent check-in sessions, which are a space for you guys to connect with your students’ coach to ask questions and get progress updates. And you’ll also receive summaries from the coach that essentially outline what was covered so you’re kept aware and the direction that they’re heading in.

GLEN: You can go to the next one. Oh yeah.

KENNEDY: Thank you. So just to give you a sense of our results. On average, students had three times, or more, chances of getting into an Ivy League school. Ultimately, nothing’s guaranteed, but what we can say is by working with us, you’ll definitely get an increase in your chances. And this is only getting more competitive with each passing year, I mean on Glen’s slide, each Ivy had single digits. Many were six and below. And this is only going to get more competitive as we continue to go, especially if you have younger students who are maybe in middle school and thinking that this is something they might want to target in the future.

And we’d love to meet with each of you individually. So I encourage you to schedule an initial consultation. We have space in our calendar this week and early next week, as well. It’s great when the whole family can be there, too. So if possible, having your students present is great for us. We can learn more about you all and discuss how we’ll work with your students specifically, and also answer any admissions questions that you have. So you can scan this QR code. Rakiyah will also be putting a link in our chat, so you’ll see it there. You can book directly. I’ll likely be the person taking it, so I’d be happy to say more about Columbia, if that’s the school you’re interested in, or just speak more about your aspirations going forward. Perfect. Is there anything else you wanted to add, Glen?

GLEN: No, I mean, I just think I get two things at once. The things that you mentioned are really important for the Ivy League schools. Our program is built around it. Those 9th and 10th graders, you are building the core stories that matter. You are building the experiences and having someone to walk you through with that and actually make sure that those experiences are going to align to what you need in the long term, is so important. You are doing a ton of work in 9th and 10th grade that matter, but then junior year, yeah, you also have to have that writing for it. You have to have that ability to put it into the actual application. And then yes, we want to meet with parents as well. It’s very important, these parent check-ins, it’s very important that parents are in that call because you have so much knowledge of your kid and we want to make sure that we are getting everything we can from you so that everyone is on the same page and has as much information as possible so we can maximize your chances of putting the best foot forward for this kid.

GLEN: But I’m curious if there are other general questions that people might have.

KENNEDY: Any questions from anyone?

There was one person who asked a question that I think could be interesting to bring to the entire group. They asked, essentially, when it comes to thinking about a student’s entire profile, high school students have competing priorities. They’re doing sports, high level APs, club positions, research, et cetera. Someone asked, “Will balancing all these things kind of prove anything to an admissions officer?” And I guess maybe how to think about balancing everything that they’re doing at a high level. “What should they focus on? What should they maybe spend less time on? What do you think about that?”

GLEN: Yeah, I mean you shouldn’t be doing everything. And I think that’s one of the first things that our coaches do with our kid is like, “Oh, you’ve got all these activities. What can you cut?” Because there is a limited amount of time and being able to eliminate things that just don’t have that much impact, matters. You do want to have the three big buckets that fit these values that we talked about. You need to have things that demonstrate your academic interest. That is the first thing, and if you don’t have that, don’t move on to the other buckets because you are applying to a major. So that is the first thing. And then it’s the bucket of “What are you doing to impact the world?”, which can intersect with it. “Imbricate” is the Ivy League word with that overlap, like roof tiles. And then the other thing is, joy, what are you doing for joy? But if you have those things in those three big buckets, other stuff outside of it, no, cut it. Go deep with those things. Be yourself in those things.

KENNEDY: Absolutely. And Sanjita, you asked to maybe speak more about how students are compared. She was asking more specifically about “If students are compared to students who are applying for the same major or the entire school. How do admissions officers think about that?”

GLEN: Wait, sorry, say that again.

KENNEDY: Yeah, so if a student’s compared, sorry, “Is a student compared with students who are applying for the same major or the entire school?” So I think maybe school group comparison is probably what we want to answer here. Yeah.

GLEN: Oh, school group?

KENNEDY: Within that major, I’m assuming, how are students essentially compared to each other throughout the process?

GLEN: Yeah, so I mean there are two parts of it. One is, yeah, you are applying to people who fit in your major. This is why CS is just so much more competitive than what would be like anthropology, depending on the school. If you have a really competitive anthropology program, then we got to be cognizant of that. That’s why it’s very important to be strategic about it, you can’t just apply anthropology. But so there’s that. You will compare across major and you will be compared across location. Certain locations are just more competitive than others. The Bay Area, California, is one of the most competitive areas. Boston is a very competitive area. You get compared against in your school, which kind of sucks because those are your friends who you’re competing against. But it does matter, and it is something that we want to make sure that we are doing enough to differentiate you from other kids who might be doing the exact same activities you are doing. That’s part of our role, is to make sure that you do stand out in that way.

KENNEDY: And another anonymous attendee asked what we do to guide students who are still unclear of what they want to do. So how do we work with undecided kids?

GLEN: Oh, that’s the most fun. I love those kids. Yeah, I mean, no, those kids are great. If that’s the kid, you get them in there as soon as you can into a coach who can really dive into them. Dive into them is really meaning like deep dive into who they are. And the main thing we start to do is build out your interest, build out anything that is like, what is the excitement? And then we kind of just throw things at them, like “Okay, try this. Here’s an idea.” One of my Columbia admits came in with me like, “Hey, I think I want to be a doctor.” I’m not quite sure. Maybe. It wasn’t really there. But then we started to get interested in, we had him sign up for just something that made him more academically competitive. He signed up for a contest, astrophysics, and I was like, “Wait, why don’t we intersect these things? You’re interested a little bit in medicine, a little bit in space. What if we do space research?” And then he started to do research in his junior year, and he wants to become the forerunner in like “How does microgravity impact medicine development?” Fascinating profile, very rare. And he got into Columbia. And the kid’s profile was like, it was alright, but the narrative that he had and that he actually showed deep investment in because it was grounded in things that he liked and you got to have that deeper thing he did way better.

KENNEDY: That makes a lot of sense. I meet with those kids a lot.

GLEN: It’s normal. They’re 16, they don’t know what they want to do yet, so you just have to let them see a path and start walking that path. The colleges also know it’ll change, but they want to see that you have walked that path. They hope it’ll change when you get there, too. That’s their whole role, is to expose you to new things, but you’ve got to show that you can walk the path.

KENNEDY: Yeah, and I will say, I think for students who are unclear, being unclear and the absence of someone guiding you, can hurt your application. It’s like you can’t apply without a major. You shouldn’t be applying without a major. So ultimately, it’s important to have someone guiding you and figuring that out. Of course, it’s a natural process, but there is an end goal in a sense that there has to be a narrative and your application does need to feel unified at the end.

GLEN: Yep.

KENNEDY: I think this is a student likely, they said in 9th and 10th grade they were a bit weaker. What should they do in 11th and 12th to increase chances of successful applications? They didn’t specify what was weaker specifically, but just weaker in general.

GLEN: Yeah. I mean, it’s common. A lot of schools have increased weight placed on lighter years. Right? Freshman year, some schools, like Emory, don’t even look at it, which is not an Ivy, but a top school. Stanford barely looks at it, but they really look at your junior year and senior year. Do you have A’s in the most competitive courses available? That’s the best thing you can do, and then kids figure out their paths at different times. Jump into something, try and experiment, try and get, so that you have a strong research, strong academic activity your junior summer. But yeah, don’t stress it if you’re like, oh man, I got that B freshman year, or I got those two B’s freshman year. The world is not over. You just really got to buckle down junior and senior year.

KENNEDY: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t see any more questions right now, but something I wanted to toss to you I think could be interesting is for students that are, say in 9th grade, entering 9th grade or just a bit younger, what are some things that they could maybe do in the meantime to practice the style of writing that’s going to be expected of them in the college process?

GLEN: Yeah, you don’t have to be, necessarily, like in 9th grade, do you have to have your personal statement written? No, that would be ridiculous. Hopefully that changes in the next four years, but one of the things you do need to be having is conversations with somebody who can push your understanding of your “why’s.” There’s a five “why” paradigm that works that our coaches use. That’s really getting to understand your deeper senses, and then, yeah, you want to be practicing these processes, but writing a personal statement is more useful than applying for a program in the summer, a competitive one where you’re getting that feedback experience from a coach who knows it. That’s something you can do. Find something that you can apply to or write something that can get published that is a bit more narrative-based or a bit more “why” based, where that is connected to your larger passion, so you just get experience writing it. Writing is a way of showing, and it is a way of learning, so if you do that learning alongside an expert, you just do it better. That’s why teachers exist.

KENNEDY: Yeah. Can you speak to the volume of essays in the application process? What should families, students, parents be expecting in terms of workload, if you could even quantify it, amount of essays, hours a week, any insight you can give?

GLEN: It’s brutal. I don’t envy them. I’m sorry that it’s so hard to get into these schools. I wish it was easier. In many ways, if you’re applying, our kids, do, kids who get in these schools do about 10 quality drafts that we iterate on.

So each essay, let’s say there are five essays, five supplements. I am doing 10 rounds of edits with those. Those are edits that I see. I know those kids are doing multiple rounds on their own before they send it to me because I see it on their Google Docs. So, they also start, honestly now in April if they’re applying, and we do 10 of those rounds. Each school, if they’re applying to 15 schools and they’re all competitive, you can do the math. It’s a lot of essays. It’s a lot of time. It is a full activity. They’re spending multiple hours every week. But that’s the important thing, is if they break it into multiple, they start now and they’re doing a few hours every week, come November, December, they’re chilling. Well, they’re not chilling because it’s still stressful, but they’re not trying to panic and spread everything in a minute and it just is not as good. The kids who wait until the last minute, it’s rough because the learning of who you are also happens through that writing process. You write something, I ask why, and you’re like, “Wait, I don’t know why. I have to think about it.” And I’m like, “Well, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s this.” They’re like, “Oh, it’s not that, let me think about it some more. Maybe it’s this.” Yes, we find the revelation. You can’t do that. You can’t do that in a minute. It’s just not as strong.

KENNEDY: Right. That makes a lot of sense. It is definitely a lot, and I feel like we see it in senior year. And another question I had for you, I’m losing my train of thought. It was about, yeah, so sometimes I think for a lot of our families, they’re in really competitive public schools, competitive private schools that maybe have a college counseling department. What’s your feeling on working with a school counselor versus a private counselor? What’s your thinking on that and how should families maybe even begin to have that conversation and weigh the pros and cons?

GLEN: Speaking from a former school counselor, I was one at a private school, so we have it better than the ones at the public schools. Your role is you have a very important purpose and that you know that school very well. Your high school, very, like you are the expert on that. You can do a number of things that we can’t do. We can’t call Yale on behalf of you. We can’t send in your counselor recs, but you also, I had 50 students I was responsible for, which is just a lot, and that’s at a private school. At a public school, it tends to be even more in the hundreds. So what we do is we get to know that kid very well. We are that kid’s. We know their ins, their outs, their likes, their dislikes, what their struggle with what their growths are. We’ve worked with them for multiple years. We know. And so, I see that we’re on the same side. They do a lot of the logistical work about school reports, getting all those things in, calling, but in terms of the depth, this is the thing is to do that work as a counselor, I know I couldn’t do that when I was a school counselor. I just couldn’t get that many. It was like you would get maybe one.

Yeah. I think they work in conjunction. Love them. They do a very important job. I hope we can make their jobs easier.

KENNEDY: Yeah. Well, I think these were all the questions for tonight. It’s running up on 8:10 p.m. or so. I know people have dinner this time with their family, but thank you so much for coming. Please schedule your free initial consultation. We’ll spend time strategizing your students’ profile, giving you a sense of how we’re going to help you throughout this process, and as I mentioned before, it’ll likely be me on the phone specifically, so I would love to meet you all and your students together. Please schedule, I believe, let me just drop the link again in the chat, or you can use the QR code. Whichever’s easier for you.

GLEN: Yeah. Hope to see you all in a session soon. Thanks all.

KENNEDY: Yeah, have a good night.