An anonymous person has recently asked me on Quora.com, to respond to the following question.
What can I do to improve my chances of getting into an Ivy League school?
I'm currently a freshman in high school, with good grades (all A's and A-'s in intensive/accelerated classes) and have done a fair amount of community service.
It is a question a lot of high achieving students want to know the answer to. I will attempt, in a several part series, to address the question but also the ideological frame that surrounds it.
For those of you who read this blog you know I ask many questions. I will begin my answer with a question of my own. After that, I will try to provide a few pragmatic suggestions that might be useful to this person and to some others too.
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My first question to anyone who brings up wanting to attend a school in the Ivy League is 'why'? What is it about this particular sports league that draws people’s attention, followed then by strategies (often including expensive investments in consultants), and then by applications? Applications to the Ivies have risen by as much as 90% over the past decade. The acceptance rate is now under 10% for most of the schools; some will likely hit 5% in the next year or two. For those who are not in a special category (athlete, legacy, under-represented minority), the acceptance rate is more likely closer to 1% or 2%.
These kinds of percentages would seem to make the answer to my why question obvious: if so many people want an Ivy education, then it must be a great educational choice for any student lucky enough to get in. But sometimes the obvious is not always useful or true. From where we stand each day it does indeed seem as if the sun orbits the earth and we are at the center of the universe. For well over a millennium it was obvious that this was how things worked.
For the last 100 or more years, people have assumed that the center of the academic universe in the US has been the Ivy League. And there is some data to back this up. Now, however, instead of thinking of the educational universe as Ivycentric, there is more data and information that might cause some to call into question what once seemed a commonsense assumption. For those who are willing to do a little research, they may see the universe of schools in a whole new light.
I would propose to those looking to explore colleges and universities in the next few years that they embrace what the scientific philosopher Thomas Kuhn called a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift, simplifying it greatly, is a dramatic change in approach and understanding of how the world works.
Instead of defining what is best by looking at acceptance percentages or rankings in various magazines, I would start encourage people to search for places that will continue to develop certain lifelong skills:
Learning how to think and communicate effectively
Learning to work and play well with others
Internalizing a commitment to contribute to the greater good of one’s community
These attributes can be learned in many places and in many ways. For some, schools of engineering might be great choice. For others, state research universities might be best. And for others, small liberal arts colleges. The best school will to a large degree be based on the set of experiences and skills and interests a student has developed over the first 17 years or so of his or her life. The perception that one set of schools would be best for all students ignores the laws not of the cosmos but of biology. Each of us approaches life based on our genetic make up and our individual experiences; therefore, a rigorous self-examination is necessary for determining the most useful places for survival in the broadest sense of the word.
If the educational world cosmos is not centered on the Ivies, it is because the individual survival of the species far more complicated and far more uncertain than standard metaphysical view can account for. This is simply a rather fancy way of saying that generalized ‘truths’ of any sort often fall apart under rigorous questioning and testing. Until Darwin proposed his theory, the best minds in the western world were convinced that Man was a stand-alone animal, placed on earth by divine fiat in 4004 BC. Darwin shattered that idea. Sort of. Among people with scientific training especially in biology, there is almost worldwide consensus that Darwin explains how you are now sitting someplace reading these words. Natural Selection is, at least to scientists, a theory that will likely stand the test of time far longer than the previous stories of how we got here ever will.
If all this talk of science seems a useless digression I hope to demonstrate why approaching the college search with scientific rigor rather than with an unquestioned acceptance of the common dogma is the best approach for a successful educational outcome.
When I have asked students why they want to attend an Ivy the most frequent response is: “Because they are the top ranked schools in the country”. This response seems logical. But the problem is that it is the rankings themselves that are in need of scrutiny. I have discussed Malcolm Gladwell’s dismantling of the methodology of the US News Rankings before, so I will not repeat it here. Suffice it to say, belief that the ‘truth’ about the best schools is contained in this “Good Book’ would be about as useful as saying the heavens and earth were created in 7 days. Some still believe that latter, but the evidence is certainly heavily against it.
I would argue that for most students, the belief that attending an Ivy would be the best choice for them is faith based rather than logically arrived at. The rankings that people often assume are accurate do not consider a huge range of factors that go into what makes a great college for any individual. And some of the factors that are used have little or no bearing on the outcomes for people in their lives or occupations. I am not saying that the rankings mean nothing. They do. But not for the reasons people think. The rankings matter because people think they matter. If someone says they attend an Ivy the response is almost always one of awe and admiration. The reputation, in other words, does have real life consequences. On the other hand, more and more people who do hiring and admission to graduate schools recognize that great educations can be found at hundreds if not thousands of schools.
We live in the era of big data. More and more information is being entered and interpreted. Increasingly, the most important data for students to search is that which will help them match their interests and skill sets to a relatively small subset of schools. For some, this may be an Ivy; for most, it is not. In subsequent posts I will turn the word why against myself and try to explain why, for most, there are far better schools to attend than just those in the Ivy League.
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