Should You Apply To An Ivy? Who says so and Why?

Is it even worth it to apply to an Ivy League with a 4.0 GPA, but low ACT score?

I have a 4.0 GPA and I have a lot of extracurriculars, along with being on the student council, National Honor Society, and National Spanish Honor Society. I’ve always suffered from test taking anxiety and I’ve always done better at school than taking standardized tests.

I was asked to answer this question on the website Quora.com

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It is wonderful that you have a 4.0 and are a part of a number of activities. Given this, you are likely to get in to many colleges and universities. You may well be offered merit scholarship to attend some of these schools (If this happens you might consider going to this school instead of a higher ranked school.)

Your question, is it worth it, is impossible for me to answer. I do not know how you define worth. The Ivies ask for a lot of writing and in addition to the common application essay (or if you choose the new application platform Coalition for Access & Affordability). Therefore you will put in a lot of work. Is it worth it if the rate of return in less than 10%? That is what the acceptance rate is for most of the Ivies —it’s lower at a few of them. The odds are against anyone who applies and as long as you know this going in then you may still want to give it a shot.

The first thing you will need to think about is whether your academic program is strong enough to compete with the applicant pool to the Ivies. GPA is an important factor but these days there is so much grade inflation that many students are applying with 4.0 gpas. The majority of valedictorians get turned down at top ranked schools. So while your grades are necessary to get a close look they are not sufficient by any means to get you in. Your courses are, I hope, the most advanced you can take especially in the areas of English, Math, Science, Social Science and Foreign Language. Most students who get into Ivies and other selective schools have lots of AP tests with high scores from junior year, or a high prediction on the IB. Program and performance taken together are the best predictors of academic success— better than standardized testing.

But let’s say you really do have a low ACT. By low I mean below 28. Of course this is not really low compared to the average student, but it is low for the average student accepted at an Ivy. The mid 50% scores at the Ivies are approximately between 30–34. A 27 will put you pretty far down in terms of any students who were offered admission. In addition, many of the low scorers who are admitted are “hooked” students. By hooked I mean there is something about them that the school really wants besides just exception academics: Athletes, under-represented students, some high profile legacies and development cases, some others with special talents or incredible life stories. Take out all of those and there are very, very few who get in with scores below the mean.

Of course the schools look at your essays and recommendations; these words you submit may help to overcome a low score or two. But not often. The words will have to be pretty exceptional and that generally means at the top 10% of those who apply. Holistic admission means they look at more than numbers, but numbers are important.

The same goes for activities. Those students who compete at a national or international level in something, whether it be academically focused or not, will get a big admission boost. Those who are highly involved with school leadership positions and service work tend to look a lot like other applicants.

You may decide, after talking to some people who know about admission, that it is  very unlikely that you will be offered admission. You may then decide not to apply. I would say, however, if you are the kind of person who will hold on for years to the “What If I had applied…” question, then you should still go for it. Getting turned down at an Ivy happens to 90% who try. But they did try.

Best of luck.

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What advice would have you have given this student? Would you encourage  a student with “low scores” to apply to a school that is among the most difficult to get into in the US? Or would you have tried what some would call tough love and encourage the student to look at other colleges that might be more of a match?

Let’s say you knew this student had a 27 on the ACT. The concordance tables for the ACT and the new SAT indicate this is a 1300. (A 1300 would convert to a approximately an 1820 on the old SAT). While these scores are all significantly above the national average for students taking these tests, they are, as I said above, quite low for the schools that are designated as very highly selective. In addition, let’s assume the student is not one who has a significant ‘hook’. He or she attends a secondary school that sends most of its students to college but very few to the most selective schools. The student has taken a number of APs and has straight A’s but does not have remarkable extracurricular activities.

Questions

What would you advise this student to do when deciding which schools to apply to? The chances of a student like this getting into a very highly selective school are slim at best. Should the student invest time, money, emotion and energy into pursing an Ivy? What is the student had visited one of the Ivies and fallen in love with it? What if the student had not even visited any of the Ivies?  If you were a parent and your student came home crying because the college counselor had said there was almost no chance for this student to get in would you be angry at the counselor?

What is the job of a counselor when it comes to giving advice? Schools that have programs, such as Naviance,  can show on a graph where a student fits in to the applicants from the same secondary schools who applied in previous years. The graph itself may send the message, but what about schools that do not have Naviance. Should parents encourage their children to go for a school even though it is a very big reach? Would this mean the student should apply to a large number of schools because the student will not likely get in to most highly selective colleges? It is common wisdom that students should have a range of choices that extend from reach to match to likely. How many of each of these should a student select?  Would you let a student apply to all the Ivies?

Are some answers to these questions better than others or are they all equally good?