Do you want to attend an Ivy or elite university? Are you wondering what some things you should know are? Ideally by freshman year if you can, but hey, if you’re a sophomore or junior, maybe it’s not too late to understand some of these principles.
I’m going to share with you guys in this blog three things that everyone who is trying to get into a hyper-competitive college should know. And ideally you should probably know by about freshman year in high school because if you want to pull this off, the earlier you start in high school, the better. Now I won’t say that you have to start super early; if you’re seven, you’re a little early.
The first thing that I’m going to say is that one of the most important activities is not an official activity. A few years back, I worked with a student who applied ED to a top 10 university. When the student first came to me, he sent me his new student form, his resume, a list of activities, his grades, and all these kinds of things. His AP scores were fine, and his GPA was okay. But his activities—I looked at his activities list and asked him what else he had. Because he had two activities. One was community service. He was tutoring kids once a week for an hour. And the other was the National Honor Society. He did one community service project through that. And that was it. Most of the time when I have students, they have so many activities we can’t even fit them all in the Common Application activity section.
To be fair, before I get into the story, I will say that this student did attend a school where there were fewer extracurricular opportunities than I would say most high schools have. He came from a context that was a little bit unique in some ways, and I think that also probably played into his admission. But the bottom line that I want to convey is that what he did and the way that he got in was due to his activity, but it wasn’t a formal activity. He developed his interests in a way that aimed to find a solution to a specific type of problem in our world. And he cultivated and developed his academic interest in this particular area in such a dynamic, thoughtful, and deep way that he was able to write an incredibly compelling personal statement.
When I got to the end of that personal statement, I’m going to be honest, I felt like if somebody in an admissions office reads this essay and doesn’t let this guy in, they are making the world a worse place. He had clearly identified a problem in the world that he wanted to solve. He had an understanding of the kinds of solutions that other people have proposed because he was listening to podcasts, he was reading books, he was enriching himself, and then he took a class in the subject. But he also saw a very specific educational pathway that would help him build some of the solutions that he saw to these problems that he was outlining in his world that he was seeing every day. And he was going to bring these solutions to corners of the world where if he didn’t do this, I don’t know if anyone else would. And when you put that all together, it really worked. At the end of the day, your vision for the future and your ability to show how you think, what ideas you have, and what ambitions you have to try to help make our world a better place can be much more powerful than how many hours a week you spent at debate camp.
And so I think it’s really important, especially from freshman year, to understand that one of the most important things that you can do in high school is develop your interests. And when I say develop your interests, there’s a more powerful way to develop your interests versus a more typical way. I don’t want you to focus on yourself. I want you to focus on the world around you and ask yourself, how can I solve the problems? How can I scale the challenges that I see in the world around me? And then how can I build a path in my life in order to become part of the solution? How can I gain the skills, the knowledge, and the abilities I need to make a meaningful impact in this area that I see? If you can create a personal narrative in that kind of a space, I find that to be one of the most powerful and compelling elements of an application.
That is what gets me to the point where if you’re applying even to the toughest of the toughest schools—Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, MIT—your narrative rises to the top. I think one of the mistakes that students sometimes make when they are trying to develop their passion or figure out their passion is they think about themselves. They think, “I’m good at math. I’m good at science. So I want to be an engineer.” And that’s certainly an essay that some of my students are writing. But that essay is not as compelling as saying, “I see methane emissions as a huge problem because our landfills are giving off all of this methane. And there might be ways if we use science to capture that methane and chemically adapt that methane so that it’s no longer harmful to our environment. Why aren’t we doing more of that? And that’s a specific problem I want to solve. I’ve researched, and I understand several of the proposed methods that might be used in order to solve that problem. But in order to do that, I have to learn this kind of chemistry and this kind of material science. I need to take this kind of calculus, and I need to do these things. And your college is going to let me do that.”
So if there’s one thing I can say, I want you to dive deep into the things that you think are problems that you would like to solve. And it doesn’t always have to be problems you’d like to solve. Sometimes it can be challenges that you want to surmount. You might ask a “how question.” But solving a problem is usually a really good place to start. And what I love about solving problems is it also takes this emphasis off of just you. What kind of things are you good at? Are you creative? Are you a builder? And while it’s good to take stock of who you are and what you’re good at and make sure that you’re aligning what you want to do eventually with your natural skills, talents, and abilities, when you focus on something that isn’t yourself, your story comes alive in ways that it otherwise might not.
And then second, I want you to investigate how to build a life that’s going to help solve that problem or how other people are doing it. That involves research, reading, listening to podcasts, subscribing to somebody’s Substack, checking out random books from your local library, or going on Google Scholar and reading as much of them as you can. Or figuring out that your library has an ebook checkout and checking out almost any book in the world for free because you figured out how to get onto some e-library even though you live in a small town. And finally, you’re going to bring all those ideas into play in your college application. No matter what crisis you’re trying to solve, whether it’s homelessness or inflation in Zimbabwe, dig into that rabbit hole, and that’s going to help prepare you for this process in ways that signing up on a clipboard won’t.
My second point is that your activities matter a lot, but not how you think. As I like to say, clipboard activities, or anything you can sign up for in an activity sphere, are probably not going to be the most impactful activities on your college application if you’re applying to these top colleges. So, if you can just walk up and sign up on the clipboard, for most of my students, those are not the most powerful elements of their application. That being said, there are some students who are the best in the world at things, and that can be a way to stand out. So if you’re the best cellist in the state of California, yes, that’s going to be a point that could help you get into Harvard. And obviously athletic recruits. If you are an Olympic-level shot putter, yes, Yale wants you to shot put with them. But for the most part, most of the students I have are not Olympians. I have worked with them, but most of them are not Olympians, and most of them are not the best in the world at one specific thing. And if that’s not you, welcome to my channel. I’m here to help you still be amazing and awesome in your own particular way.
What does that look like? That looks like taking all the ideas I just talked about in my first point and turning them into action. So what does turning ideas into action look like? Well, let’s say you’re saddened by the destruction of wildfires. You might create a science fair project that tests various building material coatings for flame resistance. You might create an app that uses satellite LiDAR data that you found to predict fire risk. You might do a metadata analysis of historical wildfire responses that takes into account what factors help eliminate fires effectively and what factors helped complicate historical tragic wildfires. When were the wildfires handled better? When were they handled worse? And what elements played into that? As a social scientist, you could do an analysis. You could write a research paper. All of those would be taking your ideas and putting them into action in some way. And creating a meaningful activity that has what I call an N of 1. That means you were the only person who did that. It is unique to you. And when you have something unique to you, guess what happens when a reader is reading your application? They go, “Wow, I’ve never seen someone do that before; that’s pretty cool.” And that’s a way to stand out.
Another example: if you’re keen to make more opportunities for refugee children because you have a lot of refugee children in your area, maybe you start by tutoring them once a week for two hours or translating documents for their parents. And then you figure out what they need, and you figure out that a lot of these kids have giant cavities because they never go to the dentist. And then you try to bring free dental clinics to their elementary schools because you find out that there’s funding in your state to do free dental clinics at public schools. But you start to coordinate all of the dots, and you find the person over here and the person over there and the person over here that if you connect to these people, fill out enough applications, and put two and two together, you can help be the shepherd of this project. And you can help bring these resources to these people and these kids as the instigator. The possibilities are endless, but overall the theme is, one, be driven by your own personal interests in helping others or the world resolve problems, and two, take action to try to see that happen in the real world in some sort of way. Or through research if you don’t have the wherewithal to do it in the real world. You can also enter contests with the paper that you wrote. You can submit it for publication. You can go to science fairs. There are lots of ways to then peddle all the things that you’ve created, but it starts with taking action. I’d like to tell this to freshmen and sophomores in particular because you’re in a position where you have enough time to build a roadmap for that action. You could still do this as a junior, and as I like to say, it’s not over till it’s over. You can continue to send update letters to colleges right up through February, and they may still look at the things that you say in those update letters. So, even if you accomplish some of this senior year, it can still be meaningful in swaying your college admissions decisions.
My third point that I think all freshmen need to understand and know about is that scores and grades do matter, and these are a baseline, but you still have to get them in line. I sometimes see, on chat boards on Facebook, tens of thousands of parents who are trying to get their kids into colleges, and they say, “My daughter wants to go to Harvard. Can somebody share the stats of their kid that got in?” And to me this is just such a facepalm moment because just having the stats doesn’t get you into Harvard. It’s a baseline. There are plenty of kids with 1500-plus SAT scores that don’t get into Harvard, even 1550-plus that don’t get in because there’s just not enough space.
Anyhow, I facepalm a little bit when I read that because it’s not just about the stats, but at the same time, on the flip side of that, don’t expect to go test-optional and get into these colleges. I know that was a thing for a couple of years. That thing is on the outs. At present, 50% of the top 20 ranked colleges are test-required. Princeton is adding itself to the mix by 2027. So we’re going to have 11 out of 20 schools that are test-required at least, and there may be a couple more that come into the fold as well. It’s true, UCs are test-blind, but they are not AP-blind. They will look at your AP scores. If you have fours and fives on your APs, that’s going to increase your chances of getting into Berkeley and UCLA. And their admissions offices say it on their websites. I have had to quote that when I’m on the internet talking to people on chat boards who think they don’t need AP scores because they’re test-blind. Well, look at their website. They’re not test blind. They’re SAT/ACT blind. So, all of this stuff is important.
What do you need to get together if you want to attend a top 10 college, or maybe a top 20 college? First, I’m going to talk about academic baselines. Number one, I want to see a 1550-plus SAT score to open all the doors possible or a 35-plus ACT score. If you’re at that point, you’re probably good, and everything else is going to matter more. That being said, I’ve had two students with perfect scores get into Stanford the last five years, so it’s also good to do that if you can, but I don’t need it. I don’t expect it. Number two, I want to see mostly fives and some fours on AP exams. 50-50 is sometimes okay, half fours, half fives if you’re aiming for top 10 colleges. And ideally, I don’t want to see twos and threes unless you didn’t take the class or unless there are some extenuating circumstances. If you’ve got 12 AP scores and one is a three and the rest are fives and fours, you’re probably okay. But overall, I want you to have strong AP scores or IB scores or whatever might be available to you.
Third, I want to see no more than two Bs on your transcript, zero Cs, and obviously no Ds or Fs. Grade inflation is insane. We know that some high school teachers are just really tough and they’re out to get you, and I’m sorry. So, there’s a little bit of forgiveness, but heads up to everyone that about 44% of American high school students have an A average. That means they have a 3.5 unweighted GPA or above. I would say the percentage of people with a weighted 4.0 or above is probably about the same because all those Bs are mostly honors classes or AP classes. Most students that I work with have straight A’s with zero Bs. I would say over half. The competition’s stiff. I know some parents like to think, “They took the AP version, so it’s okay if they get Bs in those.” Well, it might be okay, but don’t expect to get into Yale with those Bs. I want to say high rigor. So, as many honors and AP classes as possible or close to it. That doesn’t mean one honors or one AP class a year. I want you maximizing what your school offers. Obviously if your school only lets you take two APs a year, they won’t let you take more than two a year. That is what it is. But you want to be challenging yourself as much as possible. Finally, I want to see Calculus BC if possible. If you want to go into engineering, if your school doesn’t offer that, you can take AB, but calculus is important. You know, I’ve talked to admission reps at Carnegie Mellon, for example, and they have said they really like to see calculus. It’s one of the things that they find very important for students that want to attend. So, that’s something to keep in mind for you guys.
I hope you guys like this blog! And if you want support in this process, we offer coaching for students from freshman year and up. I can help you make sure that you take all the wonderful things you’ve done and craft an application that shows that person as best as possible. You can find us on our website, supertutortv.com.
