The secret reasons why top students are getting accepted to the Ivy League and rejected by other schools
Students and parents have long approached the admissions process with a simple assumption: If you can get into an Ivy League school, you can get in anywhere.Based on that assumption, many applicants devote all of their time, energy and effort to their Harvard application first, then plan to tinker with their essays a bit before sending them on to the other schools on their list.After all, a student who is accepted to Harvard should be a shoo-in at Duke, Northwestern or Vanderbilt, right?Yet, this admissions cycle, many talented students are baffled to receive an Ivy League acceptance … and a rejection from a “lower ranked” school on their list. As a private college admissions consultant with nearly a decade of experience successfully guiding students through this process, I’ve fielded countless calls from bewildered parents and students who want to understand what went wrong.The truth? The old strategy of prioritizing Ivy League acceptance above all else is outdated.The college admissions landscape has changed dramatically in recent years.
It is no longer a simple game of prestige or a hierarchy of selectivity, and many schools that previously fit in the category of “match” or “low reach” school have joined the Ivy League colleges as “high reach” options for any student, regardless of their profile. In 2013, almost one-fourth of students who applied to Notre Dame were admitted.Today, that acceptance rate has plunged to just 9%.
Rice University has experienced a similar surge in desirability, with applications more than doubling from 15,408 in 2013 to 36,749 this admissions cycle.But it’s not just the numbers that have changed: Schools once seen as back-up plans to the Ivies are now academic powerhouses in their own right.Duke, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins and Caltech climbed past UPenn, Cornell and Brown to collectively claim the No.6 spot in the latest US News & World Report rankings.
Likewise, in Forbes’ List of America’s Top C...