How Can I Get In To A Highly Selective School?

Some of my students have their hearts set on attending their parents’ Ivy League alma mater while others are High School Musical fanatics and want to attend Stanford where some of the film was shot. Whatever the reason, the small group of Highly Selective Schools have become even more highly selective based on rising application submissions and decreasing Acceptance Rate (AR) numbers. If your student is hellbent on applying to mostly Highly Selective Schools, how can you support them?

Submit A Score

Even though many of the competitive schools are still test-optional, most of my students who are admitted to the single digit AR colleges submit scores. Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, Yale, Northwestern, among others, require tests and I predict more schools will do so soon. Why? Test scores are a bellwether of on-campus academic success. UT Austin recently released data showing that students who chose not to submit a score were underperforming those who submitted one. Another significant reason for “test comeback” is high school grade inflation. With weighted and unweighted GPAs, not every 4.0 is equal, making it hard for Admissions Committees to gauge a student’s ability to thrive in their college classroom.

Research The School

Applying to the highly selective schools isn’t a “throw pasta at the ceiling and see what sticks” crapshoot. Not all competitive schools are alike. A few students each cycle insist on applying to “all the Ivies,” a plan of action I recommend against. I had one student replace some of the highly selective schools on his list with ones that had lower ARs but programming that better suited his academic goals. When one school offers the Core Curriculum, another the Open Curriculum and yet another distributional requirements within circumscribed study areas, the differences between each college become their hallmarks, their distinguishing features. To simply apply to all of these competitive schools signals to admissions reps, who do chat with one another, that a student hasn’t done their research.

Leave Time to Essay-Draft

My “highly competitive school kids” usually have busy rising senior summers. I work with them on organizing their calendars, devising a schedule of what’s due when in terms of essay drafts. As soon as junior year is in the rearview mirror and students are released from academic pressures, I schedule an essay brainstorm to land on a topic that sings. And if it doesn’t sing, we have time to find one that does! Applicants to the Ivies, Ivy Pluses and competitive small liberal arts colleges know that narratives that wow need time: time to draft, time to contemplate, time to revise and time to finalize.

There’s no crystal ball that can foresee who gets in to the highly selective schools and why. BUT with high test scores, choosing a school’s curriculum that, like a puzzle piece, fits with a student’s high school interests and passions, and then crafting essays that creatively reflect who a student is, the admissions possibilities are endless.


For more information about College Counseling/Essay Coaching, please drop me a line at Elizabeth@eecollegecoach.com or give me a holler at 917-863-2424. Also, for “news you can use,” please check out my blog, videos, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

And Happy Holidays to All!

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