5 Little Known Tips for Getting In:
1. Intellectual Vitality: The top 20 national universities distinguish between good students and great students when rating students academically not necessarily by their grades and test scores, but by their level of "intellectual vitality" or interest/love for learning outside the classroom as evidenced by their recommendation letters, activities and essays.
2. Well-rounded Trap: Elite colleges are looking for well-rounded incoming classes, not for well-rounded students. Part of building an interesting class is putting together a few specialists: a few future Nobel Prize winners in Physics, a few future soloists at Carnegie Hall, a few future NY Times bestselling authors, etc.
3. Supplemental Essays: The "Why Cornell?" type of supplemental essays are not too keen on hearing what 20,000 applicants have to say about what Cornell can offer them - Cornell already knows this and doesn't need to be told 20,000 times. Instead, the supplemental essays are an opportunity to address what your child has to offer the elite college that no other applicant can.
4. Choosing a Major when Applying: Your entire application should have an overarching theme to it, and the choice of major should align with one's extra-curricular and academic pursuits outside the classroom.
5. Engineering vs. Arts & Sciences: When applying directly to the College of Engineering (eg, at Cornell, Duke, Columbia, Penn, CMU, etc.), engineering faculty are often involved with incoming class selection, which means that being engineers, numbers (grades/test scores) and academic research are given greater weight while soft factors and intangibles such as a great essay are valued less (Duke Pratt for instance weights the SAT triple relative to Trinity Arts & Sciences).
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