what guarantees admission into an ivy league

In 2023, there are no guarantees to gain admittance to Harvard and Yale. Nevertheless, these few things will greatly improve your chances over the typical applicant:

1. Apply as a person of Color, either Black or LatinA. The boost Harvard and Yale give for affirmative action while it lasts is tremendous. If you are in the 1st 2 deciles of academic/test scores for applications as a Black person you have between 54-56% of getting in compared to an Asian (7-12%) or White applicant (10-15%). It's 26%-31% for LatinAs.

2. Apply as a Legacy where either 1 or both parents attended Havard or Yale as undergrads. This will give your application a boost of 5-6X compared to non-legacy applicants.

3. Apply as a Recruited Athlete to play competitively on a Havard or Yale varsity team sport. Depending on your athletic rating and desirability, you will get a multiple boost on your application if you are a recruited athlete. If you are rowed crew for instance on the #1 4-man boat (scull) at the US Nationals in Florida in 2022, that's a huge plus vs. say being the 150th ranked 200M butterfly swimmer in the country. So someone like Eileen Gu was an Olympic team skier prior to getting into Stanford which was certainly good enough. If she applied to all the T20 schools after she won the Gold and Silver medal, all 20 schools would have admitted her without thinking.

4. Be a son or daughter of a Harvard or Yale professor or department head. This will give you a huge boost depending on how valuable your parent is to the school. A department chair will carry more weight than an Associate Professor.

5. Be famous and talented. So if you are a humans rights activist that has a huge social media following or won a Nobel prize nomination, that is plenty significant to help you get into an Ivy. Some notable admits have been 3 survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS shootings in 2018. It helps to be a famous actor like Noah Schnapp or Natalie Portman (StarWars) as well.

6. Be incredibly wealthy. If you are the child of a billionaire whose parents have previously donated say $20-$25 million dollars to Harvard or Yale on a consistent basis, that is an excellent path to getting admitted to the school through the back door. You can't be illiterate or a sub-par student but there are plenty of examples like Jared Kushner or Donald Trump Jr. who got into Ivys because of their wealthy parents. Dr.Dre had to donate a $70 million building to USC to get his daughter admitted.

For the rest of us who are highly qualified applicants, there are no guarantees at Ivy League schools. You try your best to curate an interesting spikey narrative with lots of impressive and impactful ECs, write beautiful essays, get glowing recommendations, 99% percentile test scores, have a 3.9-4.0 UWGPA, and pick a major that is not oversubscribed. And even if you look perfect on paper for these 8 schools you will have at best a 30-50% of getting into one of them (in the following order of difficulty, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, UPenn, Dartmouth, Cornell)

Hi! There’s nothing that truly “guarantees” acceptance into an Ivy League or very prestigious school. Here’s my advice: take challenging classes and try to get straight A’s and a very high gpa both UW and W. In addition to that you need to get involved in extracurriculars you are passionate about. Find a spike. If you don’t know a spike is one specific area/topic/passion you focus your attention on and do multiple ec’s on it. In addition to that you need good test scores and excellent essays. Ivy leagues want to see an phenomenal student and one who stands out to them. Summer programs can help show demonstrated interest but it’s not always a guarantee that if you get into the summer program you’ll get into the school. Keep your head up, get involved, work on becoming a good writer and give it your best shot. Good luck!