IvyGate's Guide to Admissions: Part II

Getting into an Ivy League school can be likened to winning the lottery: Pencil in a bunch of scantron bubbles, cross your fingers, pray to be struck by lightning. But instead of winning millions, you're rolling the dice for the opportunity to impoverish your parents. (Or ruin your credit rating, or both!) Nevertheless, aspiring Ivy is a time-honored American pursuit, and no matter how improbable, impractical, and ultimately unpleasant the prize may be, thousands attempt it every year. Mostly, we do it for the free t-shirts.

What follows is IvyGate's foolproof, guaranteed, 100%-success-or-your-money-back step-by-step guide to swindling your way into the school of your dreams.* Be warned: It isn't always pretty, and a few of these steps (#3, section ii, second option) might make you go to hell.

1. Have perfect SAT scores, an off-the-chart GPA, amazing extracurriculars, leadership positions in everything, and the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Duh. This one is a given, a prereq, if you will. Even the richest kid in the world won't get in if he's apt to flunk (or, more likely, drop) out.

2. Be from an insanely wealthy and/or well-connected family, preferably one with an Ivy League legacy. Apply early. While legacy admission standards aren't as hilariously low as they used to be, a study by Princeton SOC professors Espenshade and Chung equates legacy status with a 160-point SAT boost (on a 1600-point scale) to the privileged few who definitely need it least. But that's not what we're talking about here. To guarantee admission, you need to be the child of a major donor, the kind who write seven-digit checks to their alma mater and have buildings named after them. One such Ivy Leaguer, the grandson of a prominent university trustee, told us about his admissions process, starting with an unconventional and star-studded campus tour:

my grandad flew to meet my dad & i [at the university], and i just figured that it was going to be a regular day of tours & walking around. however, when we got there we were met by a super friendly admissions guy. he took us on the regular tour, but then we ditched it because he said "it's completely useless" (ironic, considering how much energy & money the university pumps into those tours) he took me around campus, and then brought me to meet a representative from the most popular department at the school, which i claimed to be interested in it. (later, i realized that he was one of the senior professors and chair of the undergraduate program) then they shuttled me over to the president's office. i didn't really GET that it was the president until they told me after we met. the meeting was brief, but looking back, it was quite an unbelievable opportunity. after lunch, we wandered around campus with another admissions rep, who told me all about undergraduate life.

After the jump: Anonymous Silver-Spooner (ASS) (Don't be mad, ASS! We tease because we love/hate) continues his story and we offer five more tips for getting in. Read the rest of this entry »

We've been fascinated lately by the idea of Facebook as art form. If Leonardo da Vinci were around now, he'd probably spend all day assembling elaborately captioned galleries of Facebook photos, too. Proust would spend all day in his dorm room bed, diddling on his MacBook, crafting reams of annoying Notes that his friends wouldn't even read. Rembrandt would be the guy with a hundred Facebook groups about himself, of which he is the only member. And after seeing what Facebook members have done with the group we're about to describe, we're convinced students have found the greatest medium of self-expression since tempura tempera [Ed.: We regret the typo, although we are not ruling out the possibility the great masters painted with deep-fried seafood.]

It started back in February, when a student at The Brearley School in New Jersey New York City started a Facebook group called "8th Graders need to back off 9th grade guys especially other peoples BF'S." The group's mission statement couldn't have been clearer:

For all of those 8th graders who think they are entitled to hang out flirt w/ 9th grade guys, and can wheedle themselves into HIGHSCHOOL parties, im sry u r in eighth grade..um soo stop. DONT think we hate you tho

Harmless enough. But then came the commenters. At first there were only high schoolers. But at some point -- it's hard to say exactly when -- the joke turned on them, the tipping point tipped. A Davidson student in early March became the first college person to weigh in on the issue, and then, as word leaked across campuses from NYU to Notre Dame to BC to Skidmore, la deluge:

OMG i h8 it when my 8th grade boi toi is mackin on 7th graderzzzz. That's totally how he got the clap.

Yo stop being skeets 8th graders

By early April, the board was getting dozens of comments a day, in pitch-perfect imitations of high-school-speak (that would, incidentally, make Don Imus proud):

baby 8th graderz are lyke so0o0o0o0 much better than you NYU gurlz. that's why i've been hangin around @ PS 144 after micro orgo chem every T and H. so it izn't our fault and it sure as he** iz'nt theirz: itz urs.

who the fuck do the 8th graders think they are? god better back up for i break it off like rihanna.

4 realz dis one 8th grade bitch wuz all up on my man and i wuz like oh no u didnt bitch. shez a ho and my 9th grade boi dont want no 8th grade skank

Well, maybe if these 9th grade girls maintained that fine middle school figure, they wouldn't face so much competition. Really now, who should bear the blame here?

nimble skanky assed 8th grade hos be all up in my grill and im all $TEP OFF BETCH STOP PUTTIN UR CAREBEARS LUNCHBOX NEXT 2 MY JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE BACKPACK

Fo real, hoes jealous of my pokemon collection. If you're in junior high that shit just ain't balla to me.

I lost my fiance to an 8th grade girl. Bitch ruined my life.

I'm so glad someone finally created a facebook group for this problem. I thought I was the only one who cared.

And so on. The group currently has 5,742 members, 900-plus wall posts, and in the photo gallery, there's 8th grade "hoez" "mackin" on 9th graders by the "snak macheeenz." Does this have anything to do with the Ivy League? No. We just wanted you to see it.

Update 4:07 p.m.: Oh no! The group's creator has taken it down! What gives? Doesn't she know that's like spray painting over the Sistine Chapel? Luckily, we saved a copy of the group's front page here. Now that the group is dead, feel free to leave your own rantz in our comments section.