IvyGate's Guide to Admissions: Part IV

Somewhere between F. Scott Fitzgerald's untimely death and that Tom Green movie about Harvard, some misconceptions of the awesome Ivy League education have spiraled out of control. First of all, the classes are not that difficult—seriously. And if you don't like just plain easy classes, there are stupid easy ones too! Beware, though, it's actually pretty easy to get (sort of) kicked out for a million things besides getting a C. Wait, you didn't know that grades are being phased out in the Ivies? Welcome to the high graduation-rate heaven of the still very profitable elite universities.

So if you're one of the happy few, be prepared to abandon all those bright-eyed ideals of your presumably successful high school career. Time to get greedy, lazy, jaded, and depressed.

1. Shine your shoes and practice that shit eating grin. A good grade is not hard to find at any Ivy if you know the right way to slut it up. First of all, we're all familiar with this grade inflation myth, right? Without even getting into the whole argument, it exists. According to the Boston Globe, over half of the grades given out at Harvard in 2007 were in the A-range. The real question, then, is how to make sure you're in the lucky half rather than the poor bastards who have to settle for B's, a sure fire dive into a life of destitution and, consequently, fewer orgasms. The answers...

• BORROW a learning disability. No kidding. Just make it up, go to health services, and enjoy with the fun medication or exemptions from required credits. One anonymous source told us about an anonymous freshman from an anonymous school who convinced doctors that he had an inability to learn foreign languages and thus avoided the language requirement. Too bad he wanted to be a comp lit major.
• BEG your professors for extensions, exemptions, and excellent grades you don't deserve. It's an art in its own way, but little things like attending office hours (with lots of cleavage) and chatting with your TA (with lots of cleavage) really do translate into better results.
• STEAL someone's identity! A couple years ago, a con artist got into and attended Columbia–though that's no big deal. Or you could just steal somebody else's work. If Kaavya Viswanathan (among others) can  bullshit her way up, so can you!

After the jump: skipping class, going nuts, and graduating happy! Plus, hating the Ivy League, leaving, and coming back by novelist Andrea Seigel.

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IvyGate's Guide to Admissions: Part III

Your dream school is Columbia, but your intuition (or that flaccid rejection letter) tells you that you're not Columbia material. What is one to do, aside from attending NYU? In this five-point guide, we explain how to gain that coveted admissions letter from this neoclassical jewel on the hill. But be forewarned: Columbia is known to induce extreme feelings of academic inadequacy, general sleep-deprivation, and a social life (and for some a sex life) that revolves around the Butler library.

1. Do well at another school (read: get straight A's and suck up to profs who will write your recommendation letters) and re-apply as a transfer. This is the obvious choice, and the choice that has the least stigma. Transfers, especially those to CC, make other CC students feel good about themselves. Every time they see a transfer they think to themselves, "See some people do want to be here." And if you've transferred from Yale, say, or Harvard, it helps prove to them that hey, so what if I got rejected to them in high school, I live in New York City and it's omfgawesome. But it doesn't really qualify as a backdoor since it's also the hardest way of getting in. For this year's freshmen, Columbia College's acceptance rate was 8.68% and SEAS's acceptance rate was 17.6%, for an overall admit rate of 10.04%. The acceptance rate for transfers is even lower. Out of 1,401 applicants to the College and SEAS, only 112 students were admitted, or 7.99%.  It's a shot in the dark, but maybe, if you really hate the school you landed at and you act like annoying grade-obsessed gunner in all your classes you might as well give it a try.

2. Apply as a freshman or transfer to Columbia-affiliated Barnard College. The women's college has been a source of endless debate and angst ever since Columbia College went coeducational in the early eighties, after years of failed discussions to integrate with the University at large. No one, not even the president of Barnard, seems to really understand the school's tangled relationship with Columbia. On one hand the Barnard website touts the fact that "Barnard has its own campus, faculty, administration, trustees, operating budget, and endowment." On the other hand, Barnard students receive Columbia email addresses, have full access to Columbia classes and student organizations, and earn degrees signed by both Barnard and Columbia presidents. Most gripes around Barnard center around the fact that its students get in easier but are de facto Columbia students. (The acceptance rates for this year's freshmen and transfers were 28.5% and 29.1%, respectively). Angsty prestige-driven Columbians should be more concerned about recruited athletes, don't you think?

More backdoors after the jump.

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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 »

IvyGate's Guide to Admissions: Part I

Lately, the cavalcade of admissions soothsayers seems to stretch from high school guidance counselor's offices all the way to the bank—not to mention a stopover at the open palms of admissions coaches. Neither here nor there, the secret to getting in exists. Just ask anyone who can be identified as a "Former admissions officer, Ivy League college." A recent flurry of clues on how to get in and how not to get in gave so much credit to said anonymous sources that we decided to do a little multi-part series on Ivy admissions.

As an introduction we've picked out some of the more salient comments from the Daily Beast's recent treatment of the elite admissions game. Appropriately enough, the prophets holding the keys to the Ivory Tower tend to be the half-jaded, wholly-enlightened ones who write those books with clever titles that pun on the letter "A." (Oddly enough, a lot of the authors seems to have worked in Dartmouth's admissions office.) These guys have some interesting—and some offending—things to say. But in the long run we'll be bringing out some dirty truths from the students who do get in.

The low-down from a current Ivy League officer (probably from Dartmouth based on the aforementioned trend in admissions book publishing)—via Daily Beast:

An admissions officer is really asking himself, ‘Would I like to hang out with this guy or gal for the next four years?’ So if you come off as just another Asian math genius with no personality, then it’s going to be tough for you. An admissions officer is not going to push very hard for you.”

Ok, that's racist. Asian math geniuses are actually as fun as white, brown, or black math geniuses after a couple of drinks. To be real, a lot of smart people are a lot more fun if you're smart enough to keep up with them. Read more upsetting truths about why you did (or didn't) get in after the jump.

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