Top-Tier Colleges: What do they really want? (Part 2)

Please note that this is a three part blog on what traits colleges are looking for in competitive applicants. Click here for Part 1.

Ivy Leagues seek students who are risk-takers

Parents need to help nurture strong decision making skills. This also means allowing children to taste failure. Time and time again. Ivy Leagues often seek students who take risks and aren’t afraid to fail. In fact, one of the Common App prompts reads: “Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?”

MIT is even clearer about it. Their admission criteria of MIT states: “MIT wants to admit people who are not only planning to succeed, but who are not afraid to fail. When people take risks in life, they learn resilience as a result - because risk leads to failure as often as it leads to success.” 

Take Jeff for example. Like Tim, he wanted to help students from a low income community. But his idea was to teach “easy” Calculus to 5th and 6th graders. Though his parents confessed their concerns to us that this program wouldn’t work, and (possibly distract Jeff from his studies), they wanted their son to try. Jeff was certain his passion for math would be infectious, but his program of 15 kids dwindled to a class of four. It was a painful, yet even in his apparent failure, Jeff realized that what were more important weren’t his math lesson plans—it was simply that he showed up each week. He was the only stable adult in the lives of these inner city kids. With that fresh perspective, Jeff brought in math games into his program and slowly built it up again to 13 students. Their teacher later thanked Jeff, since she saw a whole grade level improvement in their math abilities by the end of the year. Jeff took his experience of failure and leveraged it to gain admission to Cornell University.

Unlike Jeff, Cindy didn’t reach her goal. She was aiming to study pre-med. She did hospital volunteering and a bio research summer camp. When we asked if she wanted to try to start a pre-med club at school or do research in a lab she hesitated. She had never done these things before and they seemed outside of her comfort zone. Cindy wanted to stick with what she was already doing--and take no risks.  While she become a lead volunteer and went to two more summer camps--these actions weren’t enough. Even with her perfect 4.00 GPA and 34 ACT score, she was rejected from all Ivy Leagues.

Ivy Leagues look for students who push the boundary, take chances, and demonstrate “grit” in the face of failure. Yet, this level of dedication and direction only happens when the student is truly passionate about the project.

Stay tuned for our final post describing the last and most critical trait colleges are looking for! 

Top-Tier Colleges: What do they really want? (Part 1)

34,000. That’s how many earnest high school seniors applied to Harvard University last year. Only about 2023 of them were admitted. In 2011, Harvard had a 6.17% admittance rate. In 2012, it decreased to 5.92%. By 2013, it dropped to an all time dismal low of 5.79%. In 2014, it went back up to 5.9%.

So what can parents do to help their child enter the ultra-competitive Ivy Leagues? Particularly, what can Asian parents do when every Asian student looks identical: a top violinist who is also the president of the debate club and captain of the robotics club, graduating top of her class with a 2400 SAT score. 

From our experience as college admissions consultants, we’ve discovered a few key parenting trends that help raise an Ivy-League ready child.

Ivy Leagues seek students who are their own masters.

The Stanford admissions website states that “We want to see the initiative with which [students] to seek out opportunities that expand [their] perspective and that will allow [them] to participate in creating new knowledge. These traits of self-trust and drive are often rarely found among Asian students. We coach mostly Asian students, and we’ve discovered how our collectivist values (which stress service, thoughtfulness, and submission) leave many Asian students immobilized.

For example, Paul was one such student. He received his two B’s in sophomore year and his mom was furious.  The next year, she sat next to him for up to six hours a day watching him study and complete his homework. She also cancelled most of his extracurriculars and scheduled him with as much tutoring and SAT test preparation as possible. The result? He never learned to take control of his own learning. He never learned how to make his own decisions and manage his own time. His GPA began to slip, and his lack of extracurriculars and apparent lack of initiative hampered his future. He had barely made it into UCSD after being waitlisted for a few months.

Often these students, who have the raw talent to do well at an Ivy League, do not make it to one if they lack initiative. However, we’ve found that parents who foster a sense of independence and self-trust enable their students to thrive.

One of our students from 2012 comes to mind. Fred and Nina often asked their son, Tim, “Well, what do you think? You decide.” Tim learned to identify a problem and figure out how to solve it on his own.  As we worked with Tim, he was bothered that many students from low-income neighborhoods were not college-bound. Tim started a college-admissions workshop for inner city high school students. Tim planned an entire semester’s worth of curriculum and met with high school students each week to provide academic counseling. Tim was the commander of this project, and owned the process from start to finish. Tim later began his freshman year at Yale University--a place in which the president wrote, “In selecting future Yale students, “I am inclined to believe that the person who gives every ounce to do something superbly has an advantage over the person whose capacities may be great but who seems to have no desire to stretch them to their limit.” “We look for that desire and ability to stretch one’s limits” states another Yale admission officer. That motivation can only come from students who have learned how to think--and act--for themselves.  

Come back tomorrow to learn the second trait top-tier colleges are looking for!