To Get into the Ivy League, “Extraordinary” Isn’t Always Enough These Days

Political alliances are fraught things. In this moment, some Asian students have allied with far-right white students and their parents, because both groups are somewhat disadvantaged by affirmative action. Of course, the deck was strongly stacked in favor of the white students prior to affirmative action, so actually removing all racial considerations and signifiers from white students would be a net negative for them.

It's a test case to blow up affirmative action and roll back the protections put in place during the Civil Rights Era. We know this because it's being spearheaded by Edward Bloom, who also organized Shelby vs. Holder, which sucessfully gutted the Civil Rights Act.

Finally, at a population level, it is less remarkable for a rich student to be a top decile performer, because they have far fewer obligations to their household. They don't have to work extra jobs or drive their parents to doctor's appointments. They're likely to live much closer to their schools, and those schools have been dramatically better funded.

"But what about the poor white kids" you say? The AEI isn't looking out for them either. They might have a slightly harder time getting into Harvard, but within rounding error, ZERO poor white kids go to the Ivies. The vast majority go to public state universities, which are the real target of this lawsuit.

It's true that the culture is homogenizing, but Dartmouth or Cornell are very different communities than Penn or Columbia. Applying to some or most of the other Ivies is very different from applying to all the Ivies.

The question you have to answer in an application is why this school. If your answer is "I just want to go to an Ivy", each school gets to say "Ok, neat. Go to a different one." And if your answer is "I need to get in to an Ivy to validate myself", bless you sweet sweet heart. You answered honestly, but incorrectly.

It's like telling Columbia "I want to attend Columbia because I really want to go to college in NYC." Laugh, but it happens all the time. Their answer, of course, is "Ok, you have more than a hundred other options. Go there instead."

Give a better answer to the question. Even if the culture is homogenizing, pander to the audience and tell them things that they uniquely offer. Unless you've won the equivalent of the Siemens Competition or you have letters of recommendation from Fields Medalists, you've got to sell yourself to them.

Can you matriculate into your major after your first year? I assume so, provided you performed sufficiently well in coursework that year.

Unless it’s fallen into an abyss, Penn has Wharton, which is a highly rated biz school. Thus, students wanting to go into “business” have a number of majors to choose from. And in ancient times when I was doing chemistry the accounting and finance majors were down there with us with crap gpa’s and tired students.

Edit: there were also only a handful of chemistry majors as pre-meds avoided it like the plague as it required 4 more nasty chem courses to graduate. There were a couple of chem/chemE double majors that screwed up the curve.