Get Help with Your Ivy League Applications: Experts at Top Test Prep

 

Top Test Prep’s Ivy League Admissions Counseling focuses on the following schools:
Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Penn and Yale

Our admissions consultants and experts have experience ranging from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford, MIT and Cornell admissions offices. Our admissions office reviews each applicant on a spectrum, focusing not only on the details, but also the broader Ivy League application.

When you sign up with Top Test Prep’s Ivy League Admissions Program, our experts will contact you to conduct an interview. During this time, we will assess your needs, strengths and weaknesses, and then bring it to his admissions consulting team. From this point, we will do the following with your Ivy League applications:

• Revise Ivy League Admissions Essays
• Give you strategies for each Ivy League School
• Help you get the best college recommendations
• Develop a specific plan for getting into each Ivy League school
• Assess your GPA, Test scores and other objective criteria
• Give you admissions probabilities for each school and admissions chances

We work with a select group of students applying to Ivy League Schools each year, so contact our Ivy admissions consultants today.

What it Takes to Get into Ivy League Schools

Tips and Strategies for Gaining Admission

There are many things you can do to improve your chances of gaining admission to the Ivy League. It’s definitely not impossible to get that big envelope. However, before we cover factors such as your GPA, test scores, admissions essays and extracurricular activities, it’s important to know your typical odds of acceptance. For the Ivies – from Harvard to Yale – Cornell to Brown – and many more, the odds of acceptance are usually between 7 to 15% on average. Therefore, you really need stand out amongst the crowded field of applicants. We’ll help you do that.

Your SAT and ACT scores: What should your goal be?

Yes, boarding schools value the SSAT scores differently; many instead emphasize factors such as admissions essays and interviews, but there is no doubt about the importance of your test scores. We’ve surveyed many admissions officers and found that nearly all assert that the SSAT is one of the only ways an admissions team can evaluate students and their potential success in prep school.

Your GPA: Is there a minimum?

Ivy league schools – defined here, as Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Penn and Yale – want high GPAs. Depending on your high school and the number of AP/IB courses you’ve taken, you should try to be in the top 10% of your class at the minimum. Your grades are important in that you need to show consistently high performance throughout your four years in high school. If your high school is on a 4.0 scale, you want to aim for a 3.8 to 3.9 on average, assuming there’s no significant grade inflation. If you’re school, like many in America, has a weighted and un-weighted scale, you’ll want to be within a fraction of the maximum possible GPA range. However, you should think about your GPA less in terms of a numeric value, and more in terms of its relative value compared to your classmates. An Ivy League admissions office always requests a school profile using systems like Naviance – and they’ll know where your GPA fits into the larger school profile.

Your Admissions Essays: 500+ words can shape your application

Think of your common app and the admissions essay you’re required to write as your opportunity to be specific; you should use good examples and directly reflect on what talents you’ll bring to the Ivy League. Many students simply write as much as possible trying to fit everything they’ve ever done in high school. These braggarts will lose out. Your goal is to be interesting. Write succinctly and don’t bore the admissions officers with a rambling essay that has little to show for what you plan on contributing to the Ivy League.

Your Extracurricular Activities: How many should you have?

Less is more. You should never try to pad your application to a top Ivy League school with 10 to 20 extracurricular activities. Rather, you should have at least three to four extracurricular activities where you had a tremendous and significant leadership role. Why? For one reason, it’s more authentic. Another reason is because it’s more realistic for admissions officers to believe. You only have 24 hours in a given day, and an admissions office will be skeptical if you try to convince them that you did that many extracurricular and in one year.

Does applying early to Ivy League schools help?

Yes. We recommend applying early action and/or early decision. There’s no question that it improves your chances of gaining admission to top Ivy colleges.

Start by getting in touch with us today. We’ll help you improve your scores, and get the Ivy League admissions counseling you need to gain acceptance.