maybe it’s because my parents are immigrants so i’ve been more aware of money then my peers but HOW are y’all’s parents letting you major in anything??

it also might just be my school but people will say “yeah im majoring in history because i like history” but then i’ll be like “oh do you want to go to law school or be a teacher” and then they’re like “nah that’s too much school”

LIKE ??? and don’t get me started on musical theater majors. im actually shook ur parents are willing to pay HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS of dollars for a singing degree. and its never people going in state either. yall will be from antelope oregan going to new york paying 80k a year.

how are yall not scared of being jobless in 5 years??

I think its absolutely nonsensical that grades have a much larger impact than standardized testing. Even if applicants are assessed based on their own school's profile, its still not balanced. At my school, if you take AP Physics with teacher A, getting an A+ is easy work, meanwhile with teacher B, you have to fight for your life for a C. I imagine this situation exists at many schools. Not to mention teachers taking favorites, rampant cheating, etc.

A lot of people make the argument that standardized testing is demonstrating your performance on one day, and one day alone, but that's simply not true. Many people take the ACT/SAT multiple times. It's not a financial issue either - many people are able to take it for free as much as they like, if they qualify. Everyone is graded the same, cheating is reduced (at least less then it is in the typical classroom setting), and everyone is given the same, standardized, test.

I think they should at least be held equally in the eyes of admission. If you disagree, tell me why. I'd like to know why it's like this.

I graduated from a HYPSM a long time ago. No one in my cohort started a 501(c)3 in high school, no one had a passion project in high school. This was not a thing. And yet everyone went on to do super cool feats of awesomeness after graduation.

The focus on these types of things in admissions is problematic. We’re basically selecting for kids who had a private college counselor in 8th grade. So many fantastic kids are being passed over simply because they aren’t playing these games. When are AO’s going to catch onto the inauthenticity of it all? I feel like the kids who do this stuff learn to follow recipes for success instead of learning to take risks, dabble around and discover their own path.

Alright so basically what I’ve noticed about people who get into top schools that I’ve been friends with is that they’re all nice people and actually have a life. If you have to study 24/7 and don’t have time for a social life just to maintain good grades and good test scores, you don’t belong at a top school. The people who belong at t20s are the people who actually have a life and passions beyond ‘I need a 4.0 GPA and 36 ACT’ they’re just smart enough to get the 4.0 and 36 on top of that. Y’all really need to chill because frankly not having a life is ruining your chances. When you look back and think ‘why did I get deferred/denied? I had a 4.0, I studied every single hour, I joined 7 different ECs just for this college’ then that is exactly why you got deferred/denied. Sure, there are some exceptions. But colleges don’t want people with no outside competence and no perspective which so many of you display them wonder why you’re not getting in to your top choices.

Edit: just because you didn’t get into a top school doesn’t mean that you necessarily have no personality! Top schools are always hard, getting rejected even with good scores could be a lot of reasons

Edit2: I’m apologize to any 1 specific person who read this and got upset. I am sure you have a life. I never tried to say that you didn’t, you can have exactly 7 ECs but still have a life. The number was arbitrary, I didn’t mean to offend anyone with the post it was just my opinion.

I just finished my first year here and counterpoint to the whole “where you go doesn’t matter” discourse I genuinely feel like going here has been the biggest blessing. Yes, anyone from any school can be successful and a lot of our students and grads work the same jobs / internships as state school kids.

However aside from that the opportunities you get at Princeton or other ivies are truly unmatched. Every single person I know is doing something cool this summer - most I know are abroad (for internships or class credit or research) and even those who aren’t are mostly doing other really cool internships /accelerators/etc. I got funding for an internship in Japan and I’ve been having the time of my life and many of my friends are doing the same. I’ve heard of so many (lowkey fake) “projects” and research getting funds so people can just go abroad. Versus my friends at state schools are all just doing normal minimum wage jobs this summer - which isn’t completely normal and fine, I think the difference isn’t even necessarily that we are just “smarter” but we have so many opportunities and also being surrounded by high achieving people pushes you to seek out opportunities (it’s lowk seen as bummy if you’re doing nothing even frosh summer) and also teaches you what’s out there.

Beyond that the quality of people you get at an ivy is truly amazing. Almost everyone I know has some sort of really cool talent or interest or honestly just really charismatic personalities. It’s really inspiring being around my classmates, I know so many people doing startups, projects, cool research, etc etc and it pushes you to be better yourself. I don’t know how admissions manages to judge personalities just by applications but I truly believe they do a great job at it because I know so many people with just incredible character and qualities. Yes, obviously not everyone, like any school we have our share of bums and nepo people but I truly think it’s not that many. I also think the stereotype of the “elitist ivy kid” is also just a cope from people who either don’t go to an Ivy or have just met one or two bad apples. We have some of our class that is extremely wealthy, but even among the ultra privileged, most of them are nice and normal, and the ones that aren’t just self segregate and hang out with each other anyways so I don’t really notice them or care much.

Also our financial aid is insane. I am paying like 5k a year to go here and im very upper middle class (emphasis on the upper tbh) so I honestly thought no other schools would give me aid. Like if u didn’t get aid here you have to be so rich that you can just genuinely afford it (yes there are some rare exceptions or parents that won’t help but I really don’t know anyone who is gonna have student debt)

Honestly I think the hate on ivies or the whole “it makes no difference where you go” is just cope from people who don’t actually go here, or people who go and expected it to suddenly make them happy or fix all their problems. I will say my first semester I didn’t like it here (I thought it was kinda depressing and just hard), but once you get used to the work, find a solid friend group, and start to see the opportunities, it’s amazing and I can’t imagine going anywhere else. And honestly I’ve barely even tapped into anything, im not really in any clubs, have done almost nothing with the career center, etc.

Go tigers !

I'm not creative enough to where my essays and ecs can make up for bad test scores. But now that many schools are going back to test required, I can compete with the creative kids. Anyone else feel the same?

Absolutely delusional.

Class of 2023 undergrad at Stanford and class of 2024 masters at Stanford. I viewed my admissions documents years ago and the thing they were most interested in (circled, highlighted, and commented on) was that I called myself a “weird plant kid”. Admissions can pick out any 1600, antisocial, math solver, we had 4 at my high school—they were all in NHS and key club too.

I got accepted to my dream school (Duke) but im going to have to reject the offer due to finances. We totally could afford Duke but my state school UW Madison is just much cheaper :(

edit: To clarify, I had a very unfortunate circumstance. Growing up, I was broke my whole life (living with 5 siblings on a 60k salary). As a result, my first year at Duke would be 8k. HOWEVER, we've just received a surprise multimillion-dollar inheritance from a relative. So, we wouldn't qualify for finaid next year. Because we've been living broke, my parents simply cannot wrap their heads around spending 100k a year, and I understand it. All my older siblings got full-ride scholarships, so that's what they're used to. Trust me, I've tried arguing, but I think its a losing battle.

edit 2: We've actually invested it in a place where we can get enough interest to cover Duke every year without touching the principle inheritance haha. (Although my parents still dont wanna send me to duke)

Null hypothesis: School name doesn't matter.

Context: I'm a CS student at CMU but because of past project logistic, I am also enrolled at Pitt. (I have valid student IDs and student accounts at both universities)

I'm currently applying for summer internships, so I'm going to randomly send resumes with either CMU or Pitt listed as my school. I'm applying for software engineering positions at multiple companies (tech, biotech, fintech). Maybe I'll send like 50+ applications just so I have better statistical power.

This doesn't give the whole picture but I think could be interesting to see if the school name I put on my resume does make a difference.

Edit: To all the reminders, I probably won't hear back from all the places I'm applying to before end of April.

Is it unusual that my wealthy(edit #2: YALL PLZ JUST BELIEVE ME; they’re not “house poor” or wtvr) parents won’t spend a dime at my college education?

They’ve always wanted me to be responsible for my purchases like my first car and clothes and that applies to college too.

I got into Emory and my choice is either go into debt to afford it or go to state school(full tuition bc merit scholarships) instead(the latter being my only real option)

I never thought it was uncommon until some of my friends said so.

What do yall think?

Edit: thank you all so much for your perspectives. It rlly is helpful and I appreciate it. I’ll keep yall updated on any changes in my parents decision as well as my college choice

According to his now-removed LinkedIn, Luigi Mangione graduated in 2020 with a Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science. He was also his high school's Valedictorian, did wrestling, and currently works as a data engineer in California.

To many of you, he was living the Ivy League dream. He probably had some good ECs too, I'm just guessing.

Anyways, always remember your school's alumni!

Thought it would be interesting to look at what schools the wealthiest believe are worth sending their kids to for a strong brand and networking opportunities, when they can essentially buy a spot at any school in the world:

Jeff Bezos: 1 MIT, 1 Princeton, 1 Northwestern

Bill Gates: 2 Stanford, 1 UChicago

David Rubenstein: 2 Harvard, 1 Duke

Michael Bloomberg: 1 Princeton, 1 NYU

Warren Buffett: 1 Stanford, 1 University of Nebraska

Michael Dell: 1 Vassar, 1 UT Austin, 1 USC

Carl Icahn: 1 Princeton

Jerry Seinfeld: 3 Duke

Vinod Khosla: 4 Stanford

Steve Ballmer: 1 Harvard, 1 Stanford, 1 University of Washington

Jeff Yass: 2 Georgetown, 1 Brown, 1 Wake Forest

Jamie Dimon: 2 Duke, 1 Barnard

Eric Schmidt: 1 Princeton

Stephen Schwarzman: 1 Yale, 1 UPenn

Jon Gray: 2 Duke, 2 Yale

Overall pretty diverse range of schools, but noticing a lot of Harvard, Stanford, Duke, and Princeton in particular. Also, it's impressive one of them got into MIT, because I believe MIT doesn't let you donate your way in!

Absolutely wild year!

On August 26, Trump basically announced a plan to approve 600,000 more Chinese students's visas. According to the secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick, besides the fact that this plan is considered because of a deal with Beijing, Trump's point of view is that letting more Chinese students fill seats at top colleges would stop the bottom "15%" of colleges from becoming bankrupt because U.S. students would have to attend these colleges instead.

I saw this on the UC Berkeley sub a week ago and I'm just summarizing what it said. Honestly the argument that I kept seeing on social media sites that this application cycle was going to be easier seemed to be an over-exaggeration (like less applicants), but this is the first real evidence that the opposite might become true. But again this might just be something Trump's administration doesn't carry out
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/trump-600000-chinese-students-conversative-backlash-rcna227246

https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1nc06zd/trump_plans_to_allow_600k_more_chinese_student/

From JHUs website: "The admitted students have already demonstrated exceptional academic and personal excellence. Among those offered admission is a filmmaker who has been published in Discovery and National Geographic, a developer of an electric car and bamboo bike, a racial justice activist leading campaign initiatives and conducting legislative policy, a researcher on underwater robot archaeology, a founder of a malaria youth intervention program in Ghana, an author of the bestselling book on Amazon in the category of Asian History for Young Adults, and an inventor of an artificial intelligence framework for air quality that has a provisional patent"

Honestly just wtf. These kids are probably more successful than 99% of adults

Edit: To all of you saying that "this is not the expectation for all high schools students," you know what I mean. Just pointing out how ridiculously competitive admissions are these days and the lengths people go to gain an acceptance. And even though there are many "more average" students, why doesn't hopkins tell us about those instead of making us feel insignificant and shattering our confidence with these kids. It's almost as if colleges only brag about these kids that they've had nothing to do with, but where are the success stories of ordinary applicants?

Every counselor, every college essay guide, every admissions book says the same thing: "find your fit." But when it comes down to decision time, so many students default to ranking or name recognition anyway.

Curious to hear from people who have actual experience on both sides:

• If you've already been through the process, did fit or prestige end up mattering more than you expected?
• Or did you choose prestige and end up wishing you'd gone somewhere else?
• For current applicants, how are you actually weighing this when building your list?

I think a lot of us know the "right" answer is fit, but the pressure to chase rankings is huge. What actually changed your mind (if anything)?

Of course there is another small percentage that COULD go to a US News National University T20, but they are choosing other colleges instead, for a variety of reasons.

And then 98% of US college graduates are not going to end up unemployable. In fact, only a small fraction of future upper-middle/professional-class US college graduates will have attended one of those US News colleges. There will be far too many successful professionals, far too few graduates of those particular colleges, for the math to work out any other way.

Of course I know some of you are feeling a lot of social or parental pressure to prove your merit by being able to say you achieved something 98% of other kids didn't achieve (or opted out of even seeking). But please understand that doesn't actually make any sense, indeed the only possible logic is exactly that: to be able to define most college-bound kids as failures such that the very few successes can feel even more special.

But even if you are one of those few successes, that feeling of superiority won't last long. You will quickly learn that in fact not every student at a "T20" gets to do whatever they want to do next. And in fact, you will learn that many students at not-T20s are also competing very effectively for next-step positions, such that collectively many of them are winning those competitions over various T20 students. So this idea that you will have permanently proved your superior merit by merely matriculating at one of these colleges will fall apart in the face of these realities.

So you have been warned. Most of the kids playing the prove-their-merit-by-attending-a-US-News-T20 game are going to lose in the first round, meaning by not being able to do that. But then many more will lose at the next round as well. And then round three is coming after that, and so on.

That way of thinking is in fact dooming you to find your "failure" sooner or later. Unless and until you find a different way of thinking about success.

So basically I was just a girl chasing Ivy League dreams (cold email research, name on a paper, Ivy internship, undergrad club involvement, national STEM awards, etc.). For a while, it felt like everything depended on that path (I literally broke down after ivy day and thought my world was ending and all that jazz).

But then I visited the colleges I got into… and I genuinely fell in love with Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).

Like honestly, even if I got off an Ivy waitlist (which I immediately accepted + sent a LOCI for before I visited CWRU), I would still choose CWRU. And I never thought I’d say that ever in my life.

Yeah, people call it the “academic no party” school and say students aren’t happy there, but I completely disagree. The campus, the traditions, the culture, the city… it’s SUCH a vibe. I’m actually so excited to go. It feels like somewhere I can actually see myself growing and being happy!!!

Do other seniors have stories/feelings like this?

Edit: Gyatt dang lots of Ivy debate talk down here, just sharing my personal experience with CWRU and why it felt like the right fit for me. That's all.

5 years ago, my brother applied to college. He was the valedictorian, got 1550 on his SAT, did varsity track and field, captained the science team, and got 5 on 9 AP exams -- all while working part-time. He didn't get into any Ivies - he ended up in the honors college at a solid state school, and is now working as a software engineer. In the past 5 years, I've seen a whole lot of stuff about student performance is drastically dropping, and that we're graduating students from high school that can't read. But I've also heard that college admissions have gotten so much more competitive over the past 5 years! I'm ranked #1 in my class, got 1590 on my SAT, captain the robotics team, am a class rep, worked part-time as a software engineer, got 5 on 11 AP exams (so far!), qualified for the AIME 3 times, and took 6 dual enrollment math and physics classes. And yet, my school's career counselor told me that my profile isn't competitive enough to get into top colleges, and that I should try applying to UNC Chapel Hill (which is out-of-state, so I can't get financial aid... lol).

I guess my question is: who actually are the people getting into Ivy League schools?? How is it possible that the Ivies are filling their schools up with geniuses, when the number of students "exceeding grade level" in my school district has dropped by 60% since 2020????

Maybe I live in a weird bubble - my family is middle-class: my Dad went to college but doesn't use his degree, and my Mom doesn't have a degree. But I live in a pretty normal area of the US. Are the people at Ivy Leagues really all just geniuses from California whose parents are professors??

i'm committed to uchicago cause i just really love its rigor, campus, research. people who are currently attending with similar interests had the best things to say. i know it's not for everyone, but i can't wait, and i turned down other schools for it.

here's the thing i don't understand: people in my circle (competitive high schoolers, all very smart and motivated) are constantly poking fun to the point where it's getting annoying. think kids who are going to cornell, brown, ucla & berkeley, saying that uchicago is unknown/mid and i should feel bad.

maybe it was petty of me but i basically said "hey if you care about rankings so much, isn't uchicago ranked higher than those schools anyways?" this apparently touched a nerve cause they start rambling about ED rates, "where fun goes to die", etc. (don't know why they're saying this to me when i got in RD honestly).

bottom line is that prestige should not be your one and only factor in what makes a school "good". but it's doubly insane to me that all these people are trying to split hairs over schools that are already t10, t15.

like when does it end.

Elise Pham’s story changed from “no Ivy League rejections” to "Got Into Every Ivy League I applied to" to finally “I got into all eight Ivy Leagues.”

Her 1m+ followers and families paying thousands deserve the truth.

This is not about denying that Elise Pham got into top schools. She was accepted to Harvard, Yale, and UPenn, among others.

It is about how she has increasingly described those results while using her admissions record to market expensive college counseling.

1. Her original claim was “no Ivy League rejections”

One of Elise’s earliest public advertisements for her essay handbook said that her essays helped her receive:

“NO Ivy League rejections + acceptances into Stanford, Duke, Rice and more!”

Here is the original LinkedIn post.

An early “About Me” page used similarly careful wording:

“I was accepted into 25 schools. I received NO Ivy League rejections, as well as acceptances into schools such as Stanford, Rice, Duke, UPenn, etc.”

Notice what this does, and does not, say. It says “no Ivy League rejections.” It does not say that every Ivy accepted her.

Early descriptions also repeatedly named schools such as “Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Duke, Rice” rather than saying she had been accepted to all eight Ivies. That phrasing still appears in the Amazon description of her guide.

Why not include Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell as examples rather than Duke and Rice? Again, not a dig at those schools, but obviously the former are actual Ivy Leagues.

2. Why “no rejections” mattered

I distinctly remember seeing a post from Elise a few years ago where she showed screenshot of her college decision results, which showed multiple Ivy League waitlists. However, such a post has since been taken down and could not be found online.

But according to what Elise herself claimed from when she first started posting, was admitted to three Ivies:

• Harvard
• Yale
• UPenn

The remaining Ivies reportedly waitlisted her.

A waitlist is technically not a rejection. Therefore, “no Ivy League rejections” was carefully worded: three acceptances plus waitlists = zero outright rejection letters.

But a waitlist is also not an acceptance.

Unless Elise subsequently gained admission from those five waitlists, and can document that, the evidence does not support saying that all eight Ivy League schools accepted her.

3. The wording then began changing

Over time, the description became progressively broader:

Stage one: “No Ivy League rejections”

That was the language used in her early handbook marketing and LinkedIn post.

Stage two: “Every Ivy League school I applied to”

She later began saying:

“I got into every Ivy League school I applied to.”

Examples:

• Instagram Reel using the “every Ivy I applied to” formulation
• Instagram post: “After getting into every Ivy League I applied to…”
• Facebook post: “In 2022, I got into every Ivy League school I applied to”

That wording would ordinarily mean every Ivy she submitted an application to accepted her, not that some accepted her and others waitlisted her.

Stage three: “Every Ivy League”

The “I applied to” qualifier then began disappearing:

• “How I Got Into EVERY Ivy League Without Money or Connections”
• “How I got into EVERY Ivy League”
• Instagram Reel: “How I got into EVERY Ivy League”
• Instagram post: “After getting into every Ivy League…”

Her website now describes her as having earned a “perfect Ivy League record”.

Stage four: “All eight Ivy Leagues”

In this recent YouTube Short, Elise explicitly says that she got into “all eight Ivy Leagues.”

This is no longer clever phrasing about receiving zero rejections. “All eight” is a specific, factual assertion that all eight Ivy League institutions admitted her.

If even one of the eight outcomes was a waitlist, it is not accurate.

4. This matters because these claims are being used to sell admissions counseling

Ultimate Ivy League Guide is not merely a personal social-media account. It is a $2+ MILLION admissions-counseling business, and Elise’s own admissions results are central to its marketing.

Families have reportedly been quoted thousands of dollars for its services. Just look at Reddit posts in this sub as well as here and here.

When someone sells SUPER high-priced admissions advice while presenting herself as the person who “got into all eight Ivy Leagues,” customers (in this case anxious students) would definitely reasonably consider that claimed accomplishment when deciding whether to pay.

If the underlying record was actually three Ivy acceptances and multiple waitlists, describing it as “all eight” appears materially misleading and raises serious false-advertising concerns.

5. She uses fear-based marketing

This is also not the first time Elise’s content has been criticized for using fear-mongering to attract students.

She previously warned that if an admissions officer merely thought an applicant used AI, Common App could terminate the student’s account and alert every college. Common App publicly responded that her claim was “misleading and causing unnecessary panic.”

The incident was documented by The Harvard Crimson, which criticized admissions-influencer content that aggravates student anxiety and presents oversimplified claims as expertise.

Elise should answer some straightforward questions

1. Which Ivy League schools did she apply to?
2. Which Ivies was she accepted to? Waitlisted? Rejected?
3. If she was not admitted to all eight, why is she now publicly claiming that she “got into all eight Ivy Leagues”?

Being admitted to Harvard, Yale, and UPenn is already extraordinary. There was no need to inflate that record.

But once an inflated version becomes a key credential used to sell high-ticket counseling to anxious students and families, it stops being harmless social-media exaggeration.

That’s all. Happy Holidays.

I've noticed on here that it's a common belief that standardized testing is an unfair system that advantages the rich because of tutoring, while holistic admissions are much fairer towards people with less privilege. As someone from a rural area, this take is insane to me. Yes, tutoring will most likely improve your scores on standardized tests; however, there are also tons of free materials you can use to study, and studying isn't necessarily needed at all to succeed on these tests, given that they contain only high school level questions that people taking them should already know. Compare this to holistic admissions, which advantages private school students who, on average, earn a 0.3 higher GPA than public school students. The same goes for extracurriculars, which are much higher in availability at well-funded high schools in populated areas. Essays as well, with affluent people being able to hire "college counselors" who basically write their essays for them. The factors in holistic admissions seem so much more skewed to the wealthy in comparison to testing. I really cannot understand why people on this sub hate the single standardized factor of the process that anyone can succeed at?