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How many A-Levels do universities like?

What is special about being accepted at 8 Ivy League universities for undergraduate study?

  • From http://www.examiner.com/article/kwasi-enin-the-college-essay-that-got-kwasi-enin-into-8-ivy-league-schools As far as I know, top universities in the same country tend to have similar admission benchmark (i.e, what they expect from the applicants). As such, when the university admission is exercised by individual universities, there are always many students who are admitted to several top universities. Thus, for these students, getting admission to multiple top universities is simply a game of applying to as many top universities as possible (if that is permitted). Of course, those overachievers will only go to 1 university (thus, wasting many vacancies in the other universities). As far as I know again, this is one of the reasons that someone can apply to Oxford or Cambridge, but not to both universities. Similarly, in many countries, universities hold joint entrance examination, so that no matter how great the applicant is, (s)he can only be admitted to 1 university, and preventing vacancy waste. Example of this are examination for admission to French Grande Ecole and Korea's Suneung and examination for admission to India's IIT.

  • Answer:

    The assumptions in your question are wrong. It is extremely common for someone to get accepted by one Ivy but not the others, or half, etc. They are definitely looking for different things. I know many people accepted by Harvard but not Dartmouth, or by Cornell but nowhere else, or by a random assortment such as Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia but not the others.

Josh Jacobson at Quora Visit the source

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Being accepted to ONE Ivy League is difficult. Acceptance rates: Harvard: 6% Yale: 7% Princeton: 7.8% Columbia: 7.4% Cornell: 16.6% Dartmouth: 9.8% Brown: 9.6% UPenn: 12.6% This means that the odds of being admitted to all 8 are, from a purely statistical standpoint, 1 in about 4.7 billion. Of course, being qualified for one increases the likelihood that others will want you, but being admitted to all 8 is extremely difficult and impressive. THAT is really the reason--bragging rights.

Gideon Soule

What you said about the universities having similar benchmarks is not accurate at all. In the US, college admission is more subjective. It's not simply determined by test scores, and there is no formula of getting into any of the 8 Ivies. Each school has their own personalities and tastes of candidates, and they are simply looking for students that can fit in. They require different application essays, and look at the same candidates in different ways. Thus, being accepted to Harvard does not mean you will necessarily get into Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell or Brown. So indeed, getting into any one of them is already hard enough, and getting into all eight of them is certainly much more difficult.

Yuan Liu

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