What does it take to be admitted to a French university?

What does it actually take to get accepted into an Ivy League university?

• What does it take to get admitted into an Ivy League university such as Harvard or Yale besides having really great grades and taking challanging classes? Have any of you out there actually been accepted into an Ivy League university and do you have any advice/tips to share? Do these universities often first choose the students who come from wealthy families and will not need much aid or does that issue not really matter?

• Answer:

  Well, like with any highly selective college like Yale or Harvard, there's no one formula that will guarantee your acceptance. However, there are a few obvious things that they like to see. Extracurricular-wise, schools like to have people who aren't just awesome at one thing; you have to be awesome at at least one thing, then kind of awesome at some other things, too. I wouldn't exactly call it well-roundedness; it's kind of like lumpiness. They like to see leadership positions and candidates who have a sense of giving back to their schools or communities. My main things in high school were viola (orchestra, particularly) and science (I had been involved in some research before), so be sure to play up those things that you care about the most. Also, it's definitely helpful to write some good essays. I wrote mine about a week before I sent it in, so they weren't too polished (I went back later, and although there weren't any overt grammatical errors, I could still edit the heck out of it). I think that it's probably a good idea to get a trusted teacher or friend to take a look at it to catch any serious errors you might have missed, but otherwise, when it's more raw, it's a little more real-sounding and you-sounding, so don't freak out too much about writing the "perfect" essay. Let it be your essay, and let it sound like you. It helps if your essay emphasizes one of your bigger extracurriculars; my essay ended up being about the viola. However, don't go out of your way to do that. Teacher recommendations: I was really lucky to have two teachers who loved me, and I'm sure that they had something to do with my getting in. My counselor liked me, too, so I probably benefited from that as well. If you have a couple of teachers that you think would consider you the best student they've ever had (and I had one teacher who flat out told me and her entire family that I was the best student she's ever had, and she retired two years after she taught me), that's definitely going to help you. Okay, all I did was pretty much state the obvious. But like I said, there's no way to guarantee admission to any school, so the best path is probably to do what you want to do with your high school experience, make the most of it, then see what happens with colleges. I will say that colleges are not nearly as elitist as they're often made out to be. Universities often have a policy of need-blind admissions, where they totally ignore how much financial aid you need until you've been accepted. I came from a moderately well-off family (both of my parents are engineers) but certainly not wealthy. By the way, what makes you want to go to Yale or Harvard so badly? Just curious... Oh, and I got into Yale. I don't know if I mentioned that already.