(Newswire.net — April 4, 2014) Las Vegas, Nevada — Westfield, NJ — The acceptance rates for the incoming Class of 2018 at Ivy League and other elite colleges were in the single digits at all Ivy League colleges (except Dartmouth with an 11.5% accept rate), ranging from a 5.9% accept rate at Harvard to a 9.9% accept rate at the University of Pennsylvania. Other elite colleges had comparably low acceptance rates with Stanford at the lowest rate of 5.09% (http://www.mercurynews.com/my-town/ci_25445614/stanford-offers-admission-2-138-high-school-students), MIT at 7.7% and Duke at 10.7%. (http://www.businessinsider.com/ivy-league-acceptance-2018-2014-3)
With record applications at the Ivies, coupled with increased pressure from the Obama administration to provide greater access to underrepresented groups, students are asking the question: How can my application stand out and what other college options are available to me? Current sophomores and juniors in high school, deciding where to apply and how best to position themselves for a successful application process, are looking for more control over the college application process.
Is there a way to get into an Ivy League or other elite school in this current competitive climate? The short answer is yes, but it’s not easy. Students must have clear sense of their unique strengths and how they will contribute to a given college.
Peter Johnson, Director of Admissions at Columbia University, recently spoke to a group of professional independent educational consultants in Princeton, NJ. Johnson related that Columbia is seeing a rise in what he calls “Niche Applicants,” which are students who have already demonstrated a deep independent intellectual curiosity or expertise in a given area from science research to humanities to outstanding athletics.
Lisa Bleich, President of College Bound Mentor and author of Surviving the College Application Process: Case Studies to Help You Find Your Unique Angle for Success (Morgan-James Publisher), echoes this sentiment. “In the early eighties, when I applied, the buzzword for college acceptance was “well-rounded,” which referred to a student who participated in many different activities,” Bleich explained. “That is no longer what colleges are looking for from applicants. Now they want to build a well-rounded class made up of students who will each fill one or two slices of their total round pie: in other words, students who are unique, focused, and angular, or express excellence or uniqueness in their interests. An angular student can also be a student who has developed a degree of excellence in one or two areas—leadership, intellectual curiosity, athletics, or community service—or who has a special talent, such as visual or performing arts or exhibits unusual personal character.”
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Mark Gillespie, a senior at Westfield High School in New Jersey, who is deciding between CalTech and Oxford University, is an example of an angular candidate. “I used the angular approach to highlight what makes me unique,” Gillespie said. “In my case, it was my passion for exploring the intersection between science and art. I think that being able to demonstrate this interest with specific examples definitely helped my application stand out.”
In Surviving the College Application Process: Case Studies to Help You Find Your Unique Angle for Success, Bleich uses The College Application Wheel™ as a framework and tool to assist students in identifying their strengths and “gaps”—areas they may need to fill in, such as community service or higher standardized test scores. It also helps students determine where their energy may best be spent in making themselves shine or stand out from the crowd. The College Application Wheel™ will help them understand what makes them unique, how to find a college that values them for who they are, and assist students in seeing where there is a match between them and a specific college.
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For more information, visit www.collegeboundmentor.com