Jackie’s family came to New Ivies in June of his senior year after he struck out in the elite college admissions process, earning admission to only a moderately selective public university and receiving rejections or waitlists-turned-rejections from over 15 top schools. Jackie, a passionate computer scientist from Northern California, and his family wished to understand where it all went wrong and what he could do about it moving forward to optimize his case for transfer admission.
SITUATION
Before coming to New Ivies, Jackie had applied Early Action to Harvard, the University of Michigan, and a few other public universities. He was denied at all of his Early Action schools. He then repeated many of the same mistakes he committed on his Early Action applications on his Regular Decision applications. Oy vey is right!
In the Regular Decision round, Jackie applied to several other highly selective and moderately selective schools. And while he received a few waitlist decisions, he didn’t approach the waitlist process the right way, choosing to update the schools on his achievements since first applying rather than following our prescribed method of winning the waitlist game. After all, Jackie and his family hadn’t yet discovered New Ivies.
He ultimately earned admission in the Regular Decision round to a large public university that, going into the admissions process, the family would have considered a very safe safety. Jackie and his family didn’t know if he should pursue a PG (postgraduate) year, take a gap year, or attend the only school he earned admission to and then seek to transfer.
Goal Schools
After a disastrous college admissions process, when Jackie and his family came to New Ivies to find out what went wrong, they didn’t have a specific school in mind. They just wanted Jackie to have options among some highly selective schools.
CHALLENGES
While Jackie was passionate about computer science and his activities reflected an interest in computer science (although his activities were the cliche, low-hanging fruit kind of activities we at New Ivies would never recommend for a computer science applicant, like robotics and tutoring underprivileged students in coding), Jackie hailed from Northern California.
Why does this matter? Because Northern California is the home of Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley is bursting at the seems with aspiring computer scientists. Jackie was dime a dozen. To make matters worse, Jackie’s parents were also computer scientists, working at the same major Silicon Valley tech company. Those jobs, of course, are listed on Page 2 of The Common Application under the Family section. Elite college admissions officers don’t appreciate students who wish to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Rather, they root for students who wish to blaze their own trail.
HOW New Ivies HELPED
As it turns out, beyond his interest in computer science, Jackie also had a strong interest in political science. Instead of encouraging Jackie to take a PG year (he didn’t want to spend another year in high school after his classmates had all gone off to college) or to pursue a gap year (gap years often flaunt privilege and elite college admissions officers frequently get scared when students are a year removed from a structured academic curriculum), we encouraged Jackie to attend the moderately selective public university he earned admission to and then apply, with New Ivies’s assistance, as a transfer with an interest in political science.
While Jackie didn’t wish to pursue a major or career in the field of political science, Jackie and his family understood that elite college admissions is a game and we simply wished to help Jackie beat that unfair game — fairly and ethically. Jackie genuinely had an interest in political science and, as such, it was easy for him to get involved in the wonderfully weird political science-related activities we recommended in his hometown as well as at the public university he’d be attending. Heck, he even came to truly enjoy these activities!
Besides, with only a few exceptions, students can change their intended major from when they apply (even as transfer candidates). After all, that’s the whole point of a liberal arts education…for a student to figure out what genuinely excites them. So if, after he earned admission, he wished to major in computer science rather than political science, at most (though not all) highly selective universities, Jackie could do just that.
COLLEGE RESULTS
Jackie applied to 10 universities as a transfer applicant with New Ivies’s assistance. Among these schools, he earned admission to the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University.
He did not earn admission to the other 6 schools to which he applied, which is quite typical for New Ivies’s transfer applicants. New Ivies’s transfer applicants so often pick off one or two top schools off their list (or in this case, four!) but fail to earn admission to most (in this case 6 schools) since the transfer admissions process, unlike the first-year admissions process, is slightly less predictable. As but one example, there was one year in which Harvard University didn’t accept any transfers (how wrong is that?!). As another example, Princeton University accepts few non-U.S. veterans as transfer applicants since reinstating transfer admissions a few years back.
In the end, Jackie debated between UChicago and UPenn before ultimately landing on attending UPenn.
