Every admissions cycle, top students from around the country apply to Ivy League schools with dazzling resumes. They’re valedictorians with perfect GPAs and test scores, club presidents, nonprofit founders, weekend volunteers, and first-chair oboists.
And every admissions cycle, most of them are rejected.
In my years of experience as the Managing Director at Command Education, a boutique college consultancy referred to as “McKinsey & Co. for 17-year-old clients,” I have seen some of the most ostensibly impressive applicants face the sting of rejection. Why? Because most families misunderstand what top colleges are actually looking for.
If you think a 4.0 GPA or a prestigious summer program will guarantee you a spot at Harvard or Yale, it’s time to rethink your strategy. Ivy League colleges and other top schools receive tens of thousands of applications each cycle, meaning that admissions officers have roughly ten minutes — sometimes less — to evaluate each application. If a student fails to hook an admissions officer’s attention within the first three minutes, their odds of acceptance plummet.
To make matters worse: What most students and parents assume will impress admissions officers is often exactly what lands their applications in the rejection pile.
There are five common misconceptions that lead to disaster on students’ applications. Learning how to avoid them can help you level up your odds of admission to your dream school. Here’s what you’re (probably) getting wrong about the admissions process:
A 4.0 isn’t that impressive
Every parent wants to believe that their child is uniquely gifted, but a 4.0 doesn’t make your kid Einstein — and it certainly won’t stop admissions officers in their tracks.
Given the rising trend of grade inflation, GPAs have gone up even as the nation’s average test scores have gone down. In 2016, 47% of high school students had a 4.0 GPA; the average GPA as of 2021 was 3.36. This means that simply listing a 4.0 GPA on your transcript places you among roughly half of the general student population.
Top schools receive an avalanche of applications from academically impressive students who have proven themselves ready for rigorous collegiate coursework.
Yes, a 4.0 GPA is the absolute baseline for admission at a top school. But at the same time, students must also demonstrate their academic prowess beyond just their grades — even enrolling in the most challenging courses or AP and IB classes is not enough.
Students should be actively seeking out competitive and academically rigorous summer programs, college courses, opportunities for independent learning, and research assistantships. A student’s academic repertoire should extend far beyond what is offered at their school.
A top summer program is actually more competitive than Harvard
Attending a prestigious, merit-based summer program can give your student a competitive edge in the college admissions process; however, most parents fail to realize that some of these programs are harder to get into than the Ivy League itself.
Renowned programs such as Research Science Institute (RSI), Telluride Association Summer Seminars (TASS), Anson L. Clark Scholars Program, and The Jackson Laboratory Summer Student Program can have single-digit acceptance rates, admitting less than 100 students per year. Some are so competitive that they offer early admissions, similar to elite higher-ed institutions’ early action and early decision programs.
Families that fail to plan ahead or devote the time and effort required for these applications are often forced to pursue other, less competitive pre-college summer programs, hoping that they will have a similar impact on their college applications—which, unfortunately, they will not.
Because of the steep competition, I recommend approaching the summer program application process as you would college applications: creating a balanced list of reach, match, and safety schools (ideally 2–3 of each), and preparing applications well in advance of their winter deadlines.
Admissions officers know you got your kid that flashy internship
You may think that leveraging your connections to get your kid an eyecatching internship at a Fortune 500 company will boost their admissions profile, but nothing could be further from the truth.
While interning can be a beneficial way for students to get hands-on experience in their desired field, admissions officers can easily spot when an internship is the result of a parent’s connections rather than a student’s merit.
There are usually two key giveaways. No admissions officer is going to buy that your 16-year-old landed an internship at Google for themselves. Another red flag? If a student’s activities, essays, and coursework are all oriented around environmental sustainability but they interned at a high-powered law firm, an admissions officer is more likely to think that Daddy is a lawyer—not that the student has a secondary interest in legal theory.
Still, an internship is an enriching opportunity, and one that admissions officers look favorably on. But that’s only if the student has done the hard work to send cold emails, establish long-term connections on their own, or navigate an application process to support their core interests.
That passion project could hurt your kid’s odds of admission
In recent years, the “passion project” has become a popular way for students to distinguish themselves from other applicants through an independent initiative.
When done right, it’s a testament to a student’s commitment to their interests and dedication to bettering their communities. But when it’s obvious that a student built a fancy website or launched a vague initiative just to pad their application, a passion project can hurt more than it helps.
Projects that seek to make an impact in a global setting, such as setting up hospital programs in distant countries, raise red flags to admissions officers, who will likely doubt that a high school student can complete their academic tasks and such an ambitious intercontinental project.
Parents should be particularly wary of private consultancies that advertise independent projects as a way of getting into college, rather than an authentic way to mobilize personal interests for public good.
An effective and meaningful passion project will have real impact — measurable results and community engagement — and it will tell admissions officers something deeper about the student and their background, not just their desire to get into a top school.
Some colleges are way more selective than admissions rates indicate
Many students and families look to schools’ published admissions rates to gauge their odds of acceptance — but these numbers can be significantly misleading.
For instance, if you’re applying to an out-of-state public school, the actual acceptance rate for your demographic may be far lower than what’s reported. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the average admissions rate was 16.8% for the 2022–23 cycle. However, that number translated to a staggering 43.1% for in-state applicants and 8.2% for those out-of-state — the aggregated rate ultimately means little, as admission odds are drastically different depending on applicants’ geographic location.
Even at elite private schools, the admissions rate is not necessarily a good indicator of one’s odds of admission.
The University of Pennsylvania received over 65,000 applications in the 2023–24 cycle, but students aren’t actually up against that many applicants.
Instead, they are each competing within a specific subset of students with similar academic interests, extracurricular experiences and backgrounds. It’s better to focus less on the overall admissions rate and more on how to stand out from the closest competition.
In the last five years, the playbook for Ivy League admissions has completely changed. Parents who attended a top school or helped an older child achieve their collegiate dreams should not assume that they understand what the process looks like today, or that they are equipped to help their high schooler get into college.
Gabriel Cramer is the Managing Director of Command Education. An education partner of the NY Post.
