The hardest colleges to get into?
12/08/12 10:39
Q. What are the hardest colleges to get into?
A. It all depends.
If you are a boy, the hardest to get into are probably Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Scripps, and Bryn Mawr. If you are a girl, I would say Hampden-Sydney, Deep Springs, Wabash, and Morehouse.
If your favorite classical composer is Justin Bieber, it would probably be Juilliard or Curtis Institute of Music. If your mother is the only one who has ever said anything nice about your drawings, it could be the Rhode Island School of Design. If you dress like the average male high school guidance counselor, it could be the Fashion Institute of Technology. If you don’t have a car, it could be Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, known as being the highest (altitude) college campus in the country.
I remember years ago pulling on a huge wooden door to get into the Dartmouth admissions office and thinking, “This really is a hard college to get into.”
Other than those, the colleges that I think are the hardest to get into include (in alphabetical order): Amherst College, MA; Brown University, RI; California Institute of Technology, CA; Columbia University, NY; Dartmouth College, NH; Duke University, NC; Georgetown University, DC; Harvard University, MA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA; Princeton University, NJ; Stanford University, CA; Swarthmore College, PA; University of Pennsylvania, PA; Williams College, MA and Yale University, CT. Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Pomona, Claremont McKenna College, and Carleton may be a little easier to get into, but not by much. The University of Virginia, William & Mary, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are also hard schools to get into for out-of-state students.
Not by my design, but over the past twenty years I have ended up helping a lot of students get into these very selective schools. I guess I must not be as smart as they are. For at least fifteen years I was thinking that you needed to be really smart to get into these schools. I finally realized that what they all had in common was that they just got the job done. When they knew they needed to write a great essay, they just worked at it until they got it done. When they knew they needed an A on a test, they just did whatever it took to get that done. When they needed to get to class, to practice, and get application materials in by the deadline, they just got it done. It was as if no one had ever told them that they couldn’t get it done. They just did it. They got it done. I don’t know whether or not they were “smart.” Maybe they thought Mr. Jones, their high school guidance counselor, was a fashionistus. Maybe they thought Justin Bieber wrote the national anthem. I just know they made the effort and they got it done.
There are 4000 colleges in the United States. If you plan ahead, and make the effort, you can get into them all . . . almost.
A. It all depends.
If you are a boy, the hardest to get into are probably Wellesley, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Scripps, and Bryn Mawr. If you are a girl, I would say Hampden-Sydney, Deep Springs, Wabash, and Morehouse.
If your favorite classical composer is Justin Bieber, it would probably be Juilliard or Curtis Institute of Music. If your mother is the only one who has ever said anything nice about your drawings, it could be the Rhode Island School of Design. If you dress like the average male high school guidance counselor, it could be the Fashion Institute of Technology. If you don’t have a car, it could be Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, known as being the highest (altitude) college campus in the country.
I remember years ago pulling on a huge wooden door to get into the Dartmouth admissions office and thinking, “This really is a hard college to get into.”
Other than those, the colleges that I think are the hardest to get into include (in alphabetical order): Amherst College, MA; Brown University, RI; California Institute of Technology, CA; Columbia University, NY; Dartmouth College, NH; Duke University, NC; Georgetown University, DC; Harvard University, MA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA; Princeton University, NJ; Stanford University, CA; Swarthmore College, PA; University of Pennsylvania, PA; Williams College, MA and Yale University, CT. Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Pomona, Claremont McKenna College, and Carleton may be a little easier to get into, but not by much. The University of Virginia, William & Mary, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are also hard schools to get into for out-of-state students.
Not by my design, but over the past twenty years I have ended up helping a lot of students get into these very selective schools. I guess I must not be as smart as they are. For at least fifteen years I was thinking that you needed to be really smart to get into these schools. I finally realized that what they all had in common was that they just got the job done. When they knew they needed to write a great essay, they just worked at it until they got it done. When they knew they needed an A on a test, they just did whatever it took to get that done. When they needed to get to class, to practice, and get application materials in by the deadline, they just got it done. It was as if no one had ever told them that they couldn’t get it done. They just did it. They got it done. I don’t know whether or not they were “smart.” Maybe they thought Mr. Jones, their high school guidance counselor, was a fashionistus. Maybe they thought Justin Bieber wrote the national anthem. I just know they made the effort and they got it done.
There are 4000 colleges in the United States. If you plan ahead, and make the effort, you can get into them all . . . almost.