

And we can certainly tell you that the bar is much higher than you may expect. We understand both the level of competition that Ivy-bound students are competing against and the type of academic/extracurricular profile that is necessary to gain a spot at these coveted universities. And so how you market yourself in your application through your extracurricular “hook” matters.Īt AdmissionSight, we’ve consistently placed students into the top universities every year. At the end of the day, you have to understand that admissions officers accept applications, they don’t necessarily admit students. In fact, it’s not unusual to see high school students with anywhere from 10-15 different extracurriculars on their resume ( 15!? How on earth do you do 15 activities, you might ask?) on their application to demonstrate the degree of their involvement. Trust us, we’ve seen it happen time and time again. Those applicants are a dime a dozen and playing that card will significantly diminish your odds of admission. But now, the standards are much higher and you need a unique and differentiated angle to get in, including developing a strong “hook” and standing out from the rest of the applicants out there.Īn Asian student who wants to study biology and become a doctor? Good luck. Back then, being involved in school activities and well-rounded was enough to merit a strong extracurricular score. The same goes for extracurricular activities. Too many students have 4.0’s and strong SAT scores to make those academic stats the norm, and instead you now have to do much more on top of that to get in. Whereas a top academic index would simply mean top grades and test scores, nowadays that’s no longer the case. The Academic Index is no longer relevant, and in its place is a rubric that requires much higher standards to demonstrate academic proficiency.

For some schools, it was on a scale of 1-5, or 1-10, and that particular score would be assigned to the candidate as well.īut over the course of the past few years, the bar has been raised significantly and the standards for admission have evolved tremendously. In addition, the extracurricular profile would get assigned a graded score.

A 4.0 GPA and 1600 SAT score would essentially be a perfect applicant academically. Stronger scores and more exams would correlate to a higher Academic Index, which would be one of the factors for admission. At least, not if you’re aiming to get into the cream of the crop Top 10/Ivy League universities.īack then, the Ivy Leagues had a rubric called an Academic Index that was used to rank students according to their academic profile on the basis of their GPA, SAT, SAT Subject Tests, and AP Exam scores. The modern day 4.0 GPA and 1600 SAT score student is no longer impressive. Is a 1600 SAT a good score? Is a 4.0 a good GPA?
