The Easiest Ivy League to Get Into: A Perspective Beyond Admission Rates
What is the Ivy League?
The Ivy League is a group of 8 elite private research universities in the Northeastern United States, including:
- Harvard University
- Yale University
- Princeton University
- Dartmouth College
- Cornell University
- Brown University
- University of Pennsylvania
- Columbia University
The League established its prestige and high social regard through its extensive history of scholastic achievement and its largely esteemed alumni networks.
Are you dreaming of joining the ranks of Ivy League graduates? Take the first step toward your academic future with Kollegio! Sign up today to access personalized college counseling features like our Essay Brainstormer and Review, AI Planner, Activity Planner, and College Match, designed to guide you through the application process successfully.
The Easiest One to Get Into
If you search it up or ask AI, 9 times out of 10, the answer will be Cornell. However, this answer is objective and mainly biased on only one factor: admission rates. Cornell has the highest admission rate and is a newer member of the Ivy League than its counterparts, explaining the reasoning behind this conclusion.
In the arbitrary context of college admissions, though, it is important to have a subjective perspective on the ‘easiest Ivy League to get into’ in order to fit this answer specific to your student profile. This blog post will dive into how exactly to go about this.
What Kind of Students Are These Schools Looking for?
Naturally, the Ivy League has a record of low acceptance rates, accounting for the unique classes they accept each year. But what constitutes the admission criteria used to decide those acceptances? Although acceptance rates and median standardized test scores are key metrics in determining the ‘competitiveness’ of a school, they do not tell us what exactly the particular school cares about. In other words, it is more difficult to measure the growing qualitative factors taken into consideration by these universities.
In a world where many schools have been test-optional post-pandemic and a new emphasis on holistic application review is implemented for many schools, it is hard to determine which factors to stress the higher quality of in your application. Let's break these factors down.
The Common Data Set
What many students do not know about in determining the ‘easiest Ivy League schools’ to get into is the common data set (CDS). Every individual school, Ivy League or not, releases the common data set on a year-by-year basis at the end of every application cycle.
In essence, the common data set tells you everything you need to know about how important that individual university weighed every factor in the college application when reviewing their applicants for that year. These factors include letters of recommendation, test scores, essays, and other demographic factors. Alternatively, you can check out Kollegio for all of these data in one place instead of searching for each college's Common Data Set individually
Let’s look at the CDS for Yale’s 2022-2023 application cycle:
The table above takes the most important factors of a student’s application to a school. In this case, Yale ranks each student's importance or weight in the holistic profile review. This information can provide more specific insights to each student and help them decide which Ivy League might be the easiest to get into.
For example, let’s say Dan has a 1550 SAT, but he spent a lot of time studying for the SAT and didn’t really have time to attend his club meetings or do much else. Even though Dan has a great SAT score, Yale might not necessarily be the easiest Ivy League to get into for him because Yale values extracurricular activities as ‘Very Important’ compared to test scores ranked as ‘Considered.’
Understanding Alumni Interviews
Another factor specific to the Ivy League and not all universities is the interview portion of the application review. High-performing candidates who have the potential to be admitted are often invited to interview with Ivy League alumni. This is another highly qualitative and immeasurable portion of the application, adding to our subjective view of the easiest Ivy League to get into.
There are two types of alumni interviews: Evaluative and non-evaluative. Evaluative interviews are done to gain more insight so that admissions officers can make a more well-informed admissions decision on a student. These interviews affect your decision outcome, whereas non-evaluative interviews do not. These interviews are solely meant to help you understand the school's culture and get more insight into the school.
UPenn recently renamed their alumni interviews as ‘alumni conversations,’ for which interviews were changed to non-evaluative for the 2023-2024 application cycle.
An Alternative Approach: Transfer Applicants
An unconventional approach to magnifying the ease of getting into a particular Ivy is the transfer route. A lot of students get discouraged when they don’t get into the Ivy League they researched was the easiest to get into, but they don't shy away from the transfer path. Starting undergrad in community college for a year and transferring to an Ivy League school is a wise alternative for saving money and increasing your chances of getting into an Ivy League.
While there are always exceptions, for most schools, transfer acceptance rates are generally higher than first-year rates. For example, this is true for Columbia, with a 3.9% first-year acceptance rate compared to an 11% transfer acceptance rate and Cornell's 7.5% compared to 13.8%.
Remember that even if you cannot get into the ‘easiest Ivy League’ according to your standards, it is never the end, and there are always other paths to get there.
How Kollegio Can Help You
Kollegio AI is an AI-driven college counseling system with many features relevant to determining which Ivy League schools are easiest according to your student profile. It has students answer open-ended prompts about themselves, their interests, descriptions of extracurricular pursuits, and stats to tell you how you compare to the average student profile of any school you can think of. Check it out at Kollegio.
Check out our blogs for more information on college admissions and related topics.
By Azra Mody
