Ivy Day

At the exact moment that I posted this, all the Ivy League schools released their admissions decisions. Many “Ivy Plus” schools will also be releasing decisions within this week. There is a lot to consider about applying to the Ivies. For starters, they only offer binding Early Decision (with no scholarship money given) or Regular Decision. The admit rate for these schools is around 5%, and everyone applying (for the most part) all has the same straight A record, test scores around 1500 (as most of these schools require testing again), and lots of great extracurriculars. If a student really wants to attend one of these schools (and she can afford it), she should give serious thought to applying Early Decision since her chances of being admitted would go almost “all the way up” to 15%, and she would be part of a much smaller applicant pool.

I was talking with a younger student the other day who wanted to “shoot her shot” at an Ivy Plus school. There’s no reason not to…except the fact that these schools all cost about $90K per year or more (unless you have financial need). This particular student knows she can’t afford it; she just wanted to see if she would get in. Some students view it this way, while others don’t want to take all the time on the essays if they know they can’t go. It’s really important that families have a conversation about budget before students get too into the process. It’s not the greatest of situations if a student gets accepted to one of these schools then the family needs to say that roughly $400,000 for an undergraduate degree isn’t in the budget. It’s also not great financial advice to say, “if you get in, we’ll find a way to finance it.”

However, the Ivy League schools have really started to prioritize giving financial aid to “low or moderate” income families. Columbia covers tuition for families with an annual income below $150,000, Penn gives free tuition to families earning less than $200,000, and for Brown and Dartmouth free tuition goes to families making less than $125,000. Princeton covers full tuition for families making up to $250,000 and covers the full cost of attendance (including housing and food) for most families making up to $150,000. Yale gives free tuition for families making under $200,000, and the total cost of attendance is covered for families who make less than $100,000. Harvard gives free tuition to families earning up to $200,000, and the full cost of attendance goes to families making less than $100,000. Notre Dame is giving free tuition to families making less than $150,000. A friend of mine who has retired was able to take advantage of one of these offers when her son got into multiple Ivies and Ivy Plus schools.

Students will also want to research these schools to learn how each one is unique and find the schools that offer what they’re looking for; they’re not all the same. So far, I’ve toured all the Ivies except Cornell and Dartmouth. The supplemental essays are very important to these schools and will require quite a bit of work. This definitely isn’t something to be done at the last minute. (Pic - courtesy of UPenn - they are all over campus!)