Why only dream of Ivy League schools?

“A Dream is not meant to be dreamed forever; instead it’s meant for you to work hard and smart enough until success wakes you up from it.” - Edmond Mbiaka. All of us dream of achieving the impossible but only a fraction of us work on turning it into reality or rather know how to turn into reality.

To book your seat in one of the world’s best universities in the world, it isn’t just sheer hard work that can see you through. “Smart Work” is a term everyone has heard of but only a few understand. There is a very fine line that differentiates Smart work from Hard work and hence there are major misconceptions amongst people.

Let’s start with what Smart Work means, does it simply mean “pretending to work?” or does it mean to “work endlessly with no stop in sight until success knocks on your door?”. Smart work in true essence is balancing the amount of hard work with what’s required to achieve the desired results.

You should set goals for yourself, have a target which you would like to achieve in the short term and a long term goal as well. Now, calculate what's required from your end to achieve that short term goal of yours.

With all this calculation done, now you have figured out the path and the effort required to reach there. Face all the challenges head-on and do make sure your short term goals align with your long term goals for the best results and a streamlined action plan!

Once a person finds a way to balance the efforts put in for something and yield the maximum results out of it, he or she is bound to be far ahead of the competition without drowning himself or herself under heaps of workload. In this blog, we will go over the parameters that separate students that get into Ivy League’s or high schools have vs those who don’t and also how to get into ivy league colleges like Brown University, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.

Before starting, let’s give you a brief overview about myself, My name is Aditya Ranjan and I am currently a Masters student at the best research university in Asia in one of the most competitive and rigorous courses for computer science i.e. Masters in Computing at National University of Singapore (Singapore's flagship University). I had applied to the top Universities in the United Kingdom, Australia etc. and was successful in receiving offer letters from all the Universities I had applied to.

To name a few, they range from the University of Birmingham in the UK to the University of Melbourne in Australia. Apart from pursuing my Masters, I am running my own startup which is currently under incubation at NUS Enterprise at the age of 22.

Let’s get back to the factors that differentiate successful applicants who make it to their dream or top colleges and those who don’t. Everyone has a dream of where they want to be or what path they want to take to achieve their target but only a few make it.

You would have often seen that the person who works the hardest in the class is often not the topper of the class instead it’s generally someone who enjoys his life, spends quality time playing, interacting etc. and then ends up acing the exam.

One of the most integral parts of smart work is time management, we should train ourselves in a way where we make the most efficient use of time and keep the wastage to a minimum. You must be thinking isn’t it obvious though and what about the times when someone feels like doing nothing and spending the day like a couch potato?

Well, the answer to that is what if you estimate and factor in the time you know you are going to waste before-hand (c’mon you know yourself well enough to know how much time you will waste) and now you will see things going as per plan. Voila!

Let’s talk about how you can learn the core principles of smart work and how you will be able to inculcate this into your daily routine. To begin with, understand how you use your time and where you have to put in most of your efforts.

I’ll give you a personal example which helped me understand this to a better extent, my internship at NUS which was a part of GAIP had a very hectic time schedule. We were attending a rigorous internship with little time to spare and with the trip being my first trip to Singapore; I was very eager to explore the place with my new-found friends I had made during the internship but was difficult to manage altogether.

With strict timelines for assignments and daily tests, the academic load was a very interesting challenge. Coping up with the daily tasks and then finding out time to explore was an even bigger challenge! Yet, with the formulation of the above advice, I was able to learn how to incorporate the advice to my daily schedule which helped me manage my time a lot better, leading to a very well rounded balance of work and play leading to one of the best experiences of my life!

I would like to conclude my tirade on smart work by saying that focus on smart work rather than hard work. You will never see a tiger or lion running aimlessly and will only approach its target using a very sophisticated and planned approach. Do, the same and the success rate of your desired outcome will improve drastically.

Now, let’s talk about improving your chances of making it into your dream college by taking a more head-on approach to understanding it. I will break down my experience and understanding of this subject in the form of a few questions below.

What CGPA/GPA or average GPA should I maintain to be able to get into the best colleges?

The prime admission requirement for getting into an Ivy League University is “8 & above”. Now, let me explain this from a University’s perspective. Any well-recognised university receives college applications in thousands and it is realistically impossible for an admission’s office to go through each and every application.

So, for the admission process for the first round of filtering of the applications, it’s generally done using CGPA/GPA and a score below 8 is generally not selected in the first round. So, focus on maintaining a respectable score of 8 and above to better your chances.

Is there any strategy for acing the Ivy league admissions or college admissions?

YES, please strategise! As soon as you realise what’s your aim and where you would like to see yourself 3 to 4 years down the line, start strategizing. Every step you take, starting from the internships you do to the courses you select if you have the option to do so should be structured in a way which at the end of the day adds more weightage to your profile and improves your CV giving you an edge over the competition.

Let’s think this through from a Universities perspective. Who do you think will have better chances of selection for a particular stream, someone with sufficient and relevant experience in the applying stream or someone who does not?

How to select the best colleges according to your personal needs and increases your acceptance rate?

The answer to this question is going to vary from person to person and scenario to scenario basis. Assuming, you have a course in mind that you would like to pursue, your next area of focus should be to go through all the colleges offering the course and make a list ranking them from most ambitious to definite selection.

Now, to get an idea of where you will get selected can be grasped by reading on the web about applicants who got selected and what their profiles were etc. Further, you should also consult your friends who have gone through the same process and education consultants if necessary as they go through many profiles on a daily basis and have developed a sense of which University requires what kind of student profiles for a successful application.

Further, another important consideration for many International University aspirants and their parents is the country the said college is based in. Apart from the University and how good it might be, the place where you live while completing the course should be an international student friendly, tolerant & peaceful society and the right fit in terms of internship/ job opportunities after the course is completed.

Afterall, I am sure you would not want to study in a place where you are not welcome or don’t see any internship opportunities which might add value to your profile.

Is work experience important?

To understand, the role work experience might play into your applications would require you to understand that the courses generally have two options. One of them is driven by coursework and the other is driven by research.

To get into research oriented courses you should have decent exposure to the research arena and have contributed to it sufficiently. I am sure you understand that the University will only be interested to give their sought after seats to deserving candidates. In the case of course work driven courses, the value work experience will add would depend on the type of course or degree you are applying for.

Eg. In the case of MBA or other management related courses, Universities generally ask for work experience because the course is structured in a manner where students with work experience will be in a better position to comprehend it.

So, my advice to you is to look at the course you are applying for and then decide if having relevant work experience is going to improve your chances of getting selected or not. If you feel like that’s not the case for your course, then fret not as your chances of selection should be fairly decent.

Are Letter of Recommendations important?

Absolutely, do not consider Letter Of Recommendations to be a minor factor in your chances of getting selected in a University. Strong LOR’s from well-reputed industry experts, professor’s or from professionals relevant to the course you are applying for has the ability to be a major deciding factor for an admission’s office of a University.

After all, established people in the relevant domains have reached their position after going through their own fair share of hardships and the industry definitely understands this and takes into consideration their words seriously. So, try your best to get strong LOR’s from relevant professionals and try getting a decent number of them.

To summarise, apart from your SOP, these three factors can be the deciding factor between you getting that seat by edging out your competition or getting left out. Make sure to take all these factors very seriously and end up making the best use of them to help you out in your goal.

Further, do take your internships seriously as they can be a key factor to improving your profile and gearing it up for a certain role. I have immensely benefited from my past experiences and internships done over the time with Corporate Gurukul, NUS, Hewlett Packard Enterprise etc which have helped me improve my time management skills through experiential learning and am now able to incorporate that experience to skillfully manage Masters and running a startup simultaneously.

I would suggest you learn from such experiences as well and live up to your own expectations. Wishing you all “best of luck” for achieving that dream of yours and remember to work smart! ;)

Feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin or email if you have any questions or to offer any feedback regarding this post.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR