Rhys Dyer, '26
Each year, children all over the nation are pressured by overly ambitious parents to sacrifice their time, mental wellbeing, and even relationships in pursuit of one thing: the Ivy League dream. The first problem with Ivy League schools is the probability. A total of 7,240 people were accepted to Harvard in the fall of 2022. There are 8 major Ivy League institutions in the US, which means around 57,920 people are accepted to Ivy Leagues each year. The admission statistics for the class of 2026 reached a record high with over 375000 applicants across all Ivy Leagues. No matter how impressive your resume is, the Ivy League is a lottery. If you do the math, about 15 in 100 applicants will be accepted to an Ivy League if they apply to all Ivy Leagues.
If you are looking to send your child to Harvard or Princeton or to a specific Ivy, the odds continue to get worse. In addition, most applicants have near-perfect grades and test scores. You have to find something that will make you stand out among everyone else, which is no easy feat. You have to combine perfect grades and test scores with a large donation to the school, an athletic scholarship, a strong recommendation from someone with a connection to admissions, win the Nobel Prize or the Nobel Peace Prize, be the founder of a successful non-profit organization, or finish a project that benefits society in a way which also showcases your innate intellect as a person. These things listed above greatly improve the odds of acceptance, although it is still possible to lottery in. Essentially, you will be leaving acceptance up to fate. The odds continue to get worse as Ivy Leagues schools place importance on diversification as well as intellect, ambition, determination, and accomplishments. They have quotas (not exact numbers, but ballpark) they meet by choosing students from every region in the nation and by choosing people from all different cultures, races, and religious backgrounds. Acceptance favors genius and requires the student to have an instilled love for learning. They must keep up inhumane levels of discipline in order to be able to sacrifice so much time and spend so much effort towards building up their resume.
While it is true that Ivy Leagues are indisputably some of the best institutions for academics in the world and can provide invaluable real-world connections, there are many great schools out there. There is a plethora of solid liberal arts colleges and other universities in and out of the US that can get close to Ivy’s in academics and can overpower Ivy’s by providing fuller and richer college experiences.
For example, Oxford, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, has a 17.5% acceptance rate. While this rate is much higher than Harvard’s 4%, Oxford is by no means inferior. Although Oxford is an extreme example, there’s no shortage of suitable options. “Tiny Ivy’s” or prestigious liberal arts colleges such as Middlebury or Haverford have much higher acceptance rates ranging from 10-15% and may prove to be a better match for some applicants. These colleges can stand equal with academic rigor and expectations in terms of content and experience, which more than makes up for the resource deficit.
In a recent article by Kayla Bartsch, she exploits these major institutions for club selectivity and elitism. From investing clubs, backpacking clubs, and even musical improv clubs, hundreds of applicants are denied each year. Kayla interviewed a current Yale student. After reflecting on her own experience at Yale, she concluded that the students often impose this elitism onto themselves. This elitism comes from a place of insecurity, and who’s surprised? Many years of their life have been spent trying to prove and justify their worthiness to themselves, parents, or even their peers. These unhealthy ways of thinking carry into the rest of their lives, forever impacted by a superiority complex of their own creation. In the end, who’s to say any of the work will provide an authentic experience full of value in one’s adulthood?
It is my personal belief that the school system should hope to instill a love of learning into students and foster strong critical thinking skills, as well as impactful social skills that set up young inquisitive minds to be able to make a significant difference in the world. The Ivy League dream creates a mindset for learning that is dependent on academic validation and achievement rather than enjoyment. Many former Ivy League students work for years in highschool, and then work for years in college. Life's drudgery culminates after graduation from school. Many former students are spit out into the world with no purpose or drive outside of this validation, ultimately creating people that are utterly burnt-out before they’ve even started the real work. As Robert Frost once noted, there are, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,” and we can’t travel both. After school, there are effectively two paths to follow: a life to be proud of or a life where solace is only found for two days on the weekends. To ensure one is able to make their stamp on the world, I believe the clearest path is the “one less traveled by.”