How to Guarantee an Ivy League Acceptance

Lessons from 40,000 hours spent with high-achieving teenagers

Parents: since I wrote this for both you and your teenager, I have made an audio version of this article to share with your kids since they are probably much more likely to listen than read... You can access it here.

When the founder of Snapchat, Evan Spiegel, was 17, he called me in the fall of his senior year and said, "Hey Danny, I've decided I'm not going to apply to Stanford. I'm not at the top of my class, and there are so many essays, it's just not worth it."  

 

Now, over the years, I have heard similar statements from students around the world. And it's understandable. You've probably heard how "it's impossible to get into an Ivy League or an Ivy-Plus university like Stanford, University of Chicago, Duke, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, MIT, and Cal Tech.

I mean, Stanford and Harvard have a 3.5% acceptance rate, right? And then there's that kid your mom's friend knows who started a nationwide initiative designed to make 3 million sweaters to ensure that all the freezing chihuahuas living in Denmark stay warm... In fact, that's why I typically advise students to simply stop going to high school, fly to Jamaica, and become bartenders.

Oh, wait…I advise just the opposite.

You see, for the last 20 years, I have worked off the fundamental belief, "If you don't ask, you can't get." This was borne out of my own experience where my principal told me I would never get into Stanford, so I shouldn't even apply. (That was a fun day.) But yes, I ignored her and that's where I went.

And it's why I told Evan Spiegel, "Yeah, you're applying to Stanford, and I don't want to hear any more crap about it."

Now, the truth is that I didn't care whether Evan applied to Stanford or not. For me, it has never been about the names of the colleges my students attend; it's about helping them find the best match for who they are and what they are interested in. However, in Evan's case, he had created a really strong graphic design portfolio in high school that was a good match for Stanford's product design program in which Evan would eventually end up first pitching the idea for Snapchat.

You see, while it's true that Evan wasn't the valedictorian of his school, his grades and SAT scores were good enough to meet what I call "threshold," which I will go into more detail about in a bit. In other words, he didn't need to be a student with 14 AP classes and all As—what he needed to be was authentically interesting.

But Danny, aren't you contradicting yourself? You just said you believe it doesn't matter where your students attend but then you give an example of the world's youngest billionaire going to Stanford. Are you just trying to flex? Do you think that going to an Ivy or Ivy-plus school is the key to success or not?

Not. 

The truth is that when I look through my alumni magazine, I see a boatload of pretty normal people--doctors, teachers, college counselors, living their lives. In fact, of the 20 CEOs of the nation's biggest companies by revenue, only 1 attended an Ivy.

At the same time, ask me if I had a great experience at Stanford.

Yep.

I never spent so much time sleeping and playing Frisbee in my life, and I still graduated with honors.

What I'm trying to say is that Stanford didn't open some magic door of high-paying job awesomeness for me or my friends, nor did it give me an education that was so much better than a state school. (I once had a Nobel prize-winning professor who was so boring, I skipped the lectures and just read the books.)

What Stanford did provide were really cool students from all over the world who were driven to try all kinds of things. So, since we become the people with whom we surround ourselves, do I think there is a benefit to attending a top college? Well, coming from the kid whose graduating class of 900 sent 17% to college and, at some point, 25% to prison, I'm gonna say yeah, I do.

And while I honestly believe that no one in the world gives a crap about whether I went to Stanford or so and so went to Harvard, I can't deny the ego-stroke that comes from getting in.

I just wish people didn't have to drop it in conversation like some kind of badge of honor. (Did I mention I spent four years sleeping and playing Frisbee?) Honestly, I believe the name perception is pretty dumb, but I can't deny its power in our society, so I totally get why a high-achieving student is setting their sights on the top 10 colleges. I was no different.

Uh, Danny? I’m reading this article because of the title, "How to Guarantee an Ivy League Admission" not to hear you pontificate about your worldview.

I hear you.

And not only do I believe that students can get accepted to Ivies if they understand and follow some basic principles, but I also know these principles can be taught.

They just may not be what you typically hear.

You see, the real reason I'm writing this article is because I'm tired.

No, I'm not tired because of the 40,000 hours I've spent working with teenagers (which either makes me an expert or slightly bonkers, and the truth is probably both).

I'm tired because so many treat college admissions like it's some kind of game to be played. There are books and YouTube videos and student-made TikToks that discuss how to create "hooks" or how to be "pointy" (i.e. super good in one thing) or how to model your essay off the girl who compares herself to Costco or the one who made friends with ghosts while saving kids from a burning orphanage while coming up with a new way to clone wolverines…

What I haven't ever seen is what I consider to be the most important part of college admissions, and it’s why I still plan on spending thousands of more hours working with teenagers.

The most important part is to first realize that high school is an amazing opportunity to develop the skills and the psychology that can allow students to be successful (and more importantly happy). In other words, you get to discover how much of an ass-kicker you can be.

And yes, I wrote that line on the off chance a high school student actually reads or listens to this, even though I'm also writing this for you parents.

In other words, for 20 years, families may have hired me to help their kids get into great schools. But I see my real job as helping students become the best versions of themselves.

So you want to really know how to guarantee an acceptance to an Ivy?

Well, strap in, and I'm going to explain things not through the lens of "what works" but rather the inner qualities I know students can develop, even if they don't think they can yet.

Step 1: Raise your expectations of what is possible.

So, I had a student named Blake. And when Blake was 16, I asked him this question: If you had a billion dollars, were already out of college, and could have any job—no restriction—what would it be?

He said, "Oh, I'd be a music producer." He then added, "But the music industry is so hard to break into that I'll probably just go into some kind of business like my dad."

I replied, "Blake, I didn't ask you to tell me why you couldn't do something. I just want you to dream for a minute without any restrictions." I then asked him if he could be mentored by any person in the world, who would it be?

He immediately said, "Oh Max Martin or Benny Blanco." (For you old parents out there, these are two huge music producers.)

To make a long (but awesome) story short, I convinced Blake that he should cold-email these producers to see if they would respond. When he expressed his extreme doubt in my sanity and in any chance they would respond, I explained that, as a teenager, he had a superpower he was not aware of:  adults would want to help him succeed in a way they wouldn't for a twenty-something.

Now it took several months for Blake to get the right contact information and hear back from someone. And when he did, it was an assistant for Benny Blanco who asked if Blake wanted to spend one-day moving furniture. I told Blake he was going to be the best damn furniture mover the world had ever seen by going early and asking if he could help in any other way.

When Blake didn't meet Benny, he thought that he was done. That's when I helped Blake write a follow-up thank you email telling Benny's people he would be willing to lick the floor if they needed him to (okay, he just said he would be available for anything they might need).

This resulted in three more days of moving furniture, which resulted in Blake meeting Benny, which resulted in a 3.5-year internship, which resulted in Blake getting signed as a music producer, which resulted in Blake winning three Grammy Awards at age 25 for producing Lizzo's album.

What's my point?

The first of the 6 (yes, count them 6) main steps I am going to discuss today is that it's time to raise your expectations about what is possible. Blake Slatkin is no different than any of you. He just was willing to think big and ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask for what he wanted. Does this mean you are going to win a Grammy? No, but I assure you that if you are a 9th, 10th, or 11th grader and you start thinking about what you might love to do and are willing to keep reaching out to big-time mentors, you might just be amazed at what happens.

So again, Step 1: Raise your expectations of what is possible.

Step 2: Surpass threshold and maximize time.

 Claire was a student of mine who went to a high school in Los Angeles.

 One day I asked her, "How are your classes going?"

"Oh great, my whale rap went over well."

"I'm sorry," I said, "your whale rap?"

"Yeah, wanna hear it?"

"Ummm, duh."

So she proceeded to turn on a beat on her phone and rap about bowhead whales, including the lines:

"If you see a bowhead, it'll have a couple of friends.

Maybe two or three buddies but it all depends.

And they travel the distance.

Yeah, they are persistent.

You'll find them up north with the penguins, not pigeons."

You get the drift.

Now Claire graduated with a 4.1 GPA and a 32 ACT score.

She was also the only student from her school to get into Stanford that year.

Wait, what?

Yep.  

Yes, there were many other students at her school who had better grades and higher test scores, but Claire was the master of Step 2. She met threshold and maximized time.

You see, Claire is a bit of an autodidact (auto meaning self and didact meaning teach). In other words, she taught herself how to play the ukulele, she sings, she is into product design, and she wrote her personal statement about her love for watching theoretical math videos (even though math was her worst subject).

Now Claire wasn't about winning awards or becoming the best ukulele player in the world. She just found many things interesting and would keep trying new things until she found something she liked. Then she would figure out how to block out time to do those things.

Part of the way she did this was to not take every advanced class her school offered but, instead, take the ones she found interesting, the ones in which the teacher was known to be good, and the ones in which the workload was more manageable. She found this out by asking older students.

Thus, if you were to look at her transcript, it would show that she was among the top students at her school in terms of the strength of her schedule, and she got mostly As. She did, however, get a few A-s and a B or two.

She then used her free periods in school to get work done, regularly met with her teachers to get time-saving advice, and blocked out time in her weekly schedule for her to make music, learn instruments, and study theoretical math videos (among other things). It was kind of like she set a series of weekly doctor's appointments with herself that could not be moved. 

In other words, instead of stressing about getting a 93 instead of a 92.4 in a subject, she tried to enjoy her classes, knowing that as long as she met a college's threshold, she would be good. 

Threshold is not a technical term; it's my term for meeting a college's generally accepted expectations for courses, grades, and test scores. It's not about a specific GPA because the GPA has no context. A GPA doesn't show what classes a student took or when they took them. It doesn't explain how some teachers at certain schools never give As. It doesn't tell the story about how a student got better grades over time or that a student's Bs were earned in math, a subject that a student might struggle with due to a learning disability.

College admissions offices take this kind of context into account when looking at a student, and a school's college counselor can often explain about the teacher who doesn't give As or about a student's learning disability in their letter, also known as the Secondary School Report.

What I'm trying to say is that while Claire didn't have straight As, her grades passed Stanford's threshold test. Now, to be fair, Claire's ACT score of a 32 was low (Stanford's average accepted ACT score is now a 34), but it was the rest of her application that was the difference maker.

Think of it this way. Let's say that the University of Pennsylvania gets 60,000 applications in a given year. And let's say 40,000 students don't meet the threshold of grades/test scores. Now they are going to admit 3500 out of the remaining 20,000 who did meet the threshold. So, it comes down to Penn Admissions wanting to create a diverse class full of students with different interests, backgrounds, and abilities.

Oh and parents—if you want to add years to your life, try not to worry so much about exactly what an Ivy looks for because the admissions process still involves human beings who evaluate applications differently and connect with certain applicants over others. This is why you rarely see a top student get into every school they apply to.

And that’s why I started this section by telling you about Claire's whale rap.

In and of itself, is it impressive?

Not really.

Yet, I still told her to take her iPhone, record herself doing the rap, and put a link on her application to the YouTube video she posted. I did this because Claire has a personality that everyone likes. She is smart, funny, and charismatic (Claire…if you ever read this, you can take me out to lunch whenever you want…) 

Thus, even though I have no idea if anyone at Stanford ever watched the video, in the off-chance they did, they would get a sample of who Claire is. And if I were an admissions person who watched the video, I'd just like her as a person.

Now I don't often have students do something like this, and I don't consider it a gimmick. On the contrary, I simply want a student to be honest, be vulnerable, and be real in their applications because it is the best way I know how to get into that group of 3500 students who get accepted from the 20,000.

So, Step 1: Raise your expectations of what is possible.

Step 2: Surpass threshold and maximize time.

Next up: Step 3: Figure out a Big Why and take consistent action. 

What's a big why? Let me explain by telling another story. So there is a woman named Shree Bose, and when she was 15, her grandfather died of cancer. As a result, she made up her mind to find a lab at a university to start volunteering in, so she could learn about cancer research. One day, she emailed three professors, and they all either ignored her or turned her down.

So, she thought, Well, I'll just keep emailing professors until someone says yes.

She ended up emailing 103 professors, and a hundred of them said no or ghosted her. But three of them agreed to talk with her, and one of them agreed to have her come and work in the lab when she was 16.

Now, once she got to the lab, she began working on a protocol for a specific type of cancer. And she tried something that allowed the cancer cell's resistance to drop and be killed by chemotherapy. 

And she was like, Oh my God. Did this just work?

She took the results to the researcher and asked if they were right. And the professor said something like, “Well, go do it 50 more times, and then we'll see.” Sure enough, the thing that she did allowed those cancer cells to be killed. In other words, she had found a cure for a certain type of cancer.

She then published her results, won the inaugural Google Science Fair Prize, won $50,000, and then went to Harvard.

Now, again, do you have to win some sort of award? No. That's why in the beginning I made a point of stating that most of my students who have gone onto Ivies or Ivy-plus universities were normal students who just applied these principles. However, Shree's story is one of the best examples of a student using a Big Why.

You see, most students wouldn't have emailed 103 professors. She did it because she felt in her heart that doing research was something she needed to do. She had a personal stake in it. Also, notice that she didn't set out to find a cure for cancer. She just took steps to learn more about what she was interested in and she "luckily" stumbled on to her findings. Or as the Roman philosopher and all-around hilarious guy, Seneca, once wrote, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

In other words, finding a Big Why is the absolute key because without it, none of you will follow through or bust through the potential obstacles that you’re going to face to get to your eventual goal. This is why when a parent suggests something like “Oh you should do community service,” it often doesn’t work. If you aren’t into community service, there's no way that you’re going to invest yourself in it. Your heart has to be in something for you to want to put in the time and be consistent over time.

Now I know it might be annoying, but repetition is key to remembering:

Step 1: Raise your expectations of what is possible.

Step 2: Surpass threshold and maximize time.

Step 3: Figure out a Big Why and take consistent action. 

And Step 4? Face your fears.

In the movie, “We Bought A Zoo,” actor and all-around hilarious guy Matt Damon is talking to his son who can't get himself to ask out this girl he likes. Matty's advice was "Sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage."

Oh…that’s so good. No really, it's an awesome piece of advice. Have you ever wanted to do something, but right before you do the thing (talk to that awesome guy in class, stand up to that bully who has been tormenting you, ask for help from your scary-ass teacher), you have a moment where you think too much and then don't take the action? Well, welcome to being a human being because we've all been there. (You don't want to hear how, in high school, I couldn't ever bring myself to kiss a girl at the end of a date and would start freaking out by saying things like, "Well, it's been fun…I guess I'll see you at school!" Sigh.)

However, any (and I mean any) successful person will tell you that the difference between massive success and mediocrity is training yourself to have that twenty seconds of insane courage and doing the thing that scares you—over and over and over again until you actually believe that no fear can ever stop you (and yes, this is possible).

I had a student named Carver who thought he might want to be a journalist for ESPN. I suggested he start writing articles for a sports blog he could eventually make. After writing a couple of articles, he came to the conclusion that, for him, writing articles sucked ass. So instead, I suggested he make a sports podcast.

"I'm listening…." he said.

I explained he could either talk sports with his friends, OR he could start interviewing people in the sports world online and create his own interview show. And like I did with Blake, I had to explain his superpower in being able to get adults to say yes.

He thought the interview show sounded a lot cooler, but he was scared you-know-whatless to actually talk to adults, let alone other reporters or NFL players.

So, he started working on his fear by first asking the quarterback of his high school football team if he could interview him about college recruiting. This first interview showed Carver that he could actually do one without vomiting, so he started reaching out to adults. Was it still scary for him? Sure. Did it get easier? You betcha.

Not only did he end up interviewing professional athletes and prominent people in the sports business world, but he also realized he was developing a network of people who now knew who he was. And taking a brilliant piece of advice from an unnamed college counselor, he created a spreadsheet with each interviewee's contact information and birthday, so he could reach out to them every 6 months just to check in, wish them a happy birthday, congratulate them on something he might have read about them in the news, and keep the connection alive. This way, when summers come or when he graduates, he will already have leads for jobs that most people his age would kill for.

My point? Go out today and ask out that girl or guy you like, if for no other reason than to prove to yourself you can. Or do something else that scares you because the strength you will get every time you face a fear is something you will carry with you throughout your life and something that no Ivy League school teaches or can give you.

Oh my God, you're going to repeat the steps again, aren't you?!

Step 1: Raise your expectations of what is possible.

Step 2: Surpass threshold and maximize time.

Step 3: Figure out a Big Why and take consistent action. 

Step 4: Face your fears.

Next up, Step 5: Develop a growth mindset (and tbh—this is the hardest and maybe most important one).

• Did you know that Evan Spiegel and his partner Bobby actually started another company at Stanford before they started Snapchat? They spent thousands of hours on it, only to see it completely fail.

• Did you know that their professor said that Snapchat wouldn't work? Or that they couldn't get anyone to use it outside of Stanford for like a year before it took off?

• Did you know that when it did start taking off, the media called it a fad and a sexting app, ripping it, along with Evan and Bobby, to shreds?

• Or that other tech companies tried to crash it, steal it, and then, only after all of that failed, buy it for $3B? (They turned it down.)

Most people don't know about any of this because they just see the "overnight success" of a kid who became a billionaire at 25.

However, knowing Evan, I would propose that he didn't become a billionaire just because he had a good idea but also because he had developed what is called a "growth mindset." 

A growth mindset can be defined as the belief that a person's abilities can be improved through effort, learning, and persistence, rather than being innate. In fact, in an interview I did with Evan, he explained how his parents actually encouraged him to fail as he was growing up. 

In her awesome Ted Talk and book called Grit, Professor Angela Duckworth explains how she set out to try to understand what allows people to live both happy and successful lives. After researching top athletes, CEOs, and even top students, she found that the #1 predictor was not intelligence, natural talent, or rich-ass uncles who could buy the wings of buildings. It was the ability to look at obstacles, stumbles, and failures as opportunities to get better.

If Evan and Bobby thought, "Well, our first company was a bust. We should just move to Jamaica and become bartenders," we would have no Snapchat (and yes, parents I know maybe the world would be better if they had…).

The point is that they took the lessons from that first failure and applied them to the next company. And when everyone either dissed or attacked them, they just took it as validation that they had something worth building (which is also why they turned down the $3B buyout).

And I can tell you without any doubt, of the hundreds of students I have worked with who have gotten into the 10 most selective colleges in America, all of them developed this quality. 

Now note, I didn't say, inherently possessed this quality. My student who lost the school's presidency by five votes did not just jump up and say, "Oh well, what's next?!" No, she cried a helluva lot for a week. My student who spent two years trying to get Yelp to adopt her environmental rating system which crashed and burned the day before it was supposed to start took some time before she rebounded.

Look, when anyone starts something new, they are generally going to suck at it. This could be basketball, podcasting, dancing, driving (sorry to hear about that first driver's test by the way), or even first relationships. The good news is that we all start to suck a bit less upon repeating the effort. And the best news can be illustrated by the fact that the girl who "failed" with her Yelp initiative currently goes to Brown.

This means that getting into an Ivy or Ivy-plus school is not about becoming the world's best at something. It's about thinking big and keeping at it, even if you need to pivot 47 times along the way or even if you don't accomplish the end goal.

Let me put it to you one final way. Think of some ginormous goal you would love to achieve but may think is impossible. 

Getting an internship with NASA you say? 

Great. 

What if I were to guarantee that you would absolutely, 100%, get the internship after you applied five times and were turned down? In other words, on your sixth try, you'd absolutely get a yes.

How fast would you fill out five applications to get turned down?

That's how you should think about any goal. Or as a wise person once said, "When life gives you lemons, call them yellow limes and sell them for double the price."

Yep, here we go again…

Step 1: Raise your expectations of what is possible.

Step 2: Surpass threshold and maximize time.

Step 3: Figure out a Big Why and take consistent action. 

Step 4: Face your fears.

Step 5: Develop a growth mindset.

And now for Step 6.

Actually, there is no Step 6.

Don't you love it when a teacher says they are going to give you more work and then changes their mind?

Time to go to the beach!

Not just yet Sparky.

I have one more thing to say to all you wannabe Ivy-goers:

Being a teenager can suck.

There, I said it.

Not only do I hear all of your stories every day, but I, too, experienced some suckage.

How's this for ya:

• I left all my friends and moved to a new school in 10th grade where there was a gang shooting in the middle of campus on my second day.

• When practicing for my driver's test with my mom, on my 16th birthday, in front of the DMV, I turned left on a green light without yielding, totaled my dad's new car, broke my mom's ankle, and sent another woman to the hospital. (And my dad still made me take the driver's test the next day while I tried not to cry as I drove past the wreckage still in the gutter).

• I had my prom date steal ballots and get caught in the girl's bathroom filling them out for her friend running against me for senior class president.

• I had my water polo coach call me a worthless piece of crap (he didn't say crap), give me an F on my report card, talked negatively about me to all my teachers individually, and threw me off the team because I simply asked to leave practice one day to study for an AP test.

• Oh, and I suffered from crippling anxiety and OCD (though I didn't know what it was and hid it), which caused me to be the worst procrastinator of all time (no, I was worse than you).

My point is that if you have some crap going on in your life right now, you aren't alone. And because I'm always real with my students, I'd love to say it will all get better soon (and it most likely will), but it's actually up to you as to how fast you feel less crappy.

In other words, since you get to choose your thoughts, you can learn how to get through anything, and I mean anything IF you consistently strive to get better, learn new strategies, and ask for help from others who have more experience.

So…

You don't have to know what you want to do with your life right now.

You aren't totally screwed if your Algebra 2 teacher gave you a B+, even though you had an 89.6 and he should have rounded.

You don't have to worry about that girl in your class who is the first generation college student and world-champion discus thrower who, like you, also wants to go to Yale.

And if you don't get into Princeton, even though it has been your dream school since you were one, you're still going to get into a great college that you will love once you meet your five friends.

Really.

If you leave with anything today, I hope you can take away that if you start to employ any of the five steps, you can get into a crazy-ass selective school where you will promptly start staying up until 1 am talking to your roommate about what it's like to live in Prineville, Oregon, sleep through your 8 am (and maybe 9 am) classes and really take advantage of that money your parents are spending on your world-class education.

Finally, if any of this is somewhat inspiring, I've done my job. I really do know with certainty that if you actually like to learn, do well in school, and work on creating some new beliefs, not only can you get into top colleges but more importantly, you can build a life worth living after graduation. This is because you will be able to choose how you look at life and take responsibility for creating it rather than having others dictate it for you.

Now go back to school and kick ass. 

And for details on how I can help your child do all these things mentioned, check out my Guaranteed Ivy program.