Dying to climb the Ivy? How to survive the race for a top spot

Top schools are still hard to get into. The classes of 2031 at Harvard and Columbia will get between 50,000 and 60,000 applicants this fall, and the acceptance rate for those universities is historically around 5%.

To make matters worse for the world’s 15 and 16-year-olds, the admissions landscape continues to change. Universities are revising standardized testing requirements, evaluating how applicants use artificial intelligence and looking for evidence of intellectual curiosity, initiative and personal development beyond the classroom.

For parents hoping to give their children the best chance of attending Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia or another highly selective university, these changes raise important questions. How early should students begin preparing? Which activities matter most? And how can families help their children stand out without turning their teenage years into an endless exercise in résumé building?

When to start preparing for the Ivies

The answer begins well before senior year, when college applications are due. According to Christopher Rim, founder and CEO of Command Education, some parents want to start college prep in fifth or sixth grade. He says that’s a bit early, but “it’s wild that parents starting as early as middle school [are] already thinking about this, but that just shows how competitive it is.”

“I would say the first thing is let your kid really be a kid. Allow him or her to explore different projects, different sports, different activities,” Rim tells the Post. Though successful, high-achieving parents want the same for their kids, Rim recommends letting them “get involved without pressuring them, without holding them to one activity that they picked three years ago.”

The challenge is that admissions decisions are not determined by a single formula. Academic performance, standardized tests, recommendations, extracurricular commitments and personal essays can all influence the outcome. Universities also consider applicants within the context of their schools, communities and available opportunities.

Parents can support these efforts by helping their children plan coursework, identify academic weaknesses and establish study habits. They should also recognize that the most demanding course schedule is not necessarily the best one if it prevents a student from succeeding or pursuing other meaningful interests. It’s equally important for students to discover what genuinely interests them.

For many families, this process begins during freshman year of high school, although middle school can provide opportunities to explore academic subjects, sports, music, community service and other activities without the immediate pressure of college admissions.

Early exploration gives students time to discover their strengths and pursue interests that may eventually develop into sustained commitments.

The return of standardized testing

One significant development is the return of standardized testing requirements at several highly selective institutions.

For the 2026-27 application cycle, Yale University requires applicants to submit either SAT or ACT scores. The university previously permitted applicants to satisfy its testing requirement with Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate results, but narrowed those options for the current cycle. 

Yale admissions officials say the decision reflects internal research showing that standardized test scores help predict students’ academic performance at the university.

Nevertheless, test scores remain only one component of the admissions process. Students also need to demonstrate that they have challenged themselves academically and taken advantage of the educational opportunities available to them.

That means enrolling in appropriately rigorous classes, maintaining strong grades and developing relationships with teachers who can eventually write informed recommendations.

Parents can help — by fostering independence

Private and public schools offer different levels of access to college preparation resources. Some private schools provide extensive counseling, tutoring, research opportunities and extracurricular programs as part of their tuition-funded services.

However, access to these resources does not guarantee admission. Even students attending schools with dedicated college counseling departments may need to seek additional guidance on particular academic interests, summer programs or application requirements.

Rim notes that the resources schools, public and private, have to devote to college counseling and guidance simply aren’t enough to guarantee an Ivy outcome. “I went to public school myself in New Jersey,” he told the Post, “and there were two or three counselors for the entire school, and that was it. That’s because of budgeting, and you know, I think that I think it’s not even hours that I spent with a counselor, but minutes through the process.” 

According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, the average public school counselor was responsible for 405 students during the 2021-22 academic year, substantially exceeding the American School Counselor Association’s recommended ratio of 250 students per counselor.

More recent figures cited by the association show that states averaged 376 students per counselor during the 2023-24 school year. Although that represents an improvement, it shows how individualized college planning can be difficult for school counselors to provide. 

That’s where private college counseling comes in.

High school counselors, even at elite boarding schools, may not be able to spend the time with every student strategizing what competitions to enter, what awards to win and what kind of course rigor is appropriate for your college aspirations. (Is getting an A+ in a regular class better than getting a B+ in an advanced class?)

When the Harvard Crimson collected responses for its annual freshman survey in 2021, they found that 20% of respondents reported receiving help from a privately hired counselor while preparing college applications. Regardless of whether students receive private counseling, academic achievement alone rarely tells admissions officers everything they want to know.

Highly selective colleges receive applications from thousands of students who have earned excellent grades and performed well on standardized tests. As a result, extracurricular involvement, intellectual interests and evidence of personal initiative can help admissions officers distinguish among academically qualified candidates.

Rim gave an example of a strong candidate who proved by his interests why he’s right for a selective school. “We had a student who was very much interested in sneakers. [He] was waiting outside of a sneaker store, and they were doing a limited edition drop of 200 sneakers worldwide.” The student in question waited in line in the rain for hours to buy these sneakers in order to resell them — for 10 times the price.

The parents came to Rim, and they were “literally crying, saying, ‘Chris, what is my child doing? Tell him to study for schoolwork and his SATs, I will pay him that amount, the profit, if he just does this!’ And I said, wait, wait, wait! Nobody else from this private school that he attended, which was arguably one of the best private schools in the country, could write a college essay on how they waited in line to start to buy inventory, essentially to resell them to start and a speaker reselling business.”

That unique experience borne out of the student’s drive to do something he found meaningful was the key differentiator that got him into his top schools. The distinction between an “astro-turfed” résumé and one that shows true initiative matters because admissions officers do not necessarily expect every applicant to have founded a nonprofit organization, completed university-level research or won a national competition.

In September 2026, Princeton University’s dean of admissions, Karen Richardson, explained that the university evaluates how applicants spend their time both inside and outside the classroom. Richardson specifically identified activities such as working at a supermarket, participating in a school newspaper, performing in an orchestra and caring for younger siblings as experiences that can help admissions officers understand applicants.

She also emphasized that Princeton wants students who will contribute to the academic and social life of the university. That perspective offers an important lesson for parents. A part-time job, family responsibility or sustained community commitment may reveal as much about a student’s character as an expensive summer enrichment program.

What should students do in the age of AI?

Recently, Rim sat down with New York Post reporter Lydia Moynihan and other industry leaders to discuss why qualities such as resilience, emotional intelligence and authenticity remain important as technology changes how students learn and prepare for their careers. 

Rim argued that AI tools can help students research colleges, compare academic programs, organize application deadlines and explore unfamiliar subjects. They can also assist with brainstorming and reviewing written work when used within a school’s policies.

However, relying on AI to produce personal essays or manufacture extracurricular narratives can create a host of other problems for applicants. An AI-generated essay may be grammatically polished, but it can’t independently communicate the experiences, motivations and judgment that make an individual applicant stand out.

For parents, this means helping children use AI as a learning resource rather than a substitute for thinking — and definitely don’t use AI for its own sake or to jump on a trend. “You want to be authentic,” Rim told the Post, “and don’t try to just do anything involved with AI.”

Richardson addressed this issue directly, explaining that admissions officers want to understand how applicants think and what matters to them. According to her, the ability to ask questions, develop ideas and communicate ideas independently not only helps prepare students for Princeton’s academic requirements, but it also shows through in their applications. 

“I have so many students and so many parents tell me, ‘Chris, like what can we do with AI? Should I develop an AI project together with my son because I’m learning about it too in real time, and I think I can help.’ I’m like, ‘No … you want to be authentic,” Rim told the Post. As much as things are changing with AI, the advice that was good before the AI period continues to hold: Doing something that everyone else is doing or only doing to look good for colleges is exactly what you should not do. 

There is no right thing for all students. What an admissions officer wants to see is a student’s authentic interests — something that they own, that is impactful in their life — to get a sense of how they will contribute to the next freshman class and the university’s community. And that they can get that read in a matter of minutes through your application.