- All the Ivy League schools I applied to rejected me.
- My biggest mistake was not fully understanding Ivy League admissions.
- Now, as a college freshman at a different school, I understand that the Ivy League isn't everything.
I was so nervous I couldn't speak. All I could do was stare at the words on my screen: Brown University. View status update.
I closed my eyes, tried to calm myself, and told myself it would be OK. I opened my eyes and clicked the button.
Immediately, I knew something was wrong. There was no confetti, no congratulations, no "We are delighted to inform you …"
I pieced it together quickly enough: The Ivy League school rejected my application. Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes and started to fall.
That was December 2023. A couple of months later, in March 2024, I'd be rejected by the University of Chicago, Harvard, and Stanford. Dartmouth waitlisted me, and I held onto hope for acceptance until June. I was ultimately rejected there, too.
Admittance to these Ivy Plus schools had been my ultimate goal, and rejection left me questioning what I'd done wrong. How could I have failed when I'd worked so hard?
Was it my SAT score? Should I have studied more for a 1500 instead of a 1490? Should I have written different essays? Were my topics too niche? Did I put my extracurriculars in the wrong order?
With reflection and personal research, I realized that my biggest mistake was not taking the full picture of college admissions into account.
The chances of getting into my dream schools were always slim
After getting rejected, I started doing a lot of research into college admissions at Ivy League schools. What I learned was surprising.
I didn't fully realize how few spots are available at Ivy League schools. At Brown University, nearly 50,000 students applied in 2024 (a year after I applied), and only 2,638 were accepted to the most recent class of 2028. That's just a 5.4% acceptance rate.
I also didn't understand that certain people have a better chance of snagging those few spots. Sure, we all know that legacy and athlete applicants have a leg up. What I didn't conceptualize was just how much of a leg up. I learned that 11% of Yale's class of 2027 were legacy students. That's about 1 in every 10 students. At Brown, 8% of the class of 2027 are legacies. Since I'm neither an athlete nor a legacy, my chances of getting accepted were low to begin with.
Plus, analysis from Opportunity Insights, a research group based at Harvard, found that admissions rates were low for all income brackets — except those in the top .1 parent income percentile who have the highest chance of admission. My parent's income bracket was in the 80th to 90th percentile, which has one of the lowest admissions rates.
These statistics put the whole process into perspective for me; it was no longer about me not working hard enough but about factors I couldn't control.
Of course, I always knew that getting into an Ivy League school was difficult, but I didn't know beforehand just how much the odds were stacked against me. Had I known, I might've made different choices during the admissions process.
I'm slowly acclimating to my college
I now attend McGill University in Montreal, sometimes referred to as the Harvard of Canada. Though it's not where I thought I'd end up, and sometimes I wonder if it's where I should stay, I've realized that no matter what, I have a duty to make the most of where I'm at.
When I first arrived at my non-Ivy League university, I felt intense loneliness, confusion, and sadness. I missed home and the feeling of knowing what each day would bring. I attributed this to not being at an Ivy League.
Eventually, however, I realized that these feelings weren't place-specific; I would have been an equally undecided student at Dartmouth as I am at my current university. I would have felt the same bewilderment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Providence, Rhode Island, as I did in Montreal.
So, today, I'm looking at the brighter side of things. It would be a lie to say that where you go to college doesn't matter. But it would also be a lie to say that it's the only thing that matters. In reality, it's a bit of both.
What matters is part where you go but, crucially, what you do when you're there.
Sophie Landis is a first-year student at McGill University in Montreal. Connect with her on LinkedIn here.