ivy league schools — Blog — TKG

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The Best Programs (Majors) at Brown University

Brown is the innovative Ivy — that is, the most innovative member of the vaunted Ivy League. The Open Curriculum is actually an open curriculum, which is worth underlining because most self-described open curriculums are just sorta, kinda open. At Brown, it’s really anything goes as long as you are pointed in a clear direction, are collaborative, community-oriented, and also totally brilliant. The campus is home to 6,500 of this type of student, alongside 1,429 faculty. Students have nearly 2,500 courses to choose from, and more than 80 programs (or what other schools tend to call majors).

How to Get into Cornell

There is a lot to love about Cornell. The Ivy League Research University has a whopping seven undergraduate schools and is only one of two Ivies that offer an undergraduate business school. Plus, they have even more unique programs like the School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the School of Hotel Administration. Cornell sits between waterfalls and forests in Ithica, New York. They also are big on school tradition with yearly events like Dragon Day,  Big Red ice hockey games, and Slope Day.

How to Write the Brown University Supplement 2023-2024

Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island is a member of the vaulted Ivy League and has the most flexible curriculum and creativity-centric program of all of the Ivy League schools. The university challenges students to learn and act collaboratively in a way that is interdisciplinary. At the core of this is the Open Curriculum, which allows students to go deep on topics they are passionate about while exploring broadly without strict core or distribution requirements. The city of Providence nurtures this ethos. With nearly 200,000 people and nestled on the coastline, it is brimming with world-class creative and academic minds — and the seafood is also fantastic. Brown is extremely selective. They recently received 50,649 applications for the undergraduate college and admitted 2,560 for a mere 5% acceptance rate.

How to Write the Columbia University Supplement 2023-2024

Columbia University is one of the best universities in the world located in what is inarguably one of the best cities in the world — New York City. Columbia stands out in the Ivy League as having the tightest and most time-consuming distribution requirements, which they call the CORE Curriculum. The Columbia CORE is rooted in the tradition of a liberal arts education, and demands that students graduate with deep expertise alongside broad knowledge — you even need to take a swim test to graduate! In addition to the normal type of distribution requirements at most colleges where you pick language, science, math, and humanities classes from a long list of options, there are a few courses that every single student needs to take to graduate, such as Music Hum, a music theory course, and Art Hum, an art history course that requires significant flash card skills. This academic structure is ideal for high-performing students committed to the liberal arts methodology, and who want a well-rounded education at a top-tier university. The acceptance rate is just under 4%.   

College Counselor for Ivy League

This year, Columbia admitted 3.9% of students who applied. Yale accepted 4.35% of students, Brown accepted 5%, and Dartmouth just 6%. Getting into the Ivy League used to be pretty straightforward—if you had the grades, the test scores, and a solid leadership position in a club or sports team, you were in the game. Now, students need to really stand out to have a shot.

The Ultimate Guide for Sports Recruiting for the Ivy League

The Ivy League! It’s made up of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, and Yale, but we think you probably already know that if you’re here. You might think it just is a collective term for those eight schools in the Northeast known for their academic rigor, selectivity, prestige, and exclusivity. And sure, that might be the present-day connotation, but it’s actually the name of their athletic conference.

Ivy League Resume

Writing a resume often comes as an afterthought for students applying to the Ivy League in the United States. The resume is — most of the time — optional. It’s sort of hidden away in the Common Application, and it’s by far the least talked about piece of the college application puzzle. So many students we work with tell us that they hadn’t even planned on submitting a resume. They ask, “Why spend time on something that’s optional and often redundant?”

How to Write Your Resume for an Ivy League College Application

Applying to an Ivy League or Ivy-caliber college isn’t an everyday experience. It’s exceptional, and it requires more of you, the applicant, than any other college application. The same can be said for each piece of the application — including the resume. It can’t be the normal, run-of-the-mill resume you used to apply for summer jobs. More is required.

How to Write the UPenn Supplement 2022-2023

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, research institution in Philadelphia, PA. UPenn is the only Ivy League school with an undergraduate nursing school, but they are probably more famous for its business school, the Wharton School of Business. UPenn has around an 8% acceptance rate, however, they strangely did not release an acceptance rate for the Class of 2026, so this number is from a previous year. If you are serious about Penn, we highly suggest thinking about applying early. They choose a good chunk of the class during early decision and have a higher acceptance rate of around 15% ED. UPenn changed their supplement a bit this year so we wanted to break down it and give some tips on how to craft a stand-out supplement.

How to Write the Dartmouth Supplement 2022-2023

Dartmouth is the smallest college in the Ivy League. With a campus nestled into the picturesque New England town of Hanover, New Hampshire, the school is perfect for outdoorsy types or those looking for a legendary Greek experience. Dartmouth has an acceptance rate of about 6.4% making it highly competitive to get in. Dartmouth asks students to fill out a 3 question supplement and today, we want to share tips on how we would approach the Dartmouth supplement.

The 10 Most Unique Programs at UPenn

Ivy League schools are selective and competitive, and UPenn is no exception. And with them continuing to stay test-optional, it’s only going to remain competitive. If you’re thinking about applying to UPenn, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to study and why – and if you want to take it to the next level, you should also have a good idea of all the niche things you can study that will help you achieve your goals. Thankfully, UPenn has a ton of unique programs, degrees, minors, concentrations, and certificates that could help you pitch your case.

The Most Unique Programs at Dartmouth

When most people think about what they want to study in college, they go too broad. English. Biology. Engineering. While it’s good to know what you want to do, as like, a genre, it’s not going to be enough when it comes to your essays. You need specificity. Especially at an Ivy like Dartmouth. When you write your “Why Dartmouth” essay, and when you’re making your college list to begin with, research is going to be your best friend. Dive in deep to the programs you’re interested in and see what Dartmouth has to offer and if it even fits in with your goals. We’ve compiled a list of some of the most interesting programs, majors, and competitions offered at Dartmouth to help you jumpstart your research.

Top 5 tips for the Brown University Interview

If you have been following our blog, you might have picked up on a series that we have been doing where we share our top tips for Ivy League school interviews. We wanted to include Brown, but this one has to be a little different. The reason? Brown is moving away from alumni interviews and is replacing them with videos.

The Ultimate Ivy League Interview Guide

Many schools offer interviews for hopeful candidates. Volunteer alums conduct the majority of these and recently the large majority have been virtual. These interviews are a powerful tool for getting to know more about the school and getting the school to know more about you. Most Ivy League schools offer these types of interviews. We have been doing a series with specific interview tips for the Ivies, but we also wanted to share what these interviews are, which Ivies offer them, how to get one, and some general tips that work for these interviews across the board.

Dartmouth College Interview Tips

When looking at Ivy League interview tips many inform students to be as relaxed as possible. They stress the importance of the interview feeling like a conversation. This isn’t necessarily untrue at Dartmouth. They want you to be at ease, but it is one of the more formal interviews in the Ivy League. Maybe we shouldn’t say “formal.” Formal feels scary. And this shouldn’t be scary. Let’s just say that Dartmouth takes their interview seriously and you should do some prep to meet their standards. With a little prep, you should be able to crush this interview. And we have our top tips to help you do that!

Top 4 Columbia University Interview Tips

So you got an email from a random email address asking you to set up a Columbia Interview. What’s next? Many schools offer alumni interviewers for prospective students and Columbia is on that list. If you haven’t already done these types of interviews for other schools or are just super nervous about Columbia, these interviews can seem scary, but they don’t have to be. We wanted to break the Columbia interview down and share our top tips and tricks for how to approach it!

12 Unique Programs at Cornell

The Ivy League is competitive, and tons of students from across the world will be submitting their applications in only a few months. So how do you set yourself apart from the crowd? Specificity. When you tell a school what you want to study, you need to be more specific than just “biology, because it’s cool.” Thankfully, schools like Cornell have detailed, niche programs that can help you articulate what you want to study and why. Let’s dive into some of their unique programs.

Princeton University Interview Tips

Almost all the Ivy Leagues have alumni interviews. If you have read any of our blogs on Ivy League interviews, Princeton isn't much different from the rest of the Ivies. Princeton doesn’t provide much in the way of tips for hopeful students, so we thought we would share our top tips and tricks to help ace your Princeton interview.