This course is designed for first-time college applicants and transfer applicants. This course is not designed for PhD applicants.

My goal is not to teach you secrets on getting into Ivy Leagues. I certainly did not have any when I applied. Instead, this course will focus on one simple principle: colleges look for extraordinary students.

By extraordinary, I don’t necessarily mean students with perfect GPAs and high test scores. Colleges ultimately look for students with incredible stories. They want students who are ambitious enough to pursue their passions outside of class. My goal is to teach you how to become this student.

If you make an honest effort to apply these lessons to your own life, I can earnestly say that your application will improve. This is, in good faith, a course designed to help any hard-working student stand out when applying to college. More ambitiously, it is a course designed to help you succeed in life.

I’ll first show you what I did to get into Ivy Leagues. From my story, we’ll extract a more general application blueprint. This strategy is centered around pursuing your passion deeply and building a portfolio.

I’ll give six examples that teach you how to use this blueprint to build an application profile. In these examples, we'll build an application strategy for hypothetical students with the following intended majors:

1. Mechanical Engineering
2. Finance/Statistics/Computer Science
3. Biology/Neuroscience (pre-med track)
4. Psychology
5. Computer Science/Computer Engineering
6. Business/Marketing

Each student is assumed to have a particular passion, which will form the basis of their application strategy. In each case, we’ll build a portfolio for these students and write a personal statement from scratch.

Although we focus on the most common majors, the strategy presented can be used for any course of study.

1. Introduction

2. What do Ivy Leagues look for?

3. Application checklist

4. The standard advice

5. How I got into Ivy Leagues

6. The blueprint

7. Step 1

8. Step 2

9. Step 3

10. Step 4

11. Step 5

12. Step 6

13. Step 7

14. Building a resume

15. Life advice 

16. Create your own college path

17. Sample student profile 1

18. Sample student profile 2

19. Sample student profile 3

20. Sample student profile 4

21. Sample student profile 5

22. Sample student profile 6

I found a strategy that got me accepted to five Ivy Leagues and it can help other determined students do the same. 

When I initially applied to college, I took the usual route by focusing only on academics and, as a result, was rejected by most schools. This motivated me to develop an application blueprint which, I hoped, would actually help me improve as an applicant. When I reapplied, I found that this new strategy really did work, as it ultimately helped me graduate from two Ivy Leagues (Columbia and Harvard).

In all honesty, I was just an ordinary student who was willing to work very hard. I found that I was able to succeed once I aimed that work ethic in the right direction. My goal through this course is to now give that direction to other ambitious students.