Now a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller!
How do you REALLY get accepted to Harvard, Yale, and the Ivy League?
Told from the fresh and personal perspective of 26-year-old Crimson Education CEO and Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford graduate Jamie Beaton, Accepted! is an honest and practical guide on beating the odds and getting into Ivy League and other elite schools - the smart way.
Beaton takes you behind the doors of the world's top college admissions offices, revealing the highly strategic selection processes applied by institutions whose reputations depend on the number of students they admit, or more pointedly, the tens of thousands that they don't.
In Accepted!, Beaton delivers the ultimate insider "how to" and disrupts cliched admissions advice with savvy strategies like:
- Moneyballing the university rankings and increasing your chances of admission
- Class spamming your way to academic supremacy and acceptance
- Playing the early application dating game and understanding how institutions are using it to their reputational advantage
Packed with real-life examples from the thousands of students Beaton has helped land a spot at Harvard, Stanford, and other esteemed universities, Accepted! is a never-before assembled culmination of secrets, insights, and application strategies guaranteed to maximize your chances of "getting in" to the school of your choice.
From ambitious students and their supportive parents to academic advisors and admissions professionals, Accepted! is the must-read guide to demystifying the often-convoluted and increasingly competitive world of elite college admissions.
Table of Contents
Foreword xv
Introduction xix
1 Signaling, the Hunger Games, and McHarvard 1
2 Class Spam: Deadly and Effective 7
3 Early Decision and the Dating Game 17
4 Morpheus Wins: “Show Me The Future!” 29
5 The Extracurricular Results/Effort Ratio: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters 37
6 Not A School Leader? Go Build Your Own Empire 47
7 Don’t Be Fooled: Recommendation Letters Are Audit Trails 55
8 The Kingmakers: Here’s How the Best of the Best Defeat the Rest of the Best of the Best 65
9 It’s All Optional!: What the New “Test Optional” Universe Means to College Admissions 71
10 Powerade, Burger Patties, and the Perfect Personal Statement 79
11 Dual Degrees and Why Double Dipping Opens Doors You May Not Know Existed 95
12 What the Rich Get Wrong: Don’t Pay to Play over Summer 107
13 Why Student Athletes Need to Compete with Their Heads 119
14 Managing Your Toughest Adversary - Your Mind! 129
15 International Students and the Even More Uneven Playing Field 141
16 Moneyball: How to Rank and Choose the Best Universities 147
17 Harvard’s Legacy, My Legacy, and Your Legacy 161
18 The Personalities of the Ivy Leagues and Which One May Be Right for You 167
19 For Parents Only! 187
Epilogue 199
Appendix: Bonus Round 205
Acknowledgments 235
About the Author 239
Notes 241
Index 253
