The standard definition of legacy is a parent who went to the same school that you’re applying to. For example, if your mom attended Cornell, and you’re applying early there, you’d be considered a legacy.

How much does being a legacy help?

I explain exactly that in my admissions guide to Ivy League schools, but let me give you a general sense for legacy matters.

First, Ivy League Universities like continuity of their student body.

If your mom went to Cornell, she has a close affinity to the school. Chances are, you will too. This all matters for alumni donations and alumni involvement. It all comes back to the money. $$$$$

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Some Ivy League schools care about legacy much more than others. This is borne out in statistics.

For example, both Princeton and Yale are well-known for their focus on legacies. Stanford and Harvard are less so.

In today’s college admissions environment, the legacy factor is in effect far beyond your parents. If your grandparents or great grandparents went to your target school, that can have a good influence. Even your brother or sister can have an influence.

Your cousin probably cannot.

Beyond alumni, giving, and involvement, why else is legacy important?

For Admissions committees (“AdComs”), being a legacy is often a way of filtering the applicant pool.

It’s very hard to tell how well someone will do at a school, but if their mom or dad went to that school, there’s a good chance that the applicant was raised in a positive atmosphere, educated well, and will perform well academically and personally as a member of the student body. If you are a legacy, you become a safer bet.

Legacy admissions is not remarkably different from the standard common application admissions process. AdComs review the Common Apps in exactly the same way.

The difference is that if you are, indeed, related directly to someone who attended Cornell (in this example) your application may be considered more closely.

In effect, it may help you if you’re in that gray area of being a good candidate but is not a guaranteed lock for admissions.

Let me repeat that: it is NOT a guaranteed lock for admissions!!

People often ask me if it will help them if their dad went to Harvard. Then they ask me if it would be helpful if he donated $1 million – or sometimes they ask about $10,000 or $100,000.

This is a tough question to answer.

The simple answer would be, “Yes it helps slightly under specific circumstances.”

Remember that there is a lot of competition. There are a whole host of variables that really affect us.

If you give $1 million, that a very large sum of money. It may play some role in your chances of getting into an Ivy League school. At smaller amounts, it typically doesn’t matter as much.

What matters much more is that your dad did, indeed, attend Harvard. This is the point that qualifies you as a true legacy student.

If you aren’t a legacy (like me), and don’t have rich parents (definitely like me), you still have a good chance of getting in. After all, I did it – just keep reading the articles on this site. You may also want to check out my guide mentioned below!

It is simply a summary of your activities and background in high school. It serves a very important role in the Ivy League admissions process.

If you want to get into Princeton, you’re going to need a great brag sheet.

Here are the main components:

First, keep it short!

Never, ever have a brag sheet/resume that is longer than one page.

Keep in mind that elite admissions strategies need a lot of work and the help of people who know what they’re doing!

Second, focus on providing more detail than the Common Application covers.

This means listing out important extracurricular activities and explaining very briefly what you did.

It doesn’t matter that you were in the art club. Write one or two sentences about exactly what you did there:
-Did you double the size of the club?
-Did you find two teacher advisers?

Don’t just say you were on the debate team:
-Did you win the regional policy debate?
-Were you vice president of the club?
-Did you participate in National Forensics League competitions?

Give details! Admissions committees love details!

The third thing you should do is demonstrate your length of commitment and intensity of commitment.

DON’T EXAGGERATE HERE! I REPEAT, DO NOT EXAGGERATE!

Remember that, in the end, the committee will add up the numbers. If they feel the numbers are too high (and my personal rule of thumb is it should never average out to more than 4 hours a day) they’re going to know you’re lying. That’s never good!

The most important thing is to show the duration of commitment. If you were in the forensics club for four years, talk about that. If you started the international culture club and were a member for three years, say so.

Ivy League schools love committed students.

Fourth, format it nicely.

Pay attention to the details of your brag sheet/resume. If you don’t pay attention to those details, the committee will assume you can’t pay attention in class. This means you can’t be a good student.

Make sure to ALIGN your paragraphs, DOUBLE CHECK for spelling errors, use BULLETS where appropriate, and keep FORMATTING of dates and titles consistent. Make it look like a truly professional resume.

Get help from an older brother or your parents, or even search online for good resume templates. Resumes are also known as curriculum vitae or CVs, for short.

Finally, write down things that you didn’t have a chance to communicate in your admissions essays, your short answers, or the Common App.

If you really love cooking French food and didn’t have a chance to show that, it’s okay to write about that in your brag sheet.

If you’re a black belt in tae kwon do, definitely write that down. The brag sheet is an opportunity to show another side of yourself, and trust me, admissions committees will read it.

They will love it if you add interesting details.

Just make sure you spell tae kwon do (or whatever you claim your favorite hobby or activity to be) correctly!

While many of the services I’m recommending below are relatively new (and thus, I haven’t personally used them), I’ve had the fortune of investigating them closely and hearing feedback from lots of current and former Ivy League students.

If you do use any of the services below, let me know what your experience is like. I would love the feedback.

I’ll start with the 4 below which cover scholarships, resume/essay editing, SAT prep, and even renting textbooks for cheap (oh, how I wish I had something like this back when I was at Stanford!).

1. Win scholarship and free money using Fastweb

This is a GREAT resource for finding scholarship opportunities and free money for school. We all know Harvard costs $200K so the easier it is on your parents, the better!

The nice thing about Fastweb is the personalized alerts via their email newsletter that get sent straight to your inbox.

Fastweb can also be a useful resource to find out more about potential colleges outside of the Ivy Leagues, both to serve as backup options as well as legitimate choices for people with specific interests (for example, if you’re interested in becoming a chef, an education at Le Cordon Bleu may be more appealing than 4 years slaving away at Yale!)

It’s useful for both high school students and current undergraduates. I remember back in my day, I used FastWeb to find a few good national scholarship programs and earned a few thousand dollars…worth the effort, at least

Click here to get started.

2. Save money by renting textbooks using Campus Book Rentals

Back when I was an undergrad, the best we had was Half.com. Now, textbook rental companies have exploded!

I’ve read about and gotten feedback on the top ones, and the winner has been Campus Book Rentals. Not only do I have friends that work there whom I really respect, but they generally have the best prices, a great selection, and the most reliable delivery schedule (important if that Chemistry 101 class is starting next Monday!).

A few other perks:
-Free returns both ways, when the semester is over – save yourself the hassle of making $20 off a book that costs you $200 (or never finding another buyer) and just ship ‘em back to Campus Book Rentals. Plus it saves trees
-30 day return policy (so if you drop a class because the first few lectures sucked or there’s a 50 page paper due at the end of the semester, you can get your money back)

There are other services like Chegg and eCampus, but I still think Campus Book Rentals tops ‘em both.

3. Get resume and essay help from ResumeEdge and EssayEdge

First, the resume/brag-sheet:

We’ve covered the importance of the resume and brag sheet before. It an be a tipping point for the success of your app, because it’s the first opportunity outside of your essays to showcase you as a person and highlight all the little interesting things you do that don’t find their way onto the Common App.

ResumeEdge has professional writers who will work with you over email and in some cases, over phone, to accomplish exactly that. Plus, they’re used to working with real working professionals, who have a higher quality standards than most high school students.

You’ll be in good hands.

Second, the essay editing:

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have multiple people review your essays and short answers and give detailed feedback. With EssayEdge, you get not only honest feedback (their salary depends on it), but thorough and detailed help rewriting your essay to retain your voice but making sure there are no dumb mistakes (eg, improper grammar) and better structure/clarity.

*I am NOT encouraging you to get an essay written from scratch. That’s plagiarism and completely wrong. However, getting assistance on a close-to-finished product is perfectly acceptable, and you’d be dumb not to at least get free feedback before looking into something like EssayEdge

4. Get better than my 1360 SAT score by using a service like Grockit

Now there are a lot of test prep companies out there like Kaplan or Princeton Review.

The reason I like Grockit is because of its CUSTOMIZATION and DIVERSE RESOURCES.

The way everyone learns is different – some like video, some like group studying, some like self-paced individual lessons. Grockit lets you do all of that however you think best, and learn best.

Click here to get started.

Ultimately, any of the reputable test prep services out there will be helpful if you’re looking to improve your SAT, ACT, SAT Subject scores. However, the most important thing is that you’re committed and put in the HOURS necessary to see improvement. None of these programs will do the work for you, and most importantly:

None of the services is a silver bullet. None.

Keep that in mind!

In this article, I’ll explain the 5 reasons why, year after year, Harvard is always #1 in the most well-known university rankings including U.S. News & World Report, BusinessWeek, and more.

Number one – age matters

The first reason is that Harvard is the oldest university in the world.

It was founded by John Harvard more than 400 years ago and as such holds a special place in our collective hearts and minds.

It is the start of probably the best system of educational institutions in the entire world – the modern university – because it’s the oldest university in the world.

Additionally, it has had plenty of time to accumulate resources and reputation. Its endowment is also the largest among universities, which gives it more money to fund research programs, hire the best professors, build the best facilities, and attract the best students.

Because it’s the oldest university in the world, it also has the largest alumni base, which allows it to help students raise more money, build new facilities, and carry the Harvard brand around the world.

Remember alumni legacies?

Number one – the best bring the best

The second reason why Harvard is ranked number one in everything from BusinessWeek to Time to U.S. News & World Report is because it tends to attract the top academic students year after year.

Notice that I specifically said academic because I think that is one of Harvard’s biggest points of focus.

If you’re a middle or high school student considering applying to Harvard you really need to focus on your academic performance, your GPA, your class rank, your SAT scores, your in advanced placement tests, and your performance.

You should be sure to participate in academic competitions like Quiz Bowl, Science Olympiad, Math Counts, and so forth.

There are other Ivy League institutions like Brown, Dartmouth, and Princeton which place more importance on nonacademic factors.

Because Harvard does attract the top academic talent, if you look at the very prestigious Westinghouse Intel science talent search, typically the top performers all like to attend Harvard.

The reason for this is that Harvard does have the same sort of focus. It tends to have the highest SAT scores and class ranks towards matriculating freshman class relative to its peers.

Number three – top faculty and staff

The third reason why is because of its faculty and administrative leadership. Harvard tends to attract the top professors because of its reputation, its funding, and its student body.

The best professors in turn are attracted by the most interesting research projects. They win the most Nobel prizes, and they also attract more students who are eager to learn from them.

Additionally, Harvard tends to recruit very prominent and successful leaders. Everyone from Elena Kagan (current Supreme Court Justice) to Larry Summers (top ranking official in the Clinton and Obama administrations) have served in leadership roles at Harvard.

Number four – famous alumni

The final reason that I want to touch upon briefly is related to my first point. Harvard has an incredibly successful alumni base that, in turn, helps its current students with their career ambitions.

This gets Harvard’s name out in the press.

Harvard alumni become prominent CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. They serve prominent leadership positions in government.

For example George Bush had a Harvard MBA. Barack Obama went to Harvard Law school. Meg Whitman was also a Harvard MBA and CEO of EBay.

These prominent leaders really help seal Harvard’s reputation among the academic and business elites. Furthermore, they attract more applicants around the world.

Hope you understand now why Harvard consistently takes up so much mindshare. That’s not to say schools like Stanford or Princeton aren’t amazing, and your decision on which school deserves careful analysis!

It is not as well-known as schools like Princeton or Brown for its liberal arts and humanities, but it is very well-known for its undergraduate Wharton Business School.

In addition, UPenn, as its commonly known, has great graduate programs in law, medicine, and of course its graduate Wharton MBA program.

UPenn is unique in that it has two well-known and very prestigious dual degree programs called the Huntsman program and the Jerome Fisher program.

Back when I was applying to college, I applied and got in to the Jerome Fisher program.

I was attracted to it because it offered an opportunity to not only major in the Wharton Business School, but also get a degree in engineering.

The Huntsman program is also very attractive. It allows you to major in the business school while also getting an international degree.

Huntsman has a reputation for being a great gateway into international affairs, global business, diplomacy, foreign relations, and international policy. For this reason, if you’re thinking global, definitely consider Huntsman. It’s also one of the most selective programs – even more selective than Jerome Fisher.

Why do a dual degree program? There many reasons:

• The most important is that you get a lot of resources and support.
• Not only do you come out of these programs with two degrees, which is very helpful in today’s economy, but you also get to be a part of the small community of a leading students. These students will go on to be future leaders of the world, and you will be able to say you knew them in college – or they will be able to say that about you!
• In addition, you also get resources that even Wharton students don’t get access to. You will have the best professors, special lounges and study rooms, access to events and conferences, and special classes.

I ultimately chose Stanford over Jerome Fisher for reasons that I will discuss in a later article, but in some ways I regret that choice.

If you’re considering UPenn, you should definitely look into both of those programs.

This will give you an opportunity to get an even more well-rounded education and truly leverage the resources of an Ivy League institution.