Читать книгу Accepted!. Secrets to Gaining Admission to the World's Top Universities онлайн

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Of course, no one was more surprised than I was when I got into all of the greats I applied to: Harvard, Yale, Wharton (Hunstman), Cambridge, Yale-NUS, and more! I was just a skinny kid from the bottom of the world who narrowed the odds by going overboard.

So would I do it the same way again, given what I know now, given the people I've met and the places I've studied and the questions I've asked of scores of my mentors and peers at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford?

The answer is yes and no.

We're all told time and time again that there is no secret formula of guaranteeing a spot at an Ivy or Stanford or MIT—and that is true, but only to a point, given like any highly sought-after goal, sooner or later you start to see a pattern. I started Crimson Education with my then-girlfriend at 17, on the floor of our respective parents' living rooms, and even then, I knew there was an art to what I'd done that went beyond any talent or element of luck that I'd unwittingly tapped into.

It is true that acceptance rates at Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton hover around the 4% mark—but 4% still get in. The trick is building an application that puts you in that 4%, and if you have the talent and the right strategy you can increase your chances significantly.