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

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The best answer to this question is comically simple but brutally effective.

As an 18-year-old, I applied to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Wharton, and Cambridge and gained admission to all of them. I beat students who were smarter than me, had Mathematics Olympiad Medals, were head students of their school, and had a wide variety of other achievements. What was my strategy?

Take the maximum possible academic subject load and do more than any other student around you.

But what exactly does this mean? At my school, King's College, a well-to-do private boarding school where I was studying on a scholarship, the typical student would take three to four A Levels (in the Cambridge curriculum).ssss1 But I did 10.

Taking a subject load that was 2.5 times the median student and more subjects than anyone else in my school's history showed that on one very important dimension—academic capacity and work ethic—I was demonstrably able to beat everyone else. I didn't take on all that extra work simply to lay claim to this record, it wasn't about “winning” for the sake of winning. I simply had my sights set on top US or UK university admission, and at the time, doing more sounded like the best way to increase my chances of getting in. Which ultimately it did, and for other students still does. One of my students in Shanghai this year just finished his 17th AP subject. (Update: he was accepted into Harvard in the 2021 admission cycle.)