Ready for the Ivy League Challenge?

What Can I Do to Have a Better Chance of Getting Into Harvard?

Transcript

Welcome back to season two of the Ivy League Prep Academy Podcast. Equipping you to successfully pursue the college of your dreams. We believe everyone deserves to reach their full potential, and the admissions process shouldn't hold you back.

What can I do today day to have a better chance of getting accepted into an Ivy League school? I hear this question quite a lot, and sometimes it's not an Ivy League school. Sometimes there's a specific school. What can I do today to have a better chance of getting into Dartmouth or Harvard or Duke or MIT or Stanford or whatever the case may be? There are lots of outstanding colleges, right? And sometimes students come to me and ask, what can I do to get in? I'm going to give you a piece of perhaps more practical advice than you were expecting.

I think this advice will help you stand out. It's something you can do today, and it will increase your chances of getting accepted into an outstanding school. And my advice is you need to learn to love going to school.

You need to have an extremely positive attitude about school. At the very least, you need to love the objectives of school, and that is learning and growth and problem solving. Of course, if you think about your own high school right now, or middle school, for those of you who are in middle school still, you can probably imagine a lot of teens and preteens who spend most of the day complaining.

A lot of hoodies and hats covering the face, a lot of heads down, a lot of attitudes that are completely in the dumpster. And you'll hear things like, oh, this teacher is so bad. When are we ever going to use this? Why do we have to do this? Is this going to be on the test? Did you hear about so and so? I'm so sick of this class.

I'm sick of homework. I'm so sick of school. And you'll hear these comments and other similar comments everywhere you go.

All right. I have, as I've talked about before, I've taught in middle school and high school on three different continents, all different kinds of schools. And you know what? Some schools have a lot more money than others, and the complaints are virtually the same.

The details change, absolutely, but the complaints are the same. The idea is, I don't want to be here. There's something uncomfortable, something unenjoyable about what I'm doing here, and I don't like it.

Now, in this podcast, my objective is not to say that there are no problems in school. In fact, there are. There are tremendous problems in school, just as there are tremendous problems in society.

But what I'm saying is, if you want to increase your chances of getting into a top rate school, a top rate college today, if you want to increase your chances today, you have the power within you. You can make the most of what you have. You may have graffiti on the walls and a broken door heading into one of your classrooms.

Because I have taught in schools like that and I have seen teenagers be the catalyst for change, where teenagers got together and decided to clean up the graffiti or to work together to raise money to fix the door. How inspiring is that? Because it's not so much about the resources available to you, it's about how resourceful you are. And you're going to face a lot of challenges throughout school.

You're going to have teachers that are there not because they love teaching or they even love the subject. They're there because that's the job that they could get. And you're going to have other teachers that are absolutely committed and devote their entire being to the classroom.

You're going to see that entire spectrum, and none of those things are up to you. You don't decide if someone put graffiti on the school walls or if the bathroom stalls are breaking or if the door to the classroom doesn't fit correctly. You don't decide if your teacher is an amazing catalyst for inspiration and just breathes the love of learning into all of their students, or if your teacher is there just to collect a paycheck.

You have no control over your school board or your principal and a whole bunch of other factors. And so what you can do is you can choose not to focus on the conditions and the resources, but to focus instead on your approach and your resourcefulness. It is your resourcefulness that's going to dictate what you get out of high school.

And guess what? When you go to college, it will be your resourcefulness that dictates what you get out of college. Believe it or not, there are going to be a lot of people in your university who don't get nearly as much out of the classes and the experiences and the networks of support and the laboratories and all the facilities as you do. And the reason is you are the kind of person who listens to a podcast like this and that tells me that you're the kind of person who can say, you know what? I'm not thrilled with the cards that I was given, but I'm going to play them the best I can, and I'm not going to stress myself out over things that are outside of my control.

I'm going to focus my energy inwards towards things that I can control. Because if the textbook is torn up, I can read it anyway. If the classroom is overcrowded or noisy, I can do what I can to collaborate with teens and support each other and create some kind of study support group.

And the more selective the college, the more this is true. They want to see individuals who are excited about learning. They want to find teens who, even in difficult situations, found ways to bring up everyone around them, found ways to be resourceful.

And what that looks like is it looks like an island of excellence in the middle of a sea of mediocrity, right? All around them are people complaining. And it's not even just teenagers. Your school may be full of faculty who are complaining nonstop about the conditions they're in and somehow you rise above it and you choose to be an island of excellence, like we said, in a sea of mediocrity.

And that is what helps you to stand out. Now, how do we get there? Right? Because I think there's a really, really important quote by Vince Lombardi. He said that fatigue makes cowards of us all.

And nowhere is that more true than in high school. If you are sleep deprived and overwhelmed and stressed out again, possibly because you signed up for a bunch of classes and those classes really are overwhelming you. But regardless of why and how you got to the state that you're in, if you're completely sleep deprived, if you're completely overwhelmed and exhausted and your body is on the verge of breakdown, then you're going to have a really hard time loving learning.

You're going to have a really hard time lifting others and being that island of excellence. So in order to get yourself to that position where you can be so resourceful and demonstrate a genuine love and a genuine curiosity for learning, for growth, for lifting others around you, you have to take care of your body. If you don't have the stamina to keep up with your ambitions, then you're going to fall short.

Fatigue will make a coward of you as well. And so where do we begin? We begin with more sleep. What most students who care about this topic, how do I make myself more competitive for Harvard or some other great school? Most students who might be interested in a podcast with this title are the kind of students who hear about all different kinds of responsibilities and different opportunities.

And people say, can you help out with this or that? And their answer is yes. Let me see, how can I fit it all in? I've got so many things on my schedule, how can I fit this into and the how can I fit this in? Turns into the answer of, well, I'll just push my studying a little bit later into the night, I'll stay up a little bit later or I'll wake up a little bit earlier and that's how I'm going to fit everything in. And what I'm telling you is, if you want to be the kind of person who truly loves learning, you need a body that can support you.

You need stamina, you need enough sleep. And that means you shift your perspective away from how can I fit it all in? To how can I get an extra 30 minutes of sleep? And there's a whole bunch that goes into that. From getting off your screens on time to being more productive earlier in the day, to setting your priorities, to saying no to certain things, and frankly, to scheduling your classes.

Appropriately under scheduling so that you can demonstrate your love of learning in other ways, rather than just being overwhelmed by class after class after class and test after test after test. And we've spoken about that before, especially in my Master classes. You can look through my old podcasts, but the truth is, you're going to have a hard time demonstrating a love of growth and a love of learning if you can barely keep your head above water because of how many AP or IB classes you're taking.

The next thing, besides getting more sleep, is getting a tiny amount of exercise each day. And by tiny, I really mean it. Five minutes of a brisk walk is enough, according to recent research out of Harvard.

And so if you can just take a little bit of time, maybe even just walk outside and walk around your house, five minutes of brisk walking, come back in, and you got the blood flowing again, you have more oxygen to your brain, and you can focus better. You can enjoy yourself more. So get more sleep, get a tiny amount of exercise, and then, I have to say, connect your learning to your core values.

What matters most to you, and how does your learning connect to what matters most to you? We're going to talk more about this in next week's podcast, how we can tie in our vision to be more disciplined and to just lead a more meaningful life, and how we can become that true island of excellence. But ultimately, if you want to put yourself in a position where you are more likely to get into a top tier college like Harvard, then the best thing you can do today is choose to love learning. For this episode came from we are here by declare p I'm Steve Gardner.

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