Books and Ivy League Admission

Books and Ivy League Admission June 23 Read books for pleasure. Itll help your case for admission. But try to avoid book series like The Hunger Games, or books that every kid in America reads. Heres an observation weve made in our many years in the business of highly selective college admissions: College applicants just dont read. We imagine this doesnt strike you as too surprising. High schoolers not being voracious readers isnt exactly news. But for applicants to highly selective colleges, reading is as the NBA stars like to say fundamental! Grant Hill knows where its at. After all, the man is a Duke University graduate! Students who want to gain admission to Americas top colleges should be avid readers. They should have an insatiable intellectual curiosity. They should love learning. And what better way to learn than to read? We dont know a better way. Unless youre David Boies, the master litigator who happens to be Dyslexic and so got through law school by essentially memorizing verbatim everything his professors taught him (as chronicled in Malcolm Gladwells latest book David vs. Goliath). Over these summer months, we encourage high schoolers to read  not only because its a good thing to do, because itll make you smarter, because itll keep you out of trouble, but also because it will help your case for admission to highly selective colleges. Highly selective college admissions officers arent impressed that you read The Great Gatsby or Hamlet. Everyone and their mother knows that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shakespeare are required reading in high schools across America. You read required reading? What an intellect! What an insatiable appetite for learning! That was sarcasm if you didnt catch our drift So spend the summer reading for pleasure. Try to avoid books like The Hunger Games or Divergent or Twilight. No, we dont have anything against Lionsgate in spite of us just listing their three major movie franchises. We just want you reading books that everyone else isnt reading. March to the beat of your own drum, as Henry David Thoreau would say. See what we did there? We got that from reading. You can too.