Class of 2020: Aiming High

AISG’s current senior class can be described in one word: ambitious. Many of the students in the class of 2020 strive for A+s, IB 7s, and 1600s on the SAT. All of this is supposedly done in order to ensure that they get into the best universities across the globe.

The current seniors are applying to top universities including but not limited to Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Northwestern, Stanford, Oxford, and more. All of these schools are very prestigious and are incredibly selective. Harvard’s acceptance rate is only about 5%. Some students are even doing what is called ‘shotgunning’, in which they apply to a large number of top universities in the hopes that one will accept them. However, this method is not recommended by most admissions counselors. Furthermore, some students have hired private counselors to aid them in the admissions process.

Ms. Brown, one of the HS counselors, is in charge of helping seniors with their college admissions process. Ms. Brown says that the majority of students at AISG “look at rank instead of best fit,” something that is true for past senior classes at AISG as well, though there is a “slight uptick” in the class of 2020. As for students who are shotgunning top universities, Ms. Brown also said that there are “a lot more than previous years” and that it is “discouraged”. Though it may seem statistically better to shotgun since at least one university should accept a student, according to Ms. Brown, “that has not been the case many times.”

One student, Michael L., is applying to Cornell University to study architecture. Cornell University is an Ivy League school and is the top-ranked school for architecture in the US. It is the 17th ranked school nationally. He says that he is “very stressed” about applying to a top school since he is worried that he may not be accepted into his first choice university.

Terry M. is another senior applying to “most of the top universities in the US” and is one of the ‘shotgunners’. He is that “applying to 6 out of 8 of the Ivies”, and multiple top universities across the US and Canada. However, he acknowledges that his list might not be the safest and will “probably end up removing a few in December just to ease off on [his] supplements workload”. Terry chose his university applications based on his feelings on the University of Toronto, saying that “anything that [he] would prefer UofT over, [he] wouldn’t consider” and decided to “dream big and apply to the best U.S. universities in the world.”

Jason H. is a senior who is applying to Oxford, one of the top schools in the United Kingdom. He said that the application process, Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), is less stressful than its US counterpart, the Common Application. However, Jason does not feel optimistic about his chances of getting into Oxford, saying that he “still feels like [he’s] getting rejected.”

Ultimately, it is the decision of the student on which universities they want to apply to. It is important for students to be ambitious with their university applications because luck may very well be on their side. Let’s wish the class of 2020 good luck on their applications!