Alternatively, remember this and go about satisfying some need. This really shouldn't take more than two years assuming you have a decent level of diligence. Two years is really enough time to become pretty much the best at any sport, instrument, or other activity you can think of, at least at the high school level.
Egads, you're kidding me. If you are applying to the Ivies and are not black, your competition had a violin in her hands at the age of 6 months, has played in Carnegie Hall, was the valedictorian of her high school class and had test scores in the 99th percentile, and will still be rejected with the words "Another smart Asian girl... meh."
I don't buy this. I got into a few Ivys, but I'm not black, and I'm not a virtuoso instrumentalist. I just wrote about how I really liked CS and math. I got good grades and scores too, so I'm not disregarding those, but really, the world isn't full of perfect children, and even if it was, I don't think that colleges would prioritize them
That's a vast exaggeration of how hard it is. If you want to be guaranteed to get into a specific Ivy then you're probably right. But if you just want to get into any Ivy and you don't care which then all you really need 1250 SATs and no Cs. And even these are negotiable if you're really good.
Also, if you get recruited then they send your applications to admissions and tell if you're likely to get in or not before you even apply. And if you're not likely to get in then they'll tell you to go talk to folks at the other colleges because they don't want a bad reputation for future years. Because of this there will usually be at least one Ivy who needs what you have badly enough to pull some strings to get you in.
As for the violin, don't choose something like violin, gymnastics, or soccer where people start at age 3. Just choose some obscure instrument and you're pretty much guaranteed to at least be one of the best in your state in a couple years if you practice enough and get lessons. It's not like you need to be the absolute best, assuming each school takes on average 8 of X then you only need to be in the top 80. And remember that there will be a handful of those who are completely ineligible because of outright terrible grades or SATs, or else they just don't want to go to an Ivy, so really it's more like you only need to be in the top 96 or so.
Also there are a whole bunch of tricks. For example US News doesn't count the grades of people who come from Canada, so every year Harvard will recruit a whole bunch of folks from up there to round out whatever they need when if there aren't enough qualified US applicants. And plus most of these schools run massive direct mail campaigns encouraging every one to apply no mater how unqualified they are in order to make themselves appear more selective, so it's actually a ton easier to get in than it looks. Again you still need to be reasonably hard working and maybe a little lucky, but it's not so difficulty that you need to be obscenely lucky or genetically talented or whatever.
"But if you just want to get into any Ivy and you don't care which then all you really need 1250 SATs and no Cs. And even these are negotiable if you're really good."
Sounds like you're referring to the 'Z-list', of rich kids who don't need financial aid or legacies, or the athletes or whatever. They might be able to get in with those metrics, but not normal kids who have 1250s, 3.5GPA, and committed to something unusual for a mere 2 years.
Having gone through the application process with more impressive marks and accomplishments than that (1400, 3.8, national science competition winner, published in NSF journal), and gotten waitlisted till the last round, before somehow finally squeezing in and finding myself close to out-of-my-league anyway, I'm pretty sure that's not accurate.
As far as I know the only one who has written anything about this is me. I wrote this essay five years ago visiting every Ivy league school and learning about their admission processes:
I'm pretty sure the book The Game of Life talks about the admissions process of athletes and other students with special talents as well, but I haven't read it so I'm not sure how much detail they go into or how accurate it is. It's also worth understanding how the Academic Index works, since that's very important for getting into an Ivy. I don't think there is anything official written about it, but if you do some sleuthing you can find a bunch of stuff. For example a quick Google search turned up this:
It's only officially used for football, but I get the impression that it's often used unofficially as a ballpark for students with special talents in other areas.
