Academic Competitions for College Admissions
Colleges technically, officially, don’t directly compare students. They’ll never place two applications side by side, look at them both, and discard the one they think is weaker. That said, a lot of what admissions officers do involves comparing students indirectly, which means they quite enjoy it when the students do the comparisons for them.
After all, students want to admit students who are the best in math, or science, or other academic fields, but directly comparing that is hard when so many students have near-perfect grades and test scores. Academic Competitions are not a silver bullet, and winning one won’t get you admitted. What it will do is give you a solid data point: this is exactly how good you are compared to all these other students. This is how well you measure up.
Ivy Scholars works with students to help them find academic competitions which suit their interests and aptitudes, offering them chances to show off the extent of their talents. The great thing is that no matter where your academic interests lie, there are competitions designed to let you show off, to push you to your limits and let you exceed them.
Competitions We’ve Helped Students Succeed In
There are a great many academic competitions out there, and we’ve helped students enter a whole range of them. Here’s a sampling; for an example of what this help looks like in practice, see the case studies below.
- AMC
- AIME
- Debate
- Math Olympiad
- Science Olympiad
- ISEF
- Quizbowl
- Comuputing Olympiad
- National History Day
- University Interscholastic League
- Scholastic Competitions
Academic Competitions for Students: Case Studies
Competitions for students come in many forms, and we can help them prepare both directly and indirectly. Our best help comes from helping our students turn these into something more; the final victory, the gold star atop a high mountain of achievement. Here are some case studies of students we’ve worked with in the past, who have taken part in academic competitions of different sorts, and how we helped each achieve something remarkable through and on top of that.
Student T
Student T was excellent in math, both naturally gifted and eager to explore deeper concepts within it. As with many gifted high school students, he took the AMC and AIME, performing quite well on both. While he didn’t quite reach the cutoff for the olympiad team, his scores put him amongst the top math students in the nation in his grade.
This alone differentiated him, but we helped him do more with this. He attended summer programs for math, there to better explore his interests, and in attending met many students who were similarly enamored with the subject. A group chat was made, at first just to stay in contact, and then more, evolving into a community for students to help each other study and prepare for these incredibly challenging tests.
Yes, the tests are a competition, a way for students to pit themselves against each other, but here they came together, enjoying their shared passion for the subject, loving math for the sake of learning challenging things and solving hard problems. Student T took on a moderator position within the group, posting challenges, working to keep discussion on track, and welcoming and mentoring new members.
When it came time to apply, he had his scores and performances on AMC and AIME to demonstrate just how good he was at math, and the community he helped build to show how he could come together with others and share his passions. Student T was admitted to a number of top schools, including Yale, Columbia, MIT, and Caltech; he chose to attend Harvard, and is currently enjoying his time there.
Student A
Student A came to us quite interested in and enthusiastic about science, and was looking to do a research project. They selected biology, but they wanted to create something useful with their research, to pull in their interest in engineering, to build something as a result of what they discovered.
This made them perfectly suited to prepare for and compete in a science fair, specifically, ISEF. Under the guidance of one of our research mentors, they found an area they wished to address, and designed a project to study it. They gathered data, and observed the results of their tests. They did not get the result they were hoping for, their hypothesis unsupported, but they still learned something useful from the doing.
They placed at their regional fair, and presented their research at ISEF’s finals. This gave them a chance to show off what they had achieved, and to network with many other students and professionals from across the sciences, seeing how research was growing in countless fields and directions. They did not win at finals, but placing in their regional competition and getting there is still notable.
When it came time to apply to colleges, their mentor helped them showcase their love of research and discovery, and how they actively sought to use that love for the betterment of communities they were part of. Doing well in the competition was the cherry on top of the work they did as part of it, and their reasons for doing it. The student was accepted into Rice.
Student S
Student S was interested in many things, but debate was her passion; spending long hours practicing her rhetorical techniques and working to improve her fluency and fluidity with language. She had debate coaches at school and summer programs she attended; our goal was to help her deepen her involvement in the community of debate.
She began a podcast with our assistance, one which investigated the social landscape of debate. As with so many hotbeds of competition, debate does not always foster a positive environment, and this student wanted to do something to help change that fact. Her podcast invited many guests from amongst debaters, those she competed with and against, to discuss the issues they had seen and encountered, and to try to grow strategies to improve the space.
She worked as well as a debate coach. While she could see the flaws in the community, she saw clearly the strengths as well, and advocated for it, eager to introduce the passion she had to the next generation of young debaters. Here too she worked to give back to the community she was part of.
Her debate successes saw her qualify for national championships multiple times, and for a number of high level rounds. She never won outright, but her performance was notable. She was recognized for her skills, not the best debater perhaps, but in the upper echelon.
In her applications, we helped highlight her devotion to the debate community, how she had worked to strengthen and improve it, while her success within it served as a crowning accomplishment. She knew this community well, succeeded in it, and tried to make it better for those who came after her. She got into a number of top colleges, including UT Austin’s Plan II Honors, University of Virginia, Rice, and Boston University. She is currently attending Yale.
