> Clearly the admissions formula is broken. As someone who attended an "elite" college, I can assure you that you only need 3 things to get into them: 1. A pl

> Clearly the admissions formula is broken. As someone who attended an "elite" college, I can assure you that you only need 3 things to get into them: 1. A plan to follow (you can easily find great ones online these days) telling you what to do in high school (with respect to classes, extracurricular activities, volunteering, leadership, standardized tests, recommendation letters, etc.) 2. Money (i.e., live in an relatively affluent area with a good public school or attend a good private school) 3. Determination (lots of it) Your personality doesn't matter at all for anything other than the interview, which you can also pass with flying colors as long as you have basic acting skills (which can be easily learned as well). Basically just smile a lot and don't act like a psychopath at the interview, and you're good to go. As for getting into a specific college, that's a crapshoot. The admissions process is a black box, and there's no way to guarantee admission to a certain university unless your parents are big donors. But if you apply to, say, all the Ivies + Stanford + MIT, you're guaranteed to get into at least 2 or 3 if you have the 3 things I described above.