Just about every year, there’s a news story that breaks about a high school senior who earns admission to each of the eight Ivy League institutions. Heck, sometimes it’s Ivy Coach’s student who makes the news for earning admission to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, UPenn along with other elite universities like Stanford, Duke, and MIT. But most of our students don’t apply to each of the eight Ivy League schools. And why? Because most of our students only apply to one school in the Early Action / Early Decision round — and they get in. Now, if one of our students applies to Princeton or Yale in the Early round and earns admissions, we’re not against their submitting an application to Harvard or Stanford in the Regular round. But we will put our foot down if they say they wish to apply to, say, Cornell. Because there is no chance one of our students will choose Cornell over Princeton or Yale. They would simply be submitting an application to Cornell to collect a feather for their cap, which we stand wholeheartedly against.

Florida Teen Grabs Headlines for Getting Into All Eight Ivies

This week, a Florida high school senior, Ashley Adirika, made headlines for earning admission to each of the eight Ivy League schools. As Hannah Oh reports for Seventeen in a piece entitled “Florida Teen Has ‘Surreal’ Experience of Being Accepted Into Every Single Ivy League College,” “Ashley is the daughter of a single mother who emigrated from Nigeria as well as one of five kids, and was surrounded by family when the acceptances rolled in. ‘The tears just started to come out. Like they started to flow out. My siblings and I were just really excited, like screaming, jumping around. It was crazy,’ she told ABC News. Ashley was on the debate team during her time at Miami Beach Senior High School, and explained to ABC that she is ‘someone who loves to learn new things, and so debate gave me that opportunity. But more than anything, it just gave me the platform to talk about things that I believed in and talk about things that were important to me.’…After going back and forth between Harvard and Yale as her top two choices, Ashley announced on Instagram that she chose to commit to Harvard and will be attending the school starting this upcoming fall with a post captioned ‘It’s official❤️! I’m so excited to call Harvard my home for the next four years. #gocrimson ? #Harvard2026.'”

Ivy Coach’s Students Have Made Headlines for Earning Admission to All Eight Ivies

Now, we don’t know if Ashley applied to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or even Stanford via Early Action. If she did — and earned Early admission — we would not support her submission of applications to Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and UPenn. But if she did not apply to one of these schools in the Early round and instead chose to shoot her shot to all of the Ivies in the Regular round (or if her admission was deferred in the Early round), then we are absolutely ok with the fact that she submitted applications to all of these institutions. And if you’re wondering how we at Ivy Coach have had students who have earned admission to each of the eight Ivies when we’re such big proponents of applying Early and we’re quite vocal about not collecting feathers for one’s cap, well, we encourage you to think about it. Figure out the answer yet? When one of our students earns admission to each of the eight Ivy League schools (and Stanford), it usually means something didn’t go right for that student in the Early round. Maybe the student was deferred to Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, or Yale and then ultimately earned admission to the Early school — along with all of the other Ivies — in Regular Decision. Now does it make sense to you? We thought so!