In the latest college decision season, the Skyline class of 2025 performed well. This year, on March 27, 2025, when the decisions for the Ivy League schools were released, quite a few people got in.
Out of the 594 students of the class of 2025, one student was accepted into MIT, another into Cornell, and a couple into Yale. This is great news for Skyline, as all the Ivy schools are consistently ranked in the top 15 by US News and World Report.
Additionally, many Skyline students were accepted into the University of Washington’s Computer Science program, known to be one of the best undergraduate CS programs in the world. A few students also received acceptances from the top schools in their field, such as Johns Hopkins’s pre-med program and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School.
Hard work has paid off as many of these schools have acceptance rates of less than 10%. But a 4.0 GPA isn’t a requirement; while grades and GPA do matter, other factors often matter more.
Take the Common App, for example, it has 7 main sections: Profile, Family, Education, Testing, Activities, Writing, and Course & Grades. Only two of the sections focus on grades in school; other factors such as SAT or ACT scores (testing), essays (writing), and extracurriculars and awards (activities) can significantly boost your chances of landing in a top school.
Strong extracurricular activities, or the interests one pursues outside of school, can be a stronger factor than grades alone. This means that even if one aspect isn’t perfect, it won’t kill the chances of getting in.
Best wishes to our graduating class and good luck to the students of the class of 2026.
