Princeton is an Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, and probably needs little introduction. We’ll do our best, anyways, and perhaps you’ll learn something new! Princeton is a place where students are challenged to take audacious steps, and to make daring bets. When reading applications, the admissions officers look for students who are immensely intelligent, and who pair that intellect with a desire to change the world. That change is palpable and realized. Three members of the current Supreme Court are Princeton grads.
On campus, the university is home to 5,500 undergraduates and just under 9,000 students total. They have access to 37 degrees and departments that are all considered world class. All of this is housed in a suburban setting, and Princeton is an incubator for ideas without outside distractions. The environment works. It fostered new ideas and builds great leaders. Princeton is home to the oldest college literary and debating club in the United States, for example.
Princeton’s liberal arts curriculum requires students to be well-rounded, while encouraging them to go deep. The college looks for students with internal drive, and students who persevere whether through the frustration of a challenging problem set or a major life disruption. Not many students make the cut. Princeton withholds comprehensive admissions statistics, but the acceptance rate for the Class of 2027 and 2028 is estimated to be between 5% and 6% based on what data is available and ongoing trends.
If you’re hoping to get into Princeton as a first-year student, you going to need to use every tool in your toolbelt to improve your odds. One of the best tools you have is time — the time between now, when you’re reading this post, and when you press submit. The most time you’ll have open in your schedule, whether you’re a freshman planning ahead or a rising senior, is during your summers. So, it’s critical that you use any summertime you have to improve your chances of admission through exhibiting and expressing what Princeton admissions most wants to see. In this blog post, we’ll break down in detail how you can best spend your summertime to set a course for a future at Princeton.
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What does Princeton want to see from your summer?
As we dig into what Princeton wants to see from your summer, the most important thing to keep in mind is that they want to see you. They don’t want to see what many look on paper like the ‘perfect’ resume, because they know that pursuing passions and challenging yourself never goes perfectly to plan. Yes, they expect you to excel, but they most want to see you press against boundaries to discover what’s possible.
Augment Your Academics
It is really important to Princeton to only admit students who will thrive in their difficult academic environment, which asks a lot of each student. They highly recommend that all hopeful Princetonians pursue a course of study in high school that is broad and deep, and they are offer specifics. Read up on what they ask for. If your school does not have the options available to you to check all of Princeton’s boxes, you need to use your summers to augment your transcript.
Simply not having access to a particular course as an option at your school isn’t a good excuse for not taking it. If this is a situation you are facing, look into taking for-credit courses at a local community college or university over the summer to round out your transcript and meet (or, ideally, exceed) that Princeton recommendations.
You also may want to spend some time on test prep. Princeton expects to see exceptional SAT or ACT scores (like really nearly perfect) for an application to be competitive, so investing time in preparation, practice tests, and taking one or both tests multiple times is very much worth it if Princeton is on your list.
It’s true that test optional through 2025, so you may be saying: “but I’m not going to submit test scores unless they’re good anyway, so who really cares.” We hear you, but you need to hear this: While Princeton is currently test optional, that can be a little misleading. 85% of students accepted and enrolled in Fall 2022 submitted an SAT (60%) or ACT (25%) score. What this tells us is that the vast majority of accepted students choose to submit scores. Not submitting scores, then, would put you at a serious disadvantage.
And then there are summer programs. In general, we do not recommend pay-to-play summer programs unless there is strong evidence that a particular program will give you a boost in admission to your preferred university. That said, we are all for free, merit-based summer programs, especially when they are run by your dream school.
The Laboratory Learning Program at Princeton, for example, welcomes 20-40 high school students onto campus each summer for a full-time free research experience where they work alongside Princeton faculty and researchers in a lab setting. This is an in-person opportunity only, and extremely selective. The Laboratory Learning Program is best for students local to Princeton, as it does not include housing or transportation. Think of it like a summer job or internship, just at an Ivy.
Other programs include the Princeton University Preparatory Program, which is geared towards students from specific partner high schools in New Jersey, and the Princeton Summer Journalism Program, which is for high school juniors and is offered virtually over multiple weeks. The program ends with a 10-day residential capstone program, and is debuting in the summer of 2024.
If none of these work for you, we strongly advise securing an internship with a local leader or academic in an area related to your prospective major, or taking courses at home at a community college.
Emphasize Your Interests
In addition to boosting your academics, we advise that students who are interested in Princeton listen to what they ask for. They “look for students who make a difference in their schools and communities,” and they want to know if you’ve “had a job or a responsibility in your home.” “We want to know what you care about,” they insist, and you should take that to heart.
Princeton students tend to like to have their heads in the books, but the admissions office also wants to see you out in “the field” of life. At the same time, they appreciate a clear and focused narrative to who you are and what you do. The word they use a lot is “context.” They want to know what they need to understand the context of your life, interests, and pursuits.
What they love to see to provide that context includes:
Internships that connect to what you are passionate about academically
Jobs related to what you want to study or that build skills that will serve you in your future career
Artistic pursuits that are taken as far as possible
If you are going to travel over the summer, connect that travel to what you want to study. This could be a program, but it doesn’t have to be. If you are really interested in a particular language or culture, for example, immersing yourself in that place makes sense to Princeton and strengthens your application. On the flip side, if you go somewhere just to hang out that isn’t going to make it onto your application. While it may be fun, it might not be the best option if you are a rising sophomore or junior hoping to go to Princeton.
We’re not going to try to argue that everything you do needs to be geared towards your application to Princeton, but making the most of the time and opportunities you have in the summer is one of the best ways of increasing your chances of admission if you already have the grades and scores to measure up to the high bar Princeton sets for admission.
If you’re planning on applying to Princeton, you need to play a long-game. We help students create acceptance winning strategies for admissions from course selection and summer planning to punctuation.