How you can get an Ivy League Education without formally enrolling in an Ivy League School? A complete guide.

Long gone are the days when you expected to pay a huge amount of dollars to get Ivy League training. Today you have the chance to receive the rewards of an Ivy League Institution in the palm of your hands.

The term “Ivy League” was coined in 1954, when the NCAA athletic conference for Division I was formed. So in reality, the “Ivy League” was just a name given to the athletic teams of these 8 prestigious schools. All 8 of these schools are ranked at the top of the World University

rankings.

These schools (Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale), now offer free online courses for students all over the world. Courses are primarily designed for students who are either in college or are in the sophomore or junior and senior years of high school.

You can learn from a Harvard professor, at the comfort of your home, how to write code for applications and websites. You can explore your childhood passion for space, by taking a course on astrophysics and cosmology.

You could even throw yourself into something completely new and unknown such as film writing, and come out with a newfound passion. Harvard and Yale, two of the highest-ranked universities in the world, offer free courses on their websites: https://onlinelearning.harvard.edu/catalog/free and https://oyc.yale.edu/ 

respectively. 

Another great platform to use for an online ivy league education is edX; edX.org is a website with a catalog of more than 2000+ courses in all disciplines (there is a course here for everyone). edX has numerous courses taught by all eight of the Ivy League, and also other elite schools such as MIT, Stanford, and Duke. Courses on edX are profoundly diverse and range from everything on the spectrum.

Courses on artificial intelligence, robots, bioengineering, and gene editing are particularly interesting for sci-fi lovers. You can even find full-fledged and specialized courses on acting, film writing, and art. Some courses teach you how to play a musical instrument and how to compose your music.

I wasn’t lying when I told you, there is something for everyone.

Beginner courses are usually just a few weeks long, but more advanced courses can even go up to be as long as a few months! To top this all off, if you complete a credit course you can even pay for a certificate and get college credit. You can transfer your credit to your college credits: this means you will be fulfilling your college graduation requirements, from the comfort of your room.

You make your class times, choose how long you study each day, and most importantly choose what to study, all while getting valuable college credits: this is, after all, every student paradise. I also personally used edX to learn computer coding and photoshop, back when I was in high school.

Students can also visit another platform called Coursera (www.coursera.org) which offers courses that are more aimed towards students looking to gain professional skills in fields such as computer science and business. These platforms are fairly exciting for high school students. While everyone else in the class will be doing the same routine course work, high

schoolers who take online courses can truly capitalize on this opportunity of quality education and get a competitive edge. You will not only impress your fellow class fellows with your knowledge but will also help stand out from your peers in front of your teachers.

Furthermore, you can use these courses on your common app college application. In the activity section of the common application, you can add that you have taken college-level courses in your desired majors. Although, you cannot send your finished course certificates to the universities you will be applying to, you can mention them in your activities section: something that might you get extra credit with the admissions officer.

I have seen a Yale course called the science of wellbeing trending on all of my social media pages.

Upon research, I found that it can be found for free on Coursera at (https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being) and has 2.6 million enrolled students. Since most educational institutions are currently operating remotely due to the COVID pandemic, this would be the perfect time to utilize effectively and learn new things. 

Hopefully, by the end of it all, you will be able to say that you have also received a true ivy league education.