'Open the Gates to the Ivy League' Reveals Plan B for Getting into College

Although students and parents have been advised to apply to several "safety" schools, just in case you don't get into your first choices, there is another Plan B alternative: back gateways.

According to a book published this week,Open the Gates to the Ivy League, twenty colleges ranked in the top twenty-five byU.S. Newshave back doors for college admissions.

Of course, "back doors" is just the phrase commonly used to describe "other alternative" ways, other than traditional ones, to get into a top college. What all back gateways have in common is that they take students to an undergraduate degree just like the front entrance does.

Why should parents and students consider the back gateway into a top college rather than just opting for a few "safety" schools? Here are the reasons:

• Employers recognize the brand names of Ivy League and top colleges
• Top colleges often offer valuable alumni contacts
• Often top colleges offer a top teaching faculty
• Back gateways often cost lesssometimes half price as compared to the front gate
• Leadership often begins at Ivy League and top colleges
• Often, graduates of top colleges have higher lifetime incomes
• And most important, these are the colleges of your first choice.

Although there is no back door into Princeton, the rest of the Ivy League does have back gateways for admissions.

The most talked-about Ivy back door is Harvard. Harvard has two colleges that award undergraduate Ivy League degrees: Harvard College and Harvard University Extension School.

Harvard Extension is sometimes referred to as Harvard's back door. For sure, it is Harvard's way to open the gates for those students interested in merit-based admissionsif you are motivated, and you can do the work, then you can get into Harvard Extension and end up with an Ivy League diploma.

But no two back doors are the same at Ivy League colleges.

Harvard, Penn, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth are the top five Ivy League colleges with back doors either half-open or wide open. Yale and Brown also have back doors, but their back doors are barely ajar, and are limited to a very small number of students.

Open the Gates to the Ivy League: A Plan B for Getting into the Top Colleges is the only guide to college admissions that offers an alternative gateway to getting into the nation's top-rated universities. The book provides all the specifics needed to gain admission via "the back gateway". Just released in August, 2013, it is a current and essential publication as college entrance becomes more competitive and costs are escalating.

Author C. W. Henderson researched the top fifty ranked U.S. national universities, and reported the findings in the book. He was named by USA Today as one of Six Who Made a Difference, and he is an author at Penguin Group and Prentice Hall Press. He is executive editor of Ivy League Week and Education Letter, and is president of educational publisher ScholarlyMedia and its imprint ScholarlyEditions. Henderson has been an international educational researcher specializing in college admissions for more than a decade, including doctoral research in both the United States and the UK. He is a blogger at openthegates.com/blog, and his author page is amazon.com/author/cwhenderson.

"This book is not about the 'safety schools,' the alternatives to the very best. It is about exercising personal leadership to find and create alternative ways of gettingintothe very best, even when you are turned away for whatever reason: economic, social, socioeconomic, or academic; it is a book for rich kids, poor kids, and international students," Henderson said. "When the traditional front gateway of a top-branded school is closed to you, we show you another way in," he said.

"This is a new contribution to educational research, and will not only give students and parents a 'plan B', but if rejected by a college, will provide an immediate way to again apply. Some of the back gateways in this book are virtually unknown, while others are just underused," Henderson said.

Collegesincluded in this book are:

• Harvard
• Penn
• Columbia
• Cornell
• Yale
• Brown
• Dartmouth
• Oxford
• Cambridge
• MIT
• Emory
• Washington University in St. Louis
• Duke
• Caltech
• Northwestern
• University of Virginia
• Georgetown
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• New York University
• University of Southern California
• Boston College
• College of William & Mary
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• University of California-Berkeley
• University of Notre Dame.

Open the Gates to the Ivy League: A Plan B for Getting into the Top Colleges is an original paperback from Penguin Group's Prentice Hall Press. More information is available at openthegates.com.

Media Contact: Caitlin Valenziano, Penguin Group USA, 212.366.2525, caitlin.valenziano@us.penguingroup.com

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

SOURCE Penguin Group USA

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