Ok, here are the Native American student’s results, per this post. I have sorted them into Accepted/Waitlisted/Rejected/Pending categories for easier viewing on this discussion.
Accepted
- Abilene Christian
- Bates
- Denison
- Dickinson
- Pepperdine
- Rice
- UC – San Diego
- U. of Oregon
- Villanova
Waitlisted
- Amherst
- Rensselaer Polytechnic
- UC – Irvine
- UC – Santa Cruz
Rejected
- Cal Tech
- Case Western
- MIT
- Northeastern
- Pomona
- Stanford
- Texas Christian
- UC – Berkeley
- UCLA
- U. of Notre Dame
- Williams
Pending
- Brown
- Columbia
- Dartmouth
- Duke
- Georgetown
- Harvard
- Princeton
- Tufts
- UC – Santa Barbara
- U. of Michigan
- UNC – Chapel Hill
- U. Penn
- U. of Southern California
- Vanderbilt
- Yale
The UCs have been pretty unpredictable for everyone this year. But the student was rejected at the two most selective UCs, waitlisted at two, and accepted to one (arguable, the third most selective of the UCs). This distribution is easier to understand than that of students who were rejected or waitlisted at less selective UCs and then accepted to Berkeley or L.A.
As far as the rest of the results go, Rice and TCU seem to be the biggest outliers (especially TCU). Rice really liked him, and it’s not such an outlier because Amherst waitlisted him. These are smaller schools than some of the others, and admissions decisions in seeking the right fit for the student body aren’t always as apparent from the outside, but these schools thought that the student was going to be a good fit. TCU…well…, I have no explanation.
Nevertheless, though, I don’t think this student’s results have been that shocking when seen as a whole. There’s been a surprise or two which I think happens in just about any year. Now the surprising thing for some is the overall increased level of selectivity of various institutions or the degree to which a high-achieving Native American student is a “hook” or not, but as far as the results…the distribution doesn’t look such a mishmash of results.