Good point.
Also: faulty probability, if the percentage acceptance rate for the pool as a whole were the probability for each member of the pool, without differentiation. If you apply to 10 schools and there’s a 10% chance of being admitted to each (independently), there’s a 34.9% chance of not being admitted to any of them (.9^10).
I don’t know every school on the list, but I think at most of them you don’t apply “as a major” in anything.
@therearellamas - I was specifically asking the question in reference to Berkeley being a safety for the OP. I found this on the Berkeley website which I guess answers my question:
UC Berkeley is among the more selective universities in the country, becoming more competitive each year. Due to student demand, selectivity varies among Colleges, and—in the College of Engineering—among majors; for example, it is more difficult to gain admission to the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences major than to the Mechanical Engineering major.
I didn’t note the @xiggi tag in your post, which makes that clearer.
@fearless1333 I really don’t understand your point of view. Did you think that you should have been accepted everywhere? You mentioned yourself that your activities may not have been standouts since no national wins, etc.
There are kids with your stats that were overlooked by all the top tier schools. You got the likely from Dartmouth. That means that you were at the very top of the pile in someone’s opinion. You were also wait listed at multiple places. There’s not that much of a difference between an acceptance and a wait list decision so your accomplishments were appreciated. I just don’t understand this pity party. You have some great choices at top tier colleges; pick one, don’t look back and go make an impact at your college.
First OP first let me congratulate you on your fantastic stats, and on your acceptances. That is a tremendous amount of hard work, and it has paid off for you. And who knows, maybe some of the waitlists will turn into acceptances!
As to the “moral of the story,” what I see is that highly selective schools are able to turn down highly qualified applicants for (seemingly) random reasons. What I also see is applicants applying to highly selective/prestigious schools without regard to whether that school is a fit. (or at least I see no other common thread in your applications)
So it’s hard to be heartbroken over not getting into a particular school when there’s no way to tell from this list which one is the heartbreaker. Is there one that you would have loved to go to, over the others?
In any case, I think you should be proud of your record and look forward to you success in college. Good luck!
@ThereAreLlamas, as I pointed out elsewhere, there is correlation in admissions chances, so even if you have a candidate with a 30% probability at any one school, the overall probability would be far less than 97%.
In any case, to have a 30% probability at HYPSM, you’d need more than perfect stats.
Black Admissions Day in South Korea
– Tons of Korean kids with 2400s and similar specs such as yours wondering why they got rejected/waitlisted from most, if not all, Ivies and only got into one or two of their “safety” schools.
You can speculate all you want, but I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on here…
“- Tons of Korean kids with 2400s and similar specs such as yours wondering why they got rejected/waitlisted from most, if not all, Ivies and only got into one or two of their “safety” schools.You can speculate all you want, but I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on here…”
So are tons of Caucasian kids.
I was expecting to read a sad tale, not the story of somebody who got accepted to Dartmouth, for cryin’ out loud. Some perspective is needed here.
There are a bunch of people getting upset about me saying that I’m disappointed at only getting Dartmourth. I’m not saying Dartmouth is a bad school at all like I pointed out in my OP but that Dartmouth wasn’t one of my top choices. What I’m trying to point out with my post is that the reasoning for why people get into multiple tier 1 schools (HYPS) with worse stats and no awards seems to be random. Things out of your control like if you play the tuba vs the violin or like the humanities vs science based on the applicant pool. Just look at the ivy boards and go to the decision threads with all of the 2300+ SAT 3.9+ GPA impressive extracurriculars resumes that get denied… meanwhile there are countless worse resumes that get in even with no hooks. In that regard, I feel sad because no matter how hard you work there is always a very significant factor left to chance out of your control.
Fearless, that is how LIFE works.
You can eat all the right things, get plenty of exercise, and still die of cancer. You can accept a wonderful job and six months later, the company decides to outsource your position. Your home can be in excellent condition, but then a gas line explodes. There are no guarantees in life.
I feel sorry for you, not for the lack of acceptances, but because you worked hard all of your high school years for an eternal reward rather than an internal one. Students should not be driven their entire high school life to work ONLY for a goal of getting into an Ivy League school. They should do their best for the sake of learning, get involved in EC’s because they enjoy them, and doing their best at what they are assigned to do, without a reward. Having a specific reward in mind only sets oneself up for disappointment; character leads us to do our best whatever the circumstance.
“Safety” means certain admission and certain affordability. Berkeley (L&S, not engineering) could be a low match, but not a safety by this standard.
In any case, having one low match / “high likelihood” school and the rest reaches put the OP at a significant risk of a shut out.
Do you think maybe this is an indication as to why there are admission officers instead of simply just using a computer to select students? I think we should keep in mind that the stats, especially after some “threshold” lose their predictive usefulness for success. Not all schools want to fill up their student body with stat obsessed people who can’t understand that stats are only an indication, and not a guarantee, of anything. Give some credit to the accepted students at these other schools that may have some qualities and talents, including humility and gratefulness, that may be desired -and doesn’t get picked up on admission tests.
There is no planet on which Dartmouth is not a Tier 1 school. That’s all I’m saying.
Anyone who gets into Dartmouth should be dancing for joy, not whining.
You’d think that anyone who gets into and can afford any college that s/he applied to would be dancing for joy. That some are not indicates that they did not make their application lists properly (of schools that they actually want to attend).
All of the top schools are crapshoots. Be proud of what you have accomplished, go off to Dartmouth and have a great experience. Best to look at the glass as “half full” rather than “half empty”.
Again, the term safety is better expressed as I wrote earlier. I have added a couple of addenda over the years, such as the safety school being one that the student is willing and able to attend financially. The only way the OP cannot consider Berkeley a true safety might be because of his unhappiness to “have to attend.” Academically and financially, Berkeley IS a safety for a student with such credential.
Fwiw, safety is NOT a proxy for guaranteed admission. That is where some seem to find much confusion about!
For the record, there are students at HYPS who were labeled as shoo-in and were must have students. For some, this is akin of having a “safety” in the backpack. Granted, not many, but they exist. The line “nobody” can call such schools a safety is non-sense. Bringing it down to the caliber of the UC system, and the number is waaaay above the nobody!
@xiggi With you logic, would WUSTL, Swarthmore, Georgetown, and USC be safeties for this student if they could easily be a full pay student and happy at those colleges?
Regarding the impacted majors, I have no basis for discussion since the OP did not specify his choice. It might have been shared in his post or elsewhere, but I did not look it up.
Lastly, I discussed the “safety” issue of Berkeley and not the overall chance of rejection of a 2400 Valedictorian with good scores and EC at … all the HYPS and their cousins. With single digit admissions, the chances for unhooked applicants are easy to measure: they are not very good for anyone.
Regardless, most of the debate is pretty futile. The student has one great offer of acceptance. Many would cut their pinky for the chance of attending Dartmouth, a school that is often underrated among the Ivy League schools.
He was entitled to be sad yesterday but should be ecstatic today. He did not do well in the trophy hunt, but that will be forgotten as soon as he realizes the value of his acceptance at Dartmouth.