@Classicalcollege I’m sure you’re right about that 760 figure, but when I estimated a difference of 5 questions I was referring to total rather than per section. The difference is probably more around 10 or 12 but I highly doubt that it’s 20, and again we’re talking about hundreds of questions.
You are wrong! He had great ECs and work experience too. I know of students with lesser ECs (and of course, lesser scores) who have been accepted from my school but they were not Asian.
@fallcolors I doubt the ivies are concerned with yield seeing that their yield rates are some of the highest in the country.
He had very strong ECs, but I don’t know that there was a wow factor. He had a wasted opportunity using Math and a CS reccos. Likely too much similarity and he already had good CS EC so a missed opportunity to show that he had some flair in English or related–a deep thinker. Just nitpicks. There is so much we don’t know. The many waitlists meant they would take him if there was a spot. So those were just on the bubble of being accepts. Didn’t go his way I remain astonished that someone would expect so much. Given the many rejects I have to conclude there was just something not clicking somewhere in there. An expressed interest in business instead of learning? Who knows. Dartmouth sounds like a good matchup to me.
FWIW, although the OP already said he was majoring in business, if he had said his major was CS/Computer Engineering instead I think there are many reasons to choose CMU over Dartmouth and even over Berkeley.
I would choose CMU for business. Last time I checked David Tepper was the top hedge fund guy in terms of wealth(sorry I had to use some quantifying method), he went to CMU for MBA. Oops but where did he go for undergraduate, an Ivy? Nope, it’s Pitts.
First off I understand the OP being disappointed. While he certainly may not feel lucky it was not out of the question that he could have been shut out as none of those schools were safeties. In my opinion once you reach a rather rarefied strata stats become less important and a myriad of subjective and intangible criteria become the deciding factors. The problem is I don’t believe anyone, including the admissions officers, know what they are until they see it. A safety for this student would have been a very well regarded public or a private that uses primarily statistics to determine who they admit. There are two types of reaches, those that you are underqualified for and those that admit such a small portion of their applicants and whose applicants are so very highly qualified that no one can “expect” to be admitted. The kid with the 3.3 and a 24 ACT probably has about the same chance of being admitted to say Ohio State as the kid with the 4.0 and a 2400 or a 36 does to Harvard. The difference is kid 1 knows why he/she wasn’t admitted, kid 2 will never know. The thing I think is most important about these posts is that all of the very bright kids out there and their parent learn to understand this and act accordingly.
I think there is a profound mistake around the proposition–which underlies that OP’s gripe–that someone who scores 2400 on their SATs is a better student than another student who scores, say, 2300. Never mind, for a moment, that the elite colleges are using more than SAT scores to differentiate among thousands of applicants; let’s just consider the value of SATs to evaluate academic ability. There is no reason to think of them as a road race, in which the winner is the person who arrives at the finish line, or the 2400 line, first. Get a group of college professors at elite schools together and you will certainly hear that it doesn’t work out this in way in the classroom. I think at best we can group students in fairly broad ranges and then make some dependable assumptions about their ability to succeed at school.
Achieving the 2400 in a single sitting was a dramatic and significant success, as was the 4.0 gap, no doubt about it. But it was faulty to assume that it proved the OP or any of his statistical equals were the “best” students in the pile. And the universities make it clear, year after year, that that’s just not the way they look at it either.
As I hinted at above, I have a really hard time feeling sad for a kid who has some terrific options like Dartmouth, Cal, and CMU. There are literally zero opportunities at HYPSM that would not be availabe at least one of those 3 schools.
Well there’s your problem. Stats were perfect, but your gender/race wasn’t preferable to these colleges.
Berkeley and CMU are still kickass if you want to do computer science or business. I don’t know much about Dartmouth though.
There is a thread dedicated to expressing the pros, cons, and your opinions regarding affirmative action. This is not that thread. - FC
Congratulations on your achievements and acceptances to several fine universities. Please lose your sense of entitlement.
He never said he had the RIGHT to be in those universities because of his stats (aka “sense of entitlement”). He, however, does have the right to be, as he said in his post, “sad”. He also clearly mentioned that he’s posting this to let others know that perfect scores/GPA isn’t everything, which is literally what half the people in this thread are berating him for (by saying that scores/GPA aren’t everything). Read his damn post.
This is what the OP said. He expected to be admitted to his top 9. Nobody can expect it. Nobody. Except maybe if your last name is Obama.
I think some people are misinterpreting OP. I don’t think he is saying he had the right to get into all those 9 schools; he is saying that he is surprised/sad that he didn’t get into any of them. Given the difficulty of admissions these days, others might not be surprised about that. But OP was. He is just giving us his mindset and letting others know that they need to temper their expectations.
Even adults feel sadness and disappointment when they don’t get what they want. So long as OP moves on, I think it is okay for him to express his feelings here.
Good luck OP. I am sure you will succeed in one of your terrific choices.
@2018dad. Or Bush.
I think he expected to be admitted to at least one of his top nine - and while perhaps this assumption was erroneous, I think we can all agree that stats-wise, he was probably in the top few % of the applicant pool at all of these schools. I do agree that reading the rest of his profile didn’t really thrill me - nothing super special with ECs or awards.
I’m not sure why everyone feels the need to pile on and tell OP that he’s entitled. The posts everyone is citing are mostly from April 1st - literally the day after he got all of his decisions back. Everyone’s allowed to be a little bitter about their rejections for a few days. I think OP (and a lot of other people) are just looking at this and saying, “perfect wasn’t good enough. What was I supposed to do? What more could have been done?” I don’t think that question comes from a place of entitlement, but rather a place of exasperation.
Congratulations, OP, on Dartmouth, Berkeley, USC, and CMU. They are all amazing schools, and all will give you a wealth of opportunities.
Maybe the people who say OP is entitled are the jealous ones. I see it in every thread that expresses even a little bit of disappointment with acceptances to good, but not their top choice, schools. There’s always that one CC kid with the 1800 SAT score saying “shut up i would kill to get into that school”. Those people just didn’t work hard enough and that’s why the only way they could ever get in is to figuratively “kill someone”.
Or De Blasio
Perhaps it’s unfair to hold a teenager to adult standards, but feeling sad about acceptances to Dartmouth, Cal, and CMU would earn an eye-roll from most working adults.
Granted, most working adults have experienced worse things than some rejections to lottery schools and also have the benefit of perspective.
To the OP, it’s OK to be sad. I think the lesson kids need to learn from this is that there is NO difference between “perfect” scores and almost perfect. I think that is partly what causes the fuzzy math thinking. There are kids who have a 2300, 3.9 and rank 20/400 that these colleges will consider as equal to perfect. So the perfect pool is huge. As someone said, above a certain level, perfection is irrellevant. Good enough is good enough…now show me more!! That is sadly the state of affairs.
I would have liked to see more matches on your list. It looks like maybe 1 match, one safely and the rest lottery…so I’d say you got a lucky lottery ticket!
As someone else said, life will be like this. There is always a reason unrelated to numerical statistics others are chosen. Human nature.