Let’s hear the college admissions urban legends. The surprise acceptances. The ones you couldn’t believe. The unreachable reaches that became admissions. Include stories and stats!
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For my daughter Washington and Lee. But no merit.
For my son Purdue Engineering. Getting in didn’t surprise. But the $10k merit is unheard of and that surprised us.
Good luck to all. Reach or not u just need one school u love. Neither of my kids goes to the schools I just mentioned.
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What surprised you about the acceptances? Where their stats lower than the average? Were they super reaches? Why do you think they were admitted or offered the high merit?
Well my daughter applied to 21. I thought would be admitted to 16. Sue got into 17 so I mos-predicted. Her ACT was a tad low for them. I think our religion may have helped as they are seeking to grow in that area or she was simply qualified. W&L is not easy and it’s $81k a year unless u get a scholarship which many do. She interviewed but did not get.
Purdue. I’ll assume it’s because my son went to STEP, their summer program but I have no clue. Better stat classmates got in with no $$.
A reach is different person to person. So each story is different. The pedigree of school is different. No one truly knows the why.
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Same here. We expected our D to be accepted to Purdue Engineering. What we didn’t expect was the scholarship and that it would be affordable. Our D also attend their STEP camp and was later a counselor. Purdue was considered an academic match and a financial reach. We were all elated!
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My D19 is very talented (vocalist) but we were surprised she got into Berklee (Boston) with a $20K scholarship and CalArts with a $17K scholarship. Sadly, they were both too high in price to justify. Loyola New Orleans offered scholarships which brought it pretty close to our SUNY prices and she ended up very happy with the decision to go there and feeling it was “meant to be.”
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I was surprised to get into UMass Amherst’s nursing school and honors college. I had a 4.0 UW at the time of application and a 32 ACT, but the nursing school had a 12% acceptance rate, and I wasn’t expecting honors at all!
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Harvard early action for a kid with nice stats, but nothing that would have gotten him in on their own, had it not been for a big music spike (we think).
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S21 was rejected from a bunch of low match BFA acting programs and then accepted to a few reaches and then accepted to UNCSA for BFA drama! Totally not relevant to academic discussion but was very exciting.
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Amazing!!!
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So exciting!!
Nice!!
Two years ago my son applied to 5 colleges. He had his heart set on Notre Dame where he toured twice, shadowed a student, did everything he possibly could to show interest from freshman year on–then he was rejected. He was all set to attend one of his ‘safety’ schools and then one weekend in late January, he received two acceptances–one from the University of Miami with a full tuition scholarship and the coveted ‘little white box’ from USC offering a chance for one of the larger scholarships. We were all in shock and I admit, I cried tears of joy–being our first child to go to college, we had basically written off the ‘stretch’ schools after Notre Dame came in with a rejection. He interviewed with USC and was graciously offered a 1/2 tuition scholarship. He loved both schools and ended up at Miami with an offer he couldn’t refuse and is doing great (it was a difficult decision as we loved USC as well). This year, it is our daughters turn. Keep hope, the unicorns happen. 
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WOW!!! That’s a great college hopeful admissions story!
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My younger had SAT scores where Verbal was in the top 10% of the college class and math was in the bottom 10%. (It wasn’t a terrible score, just under 700.) His weighted GPA put him one off from the top 5% of the class. His activities were all over the place, two orchestras, literary magazine, Science Olympiad. He loved history and took three AP History course. He wrote a somewhat edgy essay about why he originally didn’t thing he wanted to go to U of Chicago for his “Why Chicago?” an essay that got a comment from the admissions committee when he was accepted EA. For Tufts he wrote an alternative history of the United States based on historical documents, (so he tweaked various real documents and letters all the way up to the US losing WW2) - it was a response to and optional essay that year which was something like, “What do you think might have happened if the US had lost the battle of Yorktown?” It was quite creative and showed his ability to go the extra mile when inspired. BTW he got rejected from other slightly more selective colleges!
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He sounds like a great creative thinker!
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Great story! UChicago definitely likes well written and quirky essays. And getting accepted EA (as versus ED) is not easy!
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This was a while ago Chicago did not have ED and I think applying EA was a huge advantage that year.