Admissions Differences between Ivy and Non-Ivy

Applying to College
1

Hey, I’m an ever-so-grateful student who will be attending Duke University this fall.

Having gotten all my application results, I noticed they were rather unexpected (perhaps coincidental?).

Accepted:
Stanford, Duke, UChicago, Northwestern (Medill), WashU, Vanderbilt, Boston College, Boston University, NYU (Stern), and Johns Hopkins.

Rejected:
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, and Georgetown

Waitlisted:
Brown (Declined my waitlist spot but, statistically, probably would’ve eventually been rejected.)

School: Public international school
GPA: 3.85 unweighted
Financial Aid: only applied for FA for need-blind schools
ACT: 35
AP: three 5’s, two 4’s
SAT II: Math 2-800, Physics-760, Literature-710 (did not send except for Georgetown)
EC/Awards/LoR: Quite good, I think.
Essays: Similarly written (in terms of quality and time-invested) across all applications.
Not a legacy to any of those schools.

No students from my school have ever been accepted to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Also, it has been many years since a student has been accepted to the other Ivy schools. And I was the first from my school to be accepted to Duke.

I am obviously super happy with my results but just curious as to this division of results of Ivy vs non-ivy (besides Georgetown). I know acceptance rates aren’t everything and many factors come into play but… still quite peculiar.

Any thoughts?

2

My only thought is you applied to every Ivy - they are vastly different. Whenever I see this, I always think the applicant was prestige hunting and it came through in applications. How can you see yourself fitting in rural Dartmouth and urban U Penn? With such small acceptance rates, I think the Ivies have a pretty good sense of who really wants to be at their particular school and who just wants to be at an Ivy.

3

Each school – Ivy or otherwise – has a different formula to fulfill their needs, because they aren’t all looking for the exact same class.

Most of the schools you listed could set 3.9 as the minimum GPA and 1550/35 as the minimum test score and entirely fill their classes. The fact that the odd 1400 or 3.6 gets in proves the holistic nature of these schools and the fact they are looking for classes that are diverse demographically and in terms of interests and skills. Adding the particular needs they wish to fill (the violin player, the coxswain, the championship coder…) makes it seem even more random and unpredictable to us – we simply cannot know exactly what they’re looking for.

It seems a bit odd that you were essentially stonewalled by the Ivy League but got into some other equally selective schools. It would be interesting to learn why each school made its particular decision. (of the schools you listed I consider Stanford, UChicago, Duke, Northwestern and Hopkins as true Ivy equivalents academically, and Vandy/WashU as schools that are very very close, and closing.)

4

nothing surprising here…

5

“My only thought is you applied to every Ivy - they are vastly different. Whenever I see this, I always think the applicant was prestige hunting and it came through in applications.”

Or… equally possible that the student was first gen or low income. The idea of “fit” is a very elitist concept. It encapsulates all the intangibles that each special snowflake dreams of, none of which are the first consideration of a kid who is a lot more worried about things like paying for groceries or having basic school supplies.

Guess what? Kids who grow up in a low income situation see education as a means to an end. They see getting a degree from a top school as their ticket to a different life. Period. They’re not usually wasting too much time obsessing about whether the school is urban or rural or how pretty the dorms are. They want to be accepted at the best school they possibly can to give them their best chance of climbing onto a higher socioeconomic rung. Whichever one of those top schools accepts them, they’ll make it work because the degree at the end and the doors it opens is what matters.

Are there kids who are just seeking prestige? Yes. But there are others who are just trying to get the best education they can, working with little info and different priorities than what the privileged kids are.

This poster wrote a reasonable post, mentioned their gratitude and asked a question. Let’s give him/her the benefit of the doubt and be polite instead of judging him/her.

6

“No students from my school have ever been accepted to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Also, it has been many years since a student has been accepted to the other Ivy schools. And I was the first from my school to be accepted to Duke.”

While there can be other factors, this one might be one that may have contributed to your Ivy vs. non-Ivy results. At my son’s high school, too, no one has ever been admitted to Harvard except for one outstanding, record-breaking swimmer recruit some years ago, no one before her and no one after her. Hardly anyone got accepted to HYP for many years at my son’s school until just a few years ago when Princeton started to “like” my son’s high school for whatever the reason (perhaps its IB program). Princeton has picked one student each year for three out of four years so far. Stanford and Duke, on the other hand, have been picking students from my son’s high school lot more consistently.

The high school counselors have to supply the school profile to colleges for applicants, and if your high school isn’t one of those high profile pipeline school for the Ivy League schools, then you get the kind of results you have.

7

It just doesn’t matter anymore. I would stop looking in the rear-view mirror and focus all of your attention on how to best take advantage of your opportunities at Duke.

8

@universityer: Interesting post, even more interesting are your application results. Thank you for sharing. Without reading your application file, it is hard to explain your results as anything more than an interesting coincidence.

Did you receive financial aid awards from all of your acceptances ?

9

For the people who say don’t look back, ignore them. Don’t obsess over ivy’s, but there is value in looking back.

At work when we finish a project (think tens to hundreds of millions of dollars), we always have multiple post mortem meetings. We figure out what went right , what went wrong, and apply lessons learned to the next project. We even do this for smaller projects, albeit on a smaller scale.

That said, you will get a great education at Duke. You have lost nothing in prestige, and the weather is much better!

10

^^^^The difference is that in college admissions unless one is in the room when each decision is made you are basically trying to analyze what went on inside of a black box. Unlike a project at work where the facts are readily available for analysis, nobody here will every be able to figure out with any degree of certainty or clarity why the OP got into one top tier college and not another.

11

I agree with you that this is strange. You got into some schools that are, by reputation, every bit as selective as any Ivy. It really is odd that the Ivy League left you out so consistently when other top schools welcomed you.

At any rate congratulations…you had some stellar choices (assuming you have already decided where to go). Good luck!

12

@universityer,
Thank you for posting. Your case is interesting. I can’t why you should not look back. Many threads on here are about looking back. It could help someone somehow. There is value in reflecting.

Like someone said, it could be your school and its “relationships” with those Ivies. My D’s HS has not sent a student to Yale for 10 years or more. Students get accepted to all other Ivies but not Yale. It was to the point that my D and some of her friends did not even bother to apply to Yale.

13

@rphcfb That was also true for Yale at my son’s HS. No one had been admitted to Yale in over 20 years the year that he applied. That didn’t deter my son from applying and being accepted during the EA round. I would never discourage someone from applying just because no one from a specific HS had been accepted in years. Yale turned out to be a great match for my son who is very musically and academically oriented.

14

An obvious case of yield protection! :slight_smile:

15

@momofmusician17 ,
I would not discourage my D, either. I did not know about the Yale thing until she told me. She did not want to waste her fee on Yale. More importantly, she really likes her ED choice. It offers what she looks for in a major and a minor. She was fortunate to get accepted. Great fit for her.

At another school district (public) the same year, a student was accepted to Harvard, the first one in her school history of many, many decades. She obviously was not discouraged.

16

OP, please just move on. Enjoy Duke.

I think you got into the schools you mentioned because of 1) ability to pay and 2) a killer essay. Your stats are on par with the majority of other applicants.

17

@NJWrestlingmom perhaps they could’ve perceived me as prestige hunting although I swear that was not the case. But I suppose what I meant and what was conveyed could be different. At least, I did not write about becoming a “Harvard-man” like JFK haha.
If I just looked at prestige, I think I would’ve decided to attend Stanford, because Stanford honestly has the biggest recognition over the other schools I’ve been accepted to (at least in my country).

18

College is for academic. Why is it so negative making academic fit or cohort as the first priority. Although he missed out of Ivy schools, he had nice list of academically strong schools to choose, probably based on other fit categories after his acceptances. It was a smart strategy for him.

19

@milee30
Thank you for understanding, and you perfectly described why I applied to the schools I applied to. My parents attended a two-year vocational college, so I’m not entirely first-gen but clearly not from a prestigious family. As you perfectly said, I just tried to get the best education I could since attending college is extremely expensive. I knew my chances were slim for all the colleges I applied to, hoping that at least just one would accept me. Never cared about rural, urban, weather, etc. Just wanted a great education and feel very grateful that I get to receive one.

20

@TiggerDad
Ahh I see! Yeah, I don’t think my high school is high profile… At least compared to the other private schools in my country that costs 50k a year. Mine is a rather new, public school so hopefully my high school’s students get more equal recognition in a few years.

@Publisher
I received a few merit-based awards from Duke, Vanderbilt, and WashU. But they’re not huge (when compared to the total cost of attendance). But, I’ll take even a dollar of free money! :slight_smile:

@NoKillli
Thank you, NoKillli! Yeah, I’m very excited for Duke! :smiley: Not sad at all about being rejected.
And yes, I agree, which is why I was asking for opinions. My admissions experience (though it is just a singular experience and everybody’s profile is different) can hopefully help the future seniors of my school better prepare for the daunting application process.