<p>A GC at our high school has been heard telling kids “With your GPA and a 28 on the ACT, you can get into any college.” They do NOT all know what they are doing. </p>
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<p>I was almost starting to feel bad for him. </p>
<p>So my friend got off the waitlist at Amherst. I kind of made him look bad though. He did do a lot of service in Africa and did go to a Summer School at an Ivy League for 2 years (Not going to name it for privacy reasons), so it was kind of surprising when he applied to a bunch of schools and didn’t get into any at first.</p>
<p>“I was almost starting to feel bad for him.”</p>
<p>Same here. When I see a student with these stat’s getting shut-out, it makes me wonder if one of his LOR’s reflected his bad attitude. </p>
<p>^Probably did. No college, from community college to Harvard, wants a student with a poor attitude. </p>
<p>Couple of kids from school did something similar (it’s not like they didn’t apply to safeties, they just didn’t apply to many). I meet with my GC regularly (I’m in a tiny public school and I’ve had the same GC for three years, so he knows me really well), and I went to visit him a week ago to let him know where I decided to go to school and give him a list of my admissions decisions. When I asked him generally how other kids did, he said that some kids had good turnouts, but others didn’t fair so well because they applied to mostly reaches with the safeties/matches to counteract those schools. </p>
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Pretty neat trick after only applying to “UChicago and the Ivies”…</p>
<p>Sorry, at the time all he told me about was Ivies and UChicago. He also applied to Amherst among a couple others. I think he still has yet to hear about waitlists from UChicago and Penn Wharton.</p>
<p>“service in Africa” doesn’t help if there’s no commitment to service at home. Otherwise it’s just rich kids taking a vacation in exotic locales, feeling bad for the locals, and doing a little bit of good that over 2 weeks is supposed to cover the fact the student doesn’t do much to help his/her own less privileged community at home for the other 50 weeks in the year.
Just telling you how admission officers looked at it at the schools your friend applied to.</p>
<p>^ What it shows is his parents have $ and that can be pretty alluring for any college.</p>
<p>@MYOS1634</p>
<p>I’m sorry but that just isn’t how it works. You could have “service at home” and still be rejected from these schools. </p>
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<p>He may have gotten some help from the GC after all. When a student is completely shut out from all schools, but makes a few waitlists, the GC will often “work the waitlist” by calling the waitlist colleges and letting them know the student’s situation; it can help the student get in someplace. Maybe the GC called Amherst for the student. One would hope the student learned a little humility from this experience (but I bet not…).</p>
<p>It’s funny because DD didn’t need to see her GC unless she was filling out/faxing a form & her GC didn’t seek her out to offer a list of schools that she felt that DD should apply to. Maybe because she k</p>
<p>Well, every monday second semester seniors do service instead of school for about 7 hours a day. His family also isn’t rich.</p>
<p>Last year a student in my D’s class was convinced he would get into a top ranked school. He applied to Ivies, Stanford, U of Chicago, and then one safety (local LAC, ranked about #50 in USNWR). Guess where he is attending? He was not happy…but our GC did try to get him to apply to more schools that would make sense for him. But he was too arrogant to listen.</p>
<p>@bomerr: of course one can have “service at home” and be rejected by these schools! But service ONLY “in Africa” or in a third world country, with no year-long commitment to volunteering, is a red flag.
Service every Monday is more impressive than service for two weeks in a randomly chosen country. If the country is related to something the student has done, such as starting a charity, fundraising, then going, it’s another matter. Of if it relates to volunteering at home and the abroad part is an extension of it. Both are good, but the “2 weeks in Africa to feed orphans that my parents offered me last year made me realize how lucky I am” does not impress all that much.
For schools to which OP’s friend applied, this clearly signified “wealthy” and may explain why he got off the waitlist, but for these schools with mega endowment being full pay is not a hook in itself if the poor attitude that seemed to surface here </p>
<p>^ Yep. :|</p>
<p>@MYOS1634
From personal experience seeing my peers get into school, I really don’t think it’s possible to make those kinds of conclusion. </p>
<p>One person could get accepted because they have tons of community service and if another person with the exact same profile comes up after that 1st person, the 2nd person could get rejected because they already found a high community service student to ‘complete their class.’</p>
<p>@bomerr but schools want to know that kids are giving back in genuine & meaningful ways. My own DD, who is very low SES gives back in so many ways. And absolutely loves it. She even wrote her CA essay about it. </p>
<p>@NewHavenCTmom</p>
<p>that is true but what I am saying is it only raises your chances, you could still get rejected with all that and a bag of chips</p>
<p>Well I hope the kid’s ego is now in check.
This is a good life lesson: seldom are people as good as they think they are</p>