<p>Will7- Your post is very true lol.</p>
<p>The only 2 Ivy league schools I will apply to are Cornell, and Columbia. Both very different schools, however, I’d love to go to either!</p>
<p>The majority of the schools I’m applying to are public state schools, with the exception of a couple.</p>
<p>My parents have encouraged me to look at all 8 Ivies to make sure which ones would suit me the best, and I think (I’m only a rising junior, plenty of time to reconsider lol) I’ll apply to Brown, Yale, Harvard, and UPenn. All 8 are great in their own way, but I personally don’t picture myself at Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, or (maybe will apply to) Dartmouth. I am also looking at Duke, Caltech, MIT, JHU, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, UNC-CH (in-state), and NC State. Will definitely trim list over next year, but that’s where I currently stand.</p>
<p>Yeah, it’s a HUGE gamble to apply to all of them, but somehow people manage to get lucky enough to get in at one, or even all of them. You have to be gutsy to do that, and best wishes to those who dare to beat the system. I just would be disappointed/sad to find out the one that I chose to go to wasn’t the best fit for me, and I wasted a whole bunch of time and effort for nothing. </p>
<p>@Hopeful_Underdog: Wow, that’s unbelievable! Wish that I could be her, then you would have the ultimate bragging rights for the rest of your life. The only thing people can jeer at her are for not applying/getting into Caltech, Stanford, and MIT lol! </p>
<p>One guy this year got into Yale SCEA, Dartmouth, Stanford, Princeton, and perhaps Columbia (not sure). These people must be uber lucky because those adcoms basically draw names out of a hat lol! ;)</p>
<p>And now we know why there’s an insane volume of applications to these schools + an insane acceptance rate, kids “hedging their bets.”</p>
<p>A few people at my school do this every year (if they aren’t accepted EA/ED by their first choice), often applying to Stanford and MIT as well. Of course, they are usually highly qualified before they do so (2350+ SAT, perfect GPA, etc.) but I don’t think it’s a wise idea, not because I expect them to be rejected by all the schools, but because a school like Brown isn’t really similar to a school like Columbia. Nevertheless, take for example 2 students at my HS who have applied to Ivies + MIT + Stanford:</p>
<p>Student 1, 3.9 GPA and 2390 SAT (school grade-deflates because it is extremely competitive): Accepted by Princeton, Dartmouth, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, waitlisted by Harvard, Yale, Brown, MIT (didn’t apply to Stanford)</p>
<p>Student 2, 4.0 GPA and 2390 SAT: Accepted by Dartmouth, Cornell, Stanford, MIT, waitlisted by Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Penn</p>
<p>Was student 1 really qualified for Princeton but somehow wasn’t for Brown? How did student 2 get waitlisted by a few of the less selective Ivies and yet was accepted by Stanford and MIT? Overall, I think it reflects on how much admissions can be a crapshoot. A rejection letter means that they don’t want you, but you can’t determine anything from a waitlist other than that you had some bad luck. I don’t think the idea that a student is waitlisted because he/she doesn’t have ECs that are remarkable enough is true, but I do believe that a student is waitlisted because the SCHOOL needs to have certain quotas of different profiles and that a waitlist is not because of a student’s flaw, but rather because of a school’s flaw.</p>
<p>The bottomline is: even if you’re not a perfect fit at all 8 Ivies, it is not far-fetched to apply to all 8 IF YOU’RE HIGHLY QUALIFIED, because it really is a draw out of a hat for the deserving yet unhooked profile. You just can never be truly sure what a school is looking for in its applicants. Could student 2 really have guessed that she had something Dartmouth was looking for but Penn wasn’t looking for?</p>
<p>Of course, it’s wise to have safeties; both of the aforementioned students also had safeties.</p>
<p>As for myself, I will probably apply to a handful of Ivies. I am already swaying away from Brown, Cornell, Penn (if I decide that undergrad business isn’t right for me), and maybe even Yale, but I do have high interest in Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Columbia. And hey, maybe in a few years, I will be one of those students at my school who applies to all 8 Ivies.</p>
<p>All 8 is a lot IMO, but more power to anyone who goes that route! I always knew I wanted to apply to at least 2 Ivies, and I plan on applying to Columbia and Brown.</p>
<p>All of them except Columbia and Brown</p>
<p>I can see myself potentially applying to 5 of them(if shut down in the ED round).</p>
<p>Why do people apply to NYU? I will never understand.</p>
<p>I think whoever applies to all 8 is basically just looking for the prestige, since the 8 are very different from each other.</p>
<p>Why not? Some people like the school. It’s a great school and in the city and if it has the atmosphere your looking for, why not? Plus, for highly qualified applicants applying to the ivys, NYU is kind of like a really good safety school.</p>
<p>I know someone accepted to all the Ivies, MIT and Stanford. He chose Stanford ;)</p>
<p>I don’t look down on these people because if they are looking for a top notch education, smart students, and a lot of opportunities I can’t imagine an ivy league school that wouldn’t qualify.</p>