<p>or for Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton , for that matter?</p>
<p>I have fairly good IB grades and SAT scores (higher than the mean/median for these colleges), I imagine my teacher recommendations should be great if not exceptional, and I think I can write pretty personal and engaging application essays.</p>
<p>My problem is, however, that I don't have tons of ECs and leadership positions that many other candidates will have. Sure, I have MUN, Princeton University Language Project (translation work for charities), global issues group, cross-country, badminton, piano, and have done some volunteering, and have gone to a couple of summer programs. I also did an internship at a law firm last summer. But all these are nothing spectacular, and I'm not president or chairlady of any club or captain of sports team. </p>
<p>Should I still attempt Yale or any of the schools mentioned above?</p>
<p>I’m not sure why you got so many responses with hate as a theme, but Yale may be a long shot. It sounds as if you’re in range academically, but that’s true for far more applicants than Yale can accept. You need something that helps you stand out. Will your essays tell a story that gives Yale a reason to prefer you to other academically qualified applicants?</p>
<p>I agree with opensecret… These schools are definitely a long shot for you. As is mentioned over and over again on CC, EC’s are critical to gaining admission to these universities. Harvard and Yale could fill their classes with 2400’s and 4.0’s but they choose not to because they want students who they see to have potential in becoming leaders and contributing towards society positively.</p>
<p>It is a common fiction on CC that Yale and Harvard could fill their classes with 2400’s and 4.0’s. I seriously doubt it. They could fill their classes with 4.0 HS students, easily. However for several years after the conversion of the SAT to CR+M+W, fewer than 300 students per year scored 2400 in a single sitting. The most recent number that tokenadult has posted (and I’ve seen) is 384 students scoring 2400 in a single sitting. Despite superscoring, I don’t think this number could grow to equal the total number of students at Yale and Harvard. Among the students who could potentially super-score 2400, I suspect that many of them collect 2350+ on the first SAT they take, and then walk away.</p>
<p>I think it’s also a misconception that being president of high school clubs is particularly impressive to selective schools. It’s a nice thing to have, but there are many other things that are just as good. I would say that those who get admitted to the most selective schools tend to have (in addition to great grades and scores) some significant accomplishments or achievements outside the classroom–these can be in sports, or the arts, or science (such as research), or community service, or lots of other things.</p>
<p>I have often wondered the same thing. For example, anually, there are about 1.5 million who take the psat (I think SAT numbers are similar). 50,000/ 60,000 score above psat 200/ sat 2000. 20,000 of these are semifinalists (215/ 2150). So, how can top schools reject at a rate of 80%? Just adding up the class numbers at the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley and Duke, it seems to me like they take in about 14,000. In which case, it would seem they are trying to fit about 20,000 students into 14,000 slots. Out of these 20,000 many may want to attend other schools, such as Swarthmore, Pamona, Williams, Cooper Union, F. Olin, Harvey Mudd, Middlebury, Haverford etc. Then there are NMFs who actually want to attend TX A&M, Bama, Arizona and Oklahoma etc because they get free rides. Finally, there are engineering students who would probably prefer attending schools such as CMU, Michigan, U Illinois, UT Austin, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Colorado Mines etc. So, I just cannot see how top schools can be all that picky and choosy. By the way, there must also be high scoring students drawn to scholarships/ honor programs at schools such as U Washington, Washington & Lee, Chicago, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Georgetown, Tufts etc. I am wondering, are my numbers off?</p>
<p>It would be more useful knowing what percentage of applicants with SAT scores over 2100 were rejected/ accepted and the yield for these applicants.</p>
<p>You aren’t going to find stats that tell you that, but you can get a feel for this by looking at the results threads on this forum for the last couple of years. You will see what kinds of applicants get admitted and rejected, and you can compare yourself to them.</p>
<p>Put that way, it sounds a lot less hopeless. If those 20,000 students apply to 5 colleges on average, it amounts to fit 100,000 students into 14,000 spots. It comes out 14% acceptance rate. Interesting.</p>
<p>By the way, forgot to mention schools such as Wellseley, Bryn Mawr etc- all women’s schools that could be first choice for many. Also Military/ Naval schools, Rice and Georgia Tech etc for others.</p>
<p>There are a lot more than 20,000 high-testing students. That number is the NMSF number, but not everyone takes the PSAT, and even among those who take the PSAT not everyone who eventually has high SAT scores has high PSAT scores. (Of my two children, one was a NMSF, the other wasn’t. The non-NMSF took the SAT once and scored 50 points higher than the NMSF did on the second try. And the non-NMSF had meaningfully better school grades, too.)</p>
<p>About 54,000 students scored 2100 or higher composite on a single test last year, 23,000+ of them above 2200. About 36,000 had 760 or higher on the Math test, and 20,000 had 760 or higher on CR and another 20,000 had 760 or higher on Writing. And that’s just SAT takers. Even adjusting for people who take both SAT and ACT (but remembering that some people do way better on one or the other), adding ACT takers means that there are probably around 80,000 students with the equivalent of 2100 scores, maybe 35,000 at the 2200-equivalent level, and 90,000 with a very high score on at least one important element.</p>
<p>And that’s just in the US. The elite colleges are getting a lot of applications from abroad, and lots of them have good test scores, too.</p>
<p>So, yeah, it’s a myth that Yale is rejecting thousands of 2400-scorers. But it’s not a myth at all that it has thousands of applicants with SATs (or ACT equivalents) above 2100, 2200, even 2300, or that thousands and thousands more with those scores don’t even bother applying to Yale (or Harvard).</p>
<p>By and large, those people find great places to do higher education in the U.S. system. But those places aren’t all at HYPS or anything close to that.</p>
<p>Since most students take the test more than once, 54,000 with higher than 2100 is likely a double count. Adding ACT takers will certainly increase the number of high scorers but not a simple addition. It will be interesting to know how many students take both tests and score high in both. If we take the double count into consideration, the simple argument made with NMSFs does not contrdict.</p>
<p>JHS, I think the internationals are among those 23,000 who get above 2200 since they do not take a separate SAT. Secondly, 23,000 is really not that far from my estimate of 20,000 for semifinalists and 54,000 is not that far off from the 50,000 commendeds. Good point about another 10,000 with ACT.</p>
<p>Regarding EC’s. A couple of years ago I did a statistical study of SCEA admits who posted their results on CC. Here are my observations about EC’s at that time:
</p>
<p>And regarding preference for very high test scores, Brown’s currently posted data for the class of 2014 shows that they rejected 68% of their ACT=36 applicants and that those admitted constitute 2% of the class. That they did not take all of them shows that they also value other traits in applicants. That they could have taken all of them with plenty more room shows that there aren’t that many perfect score applicants. I imagine the Yale’s selection process is somewhat similar.</p>