<p>What always will get me, probably until the day I die, is the fact that I was denied the ability to study at top notch Political Science programs because of the grades I got in AP Chem, essentially speaking.</p>
<p>I had perfect 100's for all 4 quarters of my high school life in Social Studies/Business/English/two 5 year sequences of foreign language. But because I had 85ish for Math/Science...my only bad thing mind you, I am getting royally ****ed over.</p>
<p>Just a little gripe about how admissions works overall.</p>
<p>Oh yeah... my school did this thing that if you didn't take Pre-AP math in 7th grade (thats when our "junior high" system starts) then you're a year behind in math so I'm taking Pre-Calculus my SENIOR YEAR! ahhh.. its been a nightmare, they wouldn't let me do anything during summer school. yep. attempted to explain that to adcoms but apparently they didn't get the memo. oh well.</p>
<p>i'll probably get screwed over for pton since one of my essays was about a career in entrepreneurship, when all my top EC's are political/social related.</p>
<p>rejected harvard, yale, columbia, duke, dartmouth, upenn and waitlisted cornell all today. got in nw and brown but maaan. i thougt i was a lock for duke =/. and was holding at least some hope for HY and columbia</p>
<p>holyspirit....that's absolutely my case too! Sophomore year, I did pretty miserably in AP Chem (mosntrous, despicable class), and I think that blemish on my records just screwed me over. The thing is, I HATE chem/science/math, and I'm hoping to major in IR. So, I was screwed over by a class where the class average was a D for all 4 marking epriods. </p>
<p>rejected from: harvard, yale, columbia and brown. have strong feeling that a princeton rejection is coming my way. waitlisted at sarah lawrence.</p>
<p>Anyone that thinks you need to attend an Ivy League school to make a mark later on in life, whether that be in politics, medicine, or anything, is horribly mistaken. The fact that many prominent politicians and justices, among other professions, come from mostly Ivys shows just how far the rest of the schools in the country have come. Fifty years ago, the Ivys were in a class of their own, bar none. Now, it's a different story. Private schools that were forever in the backseat - Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Georgetown - have crept up and are now right up there with the Ivys. When our kids apply to college, and they look at the lists of prominent alumni and such just as the kids in this forum did, it will be populated with a much more diverse list of people.</p>
I am a legacy to Columbia and Harvard too. Dang it seems as if four years of my life have gone down the toilet.
[/quote]
Umm, why would 4 years of your life have gone down the toilet? You have learned much in high school and assumedly enjoyed your time in high school (I know I have), so why would it all be for a waste just because a few colleges don't accept you?</p>
<p>jscott-
completely agree. plus at those times it was a lot easier to get into the ivies. hasn't that occured to anyone? acceptance rates have gone way way way down. (what were they for p-ton in say...the 1970s? I willing to bet it was much higher.)</p>
<p>with that said....rejection still hurts like hell.
as I type this I'm still crying over the p-ton rejection and cornell and columbia waitlists I recieved an hour ago.</p>
<p>Um no, Jscott. Go look up the educational histories of the Supreme Court Justices in the past and present. Or major political analysts such as Huntington, Chomsky, etc. You can be successful, hell, even make a lot of money. But you probably won't be able to attain the highest level of prestige which doesn't necessarily always go hand in hand with money.</p>
Um no, Jscott. Go look up the educational histories of the Supreme Court Justices in the past and present. Or major political analysts such as Huntington, Chomsky, etc. You can be successful, hell, even make a lot of money. But you probably won't be able to attain the highest level of prestige which doesn't necessarily always go hand in hand with money.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If you are brilliant and a great person, you will succeed. Seriously, no body gives a damn what college you go to. Anyway, if you are really want to be the top in political sciences or whatever, then just work really hard in whatever undergraduate school you go to, and then you should be able to go whereever you want for your graduate school. Don't blow this out of proportion; what some stupid comittee says about you after reading 5 or 6 sheets of paper about you is not going to change your whole entire life.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I get to choose between NYU and freaking Carnegie Mellon. What a waste of a 1580, double digits of AP/IB classes, and about 4 years of my youth I could have spent drinking and smoking non-stop.
[/quote]
And by the way, I will probably be going to Carnegie Mellon this next year too, and it is in no way a bad school. You call it "freaking Carnegie Mellon", but think about it this way. The school only has a 40% acceptance rate, so 60% of the kids who apply, don't get a chance to go! You should be greatful that you have the opportunity that many others don't. And also, by the way, many students don't have the opportunity to even attend college. Just be thankful for what you have and quit complaining, holyspirit; all of the rest of us are in the same boat as you. Good luck!</p>
<p>Props edy_42.
holyspirit- I wish I had <i>never</i> clicked on the e-mail I got with your post. I was feeling decently better about then, and then...my God, to see that.
Yes, the Ivies equal some amount of prestige. At the same time there are so many different ways to gain prestige, and going to an Ivy really equals so very little in the world of prestige- there are homeless people who went Ivy...</p>
<p>Be merciful. Have mercy on yourself, and perhaps others by realizing there will be more chances.</p>
<p>Well, I just got into UChicago with merit scholarship. So, I'm more than happy with that. Now my dreams of doing Econ aren't dashed to all hell.</p>
<p>Obviously, you don't need that Ivy League degree to go on to great heights. holyspirit, I promise you, if you change that outlook, you'll be fine.</p>
<p>Allegheny College - William McKinley
Cincinnati - William Howard Taft
Dickinson College - James Buchanan
Eureka College - Ronald Reagan
Kenyon College - Rutherford B. Hayes
Miami University of Ohio - Benjamin Harrison
Michigan - Gerald Ford
North Carolina - James Polk
Ohio Central College - Warren Harding
Southwest Texas State - Lyndon Johnson
Stanford - Herbert Hoover
Union College - Chester A. Arthur
Whittier College - Richard Nixon</p>