<p>Can a 2400 Valedictorian (with very decent but not really spectacular extracurriculars) count on getting into at least 1 Ivy/Ivy level school?</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>Nobody can “count on” getting into any Ivy school.</p>
<p>Your chances are excellent, but nothing is assured. Make sure your college application strategy includes at least one school where you are assured of entrance, can pay for given the most pessimistic financial aid assumptions, and would be happy to go.</p>
<p>You should have a safety, regardless, but yes, a 2400 val who applied to all the Ivies would have very good chances of getting into one (or more).</p>
<p>Unforunately, a 2400 scorer cannot depend on getting into any Ivy. It is likely they would get into the next tier schools, of course.</p>
<p>A 2400 will get your application put into the pile of “maybes”, but you will need fabulous ECs, excellent class ranl or GPA, great recs, and an essay which captures the attention of admissions.</p>
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<p>See, the problem with this thinking, not just limited to the ivies but for applying to many top schools, is that the applicant is, for example, just as likely to get rejected from harvard as he/she is from yale or Stanford. Applying to as many highly selective schools as you can doesn’t increase your chances of getting into one.</p>
<p>Kudryavka is very well meaning, yet providing utterly inaccurate information! Because: Vals with perfect scores can on occasion be rejected from ALL top schools. You would be surprised at the number of Vals and perfect SAT scorers that Harvard rejects! It is not ALL about top scores and grades. Ivies and top schools are NOT just looking for perfect test takers with great grades. Check any of the ED or RD results threads from any of the top schools to see the range of scores and GPAs posted by those rejected, and by those accepted. </p>
<p>As fauve alerts you, to get into these schools you should have – in addition to strong scores – a transcript that demonstrates you have done exceptionally well in your school’s absolutely most rigorous courses, high class rank, SIGNIFICANT involvement in ECs MEANINGFUL to you, great recs, and superb essays. And other tangibles and intangibles that display your intellectual and academic ambition, leadership potential, range of talents, ability to seize the extraordinary opportunities that such schools afford…What they are looking for cannot all be quantified, which is why test scores and grades on their own, in particular, simply CANNOT just “get you in.”</p>
<p>If all you had going for you WAS a perfect SAT and Val status, yes it would be possible not to be admitted to any Ivy or top ranked school. So, do NOT depend upon a perfect SAT and Val status to get you into a top school, because there is SO MUCH more involved in elite college admissions. Most have adopted a holistic admissions philosophy, therefore SAT and grades are NOT the sole criteria for admissions. </p>
<p>I urge you to look at the websites of these schools, as they all have posted their basic philosphies of admissions. Statements from the schools themselves, in which they suggest what they are looking for, could be very helpful to you.</p>
<p>Fauve is also correct that a perfect SAT probably will not get you into an Ivy or top-tier school, IF the rest of the application is undistinguised, yet it IS possible to be admitted by score to some lower ranked schools that admit solely on grades and tests.</p>
<p>In short: having a perfect SAT and Val status will NOT get you into these schools, if that is all you have going for you. However, a perfect SAT and Val status can further burnish an otherwise distinguished and competitive application.</p>
<p>My goodness, I would think a 2400 valedictorian should be able to get into any ivy. But I’ve heard that some of these top notch schools take EC’s under heavy consideration. I’m quoting someone who once said, “Anybody can ace the SAT if you practice enough and/or learn how to beat it, and anybody can get straight A’s if you work hard enough at it, but an ivy league school may want more of a contribution to the school. That’s where you EC’s come into play. What can you contribute as a leader.”</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, I can tell you from personal experience that that’s no longer true.</p>
<p>I disagree with what some people have said here.</p>
<p>Having a 2400 and relatively undistinguished ECs (I’m going to assume you are “academically intelligent”, which means you have a high, if not perfect, GPA + rigor) will get you into at least Cornell or Penn. If you have nonexistent ECs, sure, you <em>might</em> get rejected. If there is a large disconnect between your SAT and your GPA, sure you also might get rejected. But if you at least did something marginally useful for 3-4 years, even if it was something like Science Olympiad, and even if there was no leadership, you will likely get into Cornell/Penn at the least.</p>
<p>That being said, you shouldn’t push your luck. Someone with a 2400 meets a certain baseline of intelligence, and you would be squandering that intelligence if you did not do any ECs.</p>
<p>Absolutely not necessarily, at least from what I’ve been able to tell. It really depends on what else is on the application. The 2400 score means almost nothing at Ivy’s, where most competitive applicants have 2100+ SAT scores and they don’t really care as long as it’s at least 2200/2250. Valedictorian doesn’t mean that much by itself–being valedictorian at an average high school equates to probably around a 3.7 GPA at a very rigorous competitive high school. So if you’re just a 2400 valedictorian, you might easily get rejected from every ivy.</p>
<p>However, most 2400 valedictorians aren’t <em>just</em> 2400 valedictorians. They often have good EC’s, recommendations, and essays. Even with these, it’s far from a shoe-in: you want to stand out in some way to get into an ivy: you often need to do well in a competition like Siemens, do research with a professor, be significantly involved in leadership, or something like that.</p>
<p>Getting very high class rank, GPA, course rigor, and test scores merely keeps you from the quick reject pile at the super-selective schools. Then you’ll be competing against numerous other academically impressive applicants on the basis of essays, ECs, and other holistic criteria.</p>
<p>^Race definitely plays a role in admissions–a role much too large, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I kind of agree with terenc, you probably will get into Cornell or Penn if your GPA is in line with your SAT.</p>
<p>Just look at Brown’s freshman profile and the number of vals and 800 scorers not admitted. Princeton used to show those figures, too. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t assume Penn or Cornell are any shoe-in for a kid who’s only got stats on his side. Too much competition from kids who have it all- and who seem like nice, engaged, all-around sorts, destined for some sort of success.</p>
<p>Btw, it’s not just ECs that are “meaningful” to you. It’s the impression the adcoms get from the commitments you’ve made and responsibilities you took on, outside the classroom and, often, outside the hs.</p>
<p>I don’t think “perfect” SAT scores and GPAs are as meaningful to Ivy adcoms as some people on this thread seem to think. It’s often said that adcoms at most super-selective colleges will treat a 2250 as essentially the same as a 2400, “within the margin of error.” I don’t know whether that’s true, but it’s plausible. But even if it’s just 2300-2400 that’s indistinguishable, there are a lot of kids in that category–about 7,000 per year get a single-sitting 2300+, and many thousands more get into that range with superscoring. There are also 30,000 or so vals per year, and a lot of overlap between vals and 2300+ scorers. They won’t all get into Ivies. A lot of the places will already be taken by recruited athletes. Legacies with similar credentials will get preference, as will URMs and first-gens, sometimes with slightly wobblier stats. Celebrities or children of celebrities may get an extra boost. And then it will come down to a lot of subjective judgments about how interesting and compelling the essays and ECs are, and what this applicant adds to the class in light of who else is already admitted to the class–factors for which SAT scores and class rank become pretty irrelevant. </p>
<p>Anyone counting on getting into an Ivy strictly on the basis of class rank and test scores may be in for a rude awakening.</p>
<p>I think people here are overestimating the difficulty of getting into Cornell and Penn (non-Wharton). These schools are certainly HIGHLY selective. However, as DrGoogle and I have said, as long as your academic record is in line with your 2400, and as long as you did *something<a href=“even%20if%20undistinguished%20and%20no%20leadership”>/i</a>, you have a very strong chance at those two schools.</p>
<p>I believe so too. UPenn and Cornell really don’t compare with other Ivies in terms of admission rate, simply because of the relatively large pool they can accommodate.</p>
<p>I think Cornell and Penn have slightly larger freshmen class therefore they can accept more. The Ivies that have around 2000+ freshmen class are just harder to get in. So spend the effort and narrow down to one that you really want to go and apply. More focus effort.</p>
<p>I have not read all of the other posts on this thread, but after watching the acceptances this year, my opinion is that it is likely, but no where close to a guarantee. There was a really good post to a similar question this spring that broke the possibilities of getting into one or all down into percentages. It was very enlightening, even though ( or especially since) the stats did not take anything into account except val and 2400 score. </p>
<p>If I can find it I will try to link back to it for you.</p>
<p>I think it is theoretically true that a validictorian with a 2400 SAT and only middling ECs might get rejected from all Ivies and similar schools, but let’s be honest: it would be very unlikely to happen, unless there was something else actively bad on the application. There just aren’t that many people with those stats. In 2011, there were fewer than 400 students with 2400s in the country, and you can assume that they weren’t all valedictorians.</p>
<p>But I will say this: you can’t accurately predict which of those schools will take a student like this, including Penn and Cornell. So if you apply to just one or two, you might not get in to any of them.</p>