I got a 730 SAT II Lit and 700 US History. Do you think those would’ve helped me? I also got a 5 on the APUSH and AP World Exams, but a 3 on AP Spanish.
LOL I will probably get fired from every job I have.
If you have so little respect for elite schools and how they order their priorities why do you want to go there?
Yes, those SAT IIs were good scores for the schools you were applying to. They are also may above average for students with you grades. Even if you were applying to a top Ivy and the scores were low for them, you should probably still submit them because otherwise they would think they were even lower.
Because they can offer me unique opportunities and an excellent education… just because their priorities are misguided doesn’t mean I don’t want to enjoy the benefits of attending an elite university.
Good to know. Unfortunately, it is too late unless I reapply after a gap year.
Applying for financial aid with high family income was also a big factor in the number of rejections. Sorry about such a tough admissions cycle, but you will succeed wherever you go. Good Luck!
If you get good grades at the school you go to, you can apply to transfer submitting college grades, SAT/ACT, and SAT IIs.
That is what I did a long time ago. My situation is a little different, as my first semester senior grades were badly messed up by something and I had really good SAT IIs. I transferred from a nowhere school to a top 30, but maybe could have gotten into top 50 as competitive as it is today.
You won’t get financial aid as a transfer. You could also just go to one of the schools that offered merit aid and save money.
If you are in NY state, then Binghamton should cost about the same as OOS with the merit aid.
You could also take the gap year and apply to a little lower level schools. However, the senior year grades sound bad, so I guess go to Binghamton or Alabama and consider applying to transfer.
@BostonKnows why would this matter? If his/her family income was too high, wouldn’t they just not offer aid?
You think? Tbh I’m only surprised Kenyon rejected me. I know they’re not need-blind. I’m in a weird position because I applied for aid at both schools where I had legacy, and these are both notorious for being need-aware and stingy (Wesleyan, Brandeis)
Apparently needing aid hurts your app at need-aware schools. I don’t think that was the tipping point to my rejection at all, and I doubt my results would’ve differed if I hadn’t applied for aid. Heck, even if I had a 36 ACT instead of a 34 I still wouldn’t have had much better results.
Transferring is not something I’ve been thinking about tbh. I’m already dual-enrolled and should have 40-something credits done for by the time I graduate this year, so there’s no real incentive for me to go away simply to transfer again. Plus, as an upper-middle class kid who needs a lot of financial aid, freshman merit scholarships seem to be way more generous than transfer aid, and at this point the only choices I have are top schools with god-tier aid (HYP, UChicago, other schools with multi-billion dollar endowments that I’m never getting into), or hoping for okay aid at a safety/meets full need but not well school.
Which colleges offer substantial need based aid to families who earn almost $300k/year?
Well last year our AGI was 190k. Princeton had us paying 20k, Harvard 30k, and most other T20s at around 25-40k.
When you say this: “Still doesn’t take away from Angela Duckworth’s research that self-discipline and “grit” (translation: following orders and doing pointless busy work) are better predictors of GPA than intelligence.” in post 37-- I disagree strongly with your “translation.”
I think you’re making lots and lots and lots of excuses, all designed to make yourself feel better. And I can understand the pity party-- any number of my seniors spent some time this year licking their wounds.
But at the end of the day, none of this will change your results. So the question remains: what are you going to do?
I don’t necessarily disagree with the OP’s conclusions, just his expectations which are surprising, considering he has been getting pretty sage advice from this forum since he was a rising junior. If there was ever a consistent theme, it was always, “apply where you want so long as you are prepared to love Alabama.”
Test-flexible colleges, like Wesleyan, are pretty upfront about their reliance upon GPA for admissions. As an applicant from an overrepresented state (NY!!!) with few hooks, looking south for compatible colleges was probably the smartest thing he did. I presume the choice boils down to Binghampton and `bama. no?
Don’t need to change my results. If I got into Harvard my criticisms would still stand, and I would disseminate them amongst my Crimson classmates and faculty such as I would anywhere else. I did not intend for this thread for advice, but rather to foster a genuine discussion about the title of my post. Regardless, it still concerns me that education is run on a system of coercion and indoctrination.
I figured legacy would help at Wesleyan - did applying for financial aid negate that hook?
I think I’ll send subject tests to my WL schools - I don’t know how much that will help…
“I figured legacy would help at Wesleyan - did applying for financial aid negate that hook?”
I think that you are overthinking this OP. An 89% UW GPA is extremely low for a school like Wesleyan, which has a 15% admission rate. The only thing that was going to make up for that was a major hook, and legacy status (without substantial donation dollars) is not a major hook. Just go to Binghamton. Four years from now, when you are looking for a job or applying to grad school, no one will care that your degree says Bing instead of Wesleyan or Kenyon.