I REALLY don't think this is an issue at Reed. I mean, the theoretical reason schools gets Tufts syndrom is they want to protect their yeild, which mainly matters for the US News Rankings...which Reed doen't participate in. </p>
<p>Reed cares about fit, and part of fit is interest, so they will reject applicants, overqualified or not, who they think won't fit or doesn't have real interest in the (very specific) Reed culture, while accepting "underqualified" students they think have a lot to offer. But this isn't the same as rejecting overqualified students because they don't want to be thought of as a safty/are afraid of having a low yeild.
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In this case the student is a marching band star, a big hook at the school where he was accepted (which does indeed have a lower acceptance rate than Reed). He probably was a match for Reed (where he was waitlisted, not rejected), but that usually translates to something like a 50/50 chance. Since he was shocked at not being admitted, he felt like Reed was a safety, but Reed is a safety for no one (due to its reliance on fit).</p>
<p>In an effort to see whether I could actually detect signs of this syndrome, I looked at the scattergrams for my son's high school, which includes a magnet (so lots of apps to selective schools). What I was looking for was a pattern of waitlists/rejects for students with higher stats than students accepted. The only school for which such a pattern was glaringly obvious was Swarthmore. This is only one high school, of course.</p>
<p>I'm not really sure if reading this thread makes me feel better, but I got flat-out rejected from Swarthmore (2390 SAT, 102.2 GPA [1st in class of over 400], pretty good essays/ec's) and I'm pretty bummed. It was one of my top three choices (waitlisted at Dartmouth, accepted at Bowdoin), so if I was not accepted because they thought that it was a safety school, that sucks. Is this a plausible explanation, assuming that I didn't totally screw up the essays or whatever? Sorry to gripe.</p>
<p>Additionally, would it be worth my time to send them a letter and explain that I am very interested despite what they may think, or would that merely seem childish and whiny?</p>
<p>The funny thing is that I don't think Tufts has "Tufts Syndrome" anymore, :D</p>
<p>Looking at College Confidential this year, I would say Chicago's results are kind of crazy... it all probably relates to essays though.
I think I got into Chicago based on my essay, but sad to say, this was one of the first schools off my list...so if I showed passion, it didn't last long</p>
<p>The thing is... no one knows why they got rejected, and I think bearing in mind that so many people apply to these top schools and it is so competitive, no one should conclude that they were rejected from a selective school because of "Tufts syndrome". It sucks when you know you were well-qualified and you didn't get in, but there are so many stories out there of that happening, can they all be attributed to colleges' obsessions with high enrollment rates w/ acceptance? I think it's a lot more likely that admissions are, to some degree, arbitrary. I mean in the sane world a 2000 on the SATs is good, but on here it's analogous to future community college graduate. There are LOTS of people obsessed with getting into the best schools possible, and they can't accept everyone. Nor can they suddenly become incredibly selective just because so many have amazing scores. I think a heavier reliance is being placed on essays and teacher recs, and our evaluation of "how ours were" is going to be incredibly subjective. </p>
<p>actually, tufts does still have tufts syndrome. i got accepted into brown and wait-listed at tufts. my friend got accepted at johns hopkins, wait-listed at tufts. my other friend, who got rejected from ucsd, got into tufts.</p>
<p>However, I don't think Swarthmore has Tufts syndrome. They only accepted like 13% of applicants this year (about the same % as dartmouth), and they're wayyy pro-diversity affirmative action and whatnot. so if you're white, it's a bit of a disadvantage.</p>
<p>53% of Swarthmore's acceptance letters this year were mailed to non-white US applicants (15% African American, 18% Asian American, 19% Latino/a). Add in the international applicants and less than 40% of the acceptance letters went to white US students (the traditional group who thinks they "should" get into these elite colleges).</p>
<p>Now, consider that white US students are disproportionately represented in the early decision pool (something like 150 of the 929 acceptances) and way over-represented in the 6100 applications. It's easy to see why it looks like Tufts syndrome when it really is much simpler. More super qualified, high SAT white suburban applicants from the northeast than Swarthmore has room for. So, they pick the ones who have something on their applications that screams "Swarthmore" in addition to academic transcript and high test scores.</p>
<p>Plus, we never really know the infamous "rest of the story". Like the friend of my daughter who did student interviewing last summer and interviewed a highly qualified applicant who admitted that, while she felt bad about it, she and her clique in high school bashed the gay students. The poor thing had no idea that her Swarthmore interviewer was openly gay and that being a gay basher is an express ticket to Swarthmore's reject pile. Who knows? Maybe she's complaining about Tufts Syndrome?</p>
<p>I don't think you can ever say that any particular student was rejected or waitlisted for this reason (or almost any reason). The process is too complicated for that. However, when you look at scattergrams, you can see patterns. (For example, you can see that some schools value GPA more than others.) I suspect that if you could merge scattergrams from different high schools, and do different breakdowns, more patterns would emerge. All I can say about Swarthmore is that at one high school, there was a clear pattern of waitlisting of highly qualified students, which was very different from the pattern of acceptances/rejections at other similar schools.</p>