I was interested if anyone had some odd admission decision stories. I have two friends at MIT who had some odd acceptances and rejections,
Accepted: Caltech, Stanford, MIT
Rejected: UCLA
Accepted: MIT
Waitlisted: Tufts
<p>My uncle was rejected from U of Wash with a 1450 SAT and 3.8 GPA</p>
<p>I think there must've been some error in the process though, because he was eventually admitted and attended.</p>
<p>This could be the so-called Tufts syndrome - schools rejecting candidates who they know aren't going to attend anyway. </p>
<p>Nor is this necessarily a bad thing. Think of it from the schools' point of view. If a school has a strong reason to believe that you're going to go somewhere else, then there's no reason for that school to keep a seat open for you. The school should instead offer that seat to somebody who has a higher probability of actually taking it. Instead of the school offering you the seat and keeping it open for you, only for you to turn down the seat to go elsewhere as the school already thought you were going to do, might as well short-circuit the process by simply not offerning you the seat in the first place. Honestly, what does it matter - you weren't going to take the seat anyway.</p>
<p>The only people that I think this 'hurts' is those people who really would attend a particular school even if they have the stats to attend a far better one. In that case, it's a matter of demonstrating your personal commitment to the school - you have to really show that you really are interested in the school and are not just using it as a safety, which no school wants to be.</p>
<p>My D was invited into the Honors Programs of UMich and Boston University (very high SAT, 4.0 UW GPA), but turned down by Rutgers Honors. So much for trying to keep the best students instate!</p>
<p>Garland, that is ......... unbelievable!! What is wrong with those folks? :confused:</p>
<p>My own little story is a reminder that mistakes are made and it does not hurt to make a simple little phone call and ask "why".</p>
<p>As a HS senior I was admitted to U of Michigan and invited to join the honors college. Instead, I took a little detour and went overseas. U of M did not accept sophomore transfers so I attended Michigan State for 1 year, and I applied to U of M as a junior transfer. My app was denied! (I was shocked). I called the admissions office and asked why, and it turned out they had misinterpreted my HS transcript and auto-denied me!! I explained to them their error and I was admitted.</p>
<p>I still wouldn't characterize it as necessarily anything wrong with the adcom officers. As I said before, the purpose of the admissions committee is not to admit the best entering class, but rather to matriculate the best entering class, and there's a subtle but important difference between the two. Let's face it. You're not going to matriculate every student you admit. If an adcom has reason to believe that you're not going to matriculate, then the adcom is well within its rights to not admit you, even if you're a superstar. After all, why keep a seat open for you if they have a strong reason to believe that you're not going to take it? It's not like it's costless for them to do so - by keeping a seat open for you, they have to either deny or waitlist somebody else who has a greater chance of taking that seat. Rather than do that, it may be more efficient for them to simply deny you that seat and give it to that other guy. After all, if you weren't going to take the seat anyway, who cares if you were denied?</p>
<p>But Sakky, the point of the state Honors programs is to keep the best st udents in state. Why autodeny them for being so good?</p>
<p>NJRes: I transfered to UMIch as a junior, too!!! One of the best decisions of my life. (can't figure out how I managed to raise two kids who got accepted and went elsewhere :( )</p>
<p>I believe you're misunderstood the purpose. The purpose of the state Honors program is not really to keep the best students in state. The purpose is to get the best students to matriculate, regardless of what state those students may be coming from. As you said yourself, your D was admitted to the honors program of both Rutgers and Michigan at the same time. How could that have happened if the purpose really was to keep the best in-state students? How can your D be in-state in both Jersey and Michigan at the same time? </p>
<p>Furthermore, even if the purposes really was as you say it is, then that would mean that the purpose would be to keep those in-state students who might actually be "swayable" to stay in the state. If you're not swayable, that is, if it's pretty clear you're not going to stay in the state no matter what because you have better options elsewhere, then clearly you must agree that there's no point in keeping a spot open for you.</p>
<p>And like I said, you might think it's not fair for somebody to be denied for being so good. But look at it another way. Person A might be denied or waitlisted because person B who is really really good is occupying a spot, only to not take that spot anyway. Is that fair to person A? Why should person A get denied a spot in favor of person B if B isn't going to take the spot anyway? </p>
<p>It reminds me of the old 'dog-in-the-manger' story. A horse in a manger is hungry and wants to eat some straw. A dog, seeing that the horse wants the straw, deliberately decides that he is going to sleep on the straw, even though the straw is uncomfortable to sleep on. The dog doesn't really want the straw at all, he just wants to deny the horse the pleasure of eating the straw. </p>
<p>The point is, if you're not going to actually seriously consider using a particular offer of admission, then what does it really matter if you don't get it? Give it to somebody else who might actually use it.</p>
<p>i think last year someone was accepted to harvard ea and rejected from ucla</p>
<p>Maybe not as crazy, but: </p>
<p>Accepted: Cornell ED (bio), UMich - honors
Deferred: Boston College</p>
<p>that valedictorian girl from the san fernando valley who got into UCSD with a 800-900 (?) sat score (sorry i dont have the link to the article right now, but it was in the story where she got city councilmember villaraigosa to try to get her into ucla)</p>
<p>dood..if i got accepted to stanford and rejected from UCLA like KEvtrice said, i would freak out. geez..seriously..correct me if i am wrong, Stanford is much more difficult to get into than UCLA.</p>
<p>But seriously, if you had gotten into Stanford, would you have turned it down for UCLA? Probably not. So what does it matter then if UCLA turns you down?</p>
<p>Again, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but it's not about where you get admitted, but where you matriculate that ultimately matters. If you get into Harvard, then who really cares if you get turned down by SE Moron State University? You weren't going to go there anyway, so why not give up the spot to somebody who might actually use it?</p>
<p>Sakky: obviously it's not the only purpose. But in NJ, they do whine all the time about the best students not staying, and what they can do to attract them. It's a big issue here. How could they possibly know if she wanted to go or not? She had a free ride there--it was certainly in the running.</p>
<p>Also, you can't compare admissions to MIch and Rutgers. Michigan is actively sought by out of staters, but Rutgers, both Honors and regular, is almost entirely instaters.</p>
<p>BTW, in the year after her experience, they changed the Honors program to automatically accept based on grades and SATs. I'm thinking they got a lot of complaints.</p>
<p>I am not upset at these admissions. I am just saying they are odd. I got accepted to MIT but wailisted at Cornell and Columbia. I didn't care because I knew I was going to MIT at that point.</p>
<p>Kevtrice, well, if anything, I hope that what I have had to say has perhaps cleared up some of the confusion. Contrary to popular belief, the true purpose of an admissions committee is not to admit the best possible class. The true purpose is to matriculate the best possible class, which is not the same thing as admitting the best possible class. If you admit the best students you possibly can, only to have lots of them choose to go elsewhere, you risk ending up with a worse matriculated class than if you had simply offered your seats to students who were not only good, but also had a high probability of actually coming. </p>
<p>For example, if you have one seat left, and you have the option of admitting person A, who is a superstar, and person B who is good, but not a superstar, but you have strong reason to believe that person A is probably going somewhere else, then should you really offer the seat to A? By the time person A has turned your seat down, person B may have already committed somewhere else. So now you end up with neither person A nor person B - that's the worst of all possible worlds. You may be better off simply by rejecting A and instead offering the seat to person B. Like I said - it's not about admitting the best possible class, it's about matriculating the best possible class. Who really cares if you admit a great class, if the class you end up matriculating is mediocre? </p>
<p>And to Garland, of course they cannot be absolutely 100% certain that a particular person wants to go somewhere. But that's not the point. The point is, you have only a limited number of admissions seats to go around, and you shouldn't waste them. Because you have a finite number of seats, you have to play the percentages. You basically have to ask yourself, "Should I use this seat on this person who is really good, but probably isn't going to come?" At some point, you have to say no. Sure, you will never know for sure what would have happened, but that's what it means to play the odds. Nothing is guaranteed, but you can do things to maximize your odds of success. Just like choosing not to smoke doesn't guarantee that you will have good health, but it increases the odds. </p>
<p>So if you say that NJ is whining about the best students leaving, well, then NJ will simply have to sweeten the pot a little. I think what is happening is this. NJ is probably in the experimental stage. NJ sets up an honors program, with a limited number of seats, and then offers those limited spots to certain students to see how many take them. Then with that data, they then adjust the future selection of honors admittees accordingly. If they keep offering those spots to superstars who keep turning them down to go to Harvard instead, then clearly that's a waste. If NJ really wants to get students like that, then the state will obviously have to really sweeten the pot - probably offer not only full scholarships, but stipends as well and other privileges. Even then, I think it will still be difficult to convince a lot of people to turn down Harvard. But in any case, it's all about finding out the optimal way to get the best possible honors students you can to matriculate, while giving away as little money as possible. </p>
<p>The point is, it doesn't mean that you simply admit the best students you can. There's no point in offering a scholarship to somebody who isn't going to take it. Sure, you never know with a 100% certainty who is going to take it or not, but after you've done it for a few years, you start to learn who will take it and who won't. Once you've figured out with a high probability who isn't going to take it, you simply don't offer it to people like that anymore. That might end up screwing over some people who don't fit your probability model, but since you only have a limited number of scholarships to hand out, that's the risk you have to take.</p>
<p>I applied as a transfer student to The Cooper Union, Notredame, Upenn, Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore.</p>
<p>I was accepted to only one: The Cooper Union and have received a full ride scholarship to Cooper. Ironically, I didn't actually know much about the reputation of Cooper until I got in. After doing some research, I realized that it was one of the most competitive and reputable schools in the country.</p>
<p>By the way, Kevtrice, I think I remember you from high school. Weren't you from Overland Class of 2002? How's MIT working out for you? I hear MIT's unique because they offer a joint program in Master of engineering / M.B.A. I'm really interested in getting that later.</p>
<p>accepted harvard</p>
<p>rejected berekely</p>
<p>This one person I know</p>
<p>Rejected: UC Berkeley</p>
<p>Accepted: HYP </p>
<p>Actually ended up at UCLA because the money wasn't right at HYP</p>
<p>You want odd?</p>
<p>ACCEPTED: Williams, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame</p>
<p>WAITLISTED: Occidental College</p>
<p>REJECTED: University of Southern California</p>