<p>NO, they don’t have legacy status nor significant donations…</p>
<p>how much do you need to give to be considered “significant”, again? 
Whats that? H-bomb needs a new library? :P</p>
<p>They need to donate millions.</p>
<p>Okay, I know I’m a bit late to this thread.
BUT. I think you are making a HUGE mistake! You seem SO attached to those schools, and as if the other schools aren’t even good enough for you. What are your safeties, anyways? You should have at least 2 that you would be genuinely happy attending. Also, you are ruling out so many good schools. Take for example, Bowdoin College in Maine. Have you done any research on that school? It’s ranked at #6 for LAC. Have you looked at any schools that aren’t any of the ones you listed above? It seems that you are more focused on the name that you get on your graduation certificate, than the overall experience you have at the school. Who even knows how well you’d mesh with the academics anyways? Long story short, you really should consider some other schools. Try using a site like [College</a> Search - College Admissions](<a href=“http://www.■■■■■■■■■■%5DCollege”>http://www.■■■■■■■■■■) for help! And then if you get rejected to Harvard, maybe you’ll realize you love another school more.
Oh, and I read that one shouldn’t apply to more than 5-10 colleges! So choose wisely! :)</p>
<p>Well…not my choice really. My father restricted me to “the big ones”. I can’t do anything about it… my safety (my only one, need to find others!) is the University of Toronto… Im also considering Queen’s University and McGill (all in canada) as safeties.</p>
<p>He said if I DONT make the top U.S. ones, I’ll have to go to Canada (he actually prefers Canada, we used to live there for 8 years…knows the environment first hand). If I don’t make it (there just waay too many people from too many places applying there to guarantee it as a safety for me) there, my only choice would be King Fahad University for Petroleum and Minerals… good bye Wall Street!!</p>
<p>i love canada, they have really good food and going to the dentist is like a spa there! haha 
well was he only looking at the ones that have many students, or overall ranking wise? what exactly do you want to major in?</p>
<p>Finance/Economics/Commerce, in that preferrential order. </p>
<p>My dad based his opinion on Rankings+Prestige. In this part of the world, its ALMOST all about where you get your degree from, regardless of how strong the major is at that repective school…some people go to the US and attend a less known college there just to come back and get a job that pays 1.5 to 2 times (okay, maybe not TWICE as much) more than if you were postsec educated in these parts… now Imagine this sad mentality coupled with an Ivy/top 10 or 15…! get the point?</p>
<p>I know this is silly to bring up…but would it matter that I’m directly related to a former Prime Minister and current Secretary-General of an Arabic country (albeit on the lowly developed spectrum)? :D</p>
<p>Haha yeah, I miss it a lot actually… wow, 9 years (corrected, I live there for 9 years) is a lot of time…my return here screwed everything up (which means I now have attended 3 highschools…sec school report nightmare! all past highschools have new administration and counselors, and my senior high now offers AP courses! Imagine what I would look like now infront of the adcoms! not taking the most" rigorous academic courseload"! dont worry, Im going to explain it in the additional area/ask my counselor to write a letter stating my unique condition :D) I love the free healthcare!!</p>
<p>yeah, but are you also thinking about business school?
unless he wrote you a recommendation, i dont think it would play as such a big part in the admission process. how would they even know that you are related otherwise?</p>
<p>haha i know what you mean! i moved last year, and i havent figured out if it screwed things up for me or not, but i doubt it, because at least now ill get to go to a nice private school and have probably the easiest safety school in the west by me! </p>
<p>you know, theres this book called, “how make colleges want you” (i think?) and it clearly pointed out that they don’t just look at your academic records, if they feel that you will be an advantage to the diversity/overall feel to the school then they will accept you! and you should have your recommendations/counselor call the school once so that if they put it in the “no” pile (while the recommendation says something interesting about you thats memorable) they can pull it out and put it into the “maybe” pile!</p>
<p>@decathletegirl: Ofcourse. I know Im dreaming folks, but there is nothing wrong with it. Im planning on Harvard’s new 2+2, that’ll be my grad school (lets not hope that it turns to be a super-)reach. If not, the other top MBA programs would do just fine as well </p>
<p>Last names… I’ll casually drop it in the essay to give it a casual feel I don’t want to sound upright and snobby though…</p>
<p>Funny story; a billionaire’s son at my school donated a facility project worth about $750k in his own name… his average jumped from a 60 (my school suffers from slight grade inflation, more like a 55 at most) to a 90 in THREE DAYS. Better yet, the kid, who just happens to skip class whenever he feels like smoking cigarettes/weed…which is often, got ACCEPTED INTO A Harvard/MIT/Stanford/Yale (one of these schools, I wont say).No lies, he even brought the letter to school with him. SAT? 1200. I know they want a more round student body (literally in his case, being the jellobod he is), but I didn’t know they were willing to swoop that low just to get a billionaire’s son onboard… it gets better, but if I keep going, its going to be obvious. Hes Saudi btw.</p>
<p>oh i was going to say in the event you didnt get into harvard, wouldn’t it be similar if you went to a different highly ranked school (but wasnt an ivy league) and then applied to havard for business school?</p>
<p>I personally dont mind at all, its just my 1/4 asian father and my full asian mother that really want me to make it there… my heart would bleed for Crimson (hehe…get it?bleed…crimson…never mind 0_o), but I’ll get over it if I can make another top non-ivy…no big deal, but the Ivies would be the ideal place to be for a better job progression, atleast in the SHORT-term. Many wall street kingpins dont have (Undergrad) Ivy credentials…its ok! Grad school is whats really important!</p>
<p>“I’m a parent here, but I just watched a young relative who applied to 15 or 16 schools have to deal with awful stress of CHOOSING which of his 10 excellent acceptances to go to.”… choosing can be a good thing if some of the schools offer $, and sometimes you don’t know til you apply. </p>
<p>OP - Yes, reasearch ED very carefully. ED ONLY WORKS WELL IF YOU REALLLLLLY LOVE THE SCHOOL AND KNOW THAT YOU CAN AFFORD IT. </p>
<p>College lists should always have some Safeties (academic and financial). As for the Reach schools, factor in the intensity of application process. For example, MIT has MANY essays and MIT-specific teacher references… and it is truly a “lottery” school for all. (We did let son apply. But it was a real time-drainer.)</p>
<p>Rejections were easy for my D. - just cross off the list. Rejected from #1 program, went to #2 and a happy senior there. You never know if rejection is just a good fortune. Thinking positively is a plus in any situation.</p>
<p>konig,</p>
<p>Just checking to be sure:</p>
<p>1) You’ll be a full pay student, right? And your parents are ok with $60K US per year if (and only if) you get into a top ten, big name US University?</p>
<p>2) You regard UToronto, McGill, and maybe Queen’s in Canada as safeties? They probably are more like matches, but that’s ok since these are not the super-reaches that are on your US list. And you’ve got the Saudi school as a last resort.</p>
<p>So if I’m reading your posts right, then here’s my opinion: </p>
<p>Go ahead and shoot for the moon and apply to any of the top US schools that are super reaches and that you’re interested in and that your parents are willing to pay full tuition, fees, room&board. [Not checking the “need FA” box should (marginally) help your application.] If your heart is set on UPenn, then sure, apply there ED and apply everywhere else RD. That’s not as restrictive as you might think since Harvard in particular no longer has EA or ED, if I recall correctly. If you get into UPenn ED, then celebrate and withdraw all outstanding applications immediately and decline all offers of admission from rolling admission schools</p>
<p>Be sure to complete the Canadian University applications early in the process and apply to those schools as a regular/rolling admission applicant. [I’m not sure if the Canadian system does rolling admissions, but they might. In terms of the UPenn ED application, rolling and regular decision are the same since neither is binding on you.]</p>
<p>And finally, be sure to apply to the school in Saudi Arabia just in case.</p>
<p>Also—your posts indicate that you are of Asian heritage, but a Saudi citizen? While that’s not a hook, it could get your application noticed by a sympathetic admissions person.</p>
<p>You see the rejection, you think “oh no,” MAYBE you shed a few tears if you really really wanted to go there, then within a week you’re over it.</p>
<p>My advice would be this. Just apply with no expectations. It makes the accepted letter even better and the thin letter not as bad. What happened to me when I got rejected at two schools that I was really considering, USC ( my brother goes to UCLA so it’d be nice to be near him) and Wharton ( I fell in love with it, and got deferred ED too), was I just took a few steps back and thought about it. I thought how much happier I would be at some other schools. One strange thing that happened too, probably denial, was that I started finding reasons why I DIDN’T want to go there at all. PM me if it comes down to it and you are just upset about your college decision. And that offer is for anyone. Good luck college class of 2015!</p>
<p>Konig:
You’re ridiculously lucky and blessed to have parents that have no problem at all paying $50-60K a year for your education. If I were in your position, I’d apply to as many colleges as I could, taking into account what everybody already said: SUPER reaches, reaches, matches, safeties, … you got to go somewhere!
With the info and stats you provided, we can’t tell much about your chances. If only colleges admitted based on enthusiasm… Even if you did tell us about your stats, it would be all speculation. </p>
<p>I’m an international student that got into the UCs you mentioned. But as two people already mentioned in this thread, getting accepted but not able to attend is really frustrating. The worst and extremely painful and heart breaking is seeing my parents’s finances going down after I already attended 1 year of my dream college and no longer being able to return. But in your case, it seems that you don’t have to think about $ at all, so no worries.</p>
<p>What I’ve come to realize is that rejection is a driving force for you to do better and prove yourself by other means. The key is to have passion in what you do and the rest will come naturally.</p>
<p>The canadian schools a very good, you shouldn’t look down on them. Also, while what you are taught in undergraduate classes is more or less standerdized (though at more highly ranked schools they tend to cover more material per semester), the people you are with and the experience of going to school (in the social sense) is completely different. </p>
<p>Many people (wisely) reject a school thats ranked more highly (on the somewhat arbitrary scale) because they perfer the setting, or atmosphere of another school.</p>
<p>I would suggest (like the others above me) that you visit a few school during the school year and see what regular students do both during the week as well as during the weekend. This will give you a sense of what life might be like at the school should you end up going there. It might surprise you.</p>
<p>To answer your original question, here is a story about someone getting rejected from (graduate) school only to take a 4 year break and then try again (with much success): [If</a> at first you don’t succeed: Should You Reapply to Graduate School Next Year?](<a href=“http://blog.■■■■■■■■■■/?p=26]If”>http://blog.■■■■■■■■■■/?p=26). </p>
<p>While it is coming from a slightly different perspective than yours, to a large extent all application processes have similar requirenments, and can be optimized in similar ways. The rest of that blog offers advice on other parts of the application process. One of the take away points that can be made is that getting into schools is very much about crafting your application correctly, and if you do it right, you should get in somewhere good. It is linked to one of the many services that does such admissions counciling ([■■■■■■■■■■](<a href=“http://■■■■■■■■■■/]■■■■■■■■■■[/url]”>http://■■■■■■■■■■/)</a>), but there are many people out there, and if you have money to burn, and using them is likely to increase your chances of admission.</p>
<p>And, as long as I am suggesting blogs to read in preperation for college - this one offers a great perspective and its mentality is definately one that is helpful in college: [Study</a> Hacks](<a href=“http://www.calnewport.com/blog/]Study”>Study Hacks - Decoding Patterns of Success - Cal Newport)</p>
<p>Cheers</p>
<p>Honestly, I was prepared to be devastated by any rejections/waitlists I received, but instead I didn’t really feel anything. I was WLed at two of my top chioces and while I was disappointed, I was, for the most part, fine, because I was accepted into my other two top chioces, and some other very good options as well. I was lucky - the WLs and rejection I received were the last notifications I got, so by then I was pretty confident with my choices. It’s tough, but it isn’t the end of the world, and I’m still hyper-excited for college this fall (and especially excited to be a Carl!).</p>
<p>[The</a> college rejection letter - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2008/03/10/the_college_rejection_letter/?page=1]The”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2008/03/10/the_college_rejection_letter/?page=1)</p>