<p>I was just denied by Princeton early action and now I'm not sure what to do. Since I wasn't even deferred, I'm questioning whether I had any business applying at all. That being said, I'm not sure how strong my resume is and which colleges it would be appropriate for. So, here it is:</p>
<p>SAT Subject
U.S. History (720), Literature (620)</p>
<p>AP Classes - 5 total (Test score)
European History (5), U.S. History (5), Psychology (?), English Literature and Composition (?), English Language and Composition (?)</p>
<p>Extracurriculars</p>
<p>Student Council President (12), Class President (9,11, runner-up 10)
Yearbook editor-in-chief (12), designer (9,11)
National Honor Society (Member)
Beta Club (Member)</p>
<p>Sports
JV Soccer (10)</p>
<p>State residence
SC</p>
<p>Race/gender
White/male</p>
<p>Mother's education
Master's Degree</p>
<p>Father's education
Doctorate</p>
<p>Household income
$144,000</p>
<p>Disability
Type 1 diabetes, depression, and anxiety</p>
<p>High school type
Religious School</p>
<p>High school difficulty
My school is the best in this area</p>
<p>Application essay quality
Very good; about how being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes helped me find my purpose in life</p>
<p>Teacher evaluations
Very good</p>
<p>Honors/Awards
None really</p>
<p><strong><em>Thank you very much!</em></strong></p>
<p>Wallruss75 lists himself as an 18-year-old, so he has no business telling someone how strong their extracurriculars are. High schoolers are not experts, regardless of what they’ve read. There are no 18-year-olds in the Princeton admissions office, nor are there any interviewing students, working as guidance counselors or college admissions consultants.</p>
<p>Wallruss75, please stop chancing people or advising people and especially stop putting down people until you have some relevant experience and some significant expertise.</p>
<p>Spaceduck, although also in high school, gave you prudent advice. Rejection happens. It’ll keep happening to you your entire life in one form or another. Ask President Obama how often he gets rejected next time you see him.</p>
<p>I’m an alumni interviewer, and if I was your next door neighbor, after reviewing your record, I would have suggested that you apply to Princeton if you were interested. I would also have suggested that you then treat it in your mind as if you hadn’t applied, and move on and apply to other schools. In other words, because you can’t predict what the admissions office is going to do, apply, forget about it and then apply to other schools.</p>
<p>I’d recommend that you apply to about 15 schools, including a combination of safeties, matches and reaches. That may sound like a lot of work, but college is a lot of work, and life after college is even more work. And applying to 15 schools brings you to that level where probability makes it more likely that you get into a school that you like and get the financial aid / scholarships that you like. </p>
<p>Visit your safety and match schools before April, and visit any reach schools that accept you in April.</p>
<p>I’m sorry you didn’t get in. It’s likely that Princeton would have been lucky to have you. Now, apply to 15 more schools. And don’t be afraid to include some of the other Ivies on your list.</p>
<p>Dear MtBozeman,
You had every (right) business applying to Princeton. It was a “reach” school and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. One year you could have been accepted and another year not. It’s time to “forget what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead.” So check out other “college match” surveys. What ultimately matters is what you do with your education, irrespective of where you attend. Our self-worth is never in which school we attend but in God who designed us. Sometimes our great disappointments can be blessings in disguise.</p>
<p>Your numbers aren’t that great, especially GPA and subject tests. Yes SAT literature is hard, but a 620 just looks really bad. </p>
<p>If your school is the best in the area, I’m pretty sure there are more APs available. Even “humanities-focused” high schoolers take AP Calc and at least one AP lab science. Now looking at your GPA again, if your school weights for APs that GPA is really low.</p>
<p>Also, your lack of awards…if you really are that interested in writing, history, literature, etc. it should be reflected in tangible accomplishments. Essay competitions, published poetry, etc. Science kids have USAMO, Chem oly, Intel…you have those.</p>
<p>Finally, it’s possible to write a good essay about overcoming an illness/disease/whatever. However, there are a lot of pitfalls associated with those kinds of essays. Are you sure yours are good?</p>
<p>You had every right to apply MtBozeman! Everyone does.</p>
<p>I applied with a 2300, 4.46/4.5 Weighted, 3.96 UW, 800M2, 800Chem, 790 Phys and still got deferred even with some interesting ECs (writing for an online newspaper with 700k unique views per day, State championship athlete, demonstrated research in sciences). My essays were very unique or so I thought, and I still didn’t get in.</p>
<p>In contrary, one of my friends who is of the same over-represented race got in with a 2080, 4.31/4.5, 3.8 UW, 750M2, 720 Lit, 680 Phys for the same major without really any ‘amazing EC’s’. </p>
<p>In college admissions it sometimes comes down to a crapshoot. Don’t let anyone convince you that you shouldn’t have taken a shot.</p>
<p>OP, what you shouldn’t bother with is asking whether or not you should apply. Yes, acceptance rates are low for schools such as Princeton, but If you really want to go, why not apply? Assuming the application fee is not an issue.</p>
<p>I think with your ECs you should apply to some good state schools like Michigan, or maybe to some slightly lower tier privates like WashU, Hopkins, or Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>SpaceDuck try and add something useful to the conversation or leave. Stop trying to coddle applicants. I know I could have used real advice back then. A 620 is objectively bad for one of the top schools in the nation. Not having a rigorous course load (if her school does offer many other APs) is objectively bad. Not having any demonstrable achievements in areas of interest: objectively bad. This person is fine applying to Princeton but should understand that HYPS is very much a reach for him/her.</p>
<p>BiologyMaster64, you’re assuming an awful lot here.</p>
<p>“Your numbers aren’t that great, especially GPA and subject tests. Yes SAT literature is hard, but a 620 just looks really bad.” </p>
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<p>“If your school is the best in the area, I’m pretty sure there are more APs available. Even “humanities-focused” high schoolers take AP Calc and at least one AP lab science. Now looking at your GPA again, if your school weights for APs that GPA is really low.”</p>
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<p>“Also, your lack of awards…if you really are that interested in writing, history, literature, etc. it should be reflected in tangible accomplishments. Essay competitions, published poetry, etc. Science kids have USAMO, Chem oly, Intel…you have those.”</p>
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<p>“Finally, it’s possible to write a good essay about overcoming an illness/disease/whatever. However, there are a lot of pitfalls associated with those kinds of essays. Are you sure yours are good?”</p>
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<p>“A 620 is objectively bad for one of the top schools in the nation. Not having a rigorous course load (if her school does offer many other APs) is objectively bad. Not having any demonstrable achievements in areas of interest: objectively bad. This person is fine applying to Princeton but should understand that HYPS is very much a reach for him/her.”</p>
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<p>You have no real idea how strong or weak the applicant’s application is. No one can tell from the few sentences mentioned in the OP’s post or in any person’s chance post how strong the person’s case is, not even an admissions officer. That’s why Princeton has a staff of admissions officers working grueling hours evaluating lengthy applications, rather than reading brief summaries like those provided in chance posts and saying yes or no after a five-minute reading.</p>
<p>And that’s why chance threads are generally worthless.</p>
<p>Try reading these, and make your prediction for each:</p>
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<p>I would bet that you expert chancers would have said no to #1 and #3, deep maybe to number 2, and maybe to the fourth person.</p>
<p>All four of those mentioned are the same person – me (results: accepted, Princeton and Dartmouth, rejected Yale, Harvard and Cornell, ignored by Stanford coach, so I didn’t apply). </p>
<p>The difference is the detail provided (plus a rise in SAT scores, which is not unusual - and the scores have been recentered in case some of you are really worried about that level of minutiae). And kicking field goals is an easy one to clearly evaluate, because yards are yards, regardless of the school.</p>
<p>The achievements in the short chance summaries provide far too little detail for anyone to determine why this person didn’t get in or whether someone else may get in. They are more like the first and third summaries provided above, and can rarely provide something as easy to evaluate as I just provided about my HS football career. </p>
<p>Admissions is the place that can determine if the essays are good, if the course of study is weak or strong, and if the activities are stellar or inadequate. A guidance counselor or professional college counselor can give some idea of whether the person has a chance after significant review of that person’s record. High school kids, Princeton students and alumni really can’t. I’ve interviewed many Princeton applicants, and have been frequently surprised, on both acceptances and rejections. I stay away from chance posts, and posted something here only because I thought some people were needlessly harsh.</p>
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<p>Princeton was a reach for this person. Princeton is a reach for anyone who isn’t a prime athletic recruit (which means being better than I was) or the daughter of the president.</p>
<p>It could be that this person’s EC’s are weak. It could be that there is tremendous substance within them that you don’t know about, something as powerful as almost breaking state (and Ivy for that matter) football records. You can’t evaluate a record from reading several words about a number of activities, and you can’t evaluate an academic record from reading the brief summaries posted here, either.</p>
<p>Agree with others that Princeton made sense, but is a super reach for everyone. You never know how your application is relative to the rest of the applications.</p>
<p>Now you need to brush off the rejection and submit more applications. What other colleges are you applying? </p>