I’ve just been thinking about it and am wondering - I know that if you have stellar grades, stellar EC’s and stellar letters of recommendation you are still very likely to be rejected by these top Ivy schools. However, surely in the admissions process when all the admissions people are sitting around the table deciding who gets in they’ve got to find a tangible way of justifying to each other why a particular candidate is not deserving of the place? I mean I don’t really understand how if you follow the formulaic approach of doing amazingly with the SATs, ECs, essays, and school-work, how people still manage to get rejected? I get that there are only a limited number of places and more than enough qualified students but surely if the admissions people cannot find any real faults in your application it follows that they can’t rationally find a way to dismiss you as a candidate?
There’s always someone better. There is always someone more accomplished, more well-spoken, more personable, more intelligent. You may have done “all the right things,” but so has everyone else; so if someone else’s essay is more eloquent, or if they are more likable, or they have done more with their ECs…that’s certainly a valid enough reason to reject you.
Oh, if only it were that easy. I suspect that the analysis that admissions officers take at highly selective colleges where a significant percentage of applicants are equally qualified is actually the reverse: they are looking for a reason to ADMIT you, not a justification to REJECT you. You are going to have to show how you fit an institutional need and add to the student body.
There is a difference between “rejecting” and “not accepting” an applicant. There may be no obvious flaw that leads to rejection - it isn’t that there is something they DISlike. But they prefer someone else because that person contributes something to the composite class (a geographic component of some odd talent or something).
There is that phrase “It’s not really you, it’s me.” In this case colleges receive so many applications that you are compared to the rest of the applicant pool for a limited number of spots at the college. This means generally high standards for selective universities which is more exaggerated because of the rapid increase in the number of students apply to each year
There could be any number of reasons why an applicant may not be chosen. They might have written their essay topic on something that is a turn-off for the essay reader. Their essays/answers may have a tone the AO doesn’t like. The essay may have been just OK, but not made the reader feel anything. You may be the 18th upper middle class white kid with perfect scores to write about Habitat for Humanity or winning a sports championship and the AO is bored. They may have just accepted five kids just like you. They might think you’re a prestige hound and don’t genuinely have an interest in or fit for the school. They may have already filled all the available slots for your chosen major. Too many kids from your state/city/school applied (and they have a better hook than you).
These are all reasons, but they’re arbitrary or objective and completely out of your control (for the most part). It’s why students should simply do the best they can–and generally avoid being arrogant, whiny, entitled or boring in their essays–and not worry too much. You’ll go crazy second-guessing the whys and wherefores.
and adding another, positive, piece: even with a whole bunch of kids who have ticked all the right boxes, some kids just stand out for a given school- their personalities come through all the packaging that goes into an application for one of the hyper-competitive colleges.
When I look across classes of very comparable applicants that I know fairly well, most of the time I can see why this one got into Stanford but not Yale, or Yale but not Harvard, or Harvard but not Princeton, or Princeton but not Stanford (and I know people in each of those situations). Sometimes I think that we underestimate the adcomms ability to recognize the ones who fit their school particularly well.
I read an article where an admissions officer got food sickness in Buffalo, so he threw out the applications from Buffalo basically. He didn’t really need a reason to reject them, there were plenty more applicants who were just as qualified.