<p>I'm sure you'll do fine wherever you go. Just unlucky for us that we got caught in the peak of college selectivity. </p>
<p>Makes me think, if human fertility declined like in the book Children of Men and we were the last generation, wouldn't everyone get into top schools?</p>
<p>Your scores are not that bad.</p>
<p>Here's the main thing that prevented you from getting into those schools: your stats and everything look exactly like many other students that applied to those schools. Thousands upon thousands applied to California schools. In state and out of state freshman that all wanted to get into those schools.</p>
<p>It's not about having extremely good marks at that point. It's about standing out from the crowd. I don't know what your essays were like, but that can really make you stand out when you're amoung thousands of other applications that look like yours. </p>
<p>People have this misconception that you have to do extremely well to get into certain schools and use every spare moment doing some extra curricular. They want people that are individuals that have charisma, determination, passion, etc. They have to be able to see that in your application.</p>
<p>Of course, Stanford and Ivy leagues have been known to accept 4.0 students and et cetera. But I've known quite a few people that got in as freshmen that had 3.5 GPA and decent SAT scores. But their personality really came through on their essays and their choice of extra curriculars.</p>
<p>Runnells, </p>
<p>I don't think you want to hear this, but it seems to me that there was a problem with your college list, even if you'd had higher test scores. Your GPA is great, but Stanford, Pomona, and Cornell are reaches for EVERYONE. They have a large, excellent applicant pool and reject valedictorians, students who've taken virtually nothing but AP's, class presidents, and National Merit finalists. UCLA is well-known as unpredictable (and if you think you're dealing with racially based discrimination, take a look at the minute number of African-American students they've accepted of late) and their applicant pool was huge this year. You might have benefitted by increasing the number of realistic reach and match schools. Occidental and UCSB seem like your only matches, and you don't list a single safety. Yikes! It is very good that Occi and UCSB worked out. </p>
<p>It is also important to be realistic about how much athletic EC's help if you're not at a level to be recruited for your sport. Take Stanford, for example, a Div I school. Are your track times such that the coach recruited you? Would you qualify for the track team? Did you contact the coaches at Pomona or Cornell or UCLA? What happened? I'm not suggesting that being on your high school track team and lettering are not a wonderful things, just that they might not help you get into college.</p>
<p>Finally, I am very troubled by your nastiness toward senior CC members who were trying to be helpful in responding to your questions. It was way out of line. You owe Northstarmom an apology.</p>
<p>I'm hoping that you are lashing out during an emotional period of dealing with an unexpected disappointment, and that this level of hostility is uncharacteristic. (If it made an appearance during interviews or in essays, perhaps that was a problem.) IMHO, you were accepted into two schools where you can receive an excellent education, and the rest of your list was made up of high reaches for which an applicant would need some sort of phenomenal hook to balance your strong but not top of the heap scores. It's hard to see where discrimination would come into it.</p>
<p>Seriously, you are just making a fool of yourself. We are giving you realistic chances and your just blowing us off? We told you everything you didn't want to hear, so what, life is tough. Its the truth.</p>
<p>No. This seems exactly right: acceptance by UCSB only.</p>
<p>To the person who asked about GPA. Yes it's believable. I don't know about the OP's school in particular, but there are lots of grade-inflated <em>publics</em> in CA. There are (contradicting that) also a lot of quite ambitious students in some of the publics in CA (as in other states). Interestingly, though, a lot of those are clustered in the high-rent publics where, even though there may be some amount of grade inflation vs. the secular privates, the main point is that those high-rent publics are the ones that often do not rank (because there would be too many ties). So the picture is, it tends to fall along one line or another: grade-inflated publics, in which it is not difficult to be top 10%, competitive publics which may or may not rank, and schools that fall into neither category.</p>
<p>The stats on Berkeley & UCLA have for several years been the following:
98-99% of freshman admits are in the top 10% of the class (according to U.C.'s published figures). But that would obviously include only the ranking schools.
For UCSD, it's been 90% in the top 10%.</p>
<p>To the OP:
What's "out of hand?"<br>
Who "tricked" you?
And how are your results "discrimination"?</p>
<p>runnells07, I'm a parent, and I happen to be familiar with Cornell's admissions stats for this year.</p>
<p>Cornell only accepted 20% of its applicants, the lowest percentage in its history. The average SAT scores of the admitted students were 700 CR, 720 math. (Cornell didn't release numbers for writing).</p>
<p>It was a tough, tough year for admissions -- at Cornell and a lot of other places. You are not the only person who was disappointed in the results. I know National Merit Finalists who were rejected by Cornell.</p>
<p>"I understand the initial reviews geared towards my background, but I assure you there is more to me than what the people here are apparently seeing."</p>
<p>^ Understand that we aren't reading your recommendations. We haven't seen your essays, and we've never met you in an interview. We have nothing to go off of but the stats and attitude that you provide here. It has been said that your stats (by which I mean both scores AND ECs) are very good, but nothing that is going to make Cornell, Stanford, Pomona, or UCLA a definite acceptance for you. Bear in mind that a 4.8, 2200, and heapload of leadership wouldn't make all of those schools definite acceptances for you, either. It's not a weakness on your part...it's just an unfortunate fact of the system, and the schools can't be held individually accountable for not being able to make room for this year's influx of qualified applicants.</p>
<p>"Runells07, the more bitterness that you display and the more you blame others for your situation, the stronger the case you are making for why colleges rejected you."</p>
<p>^ It's true. You asked for opinions and you asked for advice...it's not being forced upon you. Sorry not to give you the info that you were looking for, but you've been given a lot of valid advice. If you don't agree with it, then state so, graciously, but there's no need to criticize those who are voluntarily answering you. Furthermore, a mother who has successfully guided two children through the application process is a valuable source, and likely has a great deal more direct knowledge than most of us, who are current students and applicants, ourselves. </p>
<p>"IMHO, you were accepted into two schools where you can receive an excellent education, and the rest of your list was made up of high reaches for which an applicant would need some sort of phenomenal hook to balance your strong but not top of the heap scores."</p>
<p>^ Also true. Both Oxy and UCSB will provide you with great opportunities (and for the record, I know one current Cornell student who was rejected as a senior in high school, but successfully transferred after a year at UCSB). You were a strong applicant, which perhaps not enough of us have been sufficiently clear and direct in stating, but your rejections, while unfortunate, are not unbelievable. </p>
<p>And in response to the poster who said that a 3.9/4.3 indicated a less-than-incredibly-rigorous courseload, I have to say that your assumption is unfounded. The highest GPA in the history of my [top] high school was a 4.414, and it's only been achieved once (2000, and the school doesn't rank, but this GPA was so exceptional that it was announced at the awards ceremony). The OP could come from a school that doesn't offer any honors/APs until junior or senior year. He could come from a religious school that has a large number of required non-weighted theology classes. He could have chosen to take lots and lots of electives, which would have "watered down" his GPA, but boosted the rigor of his courseload. One of the strongest students in my graduating class, currently at Princeton, had a surprisingly "low" GPA ("low" meaning that you would have expected a higher number from a student of this caliber) because she took four different foreign languages, none of which were weighted until at least the third year, and two of which were never weighted at all. So I do understand the assumption that you made, but just know for future posts that you need more information to go off of (which, granted, the OP did not provide). I'm not claiming that any of these describes the OP's situation...just noting that there's no standard scale for measuring one school's GPAs against those of another school.</p>
<p>And to the OP, I don't assume that you're male. I, and presumably most other posters, use "he" because it's a convenient and generally accepted default pronoun, and you haven't corrected us. </p>
<p>My little sister, who, in my pretty critical opinion, is as awesome as awesome gets, just received her 4th waitlist/rejection (she applied to 4 schools). No, your situation didn't work out the way you would have liked, but you could be worse off, as no small number of equally well-qualified students are. Best of luck at Oxy or UCSB. I hope that you come to appreciate them for the excellent opportunities that each will provide.</p>
<p>So you ask us all a question and then go off when people give you an honest answer. So let me tell you what you want to hear:</p>
<p>Oh my god. like omg. you have been discriminated against so much. If I were you I would recommend suing the school for discrimination because every other person with similar stats has without a doubt gotten in. UCLA is not at all a competitive school and someone who is as clearly intelligent and qualified as you should have gotten in with a full ride.</p>
<p>Happy?</p>