<p>I attend a rigorous, public high school in the Atlanta area. Last year, several of our top ten students with incredible stats, EC's, etc. were rejected. The same thing happened this year. Our no. 1 student with a 4.7 GPA, national merit scholar, research experience at Emory, 2360 SAT got rejected. Also, 4 others out of the top ten applied to Vandy and were rejected. </p>
<p>I can't see busting myself to get into Vandy when these "golden" students can't see to make it. What's the deal?</p>
<p>Start with your HS college counseling office. Ask about the application and acceptance pattern for the past three to five years. Ask if there are any unusual circumstances that you should know about, like an ED candidate to Vandy who broke their contract.</p>
<p>Also ask about the application and acceptance pattern from your HS to Vandy’s peer schools.</p>
<p>Atlanta has been a historic source for Vandy students and there are therefore tons of alum working and living in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and many legacies who apply…I think it would be smart since Vanderbilt has recently undergone such a massive shift from regional to national footprint in student geographic origins to make sure to apply to schools that would be seeking Georgians and would wish to have more southern state representation. I know a young lady who was the only person in her Atlanta school to get into Vandy this year and I also heard that Harvard admitted tons of Georgians this year. Vanderbilt is rejecting scores of fully qualified students now which is sad for those who would love to be a Dore but it is really about numbers of applicants. When my eldest applied in 05 the admission rates were in the high 30%tiles and about 11 thousand applicants. Now the rate was about 17% I think and the applicant number was more than doubled. Apply outside of your comfort zone and region and also apply to Vanderbilt. best wishes</p>
<p>It might not be the HS, it might be yield issues. Some schools like Vandy may indeed take a lot of students with very high stats. like that, but honestly, a lot of schools like Vandy (including, us, Emory, and peers in say that 13-20 range) are also trying to protect yield to at least some extent. Given this, they need to see a sign that you really want to go to that school. They otherwise fear that you’ll apply, be admitted, and inevitably matriculate to say, an Ivy. For example, they could fear places like Cornell and Brown which are very similar and probably equal academically to Vandy, but students just choose them b/c of the prestige factor. I’m just throwing the idea out there because even the president here has guts to admit to such admission practices in a “townhall” meeting we had on campus in the fall. He said that the office was getting phonecalls from parents whose child had received admission to Harvard but not Emory, and he straight up said that the student seemed to have no intent on actually coming (they could tell via essays and stuff). So really these high stats’ students may have nothing to do with them not being good enough. It’s partially gaming ranks, and constructing a “diverse, well-rounded class, academically, and socially”. </p>
<p>Also: A 4.7 GPA at a rigorous high school is sketch. I’d imagine it was rigorous (as in course content), but it clearly wasn’t grading that tough. I’d like to believe that I graduated from a reasonably rigorous magnet/academy program in Ga (surprisingly not North Ga.), and no one got a 4.0 (and certainly not over it because we had no such weighting/grading that allowed for it), even the students from my class who are currently at Yale. </p>
<p>I have looked into the GPAs that Vandy admits via their common data set forms and their GPAs are lower than what we get here at Emory. However, their SATs are noticeably a little bit higher. This somewhat indicates that we are getting some (or many) students with inflated GPAs, and we are about 17% Georgia (Georgia schools, especially in Gwinnett and throughout metro Atlanta, know how to inflate and overcompensate for rigor by weighting AP/IBs way too much. This may explain why many people at say, Georgia Tech, think it’s brutally hard. It is tough, but not as bad as they make it sound. If anything, it beefed up the rigor, and took away all that HS grade inflation they were used to ). Vandy is has about the same (or slightly lower) percentage of folks from Tennessee. This may indicate that Tennessee or the other schools that Vandy students come from do things differently. I mean, how high are GPAs in say the top 10% of your school, do lots of people have 4.0+ even after a school like Vandy reweights the GPA? If so, I could imagine some schools looking at some students who seem qualified skeptically (though the example you provided was clearly qualified).<br>
Personally, if you or anyone you know has stats. like the person you mention, I would tell them to apply to Vandy+some other top schools where the admit rate is more iffy (as overall, the SAT range is higher than Vandy’s, perhaps some of the top 10s) as those schools don’t really fear (no school wants to admit fearing that a student will matriculate at an equally or more prestigious competitor, but the concern is probably there at several schools) admitting you as much if you are indeed good enough and fit the freshmen class they are attempting to shape. Best thing I could say is to show you really want to go to Vandy in your app. essays.</p>
<p>A lot of “politics” goes into admissions now, especially at top schools. Kind of lame, but everyone trying to get into one must deal with it.</p>
<p>I do not agree that Vanderbilt didn’t admit the person because they were “not likely to attend.” Reason being is that Vanderbilt doesn’t care to measure demonstrated interest to measure likelihood of attendance (e.g. WashU). Vanderbilt has previously stated showing interest (like visiting the school) does NOT affect admittance.</p>
<p>Also, universities that tend to implement the “too good for us” policy tend to waitlist those students, not outright reject them. Since Vanderbilt admissions isn’t competitive enough to be a true crapshoot (e.g. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc.), the most likely explanation is that they weren’t accepted because Vanderbilt straight up did not want them.</p>
<p>Yeah, but they don’t have to use “demonstrated interest” (as I was trying to say, but I guess I didn’t make it clear). They could look at things like essays (not the standards associated with common app.) and perhaps take a guess, which is risky, but I’m sure schools do it. Many schools want to keep the yield at a decent level (at least keep it steady), and some may use various means to do that. Some are less obvious/visible than others. Again it’s just a possible reason. Now, also, the reason you site is possible. I also implied that the student may not fit into whatever schools’ plans to build a “well-rounded” incoming class. Unfortunately, to the applicant, what “Vandy” or whatever school thinks is a “well-rounded” class and how the applicant supposedly fits (or not) into this is hard to quantify, but assuming the student had that ridiculous GPA (though perhaps inflated, as suggested) and SAT, along with great ECs, it could be a mix of both our proposals (perhaps tilted a bit toward yours), but you really never know. All adcoms, especially at top schools want to at least create the perception that the admissions process is fair, and it may be to a degree, but it is very complicated, despite whatever the school reveals to the student about its admissions. It’s really hard to tell when you apply to a school like Vandy or most top 20s.</p>
<p>Emory also measures demonstrated interest, but I have to wonder how much it is used given the amount of early decision students (enough of those may decrease incentive to use it heavily when looking at regular decision applicants), and one has to wonder how most of roughly 20% (I think it was 17%, which is a bit much, hopefully it’ll be at least a little lower this fall) of last year’s freshmen class, the international students, demonstrated interest. Basically, I have to wonder how many RD applicants take advantage of the “demonstrated” interest beyond say a tour, which so many people do (the groups are huge and you see like 3-5 groups going in tandem at some points of the day), that it could hardly be used as demonstrated interest. Maybe it’s used for very top students, but then again, that’s what Emory Scholar is for. I have to wonder if the demonstrated interest measure is perhaps a scam to raise people’s confidence to the point in which they put forth an application.</p>
<p>Admissions at Vanderbilt has truly evolved. We have 2 kids who have graduated from there. I don’t think one would be admitted now! Honestly, I believe that Vanderbilt’s not requiring an additional essay on their supplement contributes to their large number of applicants. That may be a very controversial statement, but I stand by it. Usually, a supplemental essay will show more insight into a student’s choice to apply to a certain school. Vanderbilt is operating on a numbers/facts basis in admissions. There’s no opportunity to show “demonstrated interest” in any application they receive. There’s no opportunity for a student to show why Vanderbilt is their choice, whether it be 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice. They do have 2 rounds of ED, which is interesting. They don’t defer…it’s accept or reject for ED. That’s also interesting. Although a wonderful school with all kinds of exciting opportunities, I believe they could personalize their admissions a little more. They may not get as many applications…I think that students who want to apply to Top 20 schools throw out applications to Vanderbilt easily because there’s no additional essay…I think it’s that simple. Would be interesting to see how many people apply if they added one…
Our 3rd child had a boy in the top 10 in his class apply 1st round ED.He was rejected and there’s no apparent reason why. He was involved, popular, great kid - just didn’t make sense. They did take a kid with family connections, who had a 3.5 GPA. Of course, there’s a lot of that, however, they missed an opportunity to get a great boy in our top 10. During RD, they took the class valedictorian. Others applied, but none were accepted. Knowing these kids, I question their ability to make good judgments without additional essays pertaining specifically to their school. Our valedictorian is going, but it was not his first choice.</p>
<p>to the OP: if you can, ask your GC for the cross-admit stats with Emory (in other words, for the kids who were accepted to both schools, what % decided to attend Emory v Vanderbilt)
…from what I remember, when my daughter turned down Vandy, they specifically asked what school she would be attending…I didn’t realize why until now…</p>
<p>If alot of the previous admits attended another peer school (which in your case may be Emory), Vandy may be using a yield management model with your particular school…</p>
<p>Just a thought…</p>
<p>rodney, our sons received requests for which school they were attending from all of the colleges they applied to and were accepted to attend. My impression is this is standard for all admissions offices and their data collection. In 05, it was in the form of post cards supplied by each college. In 09, it was an online question and answer requested.</p>
<p>I don’t think Vandy is using a yield management program any more than other peer colleges. They lose a lot of students like your Emory student --who receive merit offers elsewhere or admission to a peer institution with similar excellent need aid opps like Ivies and strong LACs or to honors programs in good state institutions that come in at great price points. Our Vandy son is on merit and was passed over for the same merit opp at Emory despite the higher number of applications to Vanderbilt. There is a lot of chance in admissions at a school with applications numbering in the middle 20 thousands, and a great deal of chance in the rarer offers of merit dollars. </p>
<p>Swimmer726 has an interesting point about the lack of detailed essays required to submit an application to Vandy. I agree that it becomes difficult to not miss a diamond of a student (and we all know worthy students who were waitlisted at Vandy or rejected) if you have less to read to personalize the application…thinking of Yale’s list of required short answers etc…, Swat’s “why Swarthmore?” etc. Perhaps the admissions office will add in another supplemental question to help them in another year.</p>
<p>For those of you applying in the next cycle, I recommend submitting all the essays for merit dollars whether you end up with merit money or not. Never pass up an opportunity to put your voice in your application. </p>
<p>Emory, in my opinion, as bernie knows from previous chats on CC with me…and I have worked on their campus and love Emory’s fine relationship with dynamic Atlanta, --Emory could increase their application numbers by altering their pathway to merit dollars and eliminating the early deadline for the essays. Seniors in high school are morphing month to month and early deadlines ask too much of students who are quite rightly still confused about their identities and options. Emory can still build in demanding essays and interview opportunities for merit dollars. They have every right to select students they view as right for Emory’s missions but I think they lose many people with the early deadline. This is a trivial statement, but perhaps true for other families. Our sons’ essays were infinitely better the last week of December than those composed in October of their senior years. Their senior Octobers were a whirlwind of last minute testing, Eagle scout projects (son worked on seven of them senior fall), last minute trips to college senior days etc. After the holiday week winter break, they each sat down and could breath and write well when they weren’t showing up for school for zero block before school started for orchestra and doing sports till darkness fell daily.</p>
<p>rodney: That’s actually what I had in mind, but I didn’t want to flat out say it because I didn’t know for sure. I said yield management, but not in context of the schools I had in mind.</p>
<p>As for Emory: It seems as if they are very untraditional in many ways including admissions. It’s almost as if they don’t neccessarily want the apps. to increase for seeming random reasons or tweaks to the process. They really want apps. based upon who knows about us, and wants the chance at attending, etc. Essentially, it isn’t gaming. Seems as though they simply want the apps. to increase with the actual quality of the school moreso than just rep. Essentially, if it has a rep, it needs to be based upon academics, and not “selectivity” which is already way higher than most American institutions, but still not good enough for elite student, which is weird considering our academics are on par or tougher than many of the peers who are more selective. It wants to “be” good and not just “look” good (realizes that it isn’t perfect by any means, some schools make you believe otherwise about their campus’s) , and hopes that it’s rank and rep. will be rewarded. Emory is very strange in that it yields upwards to 20%ish international students per freshmen class (it ranges between 10-20), yet has so much trouble in the US. How this is possible, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting observation.<br>
This could be good or bad. Good b/c humility, bad b/c lack of confidence that will continue to lead people to undervalue and underestimate it.</p>
<p>As for diamond scholars: Again, Scholars program takes care of a lot of those.<br>
Also, Emory has started to set up Alumni interviews in major cities. These seem to be in two strong markets (ones like Boston and NYC) and the rest trouble (Nashville ironically, Chicago, San Fran, Houston, Dallas) spots demographically.</p>
<p>rodney: That’s a very common practice among the best schools. If of all the colleges your daughter was accepted Vanderbilt was the only one to request that information, I think it speaks more about those colleges than Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>Swimmer and Bernie: I suppose it’s possible, but I just personally don’t view a 2360 valedictorian as a “golden student” and certainly not a stretch to see why they got rejected if that’s honestly all the person did. The OP says valedictorian, but of what kind of school and has previous admits historically struggled at Vanderbilt? The OP says research, but what quality of research? Anybody can conduct research and be a mindless grunt at a university, but if you’re telling me the person authored a publication or came in top 10 at Westinghouse, then we’re talking about something else. There are valedictorians with 1500+ (CR+M) from Tennessee (if I recall correctly) who were waitlisted/rejected. Tennessee is Vanderbilt’s bread and butter, yet I don’t recall people speculating so much when that happened. A more likely reason was because valedictorians/salutatorians with high SAT’s are a dime a dozen, and they did not distinguish themselves in any way. </p>
<p>Projecting yield is something every university does, but to imply that projecting yield crosses over into determining who is accepted, then you’re heading over into a different territory. Like I said, institutions that practice the “yield management” you’re referring to will waitlist those students and come back to them from the waitlist to see if they really did want to attend or not. Just because other schools blatantly practice this, don’t lump Vanderbilt in just because of THIS ONE student who happened to have a high SAT score and high GPA didn’t get in. Give me a break. There are plenty more examples of people like her not getting into Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>Rejection means Vanderbilt flat out never wanted them, for whatever reason, and I’m sure that student will be very successful elsewhere.</p>
<p>wanderers: yes, I know that alot of the places she turned down asked about her future plans, but just as many did not…</p>
<p>and if I remember correctly (it was three years ago haha) , they were one of the only ones to ask “which school will you be attending” rather than “which schools were you accepted to” (there were a few of those as well which she refused to answer)…</p>
<p>and fwiw, my daughter is not at Emory but I found this thread interesting…</p>
<p>I said it was possible and if it is occurring, it is not obvious. And you have to be real, hardly no top school expects so called “quality” (as in pubication) research from a student(as in among those who conducted it) entering, so don’t go there. I’m sure there are many people with research, quality or not, with lower stats, that got in. Also, we don’t know the person’s other ECs. I’m assuming (I may be making an a** of myself) that the person had a reasonable amount if they had the nerve to apply to Vandy. You make it sound as if Vandy and its admissions is perfect or somehow dramatically different from other schools. No school’s is perfect, and Vandy isn’t too much different from peer institutions. We don’t know what happened or why Vandy didn’t want them. A rejection clearly indicates that they didn’t want them. We are trying to explore why. We are by no means ragging on Vandy. Your statement about struggling at Vandy is plausible as I tried to indicate with my comment on the grade inflation at Georgia schools. However, one would think that a person with a 1560 and solid, but inflated gpa (and probably good ECs) was not even given a chance or perhaps a waitlist. We also cannot assume that all schools that practice yield protection use the waitlist. If anything, waitlisting simply makes it more obvious that yield protection is occuring at said institution. That doesn’t mean others that don’t employ the waitlist are not doing it. Again, the example I provided was straight up rejected from Emory and admitted to a higher ranked institution Emory didn’t really want to even preserve a spot on the waitlist as they were perhaps banking on the student being admitted and matriculating to a higher peer. If the student applied for scholars, they probably would have received a second look, as the adcoms may think the student is considering us based upon financial feasibility. The admissions processes at top schools is way too complicated to rule out any reason for admission, denial, or waitlisting.<br>
Another plausible reason is: The school is already saturated with admits from those schools in the past and the students may only be average (who knows?), whereas some schools admit heavily from schools with students who are very successful. For example, Georgia Tech recruits from St. Pius (metro or intown Atlanta) heavily b/c they are very successful, which says a lot because Tech has little grade inflation and a workload that rivals or tops many schools in the top 20 (as expected, because it’s a top engineering school).</p>
<p>And honestly, I have no problem with the idea of a top school admitting more academically oriented students b/c at least they are perhaps applying for a less stereotypical reason. Facilities, potential clubs, sports scene, frats, are all very stereotypical considerations that seem to outweigh the value of the educational quality now-a-days as many are there for the name-brand degree and not really to learn. So they want to simply have fun and get a name-brand degree. Nothing wrong with that, but having a large group of students who really value scholarly activities does not hurt. I personally find it sketch to see HS students 4.0 (like 4.5s at that) + GPAs and 1 million extra curricular. One has to question their income and the actual toughness of the HS if they had that much time on their hand in terms of academics. With an internship (actually during a portion of the school schedule) and a job which I needed to work 40-50hrs a week to try and support my family (I hardly had money to dedicate to too many ECs, though there were a reasonable amount), I find it to be a miracle that I got a 3.75 and a high SAT score. I just find it weird the number of students here with a higher SAT and GPA that care less about learning and scholarly activities. Admittedly, they clearly care about their grades (and know, they don’t go hand in hand. One can choose easier/easier grading profs. or classes, pressure some profs. to curve or water down stuff, all things that happen at even the best of schools). Having a crew of simply academically oriented students applying could breed more intellectualism at schools like us, y’all, and Duke (yes, Duke has issues with it, go to their website and see all the articles and discussions on the campus’s relative anti-intellectualism).</p>