<p>Thank you. I was not familiar with the Questbridge program. Still, I somehow thought that no one was a "clear admit" to Stanford or comparable schools or even "pre-qualified", at least without being a recuited athlete or URM.</p>
<p>eulenspiegel,</p>
<p>surely you can be a clear admit without those things. But then you have to be really really exceptional ie. just look at Connie Leung who got likely letters from almost all the schools she applied to</p>
<p>DiamondT,</p>
<p>it's ridiculous to claim that luck has no factor. a hypothetical situation: say a URM, with a 2250, shining EC's and glowing recs is read in the early part of the application review. he is declared an auto-admit, and his app goes to the dean. now, say near the end of the review period, where most of the spots have been given to other people, another student shows up with URM status, a 2250, shining EC's, and glowing recs. don't you think the adcoms might hesitate a little to admit him right away, since they've already seen someone stellar in those aspects? and i can guarantee there are thousands of others cases just like that every year, but that's where the luck factor comes into play, among other things. One adcom might like your application more than another adcom, but again, only luck will determine whether the right adcom will pick up your app to read... that's why i liked the new committee review system that the new dean of admissions has installed </p>
<p>now, just because i say luck is a big deal in the admissions "game," does that mean i deface any one of your or any accepted students' accomplishments? by god, no. the truth is, there are way more qualified students than spots to fill... i can guarantee there are many rejected students out there who would make great students at stanford. you can't say that the 853 people they admitted for early action were THE best people in the entire pool; they clearly had the credentials, but their application was in the right place at the right time as well. the MIT example is perfect, because it's true, there are so many qualified students that it's impossible to choose the exact same pool twice</p>
<p>do i doubt any admission offer that these top universities give to some students? not one bit, because i'm sure the person who has been accepted is definitely qualified. and i dont brush off any of these people's acceptances and purely "chance," because there must have been something going on for them that the adcom's saw that warranted an auto-admit decision. </p>
<p>don't claim that i dont know anything about the admissions "game." as a stanford reject myself, i figure i know a lot about how everything works after talking to other people who were accepted, and if you wanted my opinion, stanford's admission process is far different from any other school, heavily weighing the essay and putting forth the extra effort to find those who will bring the intangibles. it's an admissions process that i admire and wish that i'd taken more advantage of before i'd applied, but obviously my app. wasn't the kind that they would offer acceptance. i'm not bitter, -- in fact, stanford still would stand as my number one school and you can say i'm still stanford dreamin' -- it's just that not every part of the puzzle fell into place for me.</p>
<p>sunkist16,</p>
<p>"stanford adcom's rolled a dice with 20,000 sides and Csr's app was the one that came up"</p>
<p>i dont know about you, but anybody who would read that quote would assume youre saying that his acceptance was due to chance- a 1/20000 % chance which he won.</p>
<p>I was pointing out that people who try to brush off the entire admissons system as pure "chance", dont know what they are talking about.</p>
<p>Admissions at HYPS don't just select somebody out of thin air. And when you say that they don't clearly admit the best people, HYPS admissions might not define best by your standards, which i'm assuming as purely stats.</p>
<p>HYPS attempt to admit the students who they believe will form the best class for their community of scholars.</p>
<p>It sucks you got rejected, but i bet youre getting into several of Stanford's peer institutions.</p>
<p>Hey, I'm a Questbridge Finalist as well - but I'm not a URM (I'm white).</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I haven't heard any good news back from any schools (except to get deferred from Harvard and rejected from scholarship consideration at USC).</p>
<p>Has anyone else from the program heard back from Stanford yet? Also, were you all invited to the Stanford online chat during March?</p>
<p>Congrats to those already accepted!!</p>
<p>stanford online chat during march?</p>
<p>I really think it was my essays that got me in. I think the long and short writings were good enough to make up for my lack-luster verbal and writing scores and took attention off the "nowhere to be found" national math and science competitions. I come from a small town so maybe the adcom saw that I don't have all the resources that are available to students from middle to upper income and more affluent school districts. I think I used all my resources well and took advantage of the opportunities that were available to me; maybe 20% of them due to the fact that there are so many things to look into. I think I capitalized well on the Questbride program (<a href="http://www.questbridge.org%5B/url%5D">www.questbridge.org</a>, for HS juniors); I declined the possibility of a "full ride" education because I knew I had my heart set on the program affiliate Stanford. And in the end I think it all paid off.</p>
<p>k, my statement about the dice was a gross exaggeration. it does take away from csr's acceptance, so i do recant that</p>
<p>and i didn't mean that they don't choose the best people in the way you see it... the way i see it, there is no such as "the best people." if you wanted to do it purely statistically, yeah, you can definitely rank the best 900 SAT scores and give them acceptance, but you, as well as i know that that's not even close to what they do. there's so much that goes into it, that you can't really define the admissions process as universities choosing the "2,000 best candidates to go into school"... unfortunately, some of the people that are looked over are probably just as good as someone else that has been accepted, but the small amount of luck that is needed to have things work out in your favor wasn't there</p>
<p>anyway, besides that, thanks for your words. hopefully, i do get in somewhere nice, but no matter where that place is, i wouldn't be as happy as i would be as i would have been if i got into stanford. you could give me admission offers to every ivy league school, and i would turn them down in an instant for stanford. i see that you're a cardinal, class of 2010... i wish you the best of luck</p>
<p>AIME winner too? very very nice. i'm hoping i can make a splash this year, being in the math olympiad would be amazing :)</p>