<p>Hello. I'm new here, but I'm just going to get right to the point.</p>
<p>Are there any Ivies or schools of this caliber that place less emphasis on extra-curriculars than, say test scores (by EC I mean sports and the such, not community service)? </p>
<p>I think it is kind-of ridiculous how large of a role these play in admissions. I mean, who cares if you played varsity football for 4 years? How does that even relate to education and higher-learning?</p>
<p>Thanks,
Kohl</p>
<p>Nobody has any nibblets of info?</p>
<p>There are far too many applicants with super high scores in the Ivies for ECs not be a major deciding factor. My son had perfects stats (36.0 ACT, 240 PSAT, dual 800 SAT IIs, 1/400 class rank) plus killer letters of recommendation and still got turned down by MIT, Yale and Princeton. He was not lacking in ECs with leadership roles (although nothing in sports) or community service work, either – it just wasn’t grand enough when seen on a national scale.</p>
<p>My son wasn’t the only one, see the individual stats threads of those that were rejected. He did get into Brown, Williams, Amherst and Northwestern, so we’re not really complaining. But note that in 3 of those acceptances, the admissions committee added a personalized note commending him not on his stats, but for his community service involvement.</p>
<p>You want to get into a top-20 school? You’ll first need very high SAT/ACT scores (usually top 1-3%), few Bs on your transcript, and a class rank within the top 5-10%. That will get you seriously considered. Then you’ll need to stand out from the other applicants with significant ECs to actually get admitted.</p>
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<p>If you’re in Admissions at a school that only has spots for 10% of your applicants. but 70% of your applicant pool has academic stats that are sufficient for admission, then you have to have some basis upon which to pick the 10% rather than the other 60%. So you use your wealth of options to handpick the most diverse, interesting, and accomplished entering class that you can.</p>
<p>Agree with the above posters and no, there are no top schools for which your ECs, letters of rec, and essays are not critical. </p>
<p>If you are willing to apply to less selective schools, your test scores and grades alone may be sufficient to gain admission (and perhaps scholarships) because they want to boost the average GPA and test scores that they report in the Common Data Set. But even they will want to see some evidence that you have basic social skills and will be an asset to their community.</p>