Hey junior lurkers, I know you guys will be in the same boat us seniors were in, with many sleepless nights and endless refreshing of college applicant portals, but I just wanted to give you some advice.
For the Ivy Super Lotto, I’m feeling these numbers for next year: 5 12 43 61 22 7
5 on every AP test
12th in the world in robotics competition
43 IB score
61 clubs im a member of
22 clubs founded by me
7 charities I’ve made
0 friends 
@MaizeScream I recommend filling in the “Mega” option your ticket if you’re feeling extra lucky
Care to translate this for us oldies?
@Lindagaf It’s a joke. I’m saying that if someone is applying to the Ivies/comparable schools, they might as well fill out apps like a lotto ticket
:))
And you don’t pick them, they pick you - you can’t engineer a yes
Okay, got it. The numbers show up in blue so I thought it was a link of some sort.
Can I disabuse people of the notion that it’s a lottery? Colleges don’t randomly draw apps from a hat. One of the biggest mistakes I see time and again is students with high stats filling out apps to many top 20 schools, in the hopes that it will improve their chances. It absolutely will not. It is not about chance. You need to offer a college something it wants beyond grades and test scores. You need to be exceptional. Being exceptional doesn’t mean being president of every club. Being exceptional means presenting an outstanding picture of who you are and what you have achieved.
I know you kids work really hard. You bust your chops, you are all deserving of great schools. And there are MANY MANY more great schools out there than the top 25, or the top 100 even. There is perhaps a small element of luck, in that what you have to offer might appeal to one admissions officer and not another, but at those tippy top colleges, you need to have a special something beyond stats. Great stats will get you to the front door, but being invited into the house is something that only the colleges know. They have their needs. They need athletes, URMs, some legacies, some development cases, maybe some celebrity’s child, and the Malia’s and Malala’s. And then, they start getting really picky. They want the kid who has something special to offer. You need to be exceptional. Kids with great stats are a dime a dozen. You work hard, but so do tens of thousands of other kids.
There are millions of very successful people all over the world who don’t go to HYPSM, or Oxford, or the Sorbonne. You will be much happier if you go to a college where you can be yourself. You will have a much less stressful college process (believe me, I know exactly how stressful it is) if you do not have unrealistic expectations. You will have a much less stressful college application experieince if you ensure, above everything else, that you create a balanced list of SAFETY and MATCH schools, with a few reaches as well. Every year I see too many posts by kids who had great stats and are blindsided and grief-stricken by their failure to get into the school of their dreams. They get into a safety or a match that they don’t care about, and that’s what they are stuck with. You should spend as much time, or more, researching match and safety schools as you do reach schools.
@Lindagaf It was just a joke… I’m not complaining because I’m one of the lucky few who survived
I know it was a joke. I posted for the benefit of other users.
@Lindagaf wrote:
This is exactly correct, and beautiful stated. And many qualified applicants don’t get it. Those that do will generally do much better in the admissions process.
@Lindagaf wrote:
You should spend as much time, or more, researching match and safety schools as you do reach schools.
Now repeat this three times:
You should spend as much time, or more, researching match and safety schools as you do reach schools.
You should spend as much time, or more, researching match and safety schools as you do reach schools.
You should spend as much time, or more, researching match and safety schools as you do reach schools.
I am saddened not by the dejected students with high stats who did not get any of their reaches but rather by how they lack enthusiasm for any of the excellent schools that wanted them and will surely be disappointed that they are turned down.
I’d disagree that acceptance to the top 20 schools is not a lottery. I definitely agree that you should pay more attention to match and safety schools, and that these schools can offer an excellent education, but just because you don’t get into the top 20 does not mean you did not present an exceptional picture of yourself.
A lot does in fact ride on luck, or things that are out of your control. And for the kids who did get into the top 20, a lot was also out of their control and they just coincidentally hit the right combination of factors at the right time to grant admission into one of these elites. A lot of the admissions process is in fact arbitrary and subject to the whims of the admissions counselor in the moment. Last year Brown admissions told its students after they matriculated that they were looking for more science/research related students that year. This is directly from a current Brown student. The “type” of student they are looking for changes from year to year, and there is no way for applicants to know this or present themselves in the perfect way as to grant admission into any of these elite colleges no matter how exceptional they may be, and surely are.
You can present the most outstanding and inspiring portrait of “who you are and what you have achieved” (which, by the way, is an incredibly ambiguous and feel-in-the-dark instruction of what to do and to ask of high schoolers, who don’t even know who they are yet or how what they’ve achieved fits into their role in society. But even if you do present this very picture, whatever it is, it still might lead an admissions officer to cock their head, and decide that you are not right for the school, at least in this particular year. AO’s consider a variety of factors including how you will “fit” in with the rest of that year’s student body, and this is something that you cannot control–in other words, this is something that depends on luck.
This should be a reassuring statement, because this idea of “fit” and the combination of other factors beyond your control also means that once you do land down at a particular school, even if it is not your top choice or one of the elites, you’ll have a higher chance of feeling like this is “right” for you. Because they took the time to consider everything about you in your application–courseload, activities, grades, interests, as well as how these things FIT with the rest of students admitted that year. It’s a commonly repeated mantra on CC that “you will grow where you are planted”. This is where it comes from.
So the admissions process into the schools with <10% acceptance rates is akin to that of winning a lottery. The idea that America is a meritocracy is damaging, and frankly misguided. It’s a myth.