<p>Yeah, that's right. If Harvard is the only school I get into, then I guess I'll enroll, but I'll be disappointed...</p>
<p>Well, if that’s the best you can do than try to accept it . It is what it is.</p>
<p>Unless there is something far back in your post history, your stats I saw are not those who automatically get in. With that in mind, I guess you probably don’t have to worry about being disappointed and having to go Harvard.</p>
<p>When Henry Kissinger applied to college they all rejected him except Harvard.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a exactly safety school deal though. He was a recent immigrant and was naive about the normal US college application process and applied way too late. He said some of the schools were incredibly snotty in their rejection letters - informing him that he was hopelessly after the deadline. But Harvard was not about to let a little thing like that stand in the way of enrolling an obviously very talented student and simply accepted him - no fuss, no muss.</p>
<p>smoda, he was joking.</p>
<p>I agree. If you had any real talent, you’d be waitlisted at Yale.</p>
<p>In all seriousness, Harvard is probably an athletic safety for a handful of rare student-athletes that aspire to play at Stanford or Duke (when I say rare I am referring to this group’s extremely high academic qualifications).</p>
<p>There are quite a few stories that circulate on the Internet of people getting rejected from everywhere (even the state flagships), and somehow, miraculously getting the nod from Harvard at the end of the day.</p>
<p>It happens, but Harvard is a saftey for only a few.</p>
<p>My friend got rejected from Florida State University (very easy to get into) but got accepted at Harvard!</p>
<p>^ Haha… That’s very very strange.</p>
<p>^ i read somewhere that admissions officers will reject overqualified applicants because they think that the applicant will definitely (as definite as can be for HYPS) be accepted into a top-tier school, and so wont offer a place to that applicant to protect yield numbers. just putting it out there…</p>
<p>^ Yeah, but FSU is a state school…They’re meant to have what are essentially automatic admissions based solely on GPA/rank and SAT scores.</p>
<p>This isn’t uncommon. State schools will, at times, reject highly qualified applicants. Usually, the applicant is understood to be using FSU, or whatever the school, as a safety. The Daily Beast had a whole article to this effect sometime last year.</p>
<p>If a lower-tier college has a spot on its application that asks for the other universities that the student is applying to and that student honestly replies that he or she is applying to every top 10 school, it would not make a good impression. No university wants to see itself playing 10th or 15th fiddle to others especially when it has absolutely no chance of enrolling that student. Thus, accepting that student in that case would make no sense.</p>
<p>hahahaha htat was funny oneguy! saw the post title and started cracking up 
yeah i’d be totally ‘disappointed’ if i got into harvard … i’d learn to deal with it though</p>
<p>But the fact remains that FSU is a state school; lower-tiered or not, admissions there are primarily based on concrete numbers. Additionally, all state schools are, to an extent, safety schools and I doubt any state school practices the yield game, or at least not to the extent displayed here. Yield games are generally exclusively practiced by privates.</p>
<p>Something still doesn’t add up…</p>
<p>^But the admissions committee clearly knows that a 2350+/4.0 is simply using their state school as a safety which can understandably be quite insulting. Also, if the student showed absolutely no interest or noticeably put a trifling amount of work into the application (not bothering with a personal statement, etc.), this can reflect negatively.</p>