This is a post I like to put up annually because I think it has good food for thought. I have culled many of these ideas from people wiser than I. Thought I would share.
Before you begin comparing yourself to people who got in (or not), please keep in mind that there is a lot that outsiders do not see. Scores – very few people make them public. Lots of times those that do inflate them. And scores are only one element…(diagnostic/prescriptive at best some would say). But that is the easy part.
A wise friend who went to a top 10-law school perused the corresponding sites for law school applicants, and concluded that there is a group that posts to psych people out. Sort of like men who brag about their junk – as does Mr. Trump. For example, she decided to take the LSAT scores asserted on Northwestern’s thread over a weeklong period and calculate an average. It came to 174. The real deal is 168. For Yale, the average score claimed was a ridiculous 178. The real deal is 173.5 – the highest in the country. Not a full proof analysis, but these are interesting nevertheless. Is there any reason to think that these students behaved much differently as high school seniors? Is that not the downside of competitiveness?
What is more, high-ranking students are well aware who the geniuses are versus the hard workers. Not to mention the geniuses that are also hard workers (Nobelists?!). It is easy to imagine that some rejection protestations are sparked by denial of painful truth/reality, resentment, jealously, myopia, megalomania, a bad history (like a break-up) or some such thing.
It brings to mind a conversation I wish I had taped from a long time ago. A moderately successful professor (tenured at a 5th tier - his words, not mine) that had taken a PhD from an institution ranked almost at the bottom of the pile insisted the problem is that he is so much more brilliant than his counterparts at Caltech and Princeton that even they do not grasp his ideas. He blames his obscurity and failure to publish more than 5 papers in 25 years on his alma mater, not his ability. He believes that if his advisor (at an undergraduate school that isn’t even ranked because it is 5th tier) had pointed him at Princeton or Chicago, he would have gotten in and now be of great renown. The poor man is delusional, megalomaniacal, or worse. There are plenty of people like that. Most of us think we are smarter, more talented than we really are. Such can be reflected in these posts.
Essays vary greatly in quality, even from those who ostensibly get help. Sometimes the topic may be off-color or otherwise suggest something that alienates the committee. One essay may elicit different reactions from different committees. Other times the essay is clearly composed by a philosophy professor. There may be mistakes in the essay – more than the one or two that will be overlooked. They make a bit difference. Most of us believe that we have submitted “great” essays. Compared to what? To whom? Admissions committees answer those questions. My greatest writing effort cannot hold a candle to many I have seen. That is okay. To put it crudely (because I hate to use scores to make points), if you had 20 valedictorians in a first year biology class at Chicago, and all of them had 1550 SAT’s save for one with a 1200, would that be fair to anyone in that room?
Recommendations become more critical the closer you get to the top. So, if you have a valedictorian that works her/his ass off but is in the top 20% where ability is concerned, the teacher will say that because it is true. (If it is not true, and another teacher says top 5%, that is where an admissions officer’s work begins….) Then there is someone who ranks below him and has abilities in the top 0.5%. Or they may not be charismatic as is the no. 1 student, but very few people know that the student is doing unbelievable things elsewhere, such as musically, artistically, or even science-research wise. If that student is not popular, or not well known, who is going to know that s/he may be the most brilliant in a class? And then be stunned because that student got into Chicago and the no.1 did not. There is nothing wrong with any ability level, no matter where you are on the scale. You are what you are, and you work with what you have. But it does nobody good to suggest that someone with the highest grades in the class is necessarily brilliant. Don’t get me started on the million types of intelligences that exist…. that cannot be compared…e.g., a brilliant poet versus a math whiz. Throw those two into Stanford’s pool…see what happens!
Another assumption in such discussions is that the applicant pools are identical or close to identical. Think about that for a second. There are those who indiscriminately apply to the top 30, which is silly. But there are more thoughtful applicants who select institutions for very specific reasons – which vary greatly from one student to another. And the admissions committees can change annually. They are not identical at all.
Not to mention that it is a transnational pool now, not a national pool. The varying quality of college counseling naturally precipitates a different set of schools for each student - for better or worse. Not barring that some lists are identical, but even if they are, the schools are not! They will evaluate each applicant individually as well as in contrast with each other. Different schools have different reference frames and needs.
Different schools have different relationships and histories with colleges. My high school always sent people to MIT but rarely to Caltech. I asked my counselor why and the response was, “Well, we don’t know it as well as MIT.” A rather arbitrary reason, but these exist. Sometimes counselors may not like an institution and steer kids away from it for that reason. Maybe they were rejected and “take it out” on the school by not sending them anyone.
All of this to say that decisions are not as random as they may seem. Some are, but not many. It is the case that a brilliant, accomplished student got out-competed by fellow applicants because they were even more brilliant, etc. It happens a lot. Especially when you stop to think that your number 1, when compared to other number 1’s, pales. If you are not sitting at the mountaintop with a panoramic view, you are not going to see that. You figure that the most brilliant in your school is as brilliant as any in the world. Not at all.
It’s one thing to be THE most beautiful soprano voice the local church has ever heard. But if she comes face to face with other beautiful sopranos at Juilliard auditions, the field contains – very often – talents that completely eclipse your local heroine’s. And people back home will wonder why she was denied admission.