Also, I checked and the Palestine essay was only sent to the UCs (sigh 
) and 2 colleges as supplementals! My other essay was about my Ukranian culture, how I am involved with it and other stuff about it. My friends really liked that essay and it wasnât a âriskyâ essay like the Palestinian one.
Get some crutches, a wheel chair whatever and go into school TOMORROW. Or at least call the teacher who likes you. Start with her. Take your parents with you. Especially if Brandeis is coming out on Thursday. Once they are out there is nothing that can be done. If a mistake was made perhaps the GC can reach your regional rep for Brandeis and explain the problem (once she figures it out) this is something my GC does all the time).
Something is still not making sense. If you are in the top 10% of your school, good ECs, take challenging classes and got a 34 (with lets say each subsection being at least 28), NE should have been a target/safety (no offense to anyone, great school), I know this is going to sound stupid in light of the result but why would you be worried with a 34 and top 10%? At a 34 you are at the 75% for most Ivys (not saying you would get in but you would have a shot, especially with a good backstory). One of my friends goes to Ithaca and her stats were very far from yours. Much lower
What does Naviance say with your statistics? I would think NE and Brandeis and McAlaster are targets or matches (obviously not but they should be). So unless this year is the most competitive year in history or your school has so many people applying that you have to be in the top 5% to get in any place, something is wrong. However, it does not reassure me for my own story.
Blackballs do happen. I personally know of a grad student that was ripped in a recommedation by a prof in a class she Aced and had no idea until an interviewer told her. Any time you do not see the recommendation you are acting on faith. Which is why someone from school other than the GC should review your file. You cant if you waived your right to see your recommendations but a teacher or administrator can look just to make sure nothing bad is in there.
Finally do you have a common last name? One of my friends did not get into a local school last year and we think they mixed him up with someone with the same name.
@SaphireNYâ
Ok, so going to school tomorrow wonât be a big deal, since it was only âstronglyâ suggested to stay home by my doctor. I looked and I actually am unable to book an appointment with my counselor until Thursday. My GC almost never accepts same day, or appointments booked the night before, but I will go to the office and I will try as hard as I can to let her see me and I will also tell her that is is an emergency (Cross my fingers).
I donât have Naviance, but according to some college data websites and people at school, I should have gotten in the schools that I was rejected. I literally have noooo clue about what is going on and I feel like I am in a bad dream right now. I got a nice scholarship at Ithaca, but I mean I never had an emotional attachment to Ithaca ( it was only a safety school). I am not going to say my last name on here obviously, but my last name is super unique and there are only a few people in the US with my last name.
I am going to ask a teacher that likes me to review my files and I hope I will be able to see my letters of rec. Another one of my friends who had the same counselor had an 1800-1900(I dont the exact score) and a 3.7( approximate)GPA and they also had my counselor, who was mean to her too. My friend had good essays( heartfelt and unique in my opinion) and had English teachers review her essays and she somehow was rejected from Purdue and U of Illinois. I did get accepted to Ithaca, so Im thinking that the letter was a generic, low quality recommendation that showed no passion.
Obviously donât rely on me for medical advice! and only do what your doctor considers safe.
A generic recommendation if she just met you 3 months ago may not be terrible if your teacher recommendations are good as long as she did not say anything bad and made clear that she did not have an opportunity to get to know you since she was a midseason replacement for someone who left. Many guidance counselors can barely pick their kids out of a line up. Since they get sent with the teacher ones they should count much more. What I find shocking is that you sound like a good candidate why would your GC want to risk anything by not doing your forms? I would think she wants to up her yield of accepted students. That does not sound normal for a top high school. School districts, property taxes are dependent on college admissions. People buy houses based on the school district, more expensive houses, more property taxes, more money for the schools.
and What about having the teacher that likes you sending a quick email to the regional rep at Brandeis saying, __________ is one of my top students, I just want to reinterate how much I recommend her and how interested she is in Brandeis, if you have any questions please call
I assumed you had an unusual name since you are Ukranian but I had to ask. In my friends case he was already into a school he liked better, everyone just thought it was a mixup because he should not have been rejected
Take back some of what I said about NE, read the thread, it was a ROUGH admission session. Not sure I would have gotten in for sure. A few 34s were rejected, was shocked. Starting to make peace with going to my state school if nothing better comes along. Ok, not really
If you do go in, would it help to take an adult with you? Sometimes the run around a student gets, the parents do not get but it depends on the school.
In my school the culture is bring to mom and dad when you need backup. My friend goes to a similar school and the surest way to screw something up is to bring your parents. The principal hates it.
With my parents you can practically hear the chopper blades so they would never let me go in alone but that is my parents, who hover way much. Often wish they did not.
Any teacher who likes you have college admission experience
@coffeelife Good luck with your guidance counselor today, I hope she can get you some answers. Please remember you do have some options and there are benefits to being a big fish in a small pond. You mentioned a downward trend in your GPA senior year. What was your unweighted GPA 1st semester? NEU has gotten harder and harder to get into each of the past several years. It has become one of those schools where you canât really look at past acceptances.
OPâs result in UCSD/UCD/UCSB is not a surprise. The UC UW GPA is low and the rank also confirmed that this GPA is low relative to his/her classmates. The SAT is great but UCâs put more emphasis on grades.
2018, âUnweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.7
UC GPA: 4.25
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): top 9%â
How is better than top 10% low? Do not know UC but what does she need from a top hs?
@coffeelife Good Luck. This happened to my son last year. He was offered $$ at UCR and got into SDSU and several other CSU campuses. The CSUâs werenât exciting him at all. The many rejections were tough at the time. We visited both UCR and SDSU in two days. I liked UCR better than I expected to! He liked it less than he expected. He stepped on SDSU campus and said, âthis is ITâ and he does love it there. As it turns out he will double major in Business and Film StudiesâŠhe has the time because he took 34 credits into college with him from all the hard work. That is helping himâŠhe got freshman registration and skips to Junior status alreadyâsophomore registration is the worst, i hear. The schools he thought he wanted donât have Film programs, as it turns out. He was focused on Business when he appliedâ You never know! Keep chin up. God Blesses the Broken Road!
Itâs pure number game. If the OP attend a typical public CA HS, letâs say about 500 per graduating class, most if not all top kids apply to the 5 top UCs (UCB/UCLA/UCSD/UCD/UCSB). 9% of 500 is 45. UCD will not accept 45 kids from a single HS. Thatâs the simplistic approach to explain why the result was not a surprise. Of course, these schoosl accept kids by major and then compound that with other factors (ECâs/low income/first generation/essay/# of AP,Honors,a-g classes/SAT/ACT, etc.), the result was not a surprise.
Teachers simply shouldât write scathing ârecommendationsâ⊠itâs supposed to be a RECOMMENDATION, so if youâre a teacher and a student asks you to recommend them and you donât feel that you can do so in good faith, just politely decline to do so rather than ruin the chances of a student who has worked hard to be in the position they are in.
Wow that is rough
So being top 10% which is a statistic I hear all the time that is tracked is meaningless. At small private schools that can be number 3, so what happens to number 4 and at large schools number 49.
So what exactly are your options?
I donât understand these rejections with such a profile⊠Your profile is not stellar, but your test scores are excellent and the rest seems fine. Purdue was almost a safety imo
^Yes, thatâs why the rejections are a red flag that something went wrong somewhere. Hence the need for an adult to look into it (teacher, former gcâŠ) then have the GC review everything.
OP could of course take a gap year if her parents donât want UCSC for her - but UCSC is not bad at all.
Northeastern received over 50,000 applications and admitted barely 28% of them, compared to double that just a few years ago, so itâs become really, really competitive. (Anything below 30% should be treated as a reach).
@MYOS1634â I have a friend who is attending Northeastern. Her stats were not stellar. She got like 85 in toefl, 3.65 GPA. She didnât take the SAT since Northeastern doesnât ask for it.
@mom24boys My UW GPA last semester is a 3.6, so it is not the best, but not the worst UW GPA. I got a big package from University of the Pacific today, but unfortunately the financial aid came with it and its 9K and the estimated cost of one year with books,dorms,etc is 58K. I would maybe spend 50K a year on a higher ranking school, but I am not sure if I would be willing to spend 49K on UOP. Also, I asked my GC to submit my recommendation AFTER I submitted my common app, so she basically saw everything that I did (my essay, what I filled in, the GPA I reported, etc). She also sent in my mid- year report and everything seemed ok and she never saw any red flags in my report. I am going to talk to her tomorrow, since I was not able to talk to her during school. School ends for me when lunch starts, so I was not able to wait over an hour to have the chance (very very low chance) to see her. My GC will never go out of her way to help anyone, even if it is urgent!!
Why canât you call or email her?
@rgosula Here are my results so far
Acceptances- UOP, Ithaca, UCSC, UCR and Sac State ---- not bad, but none of them are my âdreamâ schools
Rejections- Macalester, Northeastern, UCD(on the wait list), UCSB( wait list), UCSD, Purdue and Cal Poly SO-- I actually really wanted to go to these schools, especially the UCs, so it is upsetting. I did not expect to get into every single one of them, or even half of them, but I thought that I would get into 1 or 2 of these schools.
@redpoodles I have tried to email her a few times and she usually does not answer. She only answers if its like a yes or no question, like âdid you send my transcriptâ. My friends have all complained about her not answering emails.
@2018dad My friends and I believed that I had a pretty good shot at getting into at least one of those schools. Many people in my school got into at least 1 of those schools and a lot of them had lower GPAs, SATs and some of the people had significantly lower SAT scores than me ( like 1700-1800ish) and got in!