Here are all of your chances at all of the Ivies!

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hey everyone, I see that a lot of people ask for their chances to get into an Ivy, and they walk in with something like 3.9 GPA, top 10 class rank, 2200-2400 SAT, 750-800 on numerous SAT IIs, many APs with all 4's and 5's, and some top-notch EC's like the winner of an international music competition, or maybe you got published in a scientific journal, etc. (for all you uptights on grammar, I know I just committed faulty parallelism)</p>

<p>There's a fairly simple way to find your chances: go to their website, and check out the percent accepted, or if you're going ED, check out the percent accepted ED.</p>

<p>Those are your chances. </p>

<p>If you're a legacy/double legacy, or if your cousin works as a department head there or something, your chances are slightly higher. If your parents own a huge corporation or if you're family with congressmen or some royalty from a foreign nation, your chances have just been increased as well.</p>

<p>You all may make the argument that the 11% accepted into Harvard is the average applicant and that your scores and credentials are above their average applicants. Let me tell you something: your scores are very typical of the average applicant. How many people with 4.0's, 1600/2400, 800 on all SAT II's, 5's on all of their 12 AP courses have been rejected by the Ivies? The answer: too many to count.</p>

<p>Let's take Harvard. Each year, they get about 20,000 applicants. I'm willing to bet that half of those applicants have about the credentials that I listed above, and that the other half are pretty close too. The adcoms at the Ivies have to split hairs between all of those applicants, so your chances are about as good as anyone else's (unless you're stupid enough to apply with like, a 2.3 GPA and 500 on each section).</p>

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<p>Finally. </p>

<p>This site has way too many people with nothing better to do than worry about chances at Ivies or Ivy equivs... it's ridiculous, I tell you. </p>

<p>No matter who you are, no matter how amazing your stats or are that you were the president of 50 clubs at your school and blah blah blah... there's still a little bit of luck involved.</p>

3

<p>Exactly, I signed up here to get some input on colleges, and for the most part, I found too many people stressing over 2350s (not everyone thank God), and ironically, I became the person giving input.</p>

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<p>I came here without any intention of applying to ivies, and got great help regarding the colleges im looking at. And my scores aren't THAT bad (2120, 32). I can honestly say, this site is most helpful to those NOT applying to the ivies, and to those who have unique situations (crazy transfers, international students). </p>

<p>Maybe Harvard would like a 2.8 GPA person - very unique, distinguishes them from the rest of the applicant pool.</p>

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<p>"Maybe Harvard would like a 2.8 GPA person - very unique, distinguishes them from the rest of the applicant pool."</p>

<p>Haha, that's too funny!</p>

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<p>hey this is woo89 just replying back. so what do u want me to look at again?</p>

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<p>"Ivy Damn"</p>

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<p>lovely post, asianwazoo. this should become a sticky. being somewhat of a grammar nazi, i also appreciated your note about the phrasing. :)</p>

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<p>People dont get it, its a freaking crapshoot. When 80% of the applicant pool is extremely qualified, and a school only takes 11%, well... not even. From that 11%, you need a kid from Wyoming/the Dakotas/Alaska, another one from Zambodia (if thats a country), the sons/daughters of legacies who've donated big $$$$ to the school, the son of the queen of every monarchy you can think of... whatever. If you dont have any sort of hook, your chances are <5%, no matter what your stats are.</p>

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<p>jdelaville,
To make it worse, you don't know which hook is going to be opertative at a particular school for a particular year. </p>

<p>asianwazoo,
There also appears to be a financial aid factor - if you need it, your chances are worse than the average admissions rate, if you don't need it, they are somewhat better. mini has posted on this extensively - depressing (if you need finaid) but likely true.</p>

<p>The silver lining in all of this is that once the admissions rate hits around 25-30%, you do begin to see a correlation between a student's merits and his admissions results. Cornell is not nearly the crapshoot that Yale is.</p>

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<p>true, but for most elite colleges it is a crapshoot</p>

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<p>hahahahhaahahhahahaha</p>

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<p>Much of what you say is true, but I think you look at the percentage accepted and then subtract if you have no hook as opposed to add if you do. So if the admit rate is 11%, and you're not an athletic recruit/legacy/urm/billionaire, you're down to 5%.</p>

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<p>Financial factor? I thought all admissions committees were closed off from the financial aid office.</p>

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<p>The Ivies are only need blind as far as U.S. citizens and permanent residents are concerned. Some are need blind to residents of Canada and Mexico. The majority of the Ivies are not need blind to International students (HYP may be the exception)</p>

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<p>Yale is need blind to internationals; I don't know about the others, but it seems likely that HP would be, too.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
How many people with 4.0's, 1600/2400, 800 on all SAT II's, 5's on all of their 12 AP courses have been rejected by the Ivies? The answer: too many to count.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Really? How do you know? Can you give me some statistics on that?And why do you care about people asking for their chances? If you don't like these posts, don't read them or don't respond to them. It's that simple.</p>

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<p>People don't realize that it is surprsing when a val + 1600 + 3x800 is rejected from Harvard or anywhere else. The average applicant that applies to Harvard has a roughly 1400 (2100) SAT. To say that somewhat w/ the stats above doesn't have way better chances than 10% is ridiculous. </p>

<p>Certainly those people are rejected; we have seen it on here. I read a number that says that 45% of 1600s were rejected at Columbia. This means that 55% were accepted. How many of those rejected were valedictorian's w/ perfect SAT II's? Probably not very many. </p>

<p>Sure it happens. But the people who really know the numbers on this board can distinguish who has a good chance at Ivies & who doesn't. It isn't quite the crapshoot it is made out to be, but there is certainly some luck involved.</p>

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<p>The Brown website provides an idea of the level of selectivity at the ivies. Notice that Brown rejects 2/3's of the valedictorian applicants. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/factsandfigures.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/factsandfigures.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Right. But let's keep in mind that the average high-school valedictorian in the US with an 1400 or so on the old SAT thinks that he or she is Harvard/Ivy/Competitive school material. Valedictorian is hardly a good reference point, considering just how different schools are. Let's do some calculations. These are assumptions, but they're not way off. So if you are a valedictorian, you have a 2/3 chance of not getting in. If you have a perfect SAT, you have a 1/2 chance. If you have perfect SAT IIs, you have a 1/2 chance of not getting in. (Probably overestimated, but it'll do.) </p>

<p>Your chance of not getting in is then 16.666... %. Your chance of getting in is 83.333...%, an absolutely excellent chance, especially when we're talking about the absolutely top schools. Add in some good to spectacular ECs, a good essay, and we're talking chances in the 90%.</p>