I recently watched a video by a current ivy league student who said if the admissions officer sees a 3.5 they are gonna “toss away your application immediately”. Is this true? If yes, then why do colleges claim that their admissions decision is a “holistic process”, and do they exactly mean by this? Please help an anxious student out.
You can Google the Common Data Set for many colleges and see the % of students with various GPA ranges. Know that the bottom 25% of students stat-wise are probably hooked — athletes, legacies, URMs, etc.
A student with low stats (and a 3.5 is low by Ivy standards) needs something outstanding elsewhere in their application to get accepted. Like a win in a national or international competition, for example. But the first question a college has to answer is whether the student has the academic chops to succeed in their environment. If grades and test scores are low compared to the rest of the pool, that makes the school a very high research.
The good news is that Ivies are only 8 out of thousands of colleges in the US. There are tons of good schools that will accept a student with a 3.5. Stop thinking about prestige. Take your ego out of the process. Look for schools strong in your area of interest where your stats are at the 50% mark or better and are affordable. Don’t worry about where anyone else is applying.
No
Just because the student is an Ivy League student does not mean that s/he knows all the inner workings of admissions - s/he doesn’t.
That said, a 3.5 GPA will likely not be accepted unless there is something exceptional about the applicant.