How can possibly someone get admitted to ivy league with below 3.0 gpa

Applying to College
1

<p>I was web surfing and found the gpa and sat statistic of yale and princeton.
<a href="http://collegeapps.about.com/od/GPA-SAT-ACT-Graphs/ss/princeton-admission-gpa-sat-act.htm"&gt;http://collegeapps.about.com/od/GPA-SAT-ACT-Graphs/ss/princeton-admission-gpa-sat-act.htm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://collegeapps.about.com/od/GPA-SAT-ACT-Graphs/ss/yale-admission-gpa-sat-act.htm"&gt;http://collegeapps.about.com/od/GPA-SAT-ACT-Graphs/ss/yale-admission-gpa-sat-act.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>For princeton there are two people with less than 3.0 gpa who got in and one for yale. Let's say that they are athlete + URM+ Double legacy those kind of things. Still how is it possible? Were they like some kind of olympic level student? </p>

2

<p>There could have been highly unusual circumstances, such as adjustment from life in a refugee camp to an American high school, or triumphing over other adversity. Perhaps an applicant failed, dropped out, lived on the streets, and then returned to high school and earned honors for his or her final year. A handful of older colleges still have special guaranteed admission for applicants from specific families or communities. I don’t know about Princeton and Yale, but Harvard used to have a list of old Boston Brahmin families (I think they finally voted to revoke it, but only recently) whose members were promised admission (some with scholarships). Dartmouth had a special charter for educating Native Americans. Let’s just presume that these are exceptional cases, and you would know whether they’d be applicable for you or anyone you know. Are those numbers for a single year, or over a five-year period?</p>

3

<p>Maybe their parents donated a couple new buildings.</p>

4

<p>People often get confused about the legacy hook. Being a legacy may or may not put you in the category of “development cases.” Development is a fancy college euphemism for fund raising. You’re a development case if there is a good chance you or your family has donated a bunch of money or will do so now or in the future. The bar is often lowered for development cases. Simple truth.</p>

5

<p>

Note that the admit decisions are self reported. In many cases, the dots with the most extreme results are lying. I’d expect the extremely few students who are near guaranteed admits, even with sub 3.0 GPA, generally do not hang out on Cappex and post their decision results.</p>

6

<p>I would trust the institutional data in this case much more than external survey data. See <a href=“http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2013.pdf”>http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2013.pdf&lt;/a&gt; in particular section 3.11
96% with GPA of 3.5 or above, the remaining includes 3% with 3.25-3.5 and 1% from 3.0-3.25. None lower (for 2013).</p>

<p>And interestingly 0% rank in bottom half of High School class (presumably some of the lower GPA students are in schools which do not report rank).</p>

<p>With numbers like these, obviously even many athletes (and others with strong “hooks”) have quite remarkable stats at Princeton.</p>

7

<p>they donated/ have connections -_-</p>

8

<p>Don’t worry about it…■■■■■ stole my spot? It wasn’t your spot.</p>