Ok, so I’m a junior in high school and have been talking to some seniors about what colleges they have gotten accepted/rejected from, and I just do not understand why they keep getting rejected from school?!?!
Some of these are people with 4.0 GPA’s, Varsity Sports captains, president/officers of many clubs, good tests scores, and lots of volunteer work, and they did not get into their top pick colleges (They’re not even shooting for schools like the Ivy League).
So honestly how to students get into very prestigious schools?? Because I would’ve thought that some of students at my high school could have gone to college anywhere, but they only got accepted to average schools.
Isn’t this the question asked in nearly every post on CC? I would be interested to hear what you believe is an average school, but nevertheless, I will try to explain.
People inflate their stats in their minds. The reality is that there are literally tens of thousands of students out there who work their bottoms off and have great stats. Students with good grades, hard classes and high test scores are a dime a dozen.
They have uninteresting ECs, or fail to maximize the impact their ECs will make on their application. Do you do nothing outside of school, except babysit your younger siblings while your parents are at work? That’s completely fine, but don’t just say you babysit. Explain that you supervise their activites, prepare their food, bathe them, take them to the park, etc… Are you in the Rock Collectors Club? Explain that you help catalog and research the rocks your club collects. You organized a fundraiser by collecting and then selling interesting large rocks that people put in their gardens. You raised $150 for a club outing to a former quarry. Whatever it is, maximize it.
They fail to assess themselves realistically and apply to schools they have no real shot at. They don’t research match and safety schools that they have a decent chance of getting into. They just look at the name. “Oh, I have heard of that school, and Dad said that USNWR ranked it highly. It isn’t Harvard so I might get in.”
They apply to more and more schools top schools, thinking it will improve their chances. It won’t.
They don’t express interest at schools that consider it. They don’t arrange interviews. They don’t even check their portal.
They do a sloppy job on their app, and it’s littered with spelling mistakes and typos.
They write poor essays. They don’t ask anyone to give feedback on it. Most admissions reps will say that the overwhelming majority of essays are lousy. So,even at a college with a 40% acceptance rate, they still need to reject 60% of people. They look for easy ways to do that.
And of course, there is the question of simply too much competition within a similar demographic. It’s hard to give specific answers because it really might depend on where you live. If you are in a suburban area that sends a lot of kids to well-known colleges, the answer will be different than the one I might give to a student who attends a rural school with a small student body and hardly ever sends kids to top colleges.
You need to stand out. There are tens of thousands of “qualified” applicants. You need to leave adcoms with the impression that you will bring more to their school, and do more with the opportunities and resources available at their school, than other candidates with similar grades and test scores.
So many students still don’t get one thing: quantitative stats, such as GPA and Test scores, need to be competitive, but once these are within the “range,” all other qualitative pictures about you come into play in a significant way, particularly at those, as you put it, “prestigious” colleges with holistic admissions policy. I don’t know how many times that I’ve read on CC here about those students wanting to improve on the SAT score of 1550 by retaking it or sounding doom with receiving the first ever B in his life, and such. While maintaining the quantitative range, it’d be wise to spend the valuable time developing one’s qualitative aspects of the application, and not for the sake of the college admissions but based on one’s genuine passion and long-term interest. Don’t be like those who suddenly start to develop the list of EC’s in junior year and sprinkling the list with a bunch of short-term and meaningless and noisy activities.
Study the students who have made to those “prestigious” colleges and see what made them stood out. In order to be successful in getting into one of these top schools, you have to STAND OUT among 30,000 to 40,000 applicants that are applying, along with you, to each of those schools. Having the perfect GPA and SAT/ACT scores simply don’t make you stand out, period. Likewise being a valedictorian. At my son’s high school, there’s an intense battle among top students battling out for that top graduating honor as if their lives depend on it. It always makes me feel sad, because they almost always end up going to colleges that aren’t their dream schools while those students ranked below them usually end up with the prestigious spots. I intentionally made sure that my son wasn’t a part of that valedictorian battle. Instead, he spent his valuable time developing his EC’s. He finished 6th in the graduating class of some 360 and that was plenty good enough to get himself into several of the coveted colleges with the strengths of his other qualitative records.
^This @TiggerDad and ^^That @Lindagaf. CC should make your responses pop up and be acknowledged by all students before they’re allowed to make “Chance Me” and “Why Didn’t I get in” posts.
Yes, the qualitative aspects matter, but not only that, but I think people misjudge how much competition there is for how few slots. The US is a big country and the top American schools draw the best applicants from all over the world as well. Yet our elite privates are relatively small (and the LACs are tiny).
Consequently, all of the 30 schools I have as Ivies/equivalents (including LACs) added together have fewer freshmen slots as a percentage of the national population than the top 4 in the UK (Oxbridge-equivalent+LSE+Imperial) or top 3 in Japan (Tokyo+Keio+Waseda).
Both Oxford and Cambridge take in more first year students than the biggest Ivy (Cornell) and no Ivy-equivalent is close to that big.
What this means is that if you have the money, someone in the top percentile in stats (or top few percentiles) and good relevant AP scores (5’s) has a better shot at all the good UK unis in the UK outside Oxbridge and LSE (like St. Andrew’s, Edinburgh, and Durham) than their American equivalents (other than maybe UW-Madison).
@PurpleTitan - You’re making an interesting point - think outside the box! Essentially, this is what some other countries have been doing for decades. South Korea, my native country, is a great example of this. It’s a small country with huge population and with absolute reverence for its very few top universities. You think competitions for top schools here in the states is getting intense? It’s simply brutal and hellish there, 100X worse. So, it doesn’t surprised me a bit to witness the trend in the last decade that many affluent S. Koreans are sending their children not just to colleges but to high schools in the U.S. to avoid the “hell.” Interestingly, a Korean-American friend’s daughter, who wasn’t able to get into any top music conservatories here in the states, was admitted to a top conservatory in England. A very smart move, indeed, especially considering that the cost of attending there or here in the states comes to about the same.
@TiggerDad: The interesting thing is that as a percentage of the population, the SKY unis offer more places per capita in Korea than the Ivy/equivalents do in the US. I suppose the problem in S. Korea is that everything reputable is concentrated in SKY while it’s more spread-out in the US and Europe. For example, many public flagships in the US and Red Brick unis in England are strong in engineering and science so among the global top 10 engineering schools as ranked by ARWU, there are more American publics than American privates: http://www.shanghairanking.com/FieldENG2015.html
Plus, in the US, there are typically many paths to the same goal.
As others have said, you need your quantitative stats in line to even have a shot. With a great GPA and test scores, you will be in a pool of about 30,000 similarly qualified applicants. Well conceived, well written essays help with the next cut, but the pool will still be very large.
What I disagree with is that there was something magical that those who got admitted did, some way they tried harder or really stood out more than those who were rejected. In rare cases, that might be true (child celebrity, an under represented minority, a recruited athlete, hold a patent, or maybe most importantly, a legacy) but for the most part, those who are admitted were simply luckier. There are too many great applicants for too few spots. The differences between those who got in and those who didn’t is usually VERY subjective.
The bottom line though is this, and read thus very carefully, DO NOT EXPECT TO GET INTO A HIGHLY SELECTIVE SCHOOL, no matter how strong your stats and ECs are. The odds are highly stacked against you. Don’t live your life trying to check all the boxes to ensure you’ll rise above the rest. You won’t, not because you aren’t awesome, but because everyone else is doing the exact same thing you are. There are too many strong applicants.
What should you do? Have fun! Do the ECs that give you pleasure, not what you think some admissions reader will be impressed with. Why? Because the journey is more important than the destination. Your success in life is based on what you do in college, not where you go. An awesome, engaged student at Louisiana Tech with a high GPA will be more successful than a C student from MIT who didn’t do anything meaningful.
Open your mind to the truth that we’ve all been tricked into believing that the ranking of a school has any correlation to future success. Instead, focus on the factors that are important to you. Is it project based learning? Class size? School size? Weather? Region of the country? Use of TAs vs all professor taught? The ability to minor or double major? Travel abroad? Campus structure and architecture? You name it.
If you focus on factors that are important to you WITHOUT RESPECT TO RANKING, you’ll come up with a list of schools where you will thrive. Some might be selective and you might get rejected. Some might be easy admits for you. The result though will be that any of them will be fine, because they were chosen based on YOUR CRITERIA, not some bogus, self perpetuating, ranking system that’s resulted in everyone applying to just a handful of schools.
Good luck.
“Consequently, all of the 30 schools I have as Ivies/equivalents (including LACs) added together have fewer freshmen slots as a percentage of the national population than the top 4 in the UK (Oxbridge-equivalent+LSE+Imperial) or top 3 in Japan (Tokyo+Keio+Waseda).”
This is probably even more true if you compare the number of slots in the top universities in Canada (McGill, Toronto, UBC) versus the US, as a percentage of the population.
I think that one issue is that in other countries the top universities are funded by governments, and feel that they have an obligation to provide educational opportunities to the top students from that country. Here in the US many of the top universities are private, and they have an obligation to bring in enough money to stay in business. This is easier to do if they are seen as “prestigious”, which means that they need to limit the number of spots to the point that getting in is seen as a great thing.
I recall a few years ago when a daughter and I toured Boston University they said that they had recently reduced the number of freshmen that they would accept. This seemed very odd to me at the time. A few weeks later I saw a ranking of universities that happened to have BU only a few slots ahead of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Suddenly I got it: If BU were to fall behind UMass Amherst in the rankings, then no Massachusetts parent in their right mind would allow their child to spend $65,000 per year at BU when they could get the same education at UMass for 1/3 the price. Thus BU has to limit their enrollment to the point that they are seen as significantly more prestigious than UMass Amherst.
Another issue is that in other countries students mostly get accepted to big name universities based on grades and/or test scores. This makes the process highly predictable. In the US students get accepted based on a wide assortment of criteria which is very difficult to fully understand or predict. We found a few years back that in some cases it is possible that a US citizen who was born in the US and spent their entire life in the US might be able to get into foreign universities that are academically stronger and more highly ranked than anything that they can get into in the US. This is particularly likely if the student has very good grades and SAT (which will be considered by foreign universities), but has poor ECs and does not benefit from any “diversity” considerations.
Personally I think that the emphasis in the US on ECs and AP classes puts an enormous stress on our high school students. It is not enough anymore to just get all A’s and to have 700+ on each section of the SAT. You need to get all A’s in AP classes, avoid any A- grades, have great ECs (not just participate in something that you are interested in), and get at least 1500, preferably 1600, on the two part SAT. Of course this also means SAT preparation classes and tutoring. This means that students have a full day in class, then 2 hours in ECs, then many hours of studying, not enough time to eat and sleep, and it still might not be enough. I think that this is too much and is leading to too many stress related illnesses among high school students.
For you as a high school student: This is not an easy minefield to navigate. I think that you need to “think outside the box” a bit with regard to selection of universities. For a very top student (such as someone whose report card is pretty much only a list of their courses and the letter “A” repeated many times, with a few “+” signs thrown in) probably the ivy league and equivalents should be an afterthought – something that you might pick a school from to apply to but don’t take seriously. Try to find universities that are a match to what you want to do and where you want to be. Also, to me (and apparently my younger daughter) looking outside of the US might make sense. That is where the universities are that have enough slots for top straight A students, and that will accept students based almost entirely on a lot of A’s, great SATs, a kind helpful and gentle personality, and not much else.
@PurpleTitan - You’re correct. In S. Korea, EVERY top students are trying to enter one place: Seoul National University (SNU), the nation’s top university. In the U.S., we have HYPS, as well as Cal Tech and MIT and others that can claim top rankings based on specialties for the aspiring students to stake their chances at. The problem in S. Korea is that “success” is closely correlated with that very top university, whereas in the U.S. there’s no such correlation. You can go to a public in-state university that’s ranked 200th in the U.S.W.R and come out more successful than someone graduating from HYPS. In other words, there’s no “feeder” school for success in the states whereas SNU is the feeder school in S. Korea.
@DadTwoGirls: I agree wholeheartedly. If you have the means, it may make sense to look overseas (top UK unis, TCD in Ireland, some English-language programs at French Grandes Ecoles, etc.).
I’d say McGill/Toronto/UBC are roughly equivalent to UMich/UW-Wisconsin/UW-Seattle, and the last two aren’t too difficult to enter if you can pay.
Waterloo, however, is a steal if you can get in to it and hack it.
So I think you are asking after you get a 4.0, and top SAT scores or ACT, and have leadership ECs and have contributed to your community, how do you stand out? Be legacy, recruited athlete, URM or from North Dakota. Aside from that do some soul searching and find what you think makes you unique, then pray to the admissions gods, and find a four leaf clover. Only half kidding.
I’m going to make a few remarks just based on what I’ve seen in person. This year, my school (large public) is sending 12 kids to the Ivies or Ivy-equivalent schools, and there are at least 5 more (that I know personally) from another local high school going to the Ivies/Ivy-equivalents. Granted 17 isn’t a large sample size but we have some common characteristics
- High SAT/SATII/ACTs, but none of had perfect scores. I believe a 33/34 equivalent was the median and the mode, while 800s on SATIIs were much more common, but most SATII scores were in the mid-700s. You DON'T NEED PERFECT SCORES OMG. Our scores were all 'close enough for government work' but not '2400/36/1600s.
- Grades were variable. UW GPAs ranged from a low of 3.77 (including a C) from me, up to 4.00s for the UPenn and MIT admits. Basically if you are in the top 10% of your class, and have had a solid if not unspectacular run in high school, stop fretting. Your grades are probably fine. You don't need a flawless, unblemished record to get into HPYSM
- We all had devoted serious time in one or two extracurriculars. Leadership, lots of weekly hours, and lots to write about. OK we did have other things but we had like a MAIN extracurricular or activity. For instance, MIT dude had spent 4 years with the math club and singlehandedly brought it from obscurity to AMC nationals level or something, and had a local paper publish about it.
- Our teachers adored us. Recommendation letters make or break your application...
- We thought long and hard about how to 'present' ourselves. Some used professional consultants. Others just sat down and brainstormed and figured out a way to pack all of their ECs and groom their essays in a way as to present themselves as an outstanding and UNIQUE applicant. Don't just throw stats and $hit onto paper and submit.
You also have to realize that a LOT of people don’t browse CC for one reason or another. When you’re talking about schools that are as competitive as the top privates, for every 1 well qualified applicant, at least 9 others flop and fall through the cracks, sometimes through no fault of their own. You see a lot of people on CC get rejected, but there are other people who get admitted, and also rejected.
@eyemgh -
“What I disagree with is that there was something magical that those who got admitted did, some way they tried harder or really stood out more than those who were rejected. In rare cases, that might be true (child celebrity, an under represented minority, a recruited athlete, hold a patent, or maybe most importantly, a legacy) but for the most part, those who are admitted were simply luckier. There are too many great applicants for too few spots. The differences between those who got in and those who didn’t is usually VERY subjective.”
Here’s my take on this: I think the “magical formula,” if there’s such a thing, to those “prestigious” colleges is the combination of distinct and proven talent (athletes, musicians, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, etc.) and quantitative evidences of academic fitness. In some cases of rare talent, these colleges would even admit candidates with a far lower academic standards (why not, even if they end up dropping out later, they know they’ll benefit). A well known baseball player (name escapes me but he played for Boston Red Socks after college) got into Harvard with 2.6 GPA or something like that), for example. We can add internationally renowned concert artists, the Olympic athletes, etc. to such cases. If you look at the CDS of these colleges, “Talent” is always under the “Very Important” column, whereas EC’s are in either under “Important” or “Considered” column.
The URM, legacy, 1st gen hooked students also enjoy easier access but their quantitative AND qualitative qualifications need to be right up there or very closely matching those admitted.
For most candidates not endowed with such talents that can get noticed nor any hooks to rely on, they’d have to put together the best possible combination of EC’s, the record of academic excellence, and especially great essays, LOR’s and interviews. Sure, luck can perhaps play a major role here, but I think there’s still a controllable room to stand out among this category of candidates with a very well thought out and coherent application package that evidences the candidate’s purposeful vision and goals. Where I see so many candidates in this crowd failing is the very lack of purpose, coherence and vision: i.e., selling oneself and convincing the adcoms.
After this, everything else is luck.
@preppedparent - I see everyone moving to North Dakota now… 
^^^They might just…
Wasn’t there a student who got into all 8 Ivy’s as well as Stanford and MIT and he’s from North Dakota?
@TiggerDad. Sound advice #14. You state it much more eloquently than me. And yes, I think how you “package” yourself is extremely important, and in the end, there are just a lot of good students who won’t get into a prestigious school because the school “already had one of those” or another candidate ticked more boxes of what they “needed.” This may be called “bad luck.”
One way for an applicant to stand out – and I’m surprised that this approach doesn’t get more coverage – is to apply to schools that are outside your normal geographic comfort zone. Most students – even the most highly qualified ones – end up attending schools that are within 250 miles of their home. Step outside this zone and your application will become much more interesting to the admissions department. All of the top private schools value geographic diversity, and all of them get far more applications from “locals” than they need.
Say you’re from California, and you want to study engineering – but the competition at the UCs is getting more and more brutal every year. OK, so submit an application to RPI or Lehigh. Maybe nobody at your high school has ever heard of those places. Well – that’s exactly why you should apply there.
Say you’re from Long Island, and you want to study at a top liberal arts college. Guess what, places like Middlebury and Bates are deluged by applications by talented students from affluent northeastern suburbs. OK, so submit an application to Grinnell or Carleton. Maybe nobody at your high school can can imagine attending a liberal arts college in a friendly small town in the Midwest (as opposed to a friendly small town in New England). Well – that’s exactly why you should apply there.