Nevertheless, for some non-engineering STEM students, a small college, with state-of-the-art science facilities and well-funded research, may be a reasonable alternative to the better known research centers which are essentially crap shoots admissions-wise:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13323/
I think what honestly may have hindered this and many other applicants especially male is a lack of a cohesive story. It’s not enough to be a high stats person who wants to be an engineering. We can tell you’re extremely smart, but did you create a compelling story of why you wanted to be an engineer other than you liked math. This is why essays and supporting ECs can make a huge difference. The way this post is setup suspects me to believe you may have thought stats were enough and didn’t pay as much attention to narrative. I’m not assuming, but it reads this way.
Case has a LOT of Tufts Syndrome. I didn’t get into my reach school, and Case was my match…showed interest, visited, everything. Would have gone there in a heartbeat. IF they hadn’t waitlisted me. Jerks. 
Also…
The fact that I have to present a “NARRATIVE” to go get an education is ridiculous.
@bodangles, it turns out that presenting a narrative is pretty important in many situtations in life. Getting a job, making a sale, making a speech, networking, etc.
The top colleges get so many good applicants that they can be choosy, and they choose to admit people, not numbers and/or a laundry list of awards.
Finally, you can get a fine education at many, many places outside the top colleges, so you actually don’t have to present a narrative at all if you don’t want to. However, being able to do so is very useful in life, like I said.
@bodangles To be fair, it seems as though it’s pretty rare for anyone with great stats who has Case as their number one school and communicates that to them early and often is rejected. Those who would happly go there, if rejected first by the five schools they have ranked ahead of them, is a much larger pool. I personally applaud the efforts of schools like Case and Tulane to prioritize the applications of qualified kids who clearly want to attend over being the perrennial bridesmaid to rejects from the Ivies and their ilk. This does not make them “jerks.”
If more schools did this, frankly, the insanity of today’s admissions process would heal itself tremendously. The true jerks are the ones sending an endless stream of glossy brochures to kids with ACT scores 5 points below their class average that imply they have practially been admitted. You have been admitted to some enviable schools already; congratulations. If you really are interested in Case, they are one of the few decent ranking schools that do admit a fair number from the waitlist, so communicate your interest.
@sltxdad The thing that bothers me about it is the “Well, they’ll get accepted elsewhere and go there” thinking. Admissions are so competitive now that that’s not always (or even often?) what happens. So people like me only get into their safeties.
Oh well. They can do what they like, obviously. I just think it’s silly to waitlist the “overqualified”…a great majority of those students won’t get into their first-choice school. And then Case could rope them in.
@bojangles I’d prefer to marry a girl who liked me best, not one who settled for me because a Kennedy or Rockefeller never came calling. It’s a much healthier approach to life and one I still applaud Case, Tulane, etc. for embracing with a similar approach. They are consciously incorporating it into their admissons DNA. It’s probably in their interest long-term to crank out graduates who are proud and happy to have attended (these kids mostly have 30+ ACT scores BTW), than a bunch of disgruntled Cornell or WUSTL rejects who forever complain and apologize for going to Case. If that upsets a bunch of kids with no love for the place and who had counted on “something better” that is their problem. If we are talking about public flagships with a stated mission of serving the residents of their states rather than private universities who are free to do as they please, however, then this narrative changes 180 degrees.
@bodangles There are enough highly qualified kids who truly want to go to Case that they don’t have to resort to swooping in for someplace else’s leftovers. It’s not Case’s fault that the marketing efforts of other universities are keeping many students from understanding that the Case/Rochester/Tulane/BU/NYU teir is where they actually belong.
Yeah, you really don’t get my point. Never mind.
And if this is the attitude that Case picked up from you, then you obviously don’t understand them.
…What? Like I said, I WANTED to go there.
Rejected by UMich CoE likely due to GPA. Admission average has been 3.9.
Actually, if more schools focused on “level of applicant’s interest”, then true safeties would be harder to find, so that more students would get shut out, or students would apply to more match schools (increasing the application/admission craziness) hoping to avoid a shut out, since they may not be able to find any true safeties. Also, not every student who ranks a school high knows that s/he may have to play the “level of applicant’s interest” game, or does things that the school uses as indicators of such.
In the OP’s case (pun partially intended), it might be a little more complicated. I don’t know many people who would choose Case over Chapel Hill, and the OP was almost guaranteed admission to the latter as a NC resident with glorious stats. Case could have offered a massive scholarship, in order to attract him with an irresistible aid package, but I did not infer that the OP had serious financial need and he would not enhance diversity in any way. I understand that many students prefer almost any school over their own state flagship, simply for a change, but - with no disrespect for Case whatsoever - they might want to know that this student had any interest at all, given his near-certain admission and in-state tuition at UNC-CH.
Just to throw another consideration into the mix: Case is a moving target at the moment. Applications have been steadily rising for the last eight years with admission percentages dropping each year, sometimes by more than 10% between one year and the next (ex: 54% to 41% from 2012-2013). Rumor has it there has been another application surge and percentage drop this year.
@ucbalumnus These schools care more about expressed interest from “overqualified” students than from their general applicant pool. It’s a way to discern mutual interest where it may not be outwardly apparent. There are many ways to communicate this, with the essay being an excellent focal point. For any student targeting a specific university, whether it be an Ivy or a public directional, it should be obvious that he or she will benefit from demonstrating this as clearly as possible to that school’s admissions committee.
Case’s generalized profile is a place for instance bright, somewhat nerdy/awkward kids with commitment to one or two activities and relatively little interest in social activities with good but not perfect stats. That doesn’t describe the typical Middlebury, Penn, or UVA aspirant. Even though they are higher stat schools, why would Case be considered a match or safety for someone aspiring to that other type of experience? Why are those kids even bothering to apply there? It’s likely because they’d rather go to a private university ranked #38 than a (non-elite) public one ranked #75, even though the public is actually a better fit for them and formally serves the mission of providing a safety net for high achievers in their state. As a safety for someplace like MIT or Rice, on the other hand, Case makes a lot of sense. The outrage and resentment expressed by some students denied to these “beneath them” schools because of poor fit reeks of an ugly form of entitlement and elitism.
It’s not the role of a private university like Case or Tulane to serve as a safety to higher ranked schools and the fact that they don’t treat every student denied admission to HYPSM as manna from heaven is to their credit, IMHO. If more schools put significant effort toward sniffing out the poseurs, word would get out and the type of frenzy you describe would diminish rather than increase. Students might actually start paying more attention to schools that are true matches for them rather than to determining the highest-ranked US News school to which they believe they will be admitted based upon two statistics. This would make admissions committees’ jobs infinitely easier, although they could contribute a bit by cutting back their overly-aggressive marketing campaigns aimed at lowering admission rates. Reducing the stigma some feel for the true safeties for these high stat kids, the public flagships, would be another step toward injecting some sanity into the process. It’s no picnic getting admitted into these places nowadays. It would be nice if more of the status obsessed crowd acknowledged this by celebrating it as a success rather than a given and, heaven forbid the kid actually attends there, as a failure.
@bodangles I am sorry that you didn’t get in, but if Case was really THE place you wanted to go it doesn’t sound like that was communicated very clearly to their admissions people. Unlike many places, you would have had a very good shot at waitlist admission if you had accepted the offer along with a very explicit statement of your intent to enroll if admitted. Being May 1, it might not be too late if you are truly that interested. Of course, you have enough great schools to choose among as it is; you are in great shape no matter what you decide.
Given how so many students posting here apparently are not aware of “level of applicant’s interest” to begin with (now, imagine a typical high school with an overworked counselor dealing with hundreds of students who may not mention such admission nuances to each student), it is more likely that word will get out that admissions are more “random”-looking even when one gets away from the super-selective schools and is looking at apparent “match” or “safety” schools, which would drive students to increase the number of applications, rather than more carefully selecting a smaller number of applications. Also, even a student highly interested in a school may not know how to “show interest” to that school’s satisfaction (e.g. @bodangles ), and some methods to “show interest” (e.g. applying ED or a non-local visit) would not be suitable for students from non-wealthy families.
I think the answer to your question will be the same one you’ll get by answering this question:
Are you happy with attending the school you chose?
If yes, then I’d say, yeah, you had an excellent admissions season.
You can only attend one school so at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you got rejected by 99 schools but got into 1 you’ll enjoy going to. You’ll still be going somewhere where you’ll be happy to attend and that’s the whole point of applying to colleges 
@ucbalumnus Some kids like @bodangles who are qualified enough to be admitted to even more selective schools, may continue to be “victims” of the system if they truly desire to attend a school beneath their ceiling without making it clear to that school. No system is perfect. That said, I doubt he would have passed up Harvard or Cornell for Case had that been the option, so Case likely assessed his “unless one of my true interests comes through” interest correctly. Call it “Tuft’s Syndrome” if you like, but it’s just as OK for Tufts and Case to pursue Tufts and Case-type students as it is for Harvard and Duke to do the same. It’s their choice whether that group ultimately includes those denied from more widely desired schools that are willing to “settle” for them.
“Level of applicant’s interest” is not rocket science. It is also not limited to campus visits or ED applications. If you request info from the school, you express interest. If you talk to your local rep at your HS or college fair, you express interest. If you send your junior year ACT scores, you express interest. Case and Tulane even offer non-binding EA, by the way, allowing students to express interest in a risk-free manner. Case’s is even free.
If the first time a school learns your name is your deadline-submitted RD application, you have not expressed interest. If you are viewed as a great match for the school it probably won’t matter; you may very well get in anyway. Expressed interest mainly makes a difference for “overqualified” kids who seem to be using the school as a fallback and lower situated borderline students who appear truly eager to attend. It’s not Case’s job to prevent a Harvard wannabe from the “horrors” of attending UMass-Amherst.
If the indignant entitled want to blame Case rather than Harvard or their own poor choices in the application process, that is their own problem. But to indict schools with fairly predictable admissions standards and patterns like Case or Tulane as the problem instead of the false hope inducing, mass mailing dynamos like U of Chicago and WUSTL for the prevalance of excessive applications is really off the mark. You are free to disagree, but I believe it is obvious that the situtaion would improve quickly and markedly if those latter schools adopted a similar approach.