<p>You’re a naive fool, making the same foolish assumptions that I did as a high school student.</p>
<p>Brown, Penn and Columbia are not “mid-reach/match” schools for anyone less than an international math olympiad medalist, or someone of like achievement. </p>
<p>You need a taste of fear. Here’s a snapshot of a few students applying from my highly-regarded, New England prep school for the 2006 season:
Myself: top 5%, 2250 SAT (1540 M+CR), 770 Chem, 760 Math IIC, 760 Bio. Legacy at Harvard and Columbia. Waitlisted, then rejected from both. Rejected at Yale. Rejected at Penn. Accepted, ultimately, to Cornell; attend for one year, transfer to Penn.</p>
<p>Friend 1: top 5%, 2230 SAT, 750 on Physics, Spanish and US History. Rejected from Harvard, Princeton, Penn and Columbia. Waitlisted, then accepted at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Friend 2: top 5%, 2320 SAT (1590 M+CR), 740 Literature, 800 Math IIC, 680 Chem. Rejected from EVERY SINGLE IVY, got into Hopkins, now attends UMich on full scholarship.</p>
<p>Historically, my school has excellent placement, and is listed in Fortune and Money magazine as a top-20 high school for successful Ivy League admissions. Unless you go to Philips, Deerfield, or Choate, your guidance counselor PROBABLY has weaker pull at elite colleges than mine did. And in this day and age, that relatively strong influence was too weak to have any real effect. Since I applied, average SAT scores have been steadily rising.</p>
<p>I’ve read your other posts - if your SAT diagnostic is remotely predictive, you’ll have roughly the same scores as my cohort listed above, if perhaps slightly lower. Your academic profile will roughly approximate mine. Will you have better luck? I doubt it, although the admissions process, once you’ve qualified yourself with the initial academic hoops, is fairly opaque and arbitrary. So, I’ve tried to lend you a little perspective. Next May could find you waitlisted at (horrors!) WashU or Hopkins as easily as it could matriculated at Princeton. Respect the spinning, stochastic blades of the elite admissions process, or risk leaving it a jaded, dejected man.</p>