<p>he did same ap classes like everyone else, nation honor society which I thought is a joke, I also have it, and the major difference in his application is that he claimed to have his own business like owning restaurants, and made 10 grand a year (not sure which year) but come on, I played around stock these few years and get 30% average return rate past two years just what the heck?</p>
<p>Is it just pure luck or this 'additional info' really helps him out?</p>
<p>Ivy League admissions are pretty much random.</p>
<p>You serious do they just put all qualified students (aka almost full point GPA and high sat score students) in a pull and just make random number generator to randomly select kids?</p>
<p>Get a dictionary and look up the word holistic. That will help you. </p>
<p>Yes, you should also look up “holistic.” Unless you know him super well, it’s unlikely that you know every activity/achievement that he has, or what was written about him in rec letters. I didn’t know many of these facts for my HS friends.</p>
<p>Someone sounds bitter. </p>
<p>Exactly @MITer94 </p>
<p>What students do after school is a completely different world. My own DD was not one to share or brag to her friends about what she did after school. One girl knew a little because I would chat with her mom and tried to encourage mom to be more involved in her daughters pursuits. </p>
<p>qwertassertion has also not provided very much detail here. As an outsider, I find it impossible to comment.</p>
<p>
Interesting theory.
I’ve noticed it presented locally, too. People want to ask where the kids are applying to college and, when told, a certain portion of them will outright say one or even several of the following;</p>
<p>“…(He/she) can’t get in there.”
“They don’t take students from our area.”
“Students from our school have never gotten in there.”
“Waste of time and money.”
“They need to apply somewhere they can get in.”
“It’s a crapshoot getting in there.”</p>
<p>After some experience with this, I’ve pretty much figured out that it all boils down to “Our kid didn’t/can’t/won’t get in there (so it’s all based on luck).”</p>
<p>
If you have actual knowledge that someone lied substantially on their application, you have an obligation to yourself, your school and other applicants to let someone know.</p>
<p>@qwertassertion Wait, are you saying he lied? To my understanding, he lied about something huge that could easily be verified. If you know this, then certainly other people (who are willing to report it to Harvard) do too. I’d say your friend’s acceptance will likely be rescinded.</p>
<p>If, however, he did run some restaurants, that’s pretty unique (more so than getting lucky in the stock market).</p>
<p>Also, what is his SAT breakdown? M+CR are what matter.</p>
<p>In response to my above comment, Ivies seem to be “random” in their choices to an outsider; obviously, adcoms have their reasons. Applicants have to remember that every year, Ivies turn away thousands of perfectly qualified students, simply because there is not enough room for them on campus.
Also, at the Ivy League level, grades pretty much go out the window in terms of predicting admission - most everyone who applies to an Ivy has decent grades and test scores. So everything gets much more holistic, and the differentiating factors between students is less based on grades and more based on character.</p>
<p>Perhaps he learned to rely on correct punctuation and middle school grammar. That might have been the difference. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>With friends like this … </p>
<p>Ivy acceptances are not random and based on luck. Sometimes they may seem to not make sense to an outsider and may appear to be unfair, but they are not just pulling names from a hat. For all OP knows, his frenemy may have a grandfather with a building named after him on campus or is nationally ranked in some obscure sport he doesn’t talk about.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>^^^This made me smile :)</p>
<p>Managing several restaurants is the kind of EC that will make a high-stat applicant stand out among hordes of high-stat applicants.</p>
<p>A 30% gain on some stocks, particularly in a rising market, may be just luck, and much less impressive in comparison.</p>
<p>If you haven’t seen the original documents, you don’t actually know anyone else’s scores or GPA.</p>
<p>Hooks help out a lot too</p>
<p>Perhaps also one of his “friend’s” extracurriculars was devoting a large portion of his time to nurturing our OP here, a sad, ungrateful, special needs kid. </p>