<p>In response to Northstarmom - that explanation makes a lot of sense for Harvard type schools. It doesn’t really apply to technical schools like MIT and Caltech though, right? What might cause them to reject someone like (pardon the solipsism) myself?</p>
<p>Also - does anybody know how much more common superscored 2400s are than single-seating ones?</p>
<p>I have a 2320 SAT, ranked top 1%, and did not get accepted by any of the Ivies (I applied to all 8). </p>
<p>Keep in mind that I’m ASIAN.</p>
<p>Interesting, Northstarmom- about Harvard recruiting “underrepresented” majors. I wonder if one were to declare such a major, would that increase one’s chances? for example, for most of my colleges I declared english or polysci because that’s what my academic strengths and extracurricular interests reflect. what if I were to declare a religion major? Would they look for evidence of my interest in religion to back up my choice? Seems like an easy way to scam your way into harvard ;)</p>
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Thank you for your kind words!</p>
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I saw one poster said he was accepted by Yale and Stanford, complained that he was rejected by MIT and now asks if he could appeal because Harvard rejected him.</p>
<p>So, I am not sure that MIT and Caltech are much different than Harvard.</p>
<p>"Would they look for evidence of my interest in religion to back up my choice? Seems like an easy way to scam your way into harvard "</p>
<p>No, it’s not an easy way to scam your way into Harvard. The admissions officers would be looking for evidence of a deep, longterm interest in the field. If an applicant said they were a prospective humanities or arts major, yet had no demonstrated interest in that field, the admissions officers probably would correctly figure out the applicant was trying to scam them, and that would lower the student’s chances.</p>
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I’m number 2 (not in reference to bathroom activies ;))
I prepped myself with a few princeton review books. Did a few practice tests. I took it and came out with a score that I thought was good enough. Everyone told me that there was no point taking it again, so I didnt.</li>
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<p>"I have a 2320 SAT, ranked top 1%, and did not get accepted by any of the Ivies (I applied to all 8). </p>
<p>Keep in mind that I’m ASIAN."</p>
<p>Better to claim that being Asian is why you were rejected than to claim the reason below that you’d posted elsewhere. It looks to me that you assumed your stats would get you in, so you blew off your application.</p>
<p>"In retrospect, I would have put a lot more time into my application. The essays were generic. The recommendations were last minute (alas, generic). "</p>
<p>“So, I am not sure that MIT and Caltech are much different than Harvard.”</p>
<p>I believe that MIT’s admissions are more like Harvard’s.</p>
<p>CalTech is more numbers based in that a few years ago, every member of their freshman class had gotten an 800 on one of the SAT math tests.</p>
<p>NSM, I was wondering if I could get your opinion on something. I sent the exact same application to Yale and Harvard, except for the extra short answers that Yale has. Yale never offered me an interview while my Harvard interview was great. I was rejected at Harvard, but accepted at Yale. If you had to explain why, what would you say? I applied for computer science if that matters.</p>
<p>AnOmaly, it’s a crapshoot. Obviously, if you were accepted to Yale, you could have been accepted to Harvard. Why weren’t you? Perhaps the days that your app was read at Harvard, the admissions officers were in a bad mood or they read your app right after reading several applications from prospective computer science majors from Florida.</p>
<p>Maybe what you wrote on your Yale application reminded an admissions officer of themselves at your age or your application was read on the most beautiful day of the winter.</p>
<p>The answer you’re looking for is like trying to figure out how a butterfly’s wings Tokyo can affect the weather a week later in Chicago. </p>
<p>Enjoy your Yale acceptance, and enjoy Yale, including rooting against Harvard at the games…</p>
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I’ve heard this several times but I’ve never seen the source of the rumor. Do you happen to have it?</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s what I figured too. Thanks! And don’t worry, I can’t wait for “the game” :)</p>
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<p>Do you mean “the OP” or do you mean FBBG? Because it was FBBG who stated that she was rejected from “all 5 Ivies” (to which she applied) + Amherst & Swarthmore.</p>
<p>She posted her stats I think on the GW board. She acknowledged mediocre e.c.'s, which apparently lots of students here on CC still do not understand weigh heavily for Elite School admissions. It’s not a crime not to have e.c.'s, and to concentrate solely/mostly on being a perfectly respectable, even stand-out student. There are thousands of great colleges & U’s waiting for you in this country, and obviously FBBG got into one of those. But anyone who refuses to look at the data for the last 10 Ivy admission years is quite behind the times. The last time scores and grades “qualified” you for Ivies was about 40 years ago.</p>
<p>“I’ve heard this several times but I’ve never seen the source of the rumor. Do you happen to have it?”</p>
<p>I read it in one of the college guides (like the ones put out by U.S. News) about 8 years ago. It was a fact, not a rumor.</p>
<p>That’s odd. I’m really more interested in polysci, but I assumed it is very popular so wouldn’t be wise to list.</p>
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<p>Do they look for that in all fields? I told Harvard I wanted to concentrate in linguistics. There really aren’t many HS opportunities to get involved with linguistics other than reading Saussure or whomever in your free time (which I did do, but only because I had a Cambridge interview coming up. I stick to wiki :o), which one could easily lie about.</p>
<p>The ComApp doesn’t include a Why [insert major here]? essay so I definitely did not tell Harvard why I wanted to study linguistics, and there were no activities on my app which indicated interest. I imagine that there are many students not able to pursue activities that demonstrate interest in their prospective concentration. How can Harvard, or any school that cares, know that these students are being honest?</p>
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By rumor I simply meant that it was unverified, not untrue; I wasn’t calling your word into question, I just wanted confirmation. It’s interesting to know how numbers-based Caltech is. I wonder what has led Caltech away from the pack of elite schools driving into the holistic admissions game (although I’ve heard that Caltech still heavily considers ECs, just ECs of a certain type that don’t contain only passion but great ability in the maths/sciences). People say it’s due to the incredibly dense curriculum, but I don’t know; it seems like more is at play here.</p>
<p>me: 2370 SAT, 4.0gpa, current val. asian.
rejected at yale and columbia, waitlisted at princeton.
I have extremely heavy music ECs in addition to leadership roles in my school and community. good essays and recs, too.
but that still wasn’t enough…</p>
<p>I had demonstrated interest in moral and political (though I said that I loved metaphysics and phil. of language as well) philosophy (as in, I had done some work in the field) with a 2200+ SAT score and so-so grades, 3.75 unweighted GPA (mainly because of a bad freshmen year + first semester sophomore year), along with decent EC’s (reformed parts of my school district single-handedly and had a few leadership positions) and some MUN, FBLA (regional/state), and Econ Challenge awards. I was rejected by UChicago, Duke, Harvard, and Yale. So, most likely because of my own personal experience, I have doubts that they look more favorably upon prospective majors in Greek, Classics, Philosophy, or whatever “under-represented” major you can conceive. Of course, personal anecdote can never constitute proof for the validity of a position, but, whatever. In all honesty, my GPA and my uber-abstract and obscure personal essay (think the Heidegger’s Being and Time of college essays) probably screwed me over completely so I hardly can be used as a reference.</p>
<p>“So, most likely because of my own personal experience, I have doubts that they look more favorably upon prospective majors in Greek, Classics, Philosophy, or whatever “under-represented” major you can conceive.”</p>
<p>Harvard and similar schools aren’t going to accept every prospective humanities major. In addition, you were competing with humanities majors with higher scores and grades. Consequently, what you stated below probably contributed a great deal to your rejections.</p>
<p>“In all honesty, my GPA and my uber-abstract and obscure personal essay (think the Heidegger’s Being and Time of college essays) probably screwed me over completely so I hardly can be used as a reference.”</p>