<p>The way I see it is that there are some really good schools that focus a lot on how well you did at school like UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech. However, the schools that are the next level like MIT and Stanford kind of get bored of applicants who are only solid academically. They want to see extracurriculars that are outstanding make someone say “Wow” when they see it on the page. This doesn’t mean 20000000 hours of volunteering or president of 6 clubs because those things, although not expected, are easier to imagine doing than, say, lobbying delegates for a UN climate change conference or starting a charity. The admissions officers don’t care about standards. They want novelty; they want an applicant who did something interesting.</p>
<p>I thought GT’s admission rate was 51% this year. what website does it say 39?</p>
<p>Few websites have updates themselves yet, they all have information from 2012, not this year. 39% is from Georgia Tech itself.</p>
<p>The problem is that not everyone has interesting EC’s or the opportunity to do something amazing. High school students usually don’t have the power that adults have to go out and explore. They can’t just act on their ideas unless adults think its worthwhile. If parents are against it, no teenager is willing to take the risk unless they want to rebel. Sometimes we aren’t allowed to leave the house to do these activities whenever we want thanks to strict parents.</p>
<p>Actually, I don’t know if that’s completely true, as often the whole EC thing punches a hole in the ideas coming from the 2 Indian posters here as one’s ability to commit to some extremely high caliber EC’s is often correlated with socioeconomic status (as opposed to whether or not parents permit it. Many parents in upper middleclass families in America know what this admissions process is like and will often intervene to open up EC opps. for their child on their own volition) just as academic performance may be. Think about it. If I were a low income student, made really solid grades, tried to commit to some seemingly simple, but meaningful EC’s, because I also had to work a job to assist my family, and then scored between 2150 and 2200 on the SAT. Can a person, who solely committed themselves to academics, because they were able to do so, really claim that they deserve to get into “x” more than the person described in the former because they scored 2300 (many people who get 2200-2300 are usually not just simply talented, but heavily coached and prepped, especially in the US and some countries abroad. I mean, really, to think one deserves to gain admission because of them being able to circle more right answer choices on a test that is not really predictive beyond 1st year college grades? Come on…especially when attending an elite school where most exams won’t even be multiple choice and the exams sometimes are completely beyond what a student w/the most rigorous cirriculum at a top HS would see. This is especially the case in science and math courses. I mean, most Ivies now require SAT II subject tests and for good reason. They tell much more than the reasoning about a students aptitude in their subjects of interest, which is more meaningful in many senses)? I am not so sure and would leave it to the admissions officers to make the decision on how to shape their class. </p>
<p>The top institutions choose probably most people with tippy top stats., but they choose more with tippy top stats. that they feel will contribute much more to the campus and institution than a good academic record and thus the right for the institution to say, “this person did well and got a job at x, and we helped with that”. These places want future nobel prize winners, fields medalist, humanitarians, inventors, etc in conjunction with those that will thrive academically (actually if you do the former, the institution is not really going to care what your grades were. They will claim your success irregardless). You don’t need a 2300 or 2200 to thrive academically and having those probably does not tell the school the likelihood that someone would achieve something amazing (everyone like 2100 + is way, way, way above average, and even like 2000 or so is. People falling in these categories can easily do something ridiculous within their area of interest. A person who maybe got below 650-700 on verbal could be an amazing economist or mathematician and the person doing the same in math could go on and win a Pulitzer Prize). Also, at most Ivies now-a-days, 2300 may even not put you in the top 25 percentile (at HPY, it won’t), so I would not speculate too much about their admissions scheme (I mean, there is also the fact that you think you knew everything about the app. of the “less qualified” students, but the reality is, you don’t). They have plenty of people with perfect stats. like you guys and even the ones that didn’t will likely end up as successful as you guys will be. Most of those places are way past admitting a whole student body that appears perfect on paper (in terms of an HS record at that. A record whose value may have largely diminished given how easy HS is for people now. Same w/SAT and ACT. If you are relatively smart, you get the coaching, and you do way above the 1000 average).</p>
<p>As for them not caring about standards. That’s simply false. Those places, as I suggested, still have the top standards and highest admissions stats. Only places like Caltech beat them. In addition, the rigor of most of those institutions, in spite of the heavy grade inflation (and poor Princeton students don’t even get that much of this anymore) of most, is generally much higher than you find at places like Berkeley and even Tech, at least in terms of the content taught in courses at such places, especially in the natural science arena. I speculate that making students take an SAT II subject test helps them select those well calibrated for their harder departments. So you can have a student with a 2100-2200 that maybe got 800 on a chemistry SATII, and of course a 5 on AP chem (and can thus start at the non-premed orgo. course at Harvard and other schools that separate the intro. orgo. classes). Or the ridiculous prize winning math students coming into Harvard and getting to take math 155a which is like a freaking grad. class for freshmen. So they can be selecting a slightly wider range of students in terms of GPA and SAT reasoning, but be taking the best in particular areas as demonstrated by EC’s, prizes, and subject tests.</p>