<p>Is everyone who applies to the ivies, top privates, and top public sreally as qualified as everyone on CC says they are? I know we are competing against each other many people who apply to top schools are usually very qualified, but are we better off than we think? I mean before I started going to CC I thought, "Well, I'll probably go to (insert top school)" but now I'm disillusioned. Compared to everyone else at my school I have the highest stats (I go to a bad public school) so I guess I'm just in a small pond. </p>
<p>Are we underestimating ourselves in the admissions process?</p>
<p>I have noticed something: before I came here, I thought a 3.6 GPA was fine, and that a 2180 SAT score was a good score. Instead, I am angry at having both, mostly because I have now seen what I will face this year in the admissions wars.</p>
<p>In many cases, yes. The kids on CC are often among the best and brightest students applying to colleges in any given year, and are usually goal-oriented and competitive enough to spend their time on a website like this.</p>
<p>However, it's not true to say that we always underestimate ourselves. I'm a freshman at an elite university now, and I can honestly say that my peers are just as smart and amazing as I thought they'd be.</p>
<p>At least it's better to know what you're up against, rather than just getting hit with a ton of rejections you didn't expect. The chances forum is basically useless, but it's helpful to look at the decisions colleges for individual schools.</p>
<p>I think that if CCers inflate their stats on the boards here and if we believe them, they are likely to be doing so in their apps and the adcoms will likely believe them so I think that there is no net effect of the CCer’s overrepresentation of themselves. – -Did that even make sense?</p>
<p>I personally think CC mainly skews our view on the so-called necessity of getting into one of the ivies, top privates, and top publics—as determined by USNews and the CC posters themselves. There are a whole lot of really good schools with really good students out there that simply get lost on this board. </p>
<p>And yes, student stats are “judged” by a vastly different CC standard than they are in real life since all students seem to judge themselves by the impossible standards that are somehow believed to “guarantee” admission into one or more of the top schools, even if they are planning on applying to a less lofty set of highly regarded and very respectable schools. </p>
<p>As commonly noted, HYPS etc. routinely deny admission to students with top SATs–say a three part total of 2250 or above—since they deny admission to over 90% of their applicants. They also admit some students with test scores of around 2100 since their 25%-75% range for admitted students is 2070-2340. What gets lost is the basic fact that there really is a score range somewhere around 720 or 730 for each part of the SAT above which differences in test scores are essentially meaningless “noise” and the scores above that level all indicate the test taker is among the best in the nation at taking SAT tests.</p>
<p>Likewise, what’s a good gpa depends on many, many things starting with the particular high school and the particular student’s schedule relative to the most rigorous course offerings offered by that high school. Admissions folks routinely take the raw data off the student’s transcript and the school profile report provided by the GC and recalculate the student’s GPA using whatever modifications they have decided are important indicators that allow them to more accurately compare good apples to good oranges in order to pick out the most tasty fruit as a whole. So there’s lots and lots of (super-high) GPAs posted with the assurance that the student has taken (or plans to take) the most rigorous schedule possible, overly broad information about what type of high school (that may or may not be accurate), and little or no indication of how their particular high school actually computes a weighted gpa.</p>
<p>Not everyone. There will always been some applicants who are not qualified to go to the schools - some people with below average stats will apply to those schools either out of ignorance or blind home, and there’s also some students who are just on the cusp who apply “just to see” but have no intentions of actually attending these Ivies. (I had a friend who’s parents made her apply to Harvard just so they could brag that she got in, if she did. She didn’t want to go to Harvard, and didn’t.)</p>
<p>College Confidential, in my opinion, does have a skewed view of what’s competitive. For one example, look at kman146. A 2180 SAT score is in the 98th percentile of all test takers. A 2130 is likewise in the 97th percentile. And assuming a score of 710 per section, that’s in the middle 50% of accepted applicants at even the tippy-top of schools. A 2130 doesn’t disqualify you for entrance anywhere - and yet I’ve seen people get told that they need at least a 2200 to be competitive. Even the Ivies’ published stats don’t hold up to that statement. I think CC students also misjudge how many legacies, athletes, and especially underrepresented ethnic minorities get into these schools with below-average stats.</p>
<p>I also think that CC artificially inflates the importance of going to a handful of colleges (some of the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc., some others) while really undervaluing some of the other really great schools in the country. Seems the only colleges you ever hear about on here are in the top 20, maybe top 30 of U.S. colleges and universities while leaving out the vast majority of the other over 2500 schools in the country - including the other 70-80 in the top 100 colleges and universities. It’s like if you don’t get into a top 20 school your life will be ruined forever, you’ll never be able to get a decent job or go to graduate school, and what will the neighbors think?</p>