<p>I was wondering if getting into those schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford) is really that hard. I'm a pretty good academically. So I was wondering if I would be able to get in. Reply Thanks.</p>
<p>Some of these schools take single digit acceptance.....if that isn't hard I don't know what you are looking at.</p>
<p>Asking someone to predict if you can get into HPYSM is redonkulous, no one's judgement can tell that except admissions officers.</p>
<p>Do you have any outstanding talents or extracurriculars? Let me give you a taste, Princeton rates the extracurriculars on a 1-5 scale...</p>
<p>5 - National recognition or title
4 - State/Regional recognition or title
3 - Visible or major role in your community (that's where a student body president or volunteer would fall)
2 - Leader of a group/team captains
1 - Participation in activity</p>
<p>Harder then one could ever imagine....but still go for it :) You never know!</p>
<p>Like hazmat said, acceptance rates for those schools are around 10-15% -- and let's be honest with ourselves, a great deal of the 85-90% who get rejected are extremely well-qualified. It's not like you're competing against the average American high school student when you apply to top schools.</p>
<p>Once you eliminate developmental admits, legacies, recruited athletes, sons and daughters of senators, congresspeople, and ambassadors, folks for whom the admissions office needs to do GCs at fancy preps a favor, desirable URMs, best-selling novelists and Olympia medalists (and some sons and daughters of mega-millionaires), acceptance rates are around 5%, probably slightly lower if you require financial aid. </p>
<p>Best thing you can do to increase your chances is to choose your parents well.</p>
<p>"Do you have any outstanding talents or extracurriculars? Let me give you a taste, Princeton rates the extracurriculars on a 1-5 scale...</p>
<p>5 - National recognition or title
4 - State/Regional recognition or title
3 - Visible or major role in your community (that's where a student body president or volunteer would fall)
2 - Leader of a group/team captains
1 - Participation in activity"</p>
<p>and you know this for a fact...</p>
<p>Umm yea its hard lol</p>
<p>you remind me of anchorman
"umm i'm kind of a big deal"</p>
<p>Sciencenerd,
If you're so smart, why is your grammer so bad?</p>
<p>Maybe a dumb question: Does being all-state in something count as a state level recognition? Just wondering.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If you're so smart, why is your gramm*e*r so bad?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That is a classic.</p>
<p>Ditto on the authenticity of that comment being a classic. Wow</p>
<p>people in glass houses....</p>
<p>"If you're so smart, why is your grammer so bad? </p>
<p>That is a classic."</p>
<p>OMG that's funny.</p>
<p>Lol pwned! (or more formally, he got you there)</p>
<p>Do you mean like All State choirs? I don't know...</p>
<p>RBase, so skeptical, it's been published and came from the dean of admissions mouth. There are plenty of articles of schools discussing how they evaluate application, Brown did an article for U.S. News last year.</p>
<p>RBase, my ECs were all like 1s and 2s, and I still got into Princeton, so it's not a defining factor. But to reiterate, acceptance rates around 10% is as hard as it gets...</p>
<p>I had ECs in the 1-2 range, and I wasn't that involved senior year. I still got into Penn, Yale, Columbia, Brown, etc. To be entirely honest I think as long as you have some ECs and a few leadership positions, you are fine in the EC realm. Having SAT1/SAT2 scores all above 740 or so also puts you in a very competitive range. After that, it's a matter of how interesting you sound on paper.</p>
<p>But you had other factors at play, like first generation college student and geographical diversity, and a high GPA/Rank</p>
<p>I still maintain that GPA is the most important factor.</p>