Is it common for 2300+ SAT applicants to be rejected across the board from HYPMS?

Chance Me / Match Me!
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<p>If your plan is to be admitted to one of them you need to an individual strategy for each school.</p>

<p>MIT is a special animal and looks for specific traits among its applicants. There are no legacies or athletic recruits so in theory the field is more open to unhooked candidates. On the other hand, MIT looks for specific types, not just the excellent student with great tests scores. You may remember the polish kid last year who was accepted to every single Ivy and turned down from MIT, which was his first choice. SAT scores of applicants are generally high but quite secondary for admission. An 800 math SAT is completely unimpressive. Many applicants have taken the AMC and AIME and scored high on those tests. Others have participated in science competitions. Virtually all have some oustanding feature in math or science. MIT will look for creative types and adcoms can tell right away if you fit the profile. The real selection starts after that. Check out who got into MIT from your school in the past and see what they did. You may not want to waste your time applying as the process takes time and MIT does not use the common app. They will on the other hand review anything and everything that may strengthen your application. Interviews are very important and you can send as many recs as you want. </p>

<p>Stanford has large numbers of hooked applicants and superscoring bright students are the norm among the unhooked applicants. With no interview, limited set of recs, it is hard to stand out in the crowd. Our own experience at our high school (CT) is the high level of randomness in the acceptances. Don't bet on anything.</p>

<p>HYP are all different. Harvard likes to compete with MIT for top math and science talent while Yale does not seem to care. At our school Yale will often admit the val or sal and then pass on the rest unless they are hooked. Princeton is quirkier and will pick a top 10 student (not top 10%) if they like the profile. </p>

<p>In the end you need to look at the numbers. HYPSM admit roughly 9,000 students which in the end represent probably no more than 7,000 individuals counting multiple admits. (HYPSM lose admits to each other but very few to other schools.) if 40% are hooked that leaves around 4,000 students total admitted based mostly on academics. That is a tiny number. Real acceptance rates for these candidates probably hovers at 5% or less and there is little correlation with SAT scores above a 2200 threshold. Accepting some level of randomness in admission, you are probably not talking about a much greater than 10-15% actual acceptance chance at ANY off the schools, even with super stats. </p>

<p>If you throw in all the top ten schools you may actually get closer to a 50-50 chance to get admitted to at least one of them. It is a game that many high achieving students play in our geographic area and it does seem to work i.e. top students will more often than not be accepted to at least one top ten school.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the input. I do not have any extremely prestigious accomplishments in the maths or sciences (such as olympiads or competitions like Intel ISEF) for the sole reason that I did not know about them until this year. Not much of an excuse, but what can you do. I am, however, part of CTY, scored somewhat high on the SAT math in 7th grade, am looking to do a research internship this summer, have self studied some advanced math courses (by this I mean beyond high school math), and I founded my school's robotics club. I know it isn't that much, but I guess that shows my passion for the maths and sciences. MIT is my top choice right now. It is close to home, I've been their multiple times for their ESP classes, and they have the best physics department in the country. Really, when I was picking out schools that I'd apply to next year, I never intended to list off HYPMS. MIT and Stanford were my two original choices. Then I read up on Princeton and was very interested in their school. Honestly, I didn't know until last summer that Princeton was a prestigious university...yes I know, weird. I initially thought that Yale was a terrible school for sciences, but I read up on them as well, and was interested by their strong undergraduate program, like Princeton's. I told myself for the longest time that I would never apply to Harvard and convinced myself that it was only good for grad school and that I would just hate it if I went there for undergrad. But after I went their one weekend and read up on it as well, I decided to add that to the list. Anyways, enough about that tangent.</p>

<p>I have looked at the lower tier ivies, but the only one that I somewhat liked was Cornell. Brown didn't seem to be my cup of tea, same with Dartmouth, and Penn & Columbia seemed as though they lacked in personality, and, from what I've heard, Penn's & Columbia's undergrad is not amazing. Nevertheless, this is coming from the guy that didn't know about Princeton until last year, so I wouldn't really be an expert source on this.</p>

<p>If anyone could tell me what you think about my list of schools, that would be great. I am trying to figure out anything to add or subtract from the list. I am looking for a school that provides opportunities for undergraduate research and that has solid physics and mathematics departments. I am not going to bother listing off all my ECs and scores, but from what I've told you already, I have high test scores (and a perfect GPA wooptidoo...). Also, to add to the list of things I've already stated, I do game programming and have for a while (self-taught programmer). I also wrestle and I am fairly decent at it; I will probably place in the states this year. Lastly, I play piano and have played that for 10 years. I don't really care much about competitions, so piano, like most of my other activities, is just a hobby:</p>

<p>MIT
Harvard
Princeton
Yale
Stanford
Cornell
John's Hopkins
Carnegie Mellon</p>

<p>Thinking about adding....
CalTech
Brown
Columbia
UPenn
UC Berkeley (maybe?)</p>

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<p>^Haha, all I would like to ask is, are you my twin? I was looking at your post in the What are my Chances? section and I saw your most recent post. I also wish to apply to all the schools on your list, because I would like to be a Materials Engineer. I also live close to MIT (Quincy, you?) and have gone to their ESP programs. I am part of CTY and am in my Robotics Club (heard of team HYPER 69?). </p>

<p>Basically, not to steal the show, but I would also like to know if I would be able to be admitted to the same schools as the above. PSAT: 190, GPA: 3.8, Gold Medal on Latin I National Latin Exam, Bronze Medal on Spanish National Exam, honorable mention last year for science fair, moved on to regionals, part of a nationally known robotics team (head programmer), and I am also an ok swimmer. I also won't list off other EC's, but I just want a guesstimate.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The breakdown is:</p>

<p>17% recruited athletes
20% URMs
10% plus legacies

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I must have attended a different math class than the authors. From most unlikely to maybe possible</p>

<p>20% URM - are you kidding ... if that was the % then they would be over represented. The only was you could get a number like 20% would be to count Asians as URM ... which is pretty big stretch as most top tier schools. I'm quite willing to read any real data that comes anywhere close to backing up this claim (for example I know the AA representation at IVYies tends to be in the 5-8% range ... that's a whole lot of Latinos and American Indians to get the whole school to 20% URM).</p>

<p>17% recruited athletes - another failed math class ... IVYies tend to have 30-35 varisty teams with about 500-600 athletes in total on those teams. If EVERY varsity athlete was a recruited sub-par student the % of students would be roughly (assuming 600 dumb jocks per school) ... Cornell 4%, Penn 6%, Columbia 9%, Harvard 9%, Brown 10%, Yale 11%, Princeton 13%, and Dartmouth 15% ... makes it pretty tough to be 17% eveywhere. It's possible one or two of those athletes was a pretty good student (like my football playing freshman roommate who was a 3.95 student and is now a MD) in addition to being an athlete. Finally there are recruiting rules in the IVY league which designate (and limit) how many recruits can be off a typical admit (band from average with fewer per band the lower the standard). </p>

<p>10% legacies - don't know about this one ... could be true ... but I doubt it.</p>

<p>Hernandez came from Dartmouth which has the smallest class size so these issues would be bigger at Dartmouth but I doubt they are big as stated. I went to an IVY and can not really back up the complaint at all ... mostly since if you asked me who were the sub-standard students I met who were legacy, jocks, or URMS I'd have a hard time using more than my fingers to count ... apparently I was too dumb to pick out these obviously less qualified folks ... to me, excpet for very rare cases, students were students with some brillant outliers on top but a mass of similar kids below them</p>

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<p>3togo, you're simply incorrect. With Asians, the ivies all report about 35% students of color. There was a major thread on the parent's board recently which settled the debate with actual numbers from real schools. 17% athletes turned out to be low for some ivies and all have roughly 10% black students, 8% hispanic and 2% native Americans.</p>

<p>Cellardweller, good post. What you point out points to the need for a good individual strategy to play on one's strengths to lock up an admit at a top school. This is why many 2300 plus students choose a school below HYPS and apply ED.</p>

<p>Cicero, what's your class rank? That's a key stat in deciding approach.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
3togo, you're simply incorrect.

[/quote]
hmm</p>

<p>From the 2008 Cornell Common Data Set ... incoming freshman</p>

<p>Non-Resident Alien 307 (10%)
Black 135 (4%)
American Indian 13 (0%)
Asian 566 (18%)
Hispanic 179 (6%)
White 1435 (46%)
Unknown 504 (16%)</p>

<p>Looks to me the Black, American Indian, and Hispanic students add up to 10% of the incoming freshman. We do not have details on the 26% who did not report or who are non-resident aliens but somehow I doubt they are overwhelming URM to raise that % much. (I in no way dispute the 35% student of color comment ... 10% URM + 18% Asian + some part of the non-resident aliens and you get awlful close to 35%) </p>

<p>Your serve ....</p>

<p>(hunting for number of athletic recruiting ... lots on the recruiting bands ... and football ... but nothing in total yet)</p>

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<p>Cornell may well be different than the other ivies as part state school, but take a look at the others.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Cornell may well be different than the other ivies as part state school, but take a look at the others.

[/quote]
while I'm being picky ... Cornell is not a part-state school ... it is totally a private university (a couple of schools do get some support from NY state but they are not state colleges)</p>

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<p>tmanneopen: wow, that is wicked strange. How long have you been involved in CTY? I first took their diagnostic test in 3rd grade. Btw, I'm a wakefieldian :-); it is only 9 miles from Cambridge. PSAT was a crapshoot for me (200) and did not reflect on my SAT scores. In my opinion, 2200+ seems to be the threshold (from what I've read so far through this thread and others) for top schools.</p>

<p>hmom5: I am second in the class out of about 270-280 students. Our school seems to send those who are ranked 2nd and 3rd to better schools than the valedictorians (last year our salutatorian was accepted to HYS with low 2200 SATs and the year before that the kid who was 3rd in the class was accepted to Harvard with 2200s SATs).</p>

<p>Also, I definitely agree that ivies + m + s do not accept that many URMs (black, latino, native american). I would say for any top school that practices AA that URMs would make up 10% of the population.</p>

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<p>OK Princeton's common data set</p>

<p>Non-Resident Alien 107 (9%)
Black 124 (10%)
American Indian 11 (1%)
Asian 163 (13%)
Hispanic 89 (7%)
White 732 (60%)
Unknown 0 (0%) (not sure how they manage that)</p>

<p>that one is a heck of a lot closer ... Black, American Indian, and Hispanic = 18% ... adding the Asian = 31%</p>

<p>(and the US population (2007 data) ... white = 67%, black = 12%, hispanic = 15%, american indian about 1% (and asian = 5%))</p>

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<p>I had a quick look too, URMs seem to be between 18 and 22 percent at the ivies before Asians. </p>

<p>Cornell is odd, but maybe the land grant schools mean they can not practice AA to the extent others can?</p>

<p>Cicero, with a 2300 plus (as long as 800 of that is not writing) and your rank, with the addition of strong ECs, I think you have a reasonable shot at one of HYPSM.</p>

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<p>Wow, I never expected there to be that many URMs. However, if you look at the US population, the URM numbers at the top unis are lower than the national numbers.</p>

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<p>Only 13% of the population is Asian and 18% is URMs and 67% is Whites for Princeton? =0</p>

<p>They accept way tooooooooo many URM sand whites.</p>

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<p>cicero;</p>

<p>With your stats I would apply EA to MIT, CalTech and Chicago (which should definitely be on your list) and try to lock one one up and follow up with the rest of the apps RD. Even if deferred at MIT you would get a second review in RD and can always supply additional materials in the meantime. Applying SCEA to Stanford or Yale is riskier and not clearly of benefit unless you are hooked. Stanford defers very few SCEA to RD and Yale is starting to do the same. With your strong science bend I do question choices such as Yale or Brown where you would be among a small minority of science majors in a sea of liberal arts students. Princeton on the other hand is much techier and still very undergrad focused. Harvard is also strong in science and if you don't get into MIT directly you can always cross-register from Harvard.</p>

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<p>cellardweller: thank you for the advice; I have not looked at Chicago, so I'll read up on them. Brown was on a list of maybes. It wasn't exactly on my definitely list, and I probably won't end up applying there. Yale I am not so sure about. One of the main reasons that I liked Yale was because of their small class sizes and access to the grad school's resources; however, Yale was never my number one choice. I'll consider taking Yale off and putting Chicago on the list.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
I had a quick look too, URMs seem to be between 18 and 22 percent at the ivies before Asians.

[/quote]
I checked Dartmouth also ... which is 20% URM ... so I stand corrected. My school lags with URMs (disappointing job Cornell) and I think I am showing my age ... the % of Hispanics is much higher than I expected. BTW - I think it is great the URM % is about 20% at these schools ... that is pretty much in line with the % of the US population. Learn something new everyday!</p>

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<p>still hunting for data on the 17% recruited athletes ... my 600 varisty athlete number was too low ... from the Cornell atheltics web-site "Cornell's 1,100 varsity athletes have exclusive access to one of the newest and best training facilities in the nation--the 8,000-square-foot Friedman Strength and Conditioning Center". 1100 varsity athletes would make the 17% number sited earlier be in the ball park. However the 17% mentioned referenced recruited athletes ... which I read as athletes who got a break on admissions because they are athletes. For most of the IVYies close to 17% of their students are varisty athletes ... however, far from all of these are recruited ... and far from all needed an admission break to get in. I haven't found anything detailing the total breaks by Academic Index (AI) band ... I did find it for football (30 a year in total) ... and found some other interesting stuff in AIs and IVY athletics ... like this one ... <a href="http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/workingPapers/upload/cheri_wp04.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/workingPapers/upload/cheri_wp04.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Being shocked by the 40% figure seems to be the normal reaction. It certainly shocked me when I first read it. And every time I use the figure in a post here, someone comes along to tell me I'm wrong:)</p>

<p>It really helps put into perspective how few seats are left when you take away that 40%, account for the needed geographical diversity, internationals, public and private school balance, socio economic balance.....</p>

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<p>
[quote]
With your strong science bend I do question choices such as Yale or Brown where you would be among a small minority of science majors in a sea of liberal arts students."

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I don't think it is unreasonable to apply to a school like yale as a science major. I am a science person and applied under engienering. Granted I want to go into research and not go on to be a real engineer, so the caliber of undergrad to me was measured by ability to be involved in research. Yale having such a small program is ideal, and the Yale name and financial aid made the decision really easy.
And besides, Yale gets thousands of english, poli sci, economics majors, but fewer engineering applicants. So when the committee meets and it comes down to two equally qualified students perhaps they will go with the person with interests that are different than the general pool. (At least I hope so).</p>

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<p>hmom you seem to be very knowledgable about the whole admission process so I have a question. Looking from data from Yale about last year's pool of applicants there were 1700 minority students who applied. And (by applying the same metric that Harvard used) 10% of all students who applied were interested in engineering.
So that would be that 170 minority students who applied were interested in engineering. I am a black male who has been invovled with science research every year of high school, with top scores (34 ACT), and numerous awards for science research and sent in my 16 page research paper. And I made science a central part of my application.
Would you think I stand a better chance at a school like Yale as compared to say MIT.</p>

<p>Oh and I am also heavily involved in speech and debate (captain).</p>