<p>Mondo -- You were rejected/waitlisted by Cornell?</p>
<p>What college? It must have been Arts.</p>
<p>^That's exactly what came to my mind when I read his post. Maybe he meant every other Ivy he applied to, which may have just been a few others, not all seven of them.</p>
<p>Waitlisted at Cornell- I applied to Arts.
That school's tough to get into. It also didn't help that three people from my school applied ED AND got in.
Cornell pretty much shafted the rest of our school's applicants RD. One Hotel School applicant got in but that was it.
The only Ivy I didn't apply to was Yale.</p>
<p>This may be unrelated but I believe Dartmouth has one of the most self-selective groups of applicants among the ivies. The reasons should be obvious.</p>
<p>A lot of people are turned off by the required sophomore summer session and the fact that it is in the middle of nowhere.
However, the "Dartmouth Experience" is an awesome one for those who choose it.</p>
<p>^That's true; only serious kids apply to Dartmouth. The thing about HYP is that a lot of kids who aren't anywhere near that caliber apply there, because they don't appreciate the difficulty and like to entertain the delusion that they're worthy of a school like that. For example, a kid in my homeroom, (a random 15 minutes where we just sit in a classroom and do nothing with kids whose last names begin with the same letter), said that he was applying to Yale. I asked what he got on his SATs and he said, "1750, which is awesome. And I'm in the top half of the class, my guidance councilor said, which is good." My response- blank, incredulous stare. Then, when he asked me where I was applying and I said "Dartmouth" he told me he'd never heard of it.</p>
<p>^ yeah but i dont think those kids get in...</p>
<p>I'm int'l and definitely lacking in ECs compared to Americans. My education system is like the Brits where we focus on the final exams. I have decent leadership, but my grades aren't too good (but my predicted grades for my A-levels are) and my SAT I is 2150. I'm gonna retake it, but just a question about what I can do to make my app better. My SAT IIs are 800 800.</p>
<p>Well of course those kids don't get in, BlackLantern. What I'm saying is that H,Y, and P have misleadingly low acceptance rates because of idiots like that, whereas Dartmouth, Penn, U Chicago, and some other great schools whose names aren't constantly thrown around in films and on TV are only applied to by serious students. (For the most part.)</p>
<p>2 ways they're distinctive: 1. they ask for a peer evaluation
2. they send out more likely letters than most other colleges</p>
<p>are likely letters sent out to internationals too?</p>
<p>What is a likely letter?</p>
<p>likely letters=they send you a letter earlier than the official admissions decisions release date telling you unofficially that you're in. consider it their way of saying "we think you're really special, please please come to our college."
It increases a college's retention rate at little to no additional cost to the college.
It's generally sent out to uber they want to recruit, especially if the college can't use athletic scholarships to attract them.
The number of likely letters that a college sends out is inversely proportional to the likelihood that accepted students would choose to attend that college even if the college doesn't send anything to them.</p>
<p>Are likely letters sent out for ED applicants? It seems like they wouldn't need to.</p>
<p>No. They are only to RD applicants. Admissions does not need to worry about their ED yield rate.</p>
<p>Likely letters are sent to recruited athletes for ED.</p>
<p>What's a likely letter like??
It sounds impressive. The college saying we are interested in you rather than we begging them I am dying to attend your college.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Absolutely correct. So when evaluating admission rates, consider the fact that HYP have a lot of flagrantly unqualified applicants, which drives their % acceptance lower. Dartmouth, OTOH, generally has only applicants who know about the school and really want to go there. Even though their acceptance rate is higher than HYP, I think they are equally selective.</p>
<p>I wouldn't say they are equally selective, but the acceptance rates at HYP are definitely exaggerated by unqualified applicants. Dartmouth too, but not nearly as much as at HYP.</p>
<p>^I think that summarizes it quite nicely. Also, what's "OTOH"?</p>