<p>What is NU?</p>
<p>Northwestern is NU?</p>
<p>I suppose the OP should tell us about his hooks.. or else this thread is pointless (for him at least)..</p>
<p>Ivies and other selective schools do take some people with scores and grades significantly lower than their typical admits. However, they only do this for some specific reason, such as URM, athlete, legacy, etc. They simply don't take a few low-scoring people for no particular reason at all. I would say that if you can't identify a really good reason for yourself, that you are wasting your time and money applying to these schools with an 1850, and it would be a better use of your time to focus on schools where you have a realistic chance of admission. (Nickel Xenon, I don't mean you, because you have such a reason--URM. It still may not be enough, of course...it still depends on grades, recs, ECs, etc.)</p>
<p>I agree with Hunt. Yes, there have been such admits but there are reasons. If you don't have any special reason for a school to give you a bye on your numbers , they are not.</p>
<p>Someone from my school got into Harvard with 29 ACT and 1900-ish SAT.</p>
<p>someone from my school got into Harvard with 600s, he was Puerto Rican, poor, and a 3 season varsity captain, 5th in his class.</p>
<p>Someone from my school got into Stanford with 600s SATs. She was a basketball player, on the Academic Decathlon team, 8th in her class, and she was African American.</p>
<p>well, I think we all can see it is very possible</p>
<p>What's funny is that she didn't even consider Stanford an option. xD She just applied to apply and then, not only did she get in, but she got a full scholarship.</p>
<p>The URMs I've seen who got into Ivies had scores far higher than the OP's. I've seen URMs rejected with much higher scores, too.</p>
<p>i'm sure every once in a while a bored admissions officer just admits and applicant without even looking at them or because they love their name or something. Just to make their day lol.</p>
<p>Don't just look at the middle scores, though. On collegeboard, on the "How do I stack up," or something, it tells you what percentage of people had what scores.</p>
<p>There was this young mexican lady from our school who managed 1200/1600 and got into columbia, then again she was the valedictorian.</p>
<p>ah, but Northstarmom, perhaps these students failed to reflect on their culture, lacked leadership, ec's, showed little passion for a major, showed little interest in the school, had poor recommendations, or wrote poor essays. Any of these are more significant than test scores, most colleges will say 75-80% of the applicant pool in their eyes are "qualified", so admission rates of 1/3 and lower have to be made by other factors.</p>
<p>"i'm sure every once in a while a bored admissions officer just admits and applicant without even looking at them or because they love their name or something. Just to make their day lol."</p>
<p>This is a nice fantasy, but I don't really think it happens. The decision is not made by just one person.</p>
<p>Sometimes it does seen very random. The admissions process I mean, but I guess there's always a reason someone was picked over another student.</p>
<p>what does URM stand for?</p>
<p>UnderRepresented Minority</p>
<p>Asian and middle eastern doesn't count as minority.</p>
<p>By "Ivies", I'm assuming you mean all top-tier schools, so I'll let you a secret for getting into Duke with scores less than the ones you named.</p>
<p>Be really good at a sport, haha!</p>