<p>
[quote]
How do they know where else she is applying?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It can be a standard interview question, sometimes just for an ice-breaker. But, I'm sure it would raise a flag if a student rattled off every Ancient Eight college name during an interview. [this, of course, is pure speculation, but also plausible]</p>
<p>
[quote]
By the way with an 800 in math an 800 v and 800 essay and you are denied because 50% miss the mark at H and Y- tell me if this is not a game what the heck is it?
[/quote]
Well, if she had been in the 50% of that group who got a fat envelope, would that have made it not a game??</p>
<p>I admit I'm having trouble with the syntax of that sentence, but I don't get your point at all.</p>
<p>Maybe the admissions officers of Harvard and Yale happened to be in a bad mood at the moment they read the student's application while the admissions officers of the other schools happened to be in a good mood at a critical time. Maybe the phase of the moon wasn't quite right. Maybe it was just a bit too warm or a bit too chilly in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.</p>
<p>Game meaning numbers, good fortune and talent. I suppose then it's a game.</p>
<p>I believe there is something fundamentally flawed about her approach to her college application process, and also her guidance counselor's. She obviously was enamored by going to an Ivy League School, and ONLY an Ivy League School. There are significant differences in the strengths, size, location, and culture of each of the Ivy League Schools. Did she even consider those when applying? As a parent or guidance counselor, I would have advised her to research all the Ivies and pick at most four that she would really want to go to, and then focus her applications accordingly. It is possible that by tailoring her applications to those schools which matched her interests (or if HY were truly her top choices) and focusing on how those particular schools would be a good match for her, her application,particularly essays, might have been stronger. I would suspect that her essays probably did not address this issue, and may not have shown much introspection or analyses on her college selection process. Even top students are buyers in a tight seller's market when it comes to the most prestigious colleges. They have to convince the college why they are a good match and what they will contribute to campus life and beyond.</p>
<p>I also would have advised her to look beyond the Ivy League e.g., Stanford, Chicago, and top LACs. It is possible those schools may have been a better match. She might have been happiest at a Stanford or an Amherst, but she will never know. Her fixation on Ivy only also may have diluted her application efforts. As I mentioned earlier, if she decided on say four Ivies, and a few other schools and one backup safety, she could have focused her attention on the few schools she was most interested in. No guarantees, though. However, that winnowing process might have convinced her WHY Harvard/Yale were her top choices (or perhaps changed her mind). </p>
<p>In summary: Brilliant kid. Flawed, uninformed, and definitely naiive approach and attitude to college application. I also hope as she matures she will try to look at genuine quality in addition to the designer labels of what she wears.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I am certain neither Harvard nor Yale asks where else a candidate is applying. And I'm sure it's a no-go question for interviews. Also, I am sure they don't care.</p></li>
<li><p>It's silly to talk about "good enough" for Harvard or Yale. There are many more people "good enough" for them than they can take, and they don't define "good enough" strictly by reference to test scores and GPA. I don't think they pretend that they are omniscient or perfect, either, in their choices. I think, and I think they know, that they "miss" hundreds of great kids every year that would be automatic admits if they knew everything there was to know. They can only deal with applications: transcripts, essays, recommendations. Sometimes through various vagaries those may fail to communicate precisely who a kid is. And sometimes they communicate it fine, but there are twenty other kids who are similar, and each picks five of them (which may even overlap a kid or two).</p></li>
<li><p>Just looking at the scores, it's true that there probably aren't more than 1,000 kids in any cohort who have 2400 on their SAT Is, even with the way the schools calculate it (although I think Harvard and Yale may look at single test dates, unlike most). Still, if you expand that to 750+, which is probably how they look at it, you are probably talking about 5-6,000 kids (including 35+ ACT), which IS more than they can fit in their classes. Between them, they probably accept fewer than 1,500 of those kids (who, of course, don't all apply to either).</p></li>
<li><p>2400 SATs and "brilliant" are nowhere near the same thing. I have met a few brilliant kids. A couple at 1600 SATs (old scale). Most didn't. Most kids with top SATs aren't brilliant.</p></li>
<li><p>On the one hand, I tend to agree that no one could possibly want to attend both Dartmouth and Columbia. On the other, experience teaches that human beings come in all sorts of surprising configurations, many of which are not strictly logical or in accordance with theory, especially at age 18. One friend of a kid was in knots for weeks deciding between Vassar and Chicago -- a pairing perhaps even more incongruous. Sure, I thought she was goofy. And she was goofy -- smart, engaged, and goofy, not really certain yet who she was but not really forced to take a meaningful stand on that until she faced the college choice.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>.
[quote]
I have said this before I think you need to be super rich to get into these schools which is then described as having "good character" or " leadership potential".
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Really, hedoya, what in the world are you talking about? Even back in the day, when Harvard was considered to be an "old boys" school, my H was accepted and went there. His family lived in public housing. Super rich? You are so far off base that you need to do a little (actually a lot) of research and thinking before you continue opining about HYP admissions.</p>
<p>The reason all of the 800-800-800 kids don't get into Harvard (or a number of other schools)... is that those schools don't want a class populated by solely 800-800-800 kids. Simple as that.</p>
<p>Re: 44</p>
<p>There is something to that. Life is like that. An acquaintance of mine got held up in traffic on 9/11 so did not arrive at WTC on time to be blown up, like so many who did arrive earlier.
Adcoms are made up of human beings, not computers.
The adcom at one college does not need to know where else an applicant applied. And if a college wants an applicant badly enough, it will disregard the fact that said applicant not only applied but was admitted (early) to another college already by the time the (RD) application was received.
Re: # 37: Perhaps you should meet S's roommie who is at Harvard on full-ride scholarship!</p>
<p>Re: #46: JHS, cross-posted with you, and I agree with everything you said.</p>
<p>Pmyen your post was perfect.
You need a PHD in psychology, life experience and plenty of money to hire the best mentor to understand the complexities of admissions or you need to be very very LUCKY. Having 800's working hard, being yourself is not enough. Your essay must be tailored to each college reflecting you and them in a way that appears to be honest- OMG. Your posting points to how impossible it is for the average kid whose parents don't have a clue to guide them to how people in adcom offices react to reading essays etc. Imagine the leg up kids with the right parents, money to buy the best admission counsellors have. For the regular kid I guess the expression ' all schools are the same' better be enough! And your dream of going to H or Y or P or wherever is immature. What an eye opener your posting is. You know I really don't think its genuine when anyone says be yourself unless you happen to be Donald Trump's kid !!</p>
<p>There are a lot of people applying.. the randomness is part of what makes college admissions so exciting!</p>
<p>Hedoya:</p>
<p>I repeat: You should meet S's roommie, son of a blue-collar worker in a small town no one, (except it seems Curmudgeon) has ever heard of, with a median income well below the national average, and on full-ride at Harvard (Yale, Princeton, Stanford give similar finaid packages). Over the years, I've met students with similar profiles.</p>
<p>As someone said, according to H's admission dean, 90% of applicants are "qualified." If true, then this girl's SATs become irrelevant once H throws out the 10%. At that point, they will be looking for some other reason to admit her.</p>
<p>We had a 2400 SAT scorer from D's school, val with excellent ECs. He was painfully shy, and had the personality of a doorknob. Ended up at P, not H.</p>
<p>JHS wrote: "1. I am certain neither Harvard nor Yale asks where else a candidate is applying. And I'm sure it's a no-go question for interviews. Also, I am sure they don't care."</p>
<p>I am an alum interviewer for Harvard, and Harvard's inteviewing guidebook specifically asks interviewers not to ask where a candidate is applying and not to rate candidates based on how interested the applicants appear to be in going to Harvard. With the highest yield in the country, Harvard knows that the majority of students whom it accepts will happily accept the offer.</p>
<p>Hedoya wrote: "Leadership is an interesting issue. How can you tell from an essay and great EC's about leadership? She founded a national club etc...I have said this before I think you need to be super rich to get into these schools which is then described as having "good character" or " leadership potential". </p>
<p>From what you have posted, I doubt if you know very many people who attend Harvard or graduated from there. I knew students-- including nonURMs -- in my class at Harvard who were first generation college and from blue collar or low income backgrounds. Similarly, there's plenty of info that you can find by Googling about blue collar and low income students there now, as well as people like that who are recent graduates.</p>
<p>It's important to understand that there are tens of thousands of students with top SAT scores, high grades, excellent ECs, and Harvard can't accept them all. Virtually everyone who applies to Harvard qualifies for admission meaning they have the grades, coursework and scores indicating that they have the ability to graduate if accepted (and Harvard has one of the highest graduation rates in the country).</p>
<p>The best part of the Harvard experience most alum would say is the peer interaction. That is due to having such a variety of very bright people, most of whom are as passionate about their ECs as they are about their coursework. To maintain such an environment, admissions has to accept a class that includes as diverse a group of active, involved, students as possible from their extraordinarily talented admissions pool.</p>
<p>I don't know where your friend lives, but if she lives in the NE, she was at a disadvantage because H is flooded with applicants from Mass., NY and NJ. To have a well rounded, diverse class, many stellar applicants from such places will be passed over in favor of people from -- for instance -- small towns in Arkansas, the Pacific Northwest or rural or inner city areas that typically send few students to Ivies. </p>
<p>I agree with you that if a billionaire donor's kid meets Harvard's standards, they'd probably be far more likely than others to be admitted. However, Harvard's student body isn't made up of people like that. </p>
<p>Frankly, the people who probably have the strongest chances of admission are nationally ranked athletes with the academic stats and work ethic to graduate from Harvard. It's really hard to find, for instance, football players who have those kind of stats and backgrounds who'd prefer going to an Ivy instead of a powerhouse football college.</p>
<p>As for how one determines leadership -- it's fairly easy to do so from the essays, recommendations and interview -- which is required. Still, even having exceptionally strong leadership -- including at the national level -- doesn't guarantee admission due to the overabundance of very strong applicants and Harvard's desire to form a class that's diverse in all meanings of the word.</p>
<p>"if she was good enough for princeton she was good enough for harvard and yale. "</p>
<p>9 out of 10 applicants are "good enough" for Harvard according to Harvard's admissions dean (who himself came from a blue collar background). Harvard doesn't have the space to accept all of those students. </p>
<p>Consequently, simply applying to Harvard means in most cases that one is "good enough" to be admitted. The odds of admission still are very long.</p>
<p>I have said this before, and will say it again. My impression of H and Y has gone down, down, down, when I see the kids that have been accepted there from our school, and the ones that have been outright rejected (I should know - I taught them, and the ones that will go and just eake through got in, and the best were not). It is as though they want to prove they are no longer elitist. In their effort to become more politically correct in taking the lesser, I believe they are worsening their reputations. This is just one example. This holistic method is just another means of saying "politically correct." And H and Y don't vest themselves in the undergrads, their rep comes from the grad schools, and there is no way the other girl who was accepted, although coming from H, (but having lesser grades, for sure) will ever get in there. Tell your friend to pick the best fit for her, get those straight A's that she is capable of, then apply to those schools for grad school - that's where she will have a better than average chance. For many people, the prestige factor is VERY important, for others, not. It is hypocrisy for some to put this down, especially when so many of our children apply there, and it isn't just fit. If it were that, then H and Y would have a tenth of their apps. Each person picks their schools for their own reasons. This child wanted H or Y for whatever reasons, and she certainly had the stats to be accepted. This is just another example of the crapshoot that college admissions really is. We have all seen more qualified applicants rejected and lesser accepted. Just look at the college sites and the astonishment on some kids' posts that they were accepted. Some just applied for the heck of it, and were accepted, and others who really wanted to go were rejected, with superior stats. From what I have seen, I believe they set aside a certain number of slots to prove they are no longer elitist, and take all the others that would have been accepted, and throw them against a wall, and those that fall within a certain spot make it, others don't. It's as good an explanation of what happens as any other explanation, such as fit, and essays, and EC's, etc. That's just our attempt to rationalize an unexplainable situation. I know of a student who won her state level academic competition not just once, but 2 years in a row, have great EC's with passion, great recs and was rejected H and Y, so I believe she fell into the wrong pile when they threw the apps. The one thing that hasn't been brought up is that this girl may have needed FA, and no matter what the schools say, they do cap the numbers. If she needed FA, then that may have been the problem here.</p>
<p>Hedoya,
I disagree with you. By tailoring an application, I don't mean trying to be someone who you are not. I suppose there are wealthy applicants who hire consultants to package them for college admission. I am grateful for this forum and valuable information provided by CC but am somewhat troubled by their hypiing of the Guranteed Ivy Admission program which plays on the very same naive obsessions that this student had. I would encourage students to present themselves in the best possible light and not to misrepresent or oversell themselves in any way. Admissions officers read hundreds to thousands of applications a year, and can usually sniff out packaged applicants readily. Even if you were one of the few that gets through, is this the way you want to pursue future endeavors? Eventually competency matters-we see that in the business world and in government. There also may actually be good reasons, not just bad luck, why someone was selected or not selected for admission to a given school. Each university may have had different agendas or needs. In this regard, I disagree with ejr1. The institutions themselves have their reasons (we may not agree or even like them) but they were defended in front of, and discussed by, the admissions committee. The admission decisions seem "mysterious" to us because we do not know the reasons and criteria. Still, it is a human (and imperfect) endeavor to choose a class from a pool of outstanding students. I have realized this later in life when I was not hired for a job or was in a position to not hire someone. Sometimes (not always) the employer knows best. I also believe that in our meritocratic society, it is important to earn our place. The trouble is that earning a place is different than deserving a place. Moreover, it is often based on subjective criteria. I may pick someone for a job because of their work ethic and interpersonal skills and not their technical expertise. Likewise, top colleges are looking beyond SAT scores.</p>
<p>I also would not recommend prospective students trying to be someone who they are not or lamenting that they may not have had certain "advantages" that other students from wealthy/privilieged backgrounds may have had. I recently read a NYT article about an URM student at Amherst who was the son of a single mother who worked three jobs to support her family. He did not score particularly high in his SATs but with some supplemental classes and his determination, he distinguished himself academically. He was recognized by his classmates by winning a prize that recognizes the student who exemplifies the highest ideals of learning and scholarship. His application may not have been very polished, I suspect, but something in it must have caught an AdCom's eye, His character and motivation to succeed are inspiring (not just his ability to take a test) and likely shined through. Many well-endowed universities and colleges realize the economic disparities in their classrooms, and have made concerted efforts to try to identify and assist such students. Recently, Harvard, Princeton, Davidson, and Emory have virtually eliminated loans for students from families earning less than 50-60K per year. Tuition should not be a barrier from attending. Morover, I think a student from a financially-disadvantaged should take pride in his/her particular circumstance, and present it in the most postive light. I served on the admissions committee at a top medical school at one time. We always looked at candidates in the context of their educational and social background and opportunities available to them. If someone had the motivation and abilities to take full advantage of what was available to them, whatever their circumstance, it was likely they would be able to do the same when given the opportunity to attend our school. Those are the students that top colleges want, too.</p>
<p>
I think this explains a lot of the crazy-looking lists. My own D had a list that made some people scratch their heads wondering how one child could possibly envision herself at all of those schools, but my D had a thoughtful explanation for why she put each one on the list. In April of her senior year, of course, she had to figure out "who she was" and pick one, but there's some value in postponing that figuring out until April of the senior year of high school rather than making the choice in late fall of senior year. Six months is a significant length of time to grow in the life of a 17-year-old. Knowing how my own D approached that process makes me sympathetic to a student who has very different seeming schools on the list, because we don't always know why the schools ended up on the list (although I acknowledge that when it appears a student has applied to all eight of the schools in a particular athletic conference, it seems that was the main criterion for their selection).</p>
<p>hedoya,</p>
<p>unless the application has changed in the last 4 years, you write down on your application the other schools you're applying to.</p>
<p>tokenadult,</p>
<p>obviously harvard and yale don't follow princeton, but all they all accept the same type of people. it was merely a comparison (if she had the credentials to get into princeton, she had credentials to get into harvard and yale). way to read too much into things...</p>
<p>erj1- Thank you for the truth. And thank you for your honest help. Your post was a breath of fresh air. The rest of the posts are more C.Y.A. types who seem to be bathing in propaganda,spraying it around and trying to attack my simple posting. I am sorry propaganda postings don't help any of us. What is the point of this board anyway? Praise the system or help us SURVIVE it? Maybe I am naive but I keep hoping to read more posts like erj1.</p>
<p>Most don't ask for the colleges you are applying to- after you get in and choose your school if I remember correctly everyone sends you a request for where you chose and where you got in-</p>