<p>My younger sister:</p>
<p>1980 SAT
14 out of 245 rank
A genuinely nice, down-to-earth girl.</p>
<p>Into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia. Rejected from Princeton.</p>
<p>My sister is, like me, white, middle-class, non-legacy, non-athlete. About as average as they come.</p>
<p>Do NOT give up because you don't have the "numbers" - if you have a dream, pursue it.</p>
<p>wow.. lucky her. what do you think helped her get in? just curious</p>
<p>Well, her essay was one of the best things (books, novels included) that I've ever read. It was extremely well written and was very poignant. Harvard, Yale, and Stanford all included personal notes on the acceptance letters about her essay. Columbia didn't :)</p>
<p>hey congrats. does she know where she's headed yet? Why couldn't Harvard accept me last year??!! I thought my essays were amazing too.......</p>
<p>She's not really sure where she's going yet. She is just so overwhelmed right now that she has to clear her head a bit first. Finances will certainly play a large role in her final decision. A lot of people are pressuring her to go to Harvard for several reasons, but I want her to pick the school where she will be the happiest (which may or may not be Harvard).</p>
<p>posts like this are why 25,000 kids "keep the faith" and 93% of them get rejected. clearly if you have those stats and a similarly average essay, you wont get into any of the above colleges.</p>
<p>i guess that's why she got in. her essay was excellent. i guess we'll really never why she got int, but if i had to guess, i would say it was her essay.</p>
<p>well, i see that her essay and application must've been truly extraordinary. It is no accident that she got into all those schools, you know. Getting into all HYS + Columbia means that she had to be a very appealing candidate, maybe through her essays. How about her e.c? Were they like special or unique in any way?</p>
<p>Her ECs were decent but nothing exceptional. Her teacher recs, according to her, were amazing.</p>
<p>well, this is a big mystery, then. haha. college admission is seriously so random and so darn subjective. ends up producing random results.</p>
<p>yes, both of us were quite surprised. most of the schools were clearly impressed by the essay, but still has greatly sub-par stats.</p>
<p>What state are you located?</p>
<p>Congrats on the acceptances! Your family must be very proud.</p>
<p>My sister currently lives in California. Our family is mostly me and her, and we are quite proud!</p>
<p>^ Oh, cool...heh heh...I thought maybe your family could have been from some under-represented state.</p>
<p>haha, no. no wyoming or north dakota here!</p>
<p>honestly, now that i think about it, i don't think that scoring well on SAT matters much at all. Many on CC were outright rejected from so many places with such high scores. Extra 150-200 pts on SAT won't tip one's application one way or the other. I want all my money and all my swat back from those tedious SAT prep classes, lol.</p>
<p>SATs are waaay overrated.</p>
<p>i think you're on to something. in general, i get the impression that your SAT score can definitely hurt you (apparently not in my sister's case), but it can't really help you. at least at the top schools.</p>
<p>yup. out of hundreds of college decisions that i have seen on here and in real life, I've seen a very wide range of sat scores for accepted students at top schools. Unfortunately, my parents and i didn't know this when i was a junior/senior in h.s., and I attended two SAT sessions, blowing away a major cash. I should've just done some extraordinary ecs or write up a catchy essay or something, not wasting my time. So annoying now that i think about it.</p>
<p>Well perhaps your high SAT scores helped you get into other schools? There are certainly a lot of different factors that go into these decisions, so one can never be sure what kept him or her in or out.</p>