<p>^^My counselor was about to write about how I took classes for college admissions sake, thereby signaling that I was someone with specific goals in mind when I decided stuff (which was the exact opposite of what I am and wanted to convey). And then I’m like: lolwut? Where did you get that from? And then she was like: the reason you switched to AP lit was so you’d have a better chance at colleges, right (apparently that was the reason she wrote on my class transfer form)? And then I’m like: no, I actually wanted a decently challenging english class senior year with like-minded students. </p>
<p>Same counselor who recommended, being completely serious, that I not apply to Wisconsin and Michigan solely because I only had 3 years of foreign language. Quote she: your classes just aren’t strong enough to give you a chance at those schools. </p>
<p>They can be a real joke sometimes. Unfortunately, stories like yours aren’t unheard of.</p>
<p>^ That sucks. I have pretty terrible guidance counselor myself (this time I’m gonna hold myself back from ranting.) Apparently, mine wants me write her a lovely thank you letter about letting me even take AP classes (I tried switching out of one into another one schedule and she wouldn’t let me and thinks “I’m too ambitious”, which makes no sense b/c it’s not like I was taking another one).</p>
<p>Yeah, and my cousin went to a prestigious DC private school that dealt with Ivies all the time. I have no idea what the counselor was thinking.
But my cousin was tired of being around all the same sort of people, and he chose Morehouse over some USNWR top 20 style schools in the end anyway.</p>
<p>It’s not necessary for high school kids to anonymously try to invalidate people’s college acceptances. Do some decisions leave us scratching our heads? Sure. But we don’t need to cry and whine about it.</p>
<p>Asian/Filipino–3.7 GPA, 1790 SAT, a passion for zines, couple of extracurrics here and there, currently go to Tufts and I’ve made the Dean’s List! It really just goes to show you that the SATs aren’t always a great indicator of how well you’d do in college.</p>
<p>Edited to Add: I agree with ChoklitRain. There are legit reasons to why people get accepted, despite what their stats look like. Each acceptance should be viewed as a case-by-case basis, and you shouldn’t be loathing those who YOU “think” should not have gotten accepted.</p>
<p>I wasn’t doing this, and I don’t think most people posting here are either. It’s not the persons fault that they got in. Rather, we are questioning the adcoms and sympathizing with those who didn’t get in. </p>
<p>Like in my case, I feel good for the guy that got accepted to Caltech. But I can still question the decisions and feel bad for those who didn’t get in. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>My counselor wanted me to apply to Drexel, Temple and Susquehanna for engineering.</p>
<p>I got into Carnegie Mellon.</p>
<p>I understand why though. I go to an inner city public high school. The counselors here are more concerned about getting people to not drop out. She was probably instructed to tell students about schools that she knows the students with get in for sure, and have a chance at getting merit. For most, just that you’re going to college at all is fantastic. Most low-income people don’t know of the kind of resources that they can use to get them into college. It is her job to get you into <em>a</em> college, instead of getting your hopes up. Its the kind of school where people can’t spend money to take the SATs more than once, cant afford SAT prep books, and cant afford many applications. I believe I was the only one in my class to take the SATIIs (with fee waivers).</p>
<p>I think that she thought of me highly. We celebrated me getting into CMU by going to a sports bar. The principal congratulated me personally. Most of the staff knew by the next day. I had a hard time paying the enrollment deposit in the amount of time I was given, and she took it upon herself to call the school to work things out.</p>
<p>I dont see anything ‘absurd’ about that. Especially since we (Temple) offer merit scholarships for students at inner city schools, and offer plenty of full-rides for high achieving students such as yourself…</p>
<p>Other than that, guidance counselors encourage basically everyone to apply to the local schools. Everyone at my school is encouraged to apply to Temple, PSU, Pitt.</p>
<p>There is certainly nothing wrong with Temple, which I happen to think is a fine institution. I met one of your Environmental Engineering professors who gave a presentation in my area about clean energy and was particularly impressed. Im about 3 hours out from Philadelphia.</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to Temple because I couldn’t afford another application. I was able to apply to Drexel because they sent a free one in the mail.</p>
<p>It’s really tempting to lambast other students who appear “unqualified” for admission, but remember: we didn’t see the full application, we didn’t read the essays and recommendations, and we didn’t sit through the interview.</p>
<p>^Also remember that colleges do not see this person in classes, that colleges do not see these people do their homework, and that colleges may not recognize all the social aspects that would affect their university (ex: arrogance, lack of teamwork, whatever). </p>
<p>It can be argued that colleges know less about a person than his/her peers know. </p>
<p>And even though we don’t get the full profile, why can’t we question a decision? Again, no one here is really “lambasting” those who got in. It’s not their fault. I think, if anything, we are lambasting the adcoms.</p>
<p>True, but here we are questioning applicants from high schools we’ve never even seen. And I’ll bet you that many kids complaining about their classmates’ acceptances barely knew them.</p>
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</p>
<p>We can do whatever we want, it’s just relatively fruitless without the actual application in front of us.</p>
<p>Our sal got into Princeton, Yale, MIT, Cornell, and Dartmouth. <–this isn’t the absurd one
Our VAL only got into Pitt. <–this is the absurd one She’s white girl going for engineering, and go rejected from EVERYWHERE</p>
<p>Cacciato: this asian guy i went to highschool with got into cornell. definately a twinky though, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. he had some ap classes and stuff, he actually wrote the section about cornell on my website [url=<a href=“http://www.newtoschool.com%5DNewToSchool.com%5B/url”>http://www.newtoschool.com]NewToSchool.com[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Val at a magnet school
2370 or higher sat
Indian girl
President of so many things
2000+ Volunteer hours</p>
<p>Got into EVERY IVY + MIT + Stanford + well you know the rest (Full ride at some)</p>
<p>Chose to go to Virginia Commonwealth University instead… (She did get a full and got accepted into the BS/MD program but still… blahhh, also got all her med school paid and gets about 2k a month to go there from the school.)</p>
<p>These Ivy Leagues are just getting messed up. They need to rethink who they let in. I mean like at Oxford or Cambridge if you dont even have 3 700 SAT IIs, a 210o on the SAT I and like a 5 on 3 APs they dont even consider you as a candidate.</p>
It really just goes to show you that the SATs aren’t always a great indicator of how well you’d do in college.</p>