<p>Back in April, I read about a kid who had perfect GPA, perfect SAT, perfect SAT II's (or near pefect), a bunch of AP's, played sports, piano, did martial arts, aced the AMC 12, scored 9 on AIME, was in Intel Science competition, and a bunch of other stuff. That wasn't exactly what he had but similar. He was brilliant, had national recognition in science/math (maybe even published research), but also had non-academic EC's.</p>
<p>He was rejected from HYPSMC and maybe even Dartmouth, Cornell, and Brown. I think the only school he was accepted to was Duke.</p>
<p>Does anyone know who I'm talking about? Can you provide his screen name or the screen name of someone with a similarly ridiculously unfair rejection from almost all the Ivies?</p>
<p>^ The idea that a rejection by schools at this level of selectivity is “unfair” is just preposterous. Admission to these schools is not an entitlement—not for anyone. They don’t claim to select the people with the very highest test scores, GPAs, etc. They have a superabundance of applicants who are highly qualified and clearly capable of doing the work. At that point, their job is to put together the most interesting, diverse, and vibrant class that works as a group, challenging each member of the group to learn from classmates who come from different backgrounds and bring different talents, skills, experiences, and perspectives. Anyone who feels that s/he is so special that s/he is entitled to admission, i.e., that denial would be “unfair,” probably deserves to be denied, because that’s someone who is probably so taken with herself that she will neither appreciate what her classmates have to offer, nor make the effort to offer of herself to build the strength of that group.</p>
<p>Bclintonk, I believe you’re doing what many I’ve noticed on CC do – giving the benefit of the doubt far too much to these schools. There are many good applicants, but not everyone who is “capable of doing the work” is going to take advantage of a given school’s resources to the same degree. I have myself witnessed some trends in acceptance and rejection at some of these big name schools that really don’t look good. I don’t in particular think selecting the most “interesting and diverse” class is the best idea unless you’re not compromising standard merit-based admission more than a very little. </p>
<p>Though, I do agree it is the wrong attitude to feel entitled to an acceptance, I can sympathize if someone of the caliber listed by the OP felt his/her stomach churn at the unpredictability of the application process. The fact is that having an interesting background is very different from actually taking full and admirable advantage of a terrific school’s resources. Either way, a holistic approach is needed, but the factors being emphasized seem out of place to me in several cases. Some schools, however, do an admirable job for the most part.</p>
<p>TheWerg was a urm with crazy scores and got rejected by HYPSM.
His accomplishments included 2300+ SAT scores, many EC’s and I believe a stellar GPA.</p>
<p>If it were true, we don’t know what else was in the app. Maybe the student also had a history of cheating, being a suck-up, being a bully, being homophobic or otherwise bigoted or being an arrogant jerk. Maybe the person wrote an essay that reflected some of those traits or maybe the person blew off their essay. Maybe the person had the personality of a doorknob. Maybe the person went to their interviews and acted like he was God’s gift to the universe. </p>
<p>There’s far more to admissions at top school than stats and accomplishments.</p>
<p>A former Brown admissions officer a few years ago told me about a similar URM whom Brown rejected because the person’s essay indicated the person was homophobic.</p>
<p>Friend of mine with 2400 and 4.0/4.5 got rejected from HYPS Wharton and Columbia; got into Cornell/Dartmouth. Very nice guy, ridiculously smart, maybe a bit lacking on the EC side but still…</p>
That may very well have been the clincher. These schools get hundreds of applicants with the same outstanding grades and scores, and they have to distinguish among them somehow. If the only thing they were looking at were scores and grades, they would never be able to winnow out the applicants to choose admitted students. The top schools may actually not look at scores and grades as much, because they are so often exactly the same high caliber.</p>
<p>I looked up info on the kid who was rejected. He didn’t have any ECs until junior year. He had no community service at all. While community service isn’t required, lack of any community service could be viewed as reflective of being a person who only cares about himself. He wrote his essay about how he began to blossom when he became involved in debate in 11th grade.</p>
<p>He was accepted to Duke and Williams, so it’s not as if no top schools accepted him.</p>
<p>To me, he sounds like a late bloomer when it comes to leadership and socialization, and could be a top prospect for grad school at HPY, but may have been viewed by admission counselors as someone who due to his confidence issues and lack of leadership experience – might have had difficulty fitting in as an undergrad.</p>
<p>I want to know who it is because I’m discussing college admissions on another website. We’re discussing how it’s riducolous nowadays because so much of the objectivity has been taken out. </p>
<p>It wasn’t TheWerg (who really shouldn’t be considered a URM). Hispanic is a culture, not a race. Only Latinos should be considered URM. </p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the kid I’m tihnking of had high scores (like a 9) in AIME and maybe some research.</p>
<p>NSM’s reply hits it on the head: There are lots of fictional case histories posted as actual on CC; there are many exaggerated & slanted case histories on CC; social engagement with a non-academic community, and/or leadership within an academic community, is an additional desirable trait in the eyes of an elite U.S. University; and I’ll add another one: the profile described in the OP is not unique, actually. Many such students do get admitted to Ivies (& more than one), if their full application, including essay, has nothing “off” about it such as a poorly themed or constructed essay, or OTOH an obviously adult-written or heavily adult-edited essay. </p>
<p>We have a family friend who was in line, by her ability and accomplishments, to more than one elite U, but her initially submitted essay reeked of whining in the context of her already very privileged lifestyle. As a single child who was very materially pampered, it apparently did not occur to her at first how much that belied utter ignorance of a world outside of economic privilege. She cleaned up her act, got some perspective, showed some humility, and got accepted.</p>
<p>EDIT: Let me clarify what I just said. She did not pretend artificially to know something about the world outside of privilege; it’s just that she had excluded such awareness from her previous essay.</p>
<p>“I want to know who it is because I’m discussing college admissions on another website. We’re discussing how it’s riducolous nowadays because so much of the objectivity has been taken out.”</p>
<p>Nowadays? Even 40 years ago when I applied to colleges, top colleges looked for more than grades and scores.</p>
<p>Before that , many colleges also looked at race and gender as ways of excluding people from college even if those people had higher scores and stronger ECs. </p>
<p>Even when I applied to college, many colleges including Harvard artificially kept the number of women relatively low. For instance, one in 3 men were accepted to Harvard, but one in 4 women were accepted. This was done deliberately. The ratio of females to males back then at Harvard was 1 to 4, and everyone at Harvard knew that on average the women were smarter than were the men. Now that gender is no longer a consideration, the ratio of males to females at Harvard is about 1:1.</p>
<p>If you want a system that accepts students based virtually exclusively on factors like grades and scores, go to college in Europe or Asia or go to public universities here, which except for recruiting star athletes and giving preferred admission to in-state students, usually basically admit students based on scores and grades.</p>
<p>“TheWerg (who really shouldn’t be considered a URM). Hispanic is a culture, not a race. Only Latinos should be considered URM.”</p>
<p>TheWerg was half Mexican, half white/Jewish, so would be considered a URM. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans are the most underrepresented Hispanics in U.S. colleges. That doesn’t mean, however, that even high stat ones are shoo-ins for admission to top colleges.</p>
<p>There’s nothing “unfair” about it, because even perfect grades / SAT’s don’t guarantee an acceptance, anywhere. </p>
<p>And what’s so much worse about being turned down by “all the Ivies” versus other similarly situated schools? Duke’s certainly at that same caliber and he got in.</p>
<p>I think the fundamental point I find disturbing about something like this is that admissions counselors think they can glean so incredibly much about the guy by reading a simple part of his application. I don’t know that not having community service is quite indicative of a selfish personality. Lots of people do community service without caring much about it anyway – certainly shouldn’t disqualify such a stellar applicant. I would say only a terrible flaw, such as if this individual were a chronic cheater, thief, or racist, in general should have the power to disqualify him/her. It is not that selfish personalities do not slip through the admissions process often anyway; if the AOs have to judge personality, I sure hope it’s done more carefully than has been suggested. But more crucially, trying to control the personalities of those admitted seems to be a very tough thing to do in the first place – people enter college and usually only then start changing into what they will become later on anyway.</p>
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<p>To put it simply, this is one extreme, and we needn’t go there to restore sanity to the situation.</p>
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<p>Again, the problem I see with this is that we’re looking at what a person presents himself/herself as (personality-wise) in an essay – an essay is a planned thing; not, in my eyes, a good approximation of actual personality. </p>
<p>I wish we could go back to pure merit, and not have these what I’d call flimsier factors be used. Even under a purely merit-based system, there will be ambiguities as to what constitutes “merit” but at least I think the spirit of what would be going on should be right.</p>
<p>It’s great that Duke recognized such a student. What I am concerned about is that such a student, with a tiny bit of bad luck, might NOT have gotten into a top institution of learning, based on something like a perceived personality flaw that may not exist.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any educated guesses as to …</p>
<p>1) Taking the top 30 or so colleges as representing “the elite,” how many spaces do they represent?
2) How many hs seniors in the country have the pure intellectual brains that they could compete well in such an environment?</p>