<p>2-Iron- I think it’s generous of you to share an overview of your apps process, and revisit the disappointments and challenges. I remember reading one of your profile/stats threads, and feeling a bit worried that all your golf activities (unless recruited) might paint you as too privileged- (caddying, playing,) in the eyes of adcoms. I hope that wasn’t the case, but if it was, just chalk it up to the cultural shift. Fifty years ago, adcoms would have loved a country club-sounding guy–now they don’t. </p>
<p>Good luck at UVA, you’ll have a great time and can really rise to the very top there. Grad schools, watch out.</p>
<p>I actually didn’t mind whatever arrogance might have been in your post. I think what you wrote about is easy to sympathize with, especially in a hellish year like this. I’m happy to be going to one of my top 3 choices, but it definitely was difficult realizing that some places just weren’t going to happen, regardless of how technically “qualified” I may have been. Good luck at UVA.</p>
<p>Though this got a little annoying to read in certain sections, as a junior who’ll be applying to college next year, I thank you for a clear, pure, and unconvoluted reflection on the college admissions process. Posts this deep and authentic are rarely made. </p>
<p>It’s quite a shame that you were rejected at so many schools. Though the schools may have disliked your character, I am astounded that you were rejected at so many schools even with a 2390 and perfect scores on your subject tests. </p>
<p>Hmm. I maybe caddying sounds country club-ish. But I’m not like that! My entire Common App essay was about how, as a caddy, I was an outsider at the country club. It’s not like I’m a member there.</p>
<p>I play golf at a cheap county-owned course. I pay for all of my rounds and clubs on my own with the money I make caddying. I’ve never had expensive lessons…I taught myself how to golf by reading books and videotaping my own swing.</p>
<p>Great post. I think it is terrific when people (especially kids) can look back and see their own growth. That is what life is about, we have to hope we never stop growing. I think you will find that most kids will enjoy wherever they end up at college. It may not seem like it now, but sometimes where you end up is just where you are supposed to be:)</p>
<p>'I’m a boring, suburban kid with a high IQ and what appears to admissions to be a lousy work ethic. That’s not what colleges want nowadays. They either want diversity or they want type-A overachievers who hide their academic incompetence by running bake sales and whatnot. But that’s okay; I’m no hypocrite. One of the things that tipped the scales in favor of UVA for me was its somewhat-more-diverse student body. That was just me venting anger and frustration."</p>
<p>Probably you were rejected due to your overvaluing your intelligence while not valuing other things that colleges and the rest of society view as important. Things like being interesting, outgoing, empathic, being a leader, being involved in activities and doing a good job with those activities because you care about more things than yourself. In addition, colleges and society prefer people who rise above disappointments and challenges instead of blaming others for their predicaments. I also think that you probably overvalued your essay. It’s hard for anyone to accurately assess their own writing, and it’s also impossible for young people to look at their essays with the wisdom of older people.</p>
<p>I think you should feel very fortunate that you got the acceptances that you did from highly competitive schools.</p>
<p>I really liked your post, and I don’t think it was arrogant at all. I wish more people would be over indulgent about their college selection/admission experience. I can relate a lot more to a post like this than one that consists only of stats.</p>
<p>“m I bitter? Yes. I feel a bit like I have been screwed by the system. Looking back, I clearly never had a chance. Im a boring, suburban kid with a high IQ and what appears to admissions to be a lousy work ethic. Thats not what colleges want nowadays.”</p>
<p>This is what I find irksome. A self-described perfectionistic, forgetful, shy student decides to focus on raising already excellent SATs instead of working on their weak ECs, shyness, perfectionism and forgetfulness, and then blames “the system” for their not getting into their unrealistic (due to weak ECs) reaches.</p>
<p>I believe the OP was fortunate to have gotten into U VA and Bowdoin, which are superb colleges. I also think that the OP will expand their own options by realizing that personal characteristics are at least as important as gpa in terms of determining one’s post college options.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone knows what it is like until he has been through the process. Everything OP wrote, my older daughter went through. She was rejected by 6 schools in one hour. It was a brown bag over her face moment, with her dad screaming at her trying to get her to breath. So, yes, I totally get it. It is a day she will never forget.</p>
<p>She is at Cornell (got off the waitlist), but had dreams (or potential) of going to Columbia or Princeton. But now looking back, 2 years later, she couldn’t be happier at her school. Everything just clicked for her there. She really couldn’t imagine to be anywhere else.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you at UVA. You may find it as your calling.</p>
<p>Think what you would like of me, but at the very least it’s a good narrative of the gut-draining, life-changing admissions process.</p>
<p>In one sense, I am happy with the outcome. I am smarter and a better, more proactive student now than I would have been had I just settled on…I dunno…getting a job after HS graduation.</p>
<p>nice post, all the people who complain about 2-Iron being arrogant are the over achievers (or parents of) who make up for their intellectual inadequacy by planning bake sales. It was refreshing to hear someone spill their true emotions about their college admission disappointment. If anyone has the ability to change the world in the future, it is people like 2-Iron instead of the kid who EC’s his way into the nation’s top universities.</p>
<p>"A 2390 with 3x800 should have had better options "</p>
<p>U Va., U Wisconsin and Bowdoin all are excellent schools.</p>
<p>I think you and the OP fell into the trap of thinking that if a person has sky high SATs, they are bound to get accepted to a place like HPY or even Georgetown or Northwestern. That’s simply not true. Also, you and the OP may have assumed that if the OP applied to a bunch of reaches, the OP was bound to be accepted into at least one. That’s not true either. What can happen by one’s applying to a bunch of reaches is that one gets a bunch of rejections, something that the OP certainly isn’t the only person on CC to have experienced. </p>
<p>Reach schools always should be regarded as longshots. It’s always best to love best one’s safeties, and to see any additional acceptances as icing on the cake.</p>
<p>I, too, am surprised that with a 2390 and three 800 subject tests, you didn’t receive more acceptances. Maybe there was something else with your application. In my class, for example, there was a “suburban kid with a high IQ” who didn’t have amazing extracurricular activities and still got accepted into one of the colleges you did not, so it may not have been your lack of extracurriculars. I do believe , however, that EC’s are overemphasized in college admission, especially holding leadership positions. Sometimes, I wonder if colleges realize that leadership positions are sometimes more of a reflection of popularity due to wearing the right clothing or something, rather than true leadership and character.</p>
<p>", too, am surprised that with a 2390 and three 800 subject tests, you didn’t receive more acceptances. Maybe there was something else with your application. "</p>
<p>My guess is that the student’s shyness, perfectionism and lack of strong Ecs may have made the student seem to be a person who only concentrated on academics, but wouldn’t have much to offer in terms of creating an active campus life. This may have hurt the student at places like HPY, which are more interested in producing leaders in a variety of fields than in producing mainly scholars, something that many LACs pride themselves on doing. </p>
<p>Being viewed as having strong potential to be an participant in campus ECs is more important at places at HPY, which pride themselves on having hundreds of student-run ECs – than at places that don’t take as much pride as offering a vibrant student-run campus life that includes more than , for instance, enjoying football and basketball games.</p>
<p>As for leadership positions, the places like HPY that factor such things into admission are far more interested in the results of one’s leadership than titles. That’s why they use interviews as part of admission. It’s easy to tell during interviews which students have done leadership such as organizing major activities and which students have had titles and no responsibility.</p>
<p>Because one is a leader doesn’t mean that one has to be in charge of every organization that one is in. When “leadership” refers to behavior, not title, being a leader means being an active participant, having ideas, assisting with organizing things, pitching in when things need to be done, being responsible, etc. At Harvard, it means that most ECs are run by students – without advisors having to do what I used to do at a college – virtually stand over students and hold their hands to make sure that the organization did its mission. </p>
<p>For instance, on the campus where I used to teach, even though there was a print journalism program, faculty had to bribe students with extra credit to get students to write for the school paper. Even though the editors at the paper were paid, we had to almost twist students’ arms to get them to apply for the positions. And this was just for a weekly newspaper on a campus with about 10,000 undergrads.</p>
<p>Harvard has far fewer undergrads, no preprofessional programs, and few students who want to be journalists. Yet, students vie to get on the staff of the campus’ daily paper even though the positions don’t pay and one has to survive a brutal competition to get on the staff. There also is no shortage of students who wish to be editors despite the long, unpaid hours the students put in without a faculty advisor being present to make sure things get done.</p>
<p>And the Crimson is just one of the publications there. There’s a film journal, a literary magazine, an independent newspaper, a humor magazine, a lifestyle magazine, an investment magazine, a quarterly book review journal, a mathematics journal, and several other publications.</p>
<p>If you had the opportunity to do it over again would you rethink your strategy of focusing on test scores and ignoring extracurriculars? Also, do you think you were perhaps mislead about what constituted a match or reach given your profile?</p>
<p>But I’m curious what Northstarmom would say to those “overachievers planning bake sales” given her advocacy of a particular kind of leadership. Because I’m sure many would agree that there is a significant number of high school students that does early meticulous planning of ECs to project that image of being a active and organized community “leader”.</p>
<p>Of course there are those that does this without flair and look like “fakes”, and those that do genuinely gets passionately involved. But I really suspect there is a huge number that do successfully plan their leadership image.</p>