I know this girl at my school and she has a perfect gpa with a decent if not incredible course rigor, a 1550/1600 SAT, and is the president of our class. She is captain of swimming team and has a bunch of ECs. Her essays were apparently good.
Word is she was rejected by nearly every school she applied to, and she is now into safeties in the US around the 50% acceptance range. Her scores are very well known and no discipline history so what exactly could happen here? It just scares me as I am hearing back still and I just don’t understand anymore. How random is the process? Could there be an error in an app or something? I hear of things like this happening- some decision just not making plain simple sense.
Pointless to speculate based on speculation.
She only applied to schools that get 10 times as many stellar applicants as they can take. She didn’t do anything wrong except she only applied to schools where LOTS of perfect candidates get rejected. That’s why it’s important to have a balanced list. Too many students are focussed on too few schools.
If she only applied to high reaches, getting “rejected by nearly every school” isn’t that unlikely. There are threads on CC about stellar students with great ECs who applied only to elite schools, and by April found they didn’t get in anywhere. That is why students are always encouraged to include safeties and matches in their applications.
Here’s what I posted elsewhere:
"BTW, to any juniors reading: Even if you have stellar stats and ECs, unless you are hooked or are nationally/globally renown in something or the kid of someone rich/famous or insanely good at essays, expect to be denied/WL’ed from more Ivies/equivalents than you are admitted to.
Those single-digit admit rates apply to you as well."
And that may be all Ivies/equivalents.
Did she apply to any schools below the top 20 and above those 50% admit rate schools (which may still be a pretty good deal if she got lots of merit money from those places)?
I may be wrong but I think we may be seeing a bit of a trickle down situation occurring. More students want to get into top universities so they are applying to the most selective schools and also to the schools that in the past were a bit less selective. These schools now find that they have more applicants to choose from and are rejecting or wait listing applicants that in the past would have been given stronger consideration. If the average top student applies to just 1 or 2 more schools that means these schools are receiving thousand of more applications from good students than they were previously. I have no empiracle data to back up my theory but it might explain the number of “I got in almost nowhere” and “waitlist” posts.
The valedictorian of my son’s class made the same mistake this girl did. The only school she got into was UMich but the aid was insufficient, so she quickly found a school with automatic merit. She is thriving there.
This “crisis” was created when US News started ranking schools and people started believing that getting into a “top” school was necessary to be successful in life. In reality, there’s zero truth to this. It’s become a popularity contest where very qualified students are desperate to get into schools they know nothing about other than their rank. Many of the so called top schools have giant classes and extensively use graduate students as instructors. It’s well known that top students are sussessful anywhere. This is easily confirmed by looking up where Fulbright Scholars go to to school. The same is true with NASA LURCIP Scholars. Certainly they define success, yet recipients hail from all over the place, frequently schools that never even enter the conversation even as safeties. As long as students and parents continue to buy into the emperor has no clothes ranking myth, this will continue to be a problem. Caveat emptor. You’ve been warned.
True. I will be controversial by going even further to state that one can be very successful even without being a “top student.” If one has average to above average intelligence, a very strong work ethic, enthusiasm for and talent in certain areas, and the required education from at least a “decent” institution, one can go on to be very successful in life, even tops in one’s field.
There are happy and successful people in every location who might be average intellectually, but have strengths and talents not measurable by typical yardsticks. I can think of many just off the top of my head.
Reading many of these threads today written by devastated kids who are sure they are destined for mediocrity simply because they didn’t get into one of 8-20 schools (in a country that has literally THOUSANDS of schools) has made me sad and frustrated. We need to do a better job of teaching our kids that there are MANY paths to success.
She did nothing wrong, but didn’t have a hook. You need a compelling reason for ADCOMS to extend to you the “opportunity” to attend their college.
She absolutely did something wrong: she built a lousy college list!
The game is won or lost in January, when the applications go in to a well-researched, balanced list. April is just when the results are finally announced.
^^^No, this list is full of smart, stellar kids with near perfect GPA and standardized test scores, community leaders and passions, yet can’t get in to their “reach” school. Hopefully she will get a target in addition to safeties. To get that reach, you need some type of compelling story and something that can be viewed as a hook.
I feel that the best strategy for getting into top 15-20 schools for an unhooked candidate (or what some may call an anti-hook: for example being an Asian Male that is applying for engineering) is the following: pick one school from ranked 8th or lower (but not like UPenn Wharton) that you really like and do an ED.
I have poured through ED threads of schools like Duke, Northwestern, Cornell, UPenn, and JHU and I feel that a strong stats candidate with some ECs has a pretty good shot.
Top 6-7 schools and RD of any other top 15 school is extremely hard for an unhooked candidate .
Now, there are reasons why not everyone follows this strategy. The first is that top students don’t want to settle for a school outside top 6-7. Their first preference is Harvard, Stanford, and so on. The second is that anyone counting on financial aid is reluctant to go with ED route. Finally, having aced their high school and testing, most do not realize how hard a slot in any of the top 15 schools is.
Will like to hear comments from others on this strategy.
@osuprof: Agreed, though ED is not a sure thing now at those schools for that profile like it was a few years back.
@prepparent: @AroundHere is right because there are not enough slots for regular smart stellar passionate community leaders at the Ivy/equivalents and too many regular smart stellar passionate community leaders applying to those schools. At least in the RD round.
@PurpleTitan We may be saying the same thing. I am saying that there aren’t enough spots for stellar students without hooks.
Last year I heard from so many of my then-junior daughters then-senior friends parents that they felt the whole application and admission process was a total crapshoot. My H and I were really nervous going into this whole process but we feel we had realistic expectations for out daughter. She has great options but did not get into her top choice. My advice is: Hedge your bets if you can by applying to one school ED, if it is truly your top choice and your family can afford it. Otherwise, you can apply to some reaches and matches as well as a few “safeties.” Be realistic and hope for the best.
The reason students don’t follow that strategy is that they believe that within the applicant pool, they’ll rise to the top, like they did in HS. They don’t realize that among 30,000 applicants, 25,000 will have top GPAs and test scores. They are all the same. The VERY BEST strategy to get in if you don’t have a patent, are a recruited athlete, or a movie star, is to go back in time, and have your parents attend. Legacy status is HUGE for most elite schools (with a few notable exceptions like MIT).
In order to be sussessful, I need to properly spell successful. 
@eyemgh And there are approximately 37000 high schools in the United States everyone with top students plus all of the top international students who are applying.
@eyemgh I would hope that guidance counselors and parents advise these students, but perhaps not. You do not even need to be a recruited athlete to get a leg up at some excellent division 3 schools. But, I agree, athletes and legacies are great hooks. Unfortunately for my D, she was a legacy at her top choice and it did not tip the scales in her favor. At the end of the day, you get what you get and if you are realistic and lucky, you get something great.