<p>Sounds like the new admissions director is changing things- many students at a suburban HS who considered Penn a “safety Ivy” have been rejected or deferred.</p>
<p>There isn’t as much as you would think. You need a good enough SAT to get you into a certain category and then the rest is more about who you are as a person (rather than a score). Penn turns down perfect scores every year.</p>
<p>There are several books out that try and explain how the top schools select students. Apparently there is a formula based system in the number of students selected in different categories. For example, there is a category for brilliant students with SAT’s off the chart, there is a category for students that have pretty good credentials who are wanted for athletics, etc, there is a category for purely disadvantaged students who overcame great odds, a category for money/legacy students and the most intriguing category of all–students who have a profile that the school thinks will lead to them being successful and eventually endow the school with large gifts.</p>
<p>It is the last category that leads to people scratching their heads about why some students get in. The Ivy’s and other top schools have some method of figuring this out that is not consistent with what most people think are necessarily stellar credentials. It is known that the Ivy’s do not just want brilliant students probably because they know that they may eventually end up in academia and not in a position to endow the school.</p>
<p>It’s all to a certain extent “Black Magic” and supports what I was once told, “You can never assume that you will get in and you can never assume that you will not get in.”</p>
<p>I’ve just taken a look at the Stanford thread and the trend seems to be the same. </p>
<p>The ultra high 2390 etc SAT takers were almost all outright rejected but the low 2200 - 2100 kids got in. Just like Penn. Now this is completely unscientific but it is interesting none the less.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is not Penn specific ?</p>
<p>Got deferred from Wharton
2360 SAT
780 math II and 760 US history
Over 100 GPA weighted (100 scale)
10 AP classes including this year’s.
All classes are honors or AP all four years (with the exception of band class)</p>
<p>Go figure. Maybe I’ll get in regular decision? But I made UChicago so I’m happy for the moment</p>
<p>kids with high scores may be less inclined to pour their hearts into their essays. Maybe that’s the key here…</p>
<p>Oh I was very inclined, believe me.
We’ll just have to wait and see :)</p>
<p>the best academic applicants may have a lot of other factors working against them, such as ORM status, high-ish income(but not enough to make the development office care), competitive suburban location in CA or east coast, and lack of any sort of hook. it’s not as if their top academics are working against them…</p>
<p>I think it’s a mistake for the admissions committee to reject so many people with 2300+ SATs. I’m not criticizing the holistic approach, but Penn is still an academic institution and SATs are the best measure of academic ability that we have.</p>
<p>I say this only because I’ve met/tutored far too many students at Penn who are struggling in their classes because they clearly lack the requisite intellectual ability to succeed an ivy league school</p>
<p>^^ yes, many people here are suffering because they can’t compete intellectually. Having said that, I believe it makes it less stressful for the others because at least the curves aren’t 97 for a D, 98 for a C, etc (although they can sometimes feel that way).</p>
<p>Once you reach a certain level in SAT, GPA, ECs etc it really is a crapshoot. The admissions office probably performs some voodoo magic or divination or invokes the might and wisdom of Zeus to figure out whether a candidate is appropriate for their school or not.</p>