<p>“if you come from one of the best schools and are stellar in every way and you’re school has send many kids to columbia (or insert other top college), you can get in to columbia and pretty much any school that you want which fits the criteria (except schools which reject you because they know you won’t come and go to better school instead).”</p>
<p>This just doesn’t seem to be true, if by “stellar in every way” you mean top grades, top scores, and very good ECs. Such applicants do get rejected, although if they apply to enough top schools they will almost certainly be accepted by several. There are probably a few super-applicants that any school would desire, but I think these are likely to be persons who have achieved something really remarkable.</p>
<p>“but I think these are likely to be persons who have achieved something really remarkable.”</p>
<p>yes, so we agree, i’ve kept qualifying that there are very few applicants like this, but they exist every year, perhaps 50-100/100,000 exist each year.</p>
<p>“you can’t apply similtaneously to penn’s different undergrad schools, so wharton can be and is tougher to get into than the others.”</p>
<p>It seems like you’re making stuff up under your own college “Ideologys”. We’re not debating ho superior Wharton is to other schools at Penn. That has nothing to do with whether or not it’s part of Penn. The last time I checked, Wharton was a school among others at Penn, meaning it’s under the University of Pennsylvania’s “umbrella”; not a school on it’s own.</p>
<p>“A safety is defined by a school that you are almost guaranteed of getting into. I think you agree on this, so i don’t see why you contradict yourself by saying a safety should never reject you.”</p>
<p>Confidentialcoll, do you have the slightest clue what you’re talking about or the info you throw around. A safety school should never ever in any circumstance reject you–hence the root word “safe”. I have not contradict myself because I have not made two opposing claims. This is where being street smart comes in. It’s evident that if you’re a stellar student applying to top 20 schools, CUNY and SUNY schools shouldn’t really be considered a safety unless the school has a 90%-100% percentage; per say Medgar Evers college.</p>
<p>For the purpose of considering schools safeties, wharton is less likely to be a safety than other penn colleges. This arguement stands because you do apply to the schools seperately, and applying to one means you can’t apply to another. </p>
<p>I never said wharton was a seperate university, just a seperate school within penn. And for someone applying, penn CAS or penn engineering could be safety whereas wharton might not be, obviously you’d choose one to apply to.</p>
<p>As to your second statement, you do not seem to understand the logic in your arguements:</p>
<p>“Even stellar students need to because of considering schools like SUNY & CUNY as safeties because theres a possibility these colleges might reject them because they feel they wouldn’t enroll due to the strong emphasis on their yield.”</p>
<p>this here^ explains in no uncertain terms that if you were a stellar applicant and notches above someone getting into CUNY, you could still be rejected by CUNY (or any other college), because of yeild protection. </p>
<p>Do you really know that you ever have NO chance of being rejected from a school? There is almost no school that would say to you “pay the application fee and we’ll take you”, if there are such schools, they are necessarily schools most wouldn’t want to apply to. So ‘a safety’, as anyone has ever used it, is defined as a school that you are almost guaranteed of getting into because you are significantly more qualified than the average accepted applicant.</p>
<p>“yes, so we agree, i’ve kept qualifying that there are very few applicants like this, but they exist every year, perhaps 50-100/100,000 exist each year.”</p>
<p>It’s interesting to speculate how many, and just what kind of people they may be. There are about 250 each year who get 2400 on the SAT, and most of them probably have top grades too–I don’t think that’s stellar enough. I think perhaps the people we are talking about are winners of major science prizes, a few people who have done things like started successful businesses or published successful books, and maybe some particularly virtuosic musicians. I don’t know if you’d include high-stats recruitable athletes and very high-stats URMs in that category or not.</p>
<p>^One needs to include whatever defines the holisitic admission process at columbia. well I don’t think you need to only look at the 2400s, i’d say to fall in that category the </p>
<p>“I think perhaps the people we are talking about are winners of major science prizes, a few people who have done things like started successful businesses or published successful books, and maybe some particularly virtuosic musicians”</p>
<p>or someone who’s achieved two (maybe three anyone?) of these, while still maintaining academics and ECs.</p>
<p>“There are about 250 each year who get 2400 on the SAT”</p>
<p>The difference between a 2350 and a 2400 on the SAT is so marginal, that if you are amazing with a 2400, you would be just as amazing with a 2350. So in terms of SAT score alone there are a few thousands who fit the bill, but ofcouse, i’m talking about a small subsection of these people who have much much more.</p>
<p>confidentialcoll, only about 1600 got scores at 2350 or above and not all of them were US students. I don’t know how many of these got top grades in demanding high school classes but if one assumes 75% did then there are 1200 and I would consider this a stellar group.</p>
<p>at the level we’re talking about, it is not the raw intelligence intellectual abilities that are distinguishing “very bright and hardworking” kids from those who are “truly exceptional, mind-blowing talent which any college would be crazy to reject”. Such a description will turn on very different personality characteristics, which may be correlated with high perfectionism on standardized tests but certainly not universally so.</p>
<p>What I’m saying is, beyond about 2200, the difference in intellectual ability between any of the various scores is virtually nil. You’re talking about a difference in whether they made careless errors or not, not in whether they have the intellectual horsepower to understand and solve all questions in the amount of time given. Same with GPA - beyond a certain point it’s just a question of how much free time you put into being a perfectionist with homework and studying for tests - time that someone in the category we’re talking about likely would have put towards side projects or interests they have.</p>
<p>One thing we all agree on is that people in this category are few enough that they constitute a very very small group of applicants to the top colleges each year, and that if you’re in that category you pretty much know it.</p>
<p>“confidentialcoll, only about 1600 got scores at 2350 or above and not all of them were US students. I don’t know how many of these got top grades in demanding high school classes but if one assumes 75% did then there are 1200 and I would consider this a stellar group.”</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen here and read elsewhere, people with those statistics and good but essentially normal ECs will almost definitely be accepted into several top-20 schools. But it appears that they won’t necessarily get into all of them, and may not get into the top five or so. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t stellar–it just means that there are several kinds and degrees of stellarness.</p>