<p>I've heard several stories about incredibly talented, bright, 'passionate' students who get rejected from their safety schools for being overqualified. I'm not talking about iffy safety schools, I'm talking about schools where the applicant's test scores and GPA are well above the school's average, and where the applicant has solid EC's (200+ hours of volunteer work, leadership positions in clubs/activities, plays sports, well-rounded, yadayadayada).</p>
<p>I usually dismiss these stories as overexaggerated or assume that the student wrote bad essays/got bad recs, but I was curious to see if anyone else has heard such stories and what your thoughts were.</p>
<p>I don’t think every school does this, but I’ve heard schools like WashU and Tufts do this because they hate to be Ivy League backups and would rather have kids who want them as their first choice.</p>
<p>^Yes to what Yakyu Spirits said. Those schools have been known to waitlist overqualified candidates. I don’t think it’s common enough to be a problem – as there are very few who are overqualified at the WashU/Tufts level. Moreover, demonstrating interest (campus visit/interview) to those schools should correct the “overqualified” problem. </p>
<p>They just don’t want to be second choice to the Ivies.</p>
<p>Yes, this happened to a friends son at Tufts. He had like a 1550 SAT (out of 1600), along with stellar grades, etc., and Tufts though he was using them as a safety, so, to protect their yield, they wait listed him. He just wrote a letter saying how it was his top school and they admitted him pretty quickly.</p>
<p>Anyone heard about this happening to applicants who used their flagship state schools as their safeties? I suppose the key to avoiding it is to make sure you come across as sincere.</p>
<p>I don’t think it happens with state schools.
At any school, just make sure you express serious interest in them. I learned this the hardway with bucknell, which I considered a safety but didn’t do any of the optional essays for.</p>
<p>It is common here in Virginia. Many students at my school apply to James Madison or George Mason as low-match/safty schools, but are waitlisted because their grades and scores are so high that the schools are just assuming the kids will be applying to UVA and William and Mary. So it is funny when kids accpeted to UVA are denied by safties. :P</p>
<p>Many state universities are obligated to admit everyone with X grades and Y test scores. This does depend on the policies of the individual states, so you need to read the websites carefully.</p>
<p>Wash Univ. St Louis and Tufts are the 2 places that seem to continue
waitlisting the top applicants from my HS. (I have not heard of rejection though)
Recently, I heard of 2 students from my HS who got admitted to Wash Univ. who
were in the top 10% (not top 1%) who were also admitted to some of the
top 5 schools.</p>
<p>Emory and Pomona have been replacing these two as safeties because of this at
my HS.</p>
<p>However, keep in mind that they’re not rejecting you because you’re “too smart for them” (■■■■■)…but rather rejecting you because they assume you probably applied and/or got into “better” schools like HYPSM. Therefore, if you’re “overqualified” and you really DO want to go to WashU or Tufts, show some interest!</p>
<p>Are you serious? Pomona is a really tough school to get into. It’s acceptance rate is something like 15% and Emory is pretty tough to get in as well</p>
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<p>I know someone that got into UPenn (Yes UPenn not Penn State) but got rejected at UMD-CP (and I think they applied by the priority date too).</p>
<p>Hahahaha…Apparently she said something like that when the admissions officer came to the school…I mean she was apparently bragging about how she was only applying to two colleges (UPenn and UMD) because she was sure UMD would admit her and UPenn was the only school she wanted to attend :D</p>
<p>^ ■■■■■, that would’ve sucked if she hadn’t gotten into UPenn. That right there is the admissions officers of UMD flippin’ the bird to Miss High-'N-Mighty bahaha</p>