<p>If you look on common app, there's a section that states what the college deems most important to considered.
On Uchicago, grades are only important while essays, EC, talents, etc are ALL Very important.
Does this mean with superb EC, awards, and essays u can get in with mediocre grades?
All other top schools deem grades very important.</p>
<p>Also, i heard Harvard is different from Yale in terms of acceptance.
While Yale only picks the brightest, tallest flowers of the bunch, Harvard often chooses a seed with great potential. Obviously most harvard accepties are the brightest and tallest flowers, but is it true harvard will choose someone with mediocre, even bad stats but shows great potential?</p>
<p>There are schools that make their picks based on stats, and then there are schools that make their picks based on stats and character. But there are practically no elite schools that make their picks solely based on character.</p>
<p>The average 2400-based score at Chicago is 2200, while at Harvard, it is 2210. At Yale and Caltech, these are about 50 points higher. In other words, to get into Harvard and Chicago, you still have to have excellent stats as a prerequisite. It’s just that students with a lot of character who have maybe 2100 or 2150 on the SAT are deemed better for the academic environment than students with 2350 on the SAT but with fewer redeeming traits. Even back when Chicago’s acceptance rates were in the 30%'s, there were still many cases here on CC where 2400s would be rejected, even ones who had Chicago as their first choice school.</p>
<p>In summary, top grades and SATs are clearly prerequisites for H and Ch. You just don’t have to be as statistically perfect as you’d need to be for the likes of Caltech, Yale, or Princeton. Conversely, more statistically perfect students are probably less safe at H and Ch than at CaYP.</p>
<p>So what about students with special talents? National Math/science level competitions, etc. I’ve heard that Harvard will occasionally choose people with very special talents/awards (USAMO, USA(Science)o, intel, siemens, etc) with less than average grades over someone with perfect gpa/scores and many small extra curriculars</p>
<p>And I’ve also read that Chicago really likes people with special talent, although i dont know if they would consider that talent over gpa/sat. Just was curious since UChicago says that other things are very important while GPA is important and test scores are considered.</p>
<p>It’s not pure myth; there’s a reason why different universities fill out the criteria section on the CDS differently. HOWEVER, it’s unrealistic to hope to get into UChicago without great grades/scores. It happens, maybe even more often than at other top schools, but it still happens incredibly rarely and only to truly outstanding candidates. Don’t set your heart on UChicago is all I’m saying.</p>
<p>As for Harvard… There was some statement from one of their admissions people that they’d rather accept a 3.5 student with a great personality than a perfect scorer with no personality (or something to that effect), but ask yourself this: Is your personality alone great enough to make you stand out from a group of 14 perfect scorers with killer ECs and international awards in their fields of interest?</p>
<p>Just. Don’t go into the application process expecting to be that 1 in a 1000 admit.</p>