<p>I know that some schools are known for rejecting seemingly perfect candidates right and left. These schools include those such as
HYPSM
Columbia
Caltech
Chicago
Penn
Duke
Dartmouth
Brown
Cornell</p>
<p>What about those that aren't quite as selective/prestigious such as WUSTL, Vandy, NW, Tufts, Rice, Hopkins, GTown and maybe a few more? If you have a 2350+ SAT and a near-4.0 GPA with lots of AP/IB classes and great EC's, could you call those schools matches? </p>
<p>Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Hopkins, and Rice are just as competitive as some of the colleges you listed… what really matters is that you have something that makes you stand out in the admissions process. However, I would never call a school that admits less than 15% of applicants a “match”.</p>
<p>Cornell doesn’t reject perfect students, it’s really far less selective than the other schools on your list. a 4.0 2400 well rounded student with leaderships will get into cornell for sure, really most qualified students (2200 3.8 some good EC’s) will get in at least in my school (which is admittedly only 2hrs away from cornell, maybe there’s local bias). </p>
<p>No, there is no match in your list. Add more lower tiered schools. And if you are Asian male, forget about it, add even more lower tiered schools.</p>
<p>It really depends what you call a match. There are students who are definitely matches for the top schools, but due to the very low acceptance rate, even among those who look like they would fit right in there, stats wise, can’t call them matches. </p>
<p>I consider match schools ones where one has about a half a chance of getting accepted. So the 40-60% accept rate looking at the test score most heavily as long as the gpa is up there are match schools. I am accepting about 2-4 accepts from the match schools that my son picks (about 6) for his list. If he gets one reach out of the 6 reach school that he may put on his list, it would be great. I am expecting 100% or no more than one decline out of the 4 “safety” schools on his list. I have seen some very astonished,hurt kids and parents when their kids did not get accepted to a match school. Match just means there is more than half the chance of getting accepted, so if you don’t apply to a whole slew of them, yes, it is possible not to get accepted to any of them. You apply to 4 schools each with a 50% accept rate for your test score/gpa, it’s not a huge statistical aberration not to get accepted to any of them. You have a 1/16 chance of not getting into any of them but also a 1//16 chance of getting into all of them. </p>
<p>Dartmouth, Chicago, Penn and Cornell are not really in that category. Cornell in particular while still very, very, very selective is actually somewhat predictable.</p>
<p>You can have a 2400 on the SAT, a 4.0 GPA and stellar ECs and every Ivy League school will still be a reach. So will Northwestern. If I’m not mistaken, Vandy accepts everyone who applies with both a SAT score over 2300 and over a 3.7 GPA </p>
<p>I’ve seen a chart showing a 99% acceptance rate at Vanderbilt for perfect test scores, and a very high rate for scores over 2300/35. If you have a high GPA and scores in that top range, Vanderbilt and WUSTL are probably solid matches - unless, of course 40 other classmates from your school with comparable stats are applying. </p>
<p>If I’m not mistaken, the schools with <10% accept rates are
HYPSM
Penn
Brown
Chicago
Columbia
Caltech</p>
<p>Are there any more? I know there are quite a few in the low teens. </p>
<p>cornell doesn’t reject perfect students, a 3.8 2200 with solid extracurriculars should most likely get you in, forget the people with the top top stats and extracurriculars (3.95 2300+ several leaderships). I have seen several students from my school apply to cornell, it is one of hte most common colleges for students in my school, and i’ve never seen a “great” applicant get rejected from it. </p>
<p>I agree on the unpredictability of colleges part. For instance, valedictorian of our school 36 ACT, 2350 SAT, and participants of multiple competitive teams, and Geography wiz, was rejected by Yale and Northewestern, so it is really impossible to tell. Meanwhile a kid with a much lower SAT and valedictorian last year was accepted to Yale. Colleges are both selective and unpredictable.</p>
<p>@theanaconda I couldn’t disagree more. Cornell admissions is extremely feisty, and plays favorites with certain high schools. I know of three people who swept HYPS and didn’t get into Cornell. If you have perfect stats and EC’s, and tell Cornell that its your first choice, then it MIGHT be a “match,” but it is most certainly not a match to the perfect student who applies to the spectrum of ivies without playing favorites.</p>
<p>@madglav From personal experience, I was rejected from Hopkins and Northwestern (and waitlisted at UChi), which were the “less prestigious” schools on your list, and then accepted at 8 of the schools on your main list. My point is that anything under a 15-18 percent acceptance rate is gong to be something that is not a match to anyone by any means</p>
<p>@thebanshee Perhaps. I know mainly only of people from my high school, perhaps my high school is one the “favorite high schools”, I remember being surprised by several (not a few, several) rather ordinary students (nothing incredible) who got in. </p>
<p>Penn is 12% @madglav</p>
<p>thebanshee wrote,
</p>
<p>People who swept HYPS and did not get into other Ivys is mostly due to “yield protection”. As simple as that. I may even call HYPS a match for those people and the bottom half Ivys know that.</p>