<p>hahah nope, commitment.. looks good</p>
<p>My name is Eric. On my application to Stanford I tried to highlight my humanity. I used my essays to talk about my quirks and the interesting things that make me who I am. I talked with my guidance counselor for hours so that she would have more of a sense of who I was when writing the rec, and had a very close personal relationship with one of my rec writers.</p>
<p>I also had robot-stats (1540 SATs, over 4.0 GPA, lots of ECs, etc) and I got rejected early from Stanford.</p>
<p>You know, I'm sure there was something amazing about you that got you accepted and you should be proud. But the people who say "All you have to do is be human" are about as narrow-minded as those that immidiatly discount people with low scores.</p>
<p>A lot of high scoring people get rejected. A lot of low scoring people get in. But whatever the difference is, the high scoring people who get rejected are not evil robot applicants.</p>
<p>haha, sorry to insinuate that, i know you arent a robot. this whole thread was to bash the "1440 is too low! why bother trying" type of person</p>
<p>I am sorry to hear about stanford, I am surprised at how competitive it actually is, that's amazing. I'm sure u will get in somewhere awesome RD</p>
<p>that's awesome phill!!</p>
<p>however, i think you are not just a normal kid. there arent many high schoolers working in an engineering company. you know :D
plus if you're varsity baseball player and recruited, that's not so normal.</p>
<p>bye-</p>
<p>varsity yes, recruited no, planning on playing club :)</p>
<p>I got a 1550, does that make me a robot?</p>
<p>Heh, it's no problem. I do understand that wasn't really the point of the thread, but I thought it was worth stating.</p>
<p>It's hard to reconcile - if it's random like we often tell the rejects, we shouldn't be congratulating the acceptees. If it's the best and brightest that get in, we shouldn't be telling the rejects it was based on luck.</p>
<p>The real answer is somewhere in the middle. I know I couldn't have done better, and it isn't so much that the people who got in were "better" and I "worse", they just had something different.</p>
<p>You are lucky that what you had was what they wanted, but you should also be proud. You worked for it and it reflects highly on who you are that it shone through compared to a "low" (and I use the term lightly) score :)</p>
<p>please read OP's post carefully.</p>
<p>not everyone with great scores are robots. Instead bsbllallstr8 said, ppl who can not be satisfied with good scores are robots. ppl who think scores are everything in the college admission are robots.</p>
<p>I personally know bsbllallstr8 and the one thing he failed to mention is that though "lower" SATs cannot keep one out of a selective school, they certainly make it statistically more difficult. His assertion that the applicant is a person and not a number is true; however, he seems to be making the specious leap of logic that a high scorer isn't necessarily human. The lack of humanity (for lack of a better description) in applicants, if such a thing exists, would most likely be evenly distributed across the applicant pool. Many high scorers, as has become clear to me on CC, are well rounded, articulate, enthusiastic, and motivated people, which cannot be ignored. </p>
<pre><code> My take on the matter is that if your scores are at or below a school's 25th percentile, and the rest of your application is up to the school's standards, go for it. Bsbllallstr8 was a varsity athlete, had a 4.0 GPA with all math/sci AP classes, and had a full time job at a local engineering firm - fairly relevant to his intended major, I'd say! However, he did beat the odds. Schools like Duke receive many, many more applicants with scores below their 25th percentile than above, and they accept many more applicants with scores above their 25th percentile than below. The acceptance rates, then, are skewed, and very much so in favor of top scorers. This is true across the board at any top school.
In an article in the Harvard Crimson earlier this year, it was stated that out of 19,750 applications, 11000 had 1400+. Harvard's SAT 25th percentile is 1400, so if we make the jump and say that 75% of Harvard admits had over 1400 (the number is probably greater; this group probably has a slightly lower yield), and 25% of admits had below a 1400, then the sub-1400 group is looking at a 5.7% acceptance rate. This 5.7% acceptance rate is harsh enough as it is, but when you factor in that the majority of those spots are likely taken by athletes, legacies, VIPs, people with MASSIVE hooks, foreigners with amazing stats and low verbal scores, and other similarly advantage groups, the 5.7% acceptance rate for people with scores under 1400 looks downright sinister. For a normal, unhooked, plain-jane, whitebread applicant in this range, chances approach zero. Although Duke admissions are probably not this extreme, you get the picture. At a mega competitive school it's a tough fight if ANY of your credentials are significantly below the school's average, so beware.
</code></pre>
<p>from a fellow Phil, well put. Congrats on Duke. I'm pretty much in the same position, except at Princeton. It's okay not to have the best scores in the world. Other things matter too. So yeah, I'm Phil(ip) too, and I don't think I'm robot, anyways :)</p>
<p>His name is Robert Paulson.</p>
<p>His name, is Robert Paulson.</p>
<p>well said my friend...my friend got into harvard with a 1350 and almost no ec's but with great essays</p>
<p>One of my good friends got into UPenn with an 1160. She is a white female, so no minority status, but she's one of the best and nicest people you'll ever meet. If you have a great interview, like she did, it says far more about you than any list of statistics could.</p>
<p>1350 or 1360, i can't remember isn't as shocking as 1160. I think if you would have had a score like ecliptica's friend it would have really given hope to others.
I personally think anything that's 1300+ is a really good score. It is not low whatsoever. I don't know what percentage is, but you probably performed better than 80 percent(i'm not sure what the percentage is but it should be around 80 or higher) of all seniors who take the SAT's. That within itself is a really good. But yes, congradulations.</p>
<p>bsbllallstr8, so your recs didn't completely kill you right?</p>
<p>is this one of those meetings where people stand up and go "hi my name is billy blob, i was addicted to alcohol, but ive recovered!" type of thing? it certainly sounds like it. </p>
<p>overall, i agree with the person who started this thread (watver his sn is), and i agree even more with cavalier. its only STATISTICALLY lower, and like i keep complaining, what makes the people in "what are my chances" thread think that they are so much better than others that they can access the admittance of other students? the main trend that i see in there is "you have to be well rounded and perfect overall in order to be a match to any of the top schools." everyone cna say that, its nothing hard. i think the "wat are my chances" thread has gotten out of hand, people are obsessed with it, and tryin to kill themselves over some stupid deferral from harvard. i can say i got into a fairly competitive school with SAT below their 25% and act AT their 25%. do those numbers make me any stupider than those who got higher than me? no. and thats what i think people need to realize, NUMBERS are numbers, some are naturally gifted so they are better at tests. also, statistically, my sat and act are lower than 75% of the people accepted there, but i was OFFERED BME (at JHU) without even applying and without ever asking for it, while others who have 1400+ and 35 acts .......didnt even get into BME even tho they applied and emphasized it in thier essay or watever. overall, im just an example that numbers dont mean everything, especially when it comes to measuring your intelligence.</p>
<p>Thank you, cavalier.</p>
<p>I have to second the thank you to cavalier. I think people are starting to get a skewed image from this thread. I think cavalier really set the story straight.</p>