Rejected by 12/13 colleges, 1550, 4.0, & 20 college classes [including college junior level math]

Applying to College Admission Stories
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College classes:

  • Calc. series (4 classes, 3 on trimester system, 1 on semester, through vector calculus)
  • Differential equations
  • Introductory Linear Algebra
  • Intro to mathematical reasoning
  • Linear Algebra (abstract vector space proof edition)
  • Euclidean and non-euclidean geometry
  • Mathematics with applications in the natural sciences (applied math course, goes over common modeling techniques, differential equations, markov chains, etc.)
  • Abstract Algebra (groups, rings, fields, cosets, field extensions, etc.)
  • 2 English composition courses
  • 1 macroeconomics course
  • 1 Shakespeare class
  • 2 CS classes
  • 2 US history classes
  • 1 comparative politics class

AP classes:
Just AP Human Geography, 9th grade. My school doesn’t have many AP classes, and in that one the teacher covered less than half the material they were supposed to, even making exceptions for COVID. Got a 4 on that AP test.

SAT 1550, 800 math, 750 english, 1 try.

Been to multiple national and international competitions (VEX Worlds, National History Day Nationals) and gotten awards at them twice, although I didn’t win the whole thing, including one for sportsmanship.

Been a member of Key Club, NHS, and Boy Scouts for years. None of them were my main focus, but I’ve done quite a bit of community service through them all.

I applied to 13 places:

  • Washington State University (accepted)
  • Case Western (waitlisted but too expensive for me to go to regardless)
  • Rice (waitlisted, 2/2000 got off that last year so pretty much a rejection)
  • MIT (differed early action, then rejected)
  • Georgia Tech (rejected early action)
  • Reed (rejected)
  • Northeastern (rejected)
  • Emory (rejected)
  • Johns Hopkins (rejected)
  • Duke (rejected, although they were very nice about it)
  • Princeton (rejected)
  • Yale (rejected)
  • Harvard (rejected)

Obviously the ivies were a reach, they are for anybody, but some of the others hurt, Reed especially. I know someone who got into Reed. They’ve taken far less college classes than I have, have participated in less competitions, and were considerably more willing than me to make compromises in their educational pathway.

I know academics aren’t the only factor, but they weren’t the only thing on my application, and I’m fairly confident most undergraduate applicants to most of these places aren’t learning the outer edges of Galois theory.

AP classes are generally “preferred” to college ones, or so I’ve heard, but there’s no way I would’ve learned most of the math I have if I stuck to those.

I don’t want to go to college, fundamentally, because I want a high paying job. I want to go there because I want to learn, I want to grow, and I want to be intellectually challenged. One of the main through-lines of all of my prior education has been boredom. Going to a great college has been my dream since I was in 6th grade because that was supposed to be the point where I’d finally, finally be in control of my education. I wouldn’t have to avoid learning things because that’d just make me more bored when they were taught again. I wouldn’t have to feel like I was only being assigned busywork. I’d actually be forced to really think. The only time I’ve actually sat down and studied in all of high school was during those first couple calculus courses, and only because the teacher didn’t say what would be on the exams and I was paranoid. The only thing that’s made a college workload difficult was because I would accept nothing less from myself than perfection, because that was the way to get into a good college.

I guess not. I’ve been taking classes at WSU for 3 years. I know exactly what to expect from it, and it won’t do any of those things.

I suppose this is mostly just me venting, but I do also have a question: what did I do wrong? Did I? I’ve read so many thing online about people complaining about not getting into the ivies, but still getting into someplace like Rice that I’d be ecstatic to be at. WSU isn’t a terrible school, but it’s also certainly none of the things I was looking for, and entirely invalidates all the effort I have put into, well, my life, for many years. Are my academics really bad enough this should have been expected? What else could have caused this?

At this point my best guesses are that I’m a poor straight white male, not adding to diversity and leeching grant funds, and that maybe my letters of recommendation were really bad. Because all of my favorite classes and subjects were taken at college, I never saw any of the professors I asked for recommendations for more than a semester, and the teachers running the clubs I participated in and actually knew me never actually taught me a class to be counted as teachers. My professor said it was “glowing” though, so unless they lied, that doesn’t seem right either.

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Proofreading that, I made a couple grammatical mistakes. Unlike this forum post made in extreme stress, my college essays were reviewed and rewritten many times, and I had multiple iterations of outside feedback.

Probably not necessary to mention, but I’d rather preempt anyone using that as evidence as to the quality of my essays, and hence a reason for my results.

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What was your GPA (weighted and unweighted…I see in your thread title that it’s 4.0, but please be more specific), estimated class rank, and course rigor?

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4.0 unweighted. Class rank 1, although I don’t think my class distinguishes between multiple people with 4.0s. I go to a small school and definitely have the highest weighted GPA of anyone with a 4.0 though. I’m unsure how to calculate course rigor, but I took as many college classes as I could at any given time, same with AP courses if I wasn’t taking a college class in the same subject instead. If I get As in my remaining classes this semester, I’ll have a 4.61.

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Your school makes that determination and passes it on to the colleges, AFAIK.

You are obviously a student with outstanding stats. There is NO question about that, and you should be very proud of your accomplishments.

That being said, your list of colleges are reaches for ANYONE. There are lots of students with perfect GPAs and great SAT/ACT scores. One thing you might have done is had a greater range of schools that you would be happy with at different levels of selectivity. There are tons of stories where students like you aimed too high and didn’t spread the applications to a range.

Now, THAT being said, you are outstanding and you do have a college acceptance. It may not be what you want/expected. But, PLEASE: make the most of it. You are clearly an excellent student, so, in the first year, just get adjusted to being in college. if you find it easy, join clubs/organizations etc.

You can always consider a transfer, but LOVE THE SCHOOL THAT LOVES YOU. Go for broke, and do great. Then see what you feel like. Don’t look back now.

You’ve done well. Wish you the very best.

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Did you hit all the requirements? 4 years of English, Some 3 or 4 years of History, 4 years of foreign language etc – whatever colleges want to see? Do you know if your reccs were good?

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In your original post, you say you took “Just AP Human Geography” in terms of AP classes. Did you take more than that one AP? If so, what?

Out of curiosity, what did you write about in your personal statement(s)? What did you say/demonstrate about yourself? What did you highlight to make yourself stand out?

Finally, you say you did community service through NHS, Key Club, Boy Scouts, but that wasn’t really your focus. First, then what was your focus? Second, what did you do that others didn’t? I mean, at some schools, basically everyone does Key Club and NHS (if they have the grades to get in). There is nothing particularly memorable about such ECs in and of themselves. What did you do to stand out? Did you demonstrate leadership?

You obviously have a very strong academic record, but lots of applicants do. In your own opinion, what sets you apart? Do you have some unique ECs? A unique story to tell in your personal statement? Or something else that separates you from all the other 4.0/1550 students who applied to the exact same schools as you?

I don’t think you did anything WRONG. I think you just went up against a lot of other applicants with similar stats, and maybe weren’t able to tip the scales with exceptional ECs/story, and you drew the unlucky straw.

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You are clearly very intelligent, very hard working and are interested in learning for learning’s sake as opposed to for vocation-bravo-it will benefit you in the long run. Putting aside that it’s been an insane process, I think you are an ideal Liberal Arts College candidate and would be a shoo in for some strong merits. Your list of colleges was the problem not you-if that makes sense. The really low acceptance rate schools- single digits in particular-are nigh impossible if you aren’t strongly “hooked” or “spiked”. I would say look beyond rankings as the numbers are very manipulated, and there are amazing educations and experiences to be had, which would really suit you as you describe yourself, love to have you and offer a strong merit.

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You don’t mention any science classes in your list of courses. Did you take biology, physics, and chemistry? Colleges expect that. Selective colleges expect that plus one year year of a science AP for four years total of science. If your school doesn’t offer a science AP, did you still manage to take 4 years of science and just not include that in your post?

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What major?

Did you apply ED/SCEA to any of the race reaches / super-reaches?

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Go Cougs!

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That was the only AP. My school is rather small, and doesn’t offer many. There’s AP Spanish, but that’s only for people who tested ahead because they were native speakers or learned a lot of it in middle school. The only others are AP English Literature and AP English Composition, and I took college English instead.

In my general personal statement I talked about my curiosity and drive to understand the underlying reasons behind things, how I ask questions about all sorts of strange things, even if I agree with them, because I want to understand why people believe what they do, and why that’s led me to love math and its axiomatic structure, and led to a great interest in physics and philosophy.

My main focus has been the various competitions I competed in, robotics in particular. It’s a huge time sink, taking up 4 hours a week minimum, usually 6, and sometimes 18+. The world competition takes up an entire school week by itself.

Leadership has probably been one of my bigger weak spots. I was the leader of my troop for a while in Boy Scouts, but struggled a lot with social anxiety in 9th grade, which is why I didn’t found a math club, for example.

I thought that my drive and passion to learn, combined with having already pursued the subjects that really interest me extremely deeply, would be enough, to one of the non-WSU places I applied at least.

I don’t really have a very unique story. I had a goal, I had reasons to really want it, and I pursued it very cautiously and so didn’t encounter any major roadblocks to talk about.

I suspect your last point is right. I think my perception of my chances of getting into many of those places was skewed by all the times I’ve heard about people being disappointing getting into them instead of the ivies, or even occasionally not getting into all the ivies they wanted, and since I’ve studied math deeper than any of the examples of that I saw, I though my chances would be quite good. The fact that I know someone else with worse stats that got into places I didn’t definitely didn’t help, because it leads me to ask “what did I do wrong that they did right?”

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Math. Physics and philosophy would be my second and third choices, but for scheduling reasons I was unable to take any college physics courses. MIT and GIT were my only early applications.

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I’ve taken 3 years of science. AP science isn’t offered by my school. I was planning on taking college physics this year, but the college I would’ve taken it at prioritized non high school students, and so that didn’t end up working out.

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I’m also a national merit finalist and received the college board rural and small town recognition award. Don’t think it changes much, but figured I should mention it.

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I had hoped that my pursuit of math would be a sufficient “spike,” but since I didn’t do that competitively and only in classes maybe that harmed that? My approach to classes has been “take college courses whenever possible, take math classes as much as you can while reaching your graduation requirements.” My high school requires 32 credits, so that limited taking purely math classes somewhat, and taking college classes “consumes” one elective credit, meaning I could only take 1 at a time in 9th and 10th grade, otherwise I would’ve taken even more.

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It could have been enough. I think you had a real shot at many/most of the schools you applied to. But, as I said, I think it’s just that there are a lot students with great stats and rigor all applying for the same limited number of spots. I mean, take MIT. Probably half the applicants have the same or at least fairly similar stats to you, but the acceptance rate is what? Less than 5%? That means a whole lotta amazing students - students absolutely qualified to be there - are getting turned away. And with so many applicants with similar stats, it sometimes comes down to luck, it sometimes comes down to things like eye-catching/unique ECs, it sometimes comes down to just some little thing that differentiates one of the applicants from the others. And there’s likely no way to even know what! That’s what’s so frustrating. You could have gotten into a good number of those schools, but you didn’t. You may never know why. You didn’t do anything wrong - you likely just didn’t set yourself far enough apart from the many other highly qualified applicants.

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As others have mentioned, I don’t think you did anything wrong, apart from not having a balanced list of schools to apply to. Washington State was your only safety, and Case might be considered a toss-up. Everything else had a low probability of admission, not because of anything about you, but because those particular schools are so much in-demand amongst students with high stats.

Are you still interested in seeing if any other schools are out there that you’d be interested in? If so, what’s your budget? There are still some very strong schools that are accepting applications. For instance, these are schools that have confirmed they still have opening, financial aid, and housing for incoming freshmen who apply now (source):

  • Allegheny (PA )
  • Gustavus Adolphus (MN)
  • John Carroll (OH)
  • Kansas State - often making the list as having one of the happiest student bodies in the country
  • Marquette (WI)
  • Moravian (PA )
  • Oklahoma State
  • Pacific Lutheran (WA)
  • Saint Louis (MO)
  • Susquehanna (PA )
  • U. of North Carolina - Asheville (the state’s public liberal arts college w/about 3500 undergrads)
  • Western Washington - perhaps switching sides of the state might be beneficial?
  • Whitworth (WA)
  • U. of Tulsa (OK) - and I think you’d get a full ride here as a National Merit Finalist

These are all schools that had good numbers of students majoring in math, philosophy, and physics. At the smaller liberal arts schools, you would want to make sure there is sufficient depth in the math department since you have advanced so far while still in high school. But if Washington State is not where you want to be (although there are many wonderful things about it), you do still have other options.

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I love your lists, but in fairness to this student, the schools i know on that list aren’t going to challenge him. Allegheny, John Carroll, Susquehanna…they may not even have math classes as high as he has already taken. I know a math major at Allegheny that isn’t even close to this student in terms of aptitude.

Edit: I see you mention the same issue with some of the LACs.

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University of Tulsa sounds like a great opportunity.

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