Sorry for the click bait lol.
Anyway we’ve all heard these stories, a kid gets rejected by tons of ivies and ivy-esque schools, only to be accepted by Harvard. Which brings the question, is Harvard the only “premier” school with a holistic review process?
Because schools like Caltech ONLY take candidates with sub scores of SAT 700+ and 100% of the students at Caltech are at the top 10% of their class.Only 12(0.05%) students OUT OF A WHOLE admitted class got below 700 SAT math.
In comparison to Harvard that took test scores down to the 400s in SAT sub scores.
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/admissions/admissions_tracker_result.jhtml?schoolId=444&classYear=2019
http://finance.caltech.edu/documents/394-cds2015_final.pdf
Harvard has a football team
No, I have not!
@4kidsdad
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAAahUKEwidhPPiy-DIAhWB9x4KHQndDHo&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftalk.collegeconfidential.com%2Fharvard-university%2F678042-inspiring-acceptance-stories.html&usg=AFQjCNHEa-nkyunnGBRSIph4VSt_rhtatQ&sig2=uHiIRCYZ9qvJJFI3TNEFiw
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/38910-getting-in-but-only-to-harvard.html
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCoQrAIoAzAAahUKEwidhPPiy-DIAhWB9x4KHQndDHo&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftalk.collegeconfidential.com%2Fharvard-university%2F17070-do-you-know-anyone-rejected-by-stanford-and-accepted-by-harvard-please-post.html&usg=AFQjCNHnimGXYM54PvSF-488bs5j9JVdnw&sig2=3IoNFbOUltBtYW-oQv5iWg
@wisteria100 :)) :)) mean
Sorry, I didn’t intend to be mean order imply athletes are not smart. But Harvard has a lot more athletes than Cal Tech, so by default has some with lower scores recruited for sports. But certainly some of those football players do have 34 ACTs!
Caltech’s admissions process is “less” holistic than that of Harvard. The reason is quite simple. It’s a small very rigorous college. Courses are difficult, in some ways advanced from day one. There is no fallback strategy if you struggle with your core science and math classes, and these need to be at a very high level. At Harvard, if you find yourself struggling with science and math class you can shift majors. So “discovery” of your strengths is an option at Harvard which for most part is not available to incoming freshmen at Caltech.
@wisteria100 I also know a lot of recruited athletes with 2300+
@fogcity I didn’t think of it like that.
I guess that would depend on what you mean by “a lot”. There were only 9000 students who got 2300+ in the 2014 college bound class. It’s hard to believe you know a lot of them.
Had to laugh at your line because yes, my son was deferred from MIT and Caltech and then rejected. Also rejected from Stanford. (His supplementary essays for them were pretty terrible.) He was waitlisted at Harvey Mudd. Got into Harvard, RPI and WPI, the latter two with pretty nice merit awards. He had great SAT scores, and was in the top 1% of his class. He ended up going the the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon.
My theory is that at MIT and Stanford they had more than enough comp sci majors and he was not that well rounded. (Though he had comp sci experience on a level that I think must have been a plus at any of these schools.) Harvard on the other hand, had just announced they were planning on creating an engineering school when he applied. They were looking for more kids like him. I’m sure it didn’t hurt him to be a legacy as well, despite the fact that he told his interviewer that Harvard was not his first choice. Different colleges have different institutional needs, and those needs may not be exactly the same from year to year. I don’t think it’s that Harvard has a more holistic admissions, it’s just the randomness of what looks good at the particular time that the admissions committee reads your file.
The year my son applied to Caltech, his best friend, (female), got in. She had different strengths, but I suspect her gender helped a bit too. And that’s okay, Caltech is a better place if the M/F ratio isn’t too skewed.
When my husband was a grad student at Caltech, I actually knew someone who ended up majoring in “Humanities” at Caltech. She realized that while she liked science, she wasn’t really interested in spending her life in a lab. She ended up being a science writer.
CalTech is a tech school for students gifted in STEM subjects. Its entering class is very small and must fit a specific profile. It’s also one of only two universities in the country that requires calculus as a minimum requirement. The major focus + calc as a minimum means the cohort is self selected to start with and Admissions cull based on the best math/science potential. Then they look at the rest.
Harvard wants a well-rounded class. They want poets and musicians and entrepreneurs and programmers (who may well be good at math or not.)
If you compare Tech schools with non Tech schools, you will ALWAYS find higher math scores. An SAT Reasoning/Math score in the 700s is pretty basic for future engineers and mathematicians.
Essentially, you’re trying to compare apples and oranges.
The college’s needs are reflected in the class composition.
Just to be clear, my son was taking Linear Algebra as a senior. So he’d done the math Caltech was looking for. (And his scores and grades were stellar too.) 
But it is a tiny school and there certainly isn’t room for everyone who might like to be there.
@wisteria100 ahahaha
Caltech’s football team used to play USC. @-)
http://www.caltech.edu/news/1944-caltech-football-team-honored-hall-fame-725
That was when Army was one of the best in the country too…
A student who can’t pass calc can make it through Harvard. A student who can’t pass calc can’t make it through CalTech or MIT. AT MIT a humanities major (yes there are) must pass 2 calc or higher classes, 2 physics classes (and most arrive having gotten 5’s on an AP physics and CalcBC test), chem, bio. There are no alternatives. There are no classes like “Math for those who can’t count” or “Bio for recyclers”. MIT students can take Harvard classes if they want to be re-acquainted with A’s but they can’t substitute Harvard’s lower/entry level STEM classes for MIT requirements. I assume CalTech has an even more formidable list of course requirements. By the way, MIT has a football team. It is Division 3 but it is outstanding. Their football players have to clear the same hurdles as any other student. They too have outstanding credentials.
MIT math is referred to as “math for everyone” Harvard Math is much more rigorous. Harvard biology is ranked Number 1 by US News.
I do find the “Harvard has a football team” statement hilarious considering that Stanford consistently fields one of the best teams in the nation.
I knew a kid who graduated last year who went to Caltech. 2350, 4.0, recruited athlete (as in D1 recruitable).
“MIT math is referred to as “math for everyone” Harvard Math is much more rigorous.”
I seriously doubt that to be true. Both are probably rigorous but no, MIT isn’t “math for everyone”. Are you kidding? The point is I don’t think all students at Harvard have to take Calculus or higher but they do at MIT. I also don’t believe the only grade given at Harvard are A’s. I am sure some A-'s are given.