<p>An assistant admissions counselor/director from Princeton visited my daughter’s high school and told all of us point blank that Princeton every year rejects a ton of high school valedictorians, and they reject a few people with 800s on their SATs. He said, the easiest thing in the world would be to fill up a Princeton freshman class with students with basically the same numbers: 4.0s and 780-800s. He told us that would be boring as hell. They take a lot of factors into account. </p>
<p>Imagine a kid from Nowhere, Alaska who is the fourth generation of a family many of whom didn’t even finish high school and his family lives on a smelly fishing boat on some bay, barely scrapping by. But the kid is bright. He has a 3.8 GPA with 1 honors course and 1 AP, the only ones offered by Nowhere Public High School. He manages a 680-650-660 on his SAT I. His family couldn’t afford an SAT prep class and he’d have to travel 800 miles to Anchorage to even take such a course. He writes a terrific essay. THAT kid might be admitted to Princeton before big man on campus, captain of the lacrosse team, St. Albans/Andover, Daddy’s a chief financial officer at Fortune 50 corporation, 4.0, 800s on SAT I, 10 APs with 5s. That’s what the admissions guy told us. It’s kind of an extreme example, he said, but it happens, and more often than you think, not only at Princeton but at Harvard too.</p>