Ridiculous reject train ride 2022

Applying to College
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To echo a similar post form a couple years ago, candidate has experienced a string of rejections / waitlistings from what should be “7 of 10” schools. Instead, the experience has been 3/10.

Candidate qualifications:
GPA: 4.25 (unweighted out of 4.33 max) / 4.9 (weighted out of 5.33)
Class Rank: 9 of ~300 (unweighted) / 20 weighted
ACT: 36 (one sitting)
SAT: 1590 (one sitting, no writing component)
AP Scores: Calc BC (5), US History (5), Bio (5), Physics (5)

Notable Extracurriculars: Captain of tennis team; President of in-school service group with substantial time commitment; Solo performance violin (multiple orchestra work outside school)

Race: Asian

Here’s the tally as of yesterday:

BU - Reject
Vanderbilt - Reject
Rice - Waitlist
Northwestern - Waitlist
U Rochseter - Accept
Pamona - Reject
OSU - Accept (in-state)
Tufts - Reject
USF - Accept

Peculiar circumstances: Applicant transferred from private to public school in 2020. As a result applicant’s class rank suffered significantly (grade inflation in public school). Her 2.5 years of public school GPA was nearly perfect. GPA for freshman year at private school was 4.39 (based on no “honors” designation for classes). GPA at public school Junior year was 5.10 (brought “down” by community college classes that did not give “A+” - applicant did not sit out the pandemic but was proactive to cross-register and take college classes online when HS online classes were a joke). Senior year first semester GPA was 5.33 (i.e., all honors, all A+).

Maybe admissions offices can no longer operate outside the parameters of their software? Or, with an overabundance of applicants, they simply have no incentive to do so? Either that or they have “no room at the Inn” for Asian students with classical music as a core extra-curricular activity - it’s ok to discriminate against someone whose talents can be reduced to a meme.

And if a 36 ACT + 1590 SAT don’t improve your chances to get into these schools, then there is basically zero upside to taking these tests. Many of these schools were test optional, so what was is point to pay for extra score reports? (Or for that matter to pay extra application fees, including supplemental fees!)

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May I ask what your students requested major is? I must agree, very surprising they didn’t get into more schools. Very impressive test scores. This year has been shocking, we know many applicants similar to yours with surprising rejections. It makes me wonder who these schools are accepting, and how they are making these decisions.

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Sorry to hear about this. Getting into U Rochester is no easy feat. So that should be celebrated.

Its difficult to say what the weak link was here. Could have been recommendations, class rank, others. Your list of ECs look similar to other asian students, so that could have made an impact.

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I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. She deserved better. No question that others with lesser academic qualifications but traits that the schools wanted (URM, legacy, athlete, etc) were accepted instead of her. She will be an absolute superstar wherever she goes.

Take consolation in the fact that she will still do extremely well in life, despite these rejections. OSU will be totally fine, and affordable for her, to boot. She will be a superstar there, and she will make her way in life. How could she not, with high school achievement like that?

For anyone reading this thread in the future, know that in terms of music, it can help a person, when it comes to college applications, to have very high achievement in an instrument that the college feels it needs (band, orchestra), but only at colleges that feel they need that instrument. The achievement must be outstanding, and it only works if the college cares about the quality of its musical ensembles, but it can be that “spike” that sets the person above others with similar academic achievements. In your daughter’s case, violin was not going to help her at schools that had a conservatory. It might have helped her in an application to a school with no conservatory, but valued the quality of its orchestra (Harvard fit this for my kid). Not directed at your daughter, but being a concert pianist doesn’t help the college, unless they’re looking for the prestige of having the most recent 17 year old winner of the Van Cliburn competition choose to attend their school. And if the school doesn’t care about its symphony, then being an excellent strings player won’t help either.

Tufts? An applicant as highly qualified as your daughter would have had to have lied to them, telling them by her words and deeds (short of a restrictive early application) that she loved Tufts best, would surely say “yes” if they were to accept her. That’s what Tufts wants in this game, so that’s what students have to do, even if it’s not the truth. Once they’re accepted, of course, they can do what they want, go or not go.

Be proud of her. Disguise your own (justified) fury and disappointment with this system that would reject such an applicant, while accepting those with far lesser achievement. For her sake, be only enthusiastic, supportive, etc about how she will be an amazing student leader at OSU. Consider carefully whether it is worth the price differential for Rochester.

You might get a lovely surprise tomorrow. Our school had a kid last year who was rejected by Tufts, but accepted at Princeton. Also, Harvard values high achieving musicians, so if your daughter applied and sent them a music resume, and a music supplement, they surely would have sent that on to their conductor. Seeing your daughter’s stats and achievements, I think that she has a 50-50 chance there. Orchestras need a lot of violinists.

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BU feels like yield protection, but Rice, Vandy, NW, and Pomona routinely reject students with these qualifications all the time; that’s why they are major reaches. Rochester is at the same level as these academically, and was a smart place to apply. Good luck with Ivy Day and/or the waitlists.

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BU is a surprising rejection but most of the other schools should be considered a reach for any unhooked applicant.

BUT THE VERY GOOD NEWS is that URochester is a fantastic outcome and you can only attend one school.

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Obviously we don’t know the full application, but from what little we do know, these results are very disheartening. From what I can see, this kid did everything right. Not sure what that means for other kids!

Love where you land. They will be very fortunate to get you.

Watch the “Don’t Go To Harvard” video by Maalcolm Gladwell, and read “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be”. Actually read that twice. It might be the most important thing you ever read.

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U Rochester sounds like a great fit for a high academic student who also loves any sort of music. If it’s affordable, it’s a win in spite of what other schools decided - their loss.

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This seems to be the norm this year; many high stats kids (mine similar to yours) aren’t getting accepted into schools that Naviance, scattergrams, the schools’ 75th percentiles, and past experience would indicate were matches or even safeties. Good luck to her for whatever remains, but Rochester is a fantastic school. This has been a really hard cycle and it is rough for these kids who understandably anticipated better outcomes.

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This happened last year, too.

The obvious takeaway is that as long as test-optional is in place, Naviance or equivalent data from the pre-test-optional era is only very loosely useful, and test/GPA data from the test-optional era won’t be as useful as it was before. A new normal is taking shape in real time.

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I think most schools use a gpa scale with 4.0 being the highest gpa. My daughters had one B, so their gpa was a 3.9. 7/9 AP’s brought it up to a 4.2 on the final transcript. I’m not a fan of TO because I think it adds information, obviously the OP’s daughter scored extremely well.

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The val at our D’s school with perfect stats, “way back” in '18, also didn’t get into Vandy and NU. It’s not unusual that reach schools are actually reaches, especially for students applying RD. NU is now filling more than 1/2 their class in ED.

Your child has some great acceptances. Hopefully everyone can get excited about the schools that have loved her back.

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Very tough year. Lots of waitlisted this year.

I’m assuming she’s staying in the WL for Rice and Northwestern? With all the waitlisting this year maybe there will be more movement this year. It might be later before everything gets decided. Good luck.

Btw. My friend’s son was an NMF/perfect scores and GPA. Denied at most of his schools pre-Covid. All it took was one. He’s doing very well at Notre Dame.

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Please celebrate your D’s acceptances and don’t go down the path that she ‘deserved better’. No one ‘deserves’ admission to a given college. She will do well at any of the schools she has been accepted to.

Outcomes from Rochester (to take just one example) are not significantly different than any of the schools on the list, and sounds like a great fit. There are such a wide array of types of schools on the list that I am not sure what type of experience your D is looking for, but I hope she finds it at Rochester, or OSU, or USF. Good luck.

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The obvious answer is they are taking whoever makes their class more “diverse,” however you want to define that (outside of diversity of thought), be it geographically, ethnically, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ect - even if that individual comes with a 31 ACT. That is what holistic admissions are about. Add in legacy & athletes to that mix and there are fewer and fewer spots for those who don’t check one of those boxes.

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I pretty much agree with the notion that an applicant to many high quality schools has to convince them that this is one of their very top choices, if not the top choice. Applicants with such great credentials can fall victim to yield protection and/or from a school making the decision that if the applicant really wanted them as number 1 then they would have applied ED. Using a March Madness reference, this applicant applied to top schools in all regions: east, south, west, north. Our sons counselor recommended applying to only those schools that you know a great deal about and could definitely see yourself there. If not, you run the risk of having an outstanding, but generic application that might not be as specific to what that college would want concerning their school, especially since they know you will be applying to many top schools. However, they also know that you can only attend one school, and if it doesn’t show your desire for them clearly in the application then you may be at a disadvantage.

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The good news, and what matters, is that each student can only attend one university, and you have some very good acceptances. There are a lot of opportunities at a wide range of universities. You can do very well with a degree from OSU, Rochester, or USF. We have seen many examples with students attending a school lower ranked than these for undergrad, getting an excellent education with multiple opportunities, then attending a graduate program on the “Stanford, Ivy League, ‘top 5 DVM program’” sort of level.

Do you have any more applications still out?

This does however bother me. The majority of my friends are Asian-American, or in a few cases just Asian (I have traveled overseas a lot and have some friends who do not live in North America). Some of them have had similar results with similar stats. I do not see how anyone can do better than 4.24 on a 4.33 scale. You really should not be penalized for missing out on the + sign after about 1/4 of your A’s. You also should not be penalized for things that are totally out of your control. Your daughter’s ECs are superb.

I think that your daughter should love a school that loves her, and live to make those other schools regret that she is not an alumni.

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This result may be expected mathematically, if you plug in the acceptance rate of the 7 reaches (BU 20%, Vandy 11.6%, Rice 10.9%, NU 9.3%, Rochester 35%, Pamona 8.6%, Tufts 16.3%). Adjust for the fact that RD acceptance rate is lower by e.g., multiplying .65. Assuming independence of results (an obviously incorrect assumption), the odds of being rejected by all 7 is about .46. The applicant got into one of them. Unless the assumption is that one has higher than average odds of getting into these schools, the outcome seems expected. The good news is the season is not over. If she also applied to the Ivy leagues etc., there’s still about 30% chance of getting into one of them. Best wishes to all!

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I don’t think that was ever universally true for anyone prior to this year. To say someone must be hooked to get into these schools defeats the whole purpose of applying for the typical middle class applicant! I once heard someone who is a college consultant (more than a year ago) say that if you have X SAT and X GPA, and excellent essays and activities, you have a better than average chance of getting into each of these schools but at best your odds are 50-50 and that means you may get into one or 10 or none because a coin can come up tails 100% of the time even when it was supposed to be 50 -50.

To OP, when my children were waitlisted they sent letters of continuing interest immediately. In this case I would do it before Ivy Day but the letter may be different depending on what happens tomorrow so up to you.

Yes they are a reach but in Prior Years there was always a reason that a student got rejected from a bunch of them, not from any one individually but from nearly all of them. Either it was yield protection (I think student should have been WL at Tufts although female is a disadvantage there because they get fewer males applicants or did in prior years), the student had lackluster essays (I know at least two students in prior years who had 35/36 but their essays were not on the same caliber. One ended up going to a small mediocre school and the other was only accepted at Vanderbilt despite his parents being legacies at the same top 10 school (he was WL).

The difference is that this year kids are really getting rejected without a reason. They are getting rejected rather than deferred EA and ED, that has never happened. I know who applied from our school and so far the outcomes have been not as expected. The essays, activities and everything else are outstanding and it is not working out because I hear schools like NYU are getting 100,000 applications (I have no idea if that is true my children are not applying this year). I have heard of 1580s getting rejected. I do not think it matters if a student is ranked #2 or #9 in the class, at a certain point it is all the same, it is the year and hopefully guidance counselors and principals will continue writing to these colleges to talk about what happened this year

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First off, your D is a rockstar, and will do well in life. Get her to shrug off her disappointment, and move forward. You have some good acceptances. I am a bit mystified by the BU rejection.
A local friend of S1’s(Asian) had his heart set on MIT since he was 11-12 yo. He had perfect SAT/Test scores, over 20 AP’s, with 5’s in all but one or two of them. Was taking Math at the local university from gr.8 onwards. He Ed’d to MIT, was rejected. Decided to go to the local State flagship, for free, basically. Double majored in Stem and finished in 3 years while interning at Google during the summers, and now has a full time job with them. He can basically go to whatever post grad institution he wants, as his profs LR’s are so glowing.
Moral of the story is that it’s where you end up, not where you start. Going to college is just the beginning.

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