Regarding OP, to the extent that this (quote above) was true for her life, I empathize. The message going forward, though, is that kids shouldn’t be making that choice for that “first choice college” reason…it might not pan out that the options will be better than if you’d just lived the life you wanted.
The Asian ceiling is a tragedy. No doubt about that.
I think it’s not helpful to ANY candidate to have “typical” ECs. I do think its helpful to “think outside the box”. It’s not always just ECs also, it can be how you present yourself. You want to be (ideally) the only one with something, or one of 10, instead of one of thousands.
Eh, I don’t know if it’s a tragedy. I never liked the idea of “elite” companies only recruiting at a few schools, feeding the frenzy. This will help to disperse.
Because maybe the OP didn’t feel like buying lottery tickets. Maybe the OP was on a budget and didn’t want to spend $1000’s on apps, or maybe they didn’t like those schools, or maybe those schools didn’t have programs of interest. Applying to more and more colleges does NOT increase chances of getting into top schools.
OP, I know it feels like a lot of rejections, but your child applied to a sensible number of colleges and has three excellent choices. That is worth celebrating, not lamentation. Given that seven of the schools applied to are reaches, having three choices is an achievement.
If you read the thread about MIT reinstating the standardized test, it is clear that for that school it doesn’t matter how much you are above their minimum threshold. I don’t know if these schools have the same viewpoint on standardized test scores.
Seems at odds with historical data showing that actually, those with higher scores and grades were accepted at levels exceeding those with slightly lower stats. Maybe a change.
I feel for you. It is very painful. Wishing your daughter the best.
I’m so bummed. It’s behind a paywall. Would have loved to read that
That’s rough. I loved URoch when we visited; it’s a great place for student musicians. (There’s both D3 and club tennis, too - is she planning to play?) I can see this being a wonderful option for her, and she could end up being glad, a few years from now, that the admissions process narrowed down her choices. Likewise, OSU offers a terrific education, and excellent music options for non-majors… and it’s an excellent financial value for in-state; she might later be glad to have had a great experience there and a lot of leftover money in her pocket. Basically, as people keep saying, you can only go to one school, and she has more than one wonderful option.
STILL, rejection hurts, and there’s no way around feeling badly about this outcome. She sounds like a highly accomplished young woman, and having all these doors slam in her face is surprising and must feel very unfair. The thing is, there’s no way to know whether there’s any reason at all for it, or if she was just unlucky. There is some randomness in this process, and inevitably there are going to be a few outliers whose outcomes don’t seem to match their qualifications. There could be a reason, or there might not be. The fact that two extremely competitive schools waitlisted her suggests that there was no perceived “fatal flaw.”
Are there more decisions coming today? I hope for the sake of her morale that there’s an exciting offer still coming. However, there will be lots to look forward to if it does come down to UR/OSU/USF. She will be a rockstar wherever she goes!
Darn. 
I don’t have a NY Times subscription and I was able to access the article through a link from a Google search of the name of the article. Fingers crossed that may work for you.
I’ll give that a try thanks!
How can you have higher than a 4.0 unweighted? Do you go to a school where they give grades higher than an A?
Some of these schools set aside about 20% of placements for first generation, and about 10% are recruited athletes. Then there are legacy candidates, diversity candidates, and big money donors. Not too much space leftover anymore.
I’m not sure about the 20% but I believe athletes make up a lot more than 10% at many schools.
And being an athlete provides the largest admissions boost - more than being URM, first gen, low SES, etc.
(Edited to clarify the above applies to recruited athletes)
To be precise for future readers – the advantage is for recruited athletes, not students for whom their sport was their primary EC. For high school athletes who are not recruits, the sport is the same weight as any other EC such as music, volunteering etc.
For the OP, it hurts to see our kids hurt, and to hurt for them. Give everyone time to vent and grieve, without judgment – go out for ice cream, binge watch a favorite show. Then start learning about the schools which are acceptances and get excited about the opportunities there. Graduating from Vandy or Northwestern does not put a student on a different life trajectory than graduating from Rochester or other schools.
Yes, thanks. Edited my post to add this clarification.
UCLA got about 150,000 applications this year—more than any school in the country—and they are test-blind. Berkeley had about 125,000 and UCSB had over 100,000 I believe. The UC population is primarily Asian, then Latino, then white.
That very well may be true. I’ve really only looked at ivies’ stats. Northwestern and other big sports schools may have a higher percentage. At my son’s school, a girl was recruited to Harvard for field hockey in tenth grade, and a boy for baseball. Ridiculous.
Check out the NYT article that says that colleges fudge their reports to US News in order to get a higher ranking. A lot of it is bs.
Not so sure if that is universally true. Small to medium size colleges with lots of sports teams (e.g. some of the northeastern LACs that many here like) may want a ready pool of potential walk-ons among the non-recruited. It is known from the Harvard lawsuit that applicants were rated on academic, personal, extracurricular, and athletic aspects, suggesting that athletic extracurriculars (even if not recruited) are privileged over all other extracurriculars.