Does anyone else feel used by the college admission process? I just got rejected from the 6 Ivies that I applied to and I feel like the past 4 years of hard work was a waste. My stats are a 2300+, 3.9+ uw, 800s on subject tests and pretty good ecs and essays. I was straight out rejected from a lot of my targets too. Although I did get accepted to a few very good schools, I could have tried significantly less and still have gotten in. I feel schemed by the whole system and as a white male from an overrepresented state, I feel like I never really had a chance. Can anyone sympathize with me?
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thanks
Preaching to the choir son. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1759685-4-0-2400-valedictorian-rejected-waitlisted-from-all-top-choices.html#latest
Sorry you are feeling down by the Ivy rejections you received. It probably doesn’t make you feel better but you have plenty of company. It’s okay to be bummed - for a short time.
I honestly feel that nobody should be applying to 6 Ivies. Doing so is driven by placing too much emphasis on prestige. They are too different to all be a good fit. With acceptance rates below 10% and much lower for unhooked candidates, it is a lottery for most. I also feel that the Ivies don’t necessarily provide the best undergraduate education.
So, what schools did you get into? Let’s focus on that.
Schemed???
No one forced u to drink the koolaid that ivy schools alone are the affirmative of your worth and the default prize of hard work.
First of all, congratulations on the schools that you did get in to. I am no expert here, having only joined this website in November to better understand the process and support my own daughter through it. Based on the small but very accomplished sample of young applicants who post on this website, there seems to be tremendous pressure because they seem to believe only a certain level of school tier is acceptable and getting anything less is perceived as a failure. Buying into that belief will certainly leave you at risk of feeling used. This feeling of pressure is only exacerbated by the common belief in our society that “if you work hard, and get good grades, you will get into a good college and even possibly get a scholarship.” However, in today’s world of college admissions, with mega numbers of applications at all of these institutions and all the “gaming” that seems to go on among the schools and the applicants, it simply isn’t as simple as all that. Anyone who has gone through high stakes college admissions this year now knows this.
Yes, you worked hard and you expected to be rewarded for it. And you were, you did get into a “few very good schools.” The mistake is in believing that ONLY the Ivy League or a certain tier is a good enough reward for your hard work. The statistics show that these very top tier schools are a long shot for only but a very few students. You can avoid rejection by never trying for anything hard, but if you do that, you will never get to experience the very sweet moments when you achieve something that very few others do. If you keep trying, there is a good chance that will happen. No specific school will make that happen for you, only you can.
No one said anything about being the default prize of hard work.
So it looks like you got into UVa OOS. One of the tippy top public universities. You’ll get a great education there and it has a strong education. What else are you considering?
I understand. My daughter and her best friend had similar scores and ECs They also did IB diploma. And they were only wait listed at the Ivies which never came to fruition. There are thousands of intelligent, gifted kids applying. They can’t accept everyone.
My daughter ended up at great undergraduate school though and had 4 offers for grad school from very prestigious schools. She has received an NSF grant for research (making her a much better paid than average grad student) and other honors and is loving her PhD program.
I am sure you have other offers. Look at the individual programs they offer that you are interested in and best if luck.
I’m in the same boat - rejected by 7 Ivies, waitlisted by 1 - but I don’t feel like I was schemed.
I know that I was a solid applicant, but I also know that the 28,000+ other students who applied to these schools were qualified too. I don’t feel like I was schemed because I know I wasn’t entitled to admission. It really, truly, sucks to be rejected… but maybe we just didn’t have that special something that schools were looking for. Or maybe we had something special, but so did another applicant, and when it came down to it, we lost out.
Anyway, if you feel like you were cheated because you’re white, think about how I feel as an Asian 
At the end of the day though, your other options are probably fantastic, and you (and I) need to suck it up and get over it. Ivies are overrated anyway 
I sympathize with the OP completely, being in a similar situation. I also do not quite believe all this about them being a reach for everyone. I go to a very small school so there were only a few of us looking for ivy and none got it. I can tell you what is wrong with each of us (my weakness was my grades, they are excellent but there were few science grades that could have been a 98 instead of a 92 (which is still a very respectable grade in our school).) Last year there was a candidate from my school who did not have our weaknesses, she did not get in either off the bat, a neighboring school district which has 300 kids but only about 100 who want to go away for school and only about the top 20 are trying for competitive schools., sent a kid to Harvard this year and last, a kid to MIT, a kid to UChicago (URM), two kids to Duke each year, a kid to Columbia, 2 to Dartmouth, 2 to Vanderbilt, and I am not sure how many got into Cornell but more than a couple. I do not even count NYU in this. This is just what I have heard so far. Most of these are middle class families where the parents have college degrees but are not legacies at top colleges and most of the parents have very typical jobs, nothing fancy, no one is donating anything and very few are URM. The funny part is my parents did not look for a house in that neighborhood because the school district was not as good, newsflash, it got better. My former babysitter was from there and she went to UPenn, when she went maybe 6 people had gotten into great schools according to her.
I also just wasted 20 minutes looking through the results thread and most people seemed to get into no ivies, waitlisted at a few (me, actually kind of surprised and hopeful even though I should not be), got in 1 (usually Cornell, Dartmouth or Brown) or they got several plus CMU, JHU, MIT or Standford or Duke. I have to ask what gives? I just do not believe that they are all URMs, fill an institutional need (at every school?) or won major competitions. How is it that the OP and the person who posted that they were 2400 4.0 did not get in when these people have an abundance. Yes this is whiny and I am sure everyone deserves every success but it is just bizarre. I think there is a formula and some people hit on it, not sure how. I do believe it has something to do with the school you go to and it is beyond the connections the GCs make because the ones at the school I mentioned are very geneic public school nothing special ones.
@supersoaker101‌ I’m in the same position - I was rejected from all my reaches as well as most matches so I might consider taking a gap year and trying again
It’s easy to feel cheated when something like that happens but you worked hard in high school and that was never going to change. You worked hard because you had the intrinsic motivation to be the best student you can be. At least you applied with the knowledge that you gave it your all, even though the cards didn’t fall in your favor. If you’re actually a good student, you will go through undergrad and do well - better than the peers who you think didn’t work as hard as you to get there (but you’ll probably notice that there are ton of people smarter than you wherever you go). Maybe you didn’t come out ahead today, but you will come out ahead at some point and decades down the line you’ll realize that you are successful and it didn’t matter that you went to a slightly less prestigious school because you are enjoying the same success regardless.
Unique essay, interesting ECs that tell a story about who the applicant is, something that grabs the AO. Put yourself in the AO’s shoes. You’re reading THOUSANDS of applications. The students start to blend together - close to perfect grades, close to perfect test scores, recs saying how perfect the student is, some volunteer experience, head of this or that club, I even bet a lot of the essays are similar - well written and grammatically correct but common themes. Then, there are some kids that are just different or unique. Aside from the hooked applicants, its my guess that its these kids that are getting the mutiple acceptances.
I Do feel for you all given how hard you’ve work but there are tens of thousands of you and the odds are frankly against you.
@SaphireNY I guess that is the downside of being able to look at other’s stats and results, you end up comparing and asking, “how did that kid get so much, and I got nothing, why not me?” No one really knows what goes on the the black box of admissions, and some of the results are bizarre. Some kids do seem to get multiple golden tickets while other seemingly similar students don’t. And there are posts after posts after posts on this website trying to analyze and figure out what is happening and how to “break the code” so to speak. It stings right now, but like most things in life, this too shall pass.
@SaphireNY‌, the Ivies/equivalents are indeed reaches for almost everyone these days in the RD round. The only people for whom they are not reaches are those who are top 10 in something, won multiple national awards, have some talent that only 0.0001% of the population have, can write 150 word essays that make grown men cry, and preferably are URM or from a famous family as well.
To the OP: UVa OOS is quite tough to get in to these days. The truth of the matter is that if you hadn’t worked as hard as you did, you likely wouldn’t have gotten in there.
One of my match/safeties actually mentioned something from my essay as one of the reasons they accepted me (it was about an EC) so I think I kind of had that one covered. It is a school that personalizes acceptances and I think it was my stats that got me in there but my point is my essay and ec were noted. Did not help me where my stats were not at the 90%.
There is a certain point where stats do not matter but I think it is higher not lower than most people who talk about essays believe. I think that it is unhooked probably 2350 and a true 35 (as opposed to a 34.5) and an UW 3.9. Its also a little too consistent in general (not perfectly coorelated of course) but I have noticced that the people with the lower stats (the 34s, under 2350) myself included, are either getting into (or not) the “lower” Ivies or lower of the top tiers or getting WL at them. They are not even getting WL at the top ivies or Stanford (ok there are flukes and extra interesting essays and ECs, but I really do not think that most 18 year olds are all that interesting and neither are the essays. While there may be essays that stand out, they usually belong to people with a hook and not usually to the 2400 crowd.) While I dreamed about a top ivies and Stanford (and the lesser ivies which I would be fine with) and wrote some really fabulous essays and did some things that I know most people did not but are not in league with Emma Watson, I always felt like these minor grade hiccups would hold me back and they did.
In a different year (and in the case of Cornell a different major) 2 or 3 of my WLs would have been acceptances, both top tier schools not ivies. I did get into a number of fine schools but with one exception, were not schools I am excited about.
As I said before, the results are school specific, to the OP what did last year’s class do with similar statistics. In my area it matters more what happened last year than what is happening in your area. If your school has not gotten anyone into Harvard last year or the year before, they probably will not this year. If they did, what were that person’s statistics. Again, there are exceptions, someone has to be first.
Why the talk of top Ivies and lesser Ivies? What does that even mean? Based on acceptance rate and US News rankings alone? Aside from bragging rights, why is it even that important to go to one of these schools? I could tell you non-Ivy school where you will most definitely get a better education.
I’m not trying to pick on you, as I know many applicants use these terms, but besides prestige, I think many applicants can’t pinpoint exactly why that school is the best for them.
I’m sure your recs and essays were good. However, I don’t think I’ve seen a high stat kid apply to Ivies and say their recs and essays aren’t good. It’s all within context, unfortunately a context that we are not privy to as we are not reading the applications. There’s good and there’s wow.
So, @SaphireNY‌, what schools do you have under consideration?
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All I know is that there should be academic institutions where truly intellectual kids can thrive. I have a child with a perfect ACT without studying, NMF, National Merit Scholar, 16 APs because wanted to to learn, all 5s, very nice essay and excellent recs, from a western smaller state, lots lf leadership, excellent music, science supplements Rejected from Yale. They want a certain type - gregarious, extrovert, sporty, leader, and strong academics, but not necessarily top. They don’t seem to value briliance alone.