I feel some of the same. I’ve got more than one acceptance including places I wouldn’t mind going to, but I got six rejections in the last three days, which really kinda sucks. I’m still waiting on a few, but only expect more rejections. : /
Yep, we have basically the same stats, and I’ve been waitlisted to one reach school (Berkeley) and rejected by two other reach schools (Hopkins and Rice). I haven’t heard from my final two reaches, but I’m definitely not getting into Brown at this point and probably not Tufts. It’s a bummer; I really thought I had done well enough to stand a chance.
^ You stand a chance…it’s just the same low chances as most other applicants. ;(
Wow, sorry to hear this! Hopefully things will turn around for the original poster and the other kiddos in the same situation. I noticed that the schools at which ya’ll are getting denied or waitlisted are pretty selective institutions. Vanderbilt and Duke, etc. are nearly as hard to get into as Stanford and the Ivies, I hear. I think it would be better to apply to a few middle of the road institutions like Tulane, U of Miami, etc. They are still great schools, but easier for top students to get into. I encouraged my son to apply to U of Denver (honors, of course) even though he did not have that much interest in the school, because it is an academic safety for him, while still being a very nice school in a wonderful location. They did not come back with a fantastic financial offer, but at least he was accepted, and if we really had no other choices, we could have stretched the budget to make it work…Maybe Washington and Lee is a similar school for you…not in a top tier, but still a better choice than your public in-state safety. And it sounds like you got a great deal there, so at least you know you have one very good option. Good luck with the rest of your schools! 
^W&L is one of the nation’s top LACs. (Kind of like Vanderbilt or WashU for LACs - well within the Top 25.)
I agree that students with high stats should remember to treat every college with an acceptance rate below 30% as a reach, no matter what their stats are. There are many factors that play into the decision, including your essays, ECs, recommendations.
Match schools: for a high stats applicants, it’s any college with an acceptance rate in the 30 to 40% (or 45% depending on how high the score.) Did you express interest, as your match and safety schools don’t want to “feel” like they’ve been categorized as such and want to admit students who’ll be happy to attend? High stats applicants should have 4-5 match colleges.
And of course, run the Net Price Calculator.
@Nerdyparent, nope, they’re taking kids with lower stats (could be athletes, URM, some other hook/major accomplishment, etc.).
Fair or not, being 99th percentile instead of 95th actually only improves your chances somewhat at these holistic elite privates.
The thing is, no one is absolutely sure what each school wants (they all want to form a well-rounded class), so you have to apply to a bunch (including plenty of near-Ivies like UMich/UVa/ND/Emory/Tufts and LACs) in order to get 1-2 admits. Also, the RD round is brutal.
ED where you have a realistic shot (or at least EA at a bunch, including several state schools) if you can afford it.
Judging from the acceptances my friends are getting, admission to these types of schools are random.
And @chris17mom has a great suggestion. The simple matter of fact is that even if you are 99th percentile in everything, unless you have some major hooks (preferably several), your odds at Ivies/equivalents/near-Ivies are likely to be no better than their (low) admissions rate. So if you want some more acceptances, fire off some apps to schools like Miami/Tulane as well. They may still reject you (because of yield-protection), but they may throw some major money your way as well.
I had definitely set the wrong expectations for myself. I’ve gotten rejected from Middlebury and Vanderbilt; waitlisted at WUSTL, Colgate, W&L, Colorado College, and NYU. I did get accepted to Vassar, but am waiting to hear on financial aid.
What is random is how it is working out, two students who are almost identical (lets say they are on competeing debate and soccer teams.) A got rejected at NU, and WL Vandy WL Duke and WL Emory and WL at UChicago
B got accepted at Vandy but rejected at Emory and NU and Duke and UChicago. Everyone is applying to the same 20 schools and getting parrallel results except for a few people who have no better grades or hooks but have gotten into 3 or 4 places
For those who have been on this board for a couple of years, is this year worse or are we still in the middle of the storm and cannot see the forest for the trees yet
@SaphireNY, essays would be different. Also teacher recs. All that squishy intangible stuff matters a lot. At the super-selective schools, probably more than stats, because most kids would have great stats.
And others may comment (I haven’t been here years), but it’s probably been like this for a few years now.
Yes and no. It seems that this year, the most selective universities have opted for a bit more WLs over admission to protect against over-use of the commonapp; it’ds predicted there’ll be a bit more “call on the WL” than previously. In addition, specific to this year is the number of WLs at UCs, due to the budget standoff (to summarize: the university’s chancellor wants the per-student funding returned to pre-crisis level now that there’s a budget surplus; the governor doesn’t. Since universities are “at capacity”, the governor wants to increase the use of online classes, like it’s been done at ASU or Florida universities most notoriously, and the chancelor refused at first but is still negotiating. With full capacity reached, more freshmen than last year can’t be admitted this year whereas there were many many more applicants and to make up for the budget shortfall some UCs admitted up to 20% OOS/internationals for their 55K funding several CA students.) If the per-student money’s granted, many UC-WLs students will be admitted; if it stays flat, they’ll never get off the WL.
Hi everyone- after seeing this thread, I have questions that will hopefully help others next year and me down the road. It’s also quite interesting to understand the application motivations and compare it to what schools are actually doing to bring down their acceptance rate but increase yield.
I see that each of you applied to very few safeties.
1.Did your guidance counselor or parents recommend this route? If so, why? Or was this your own decision? Do you wish you had applied to more safeties, or did you only want to attend a top choice?
- Were you aware of the acceptance and yield statics at all of the schools you applied to? Did you have any help from a counselor or parent with these statistics?
- I assume you are all top students very well regarded at your respective high schools? Did that in any way give you a sense of security that you would get in to top tier schools?
- Were any of you required by family to apply to "prestigious" schools only?
I thank you in advance for the honesty of those that choose to answer. I’ve seen a big shift in the four short years since my first went to college, and I think it’s mostly at the expense of the students.
@MYOS1634 Thanks for the correction about Washington and Lee; I didn’t realize it was right up there with Vanderbilt, etc. It sounds like the original poster is very fortunate to have that offer!
@PurpleTitan Yes! I think kids in the 99th percentile should also apply to a few schools that aren’t quite as selective/prestigious as they’d like, but at which they have a much better shot at acceptance and good merit aid packages. Going into this, the only schools my son was interested in applying to were Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Rice; and he understood that he also needed to apply to our state schools as safeties. After we did a lot of research, I encouraged him to also apply to U of Denver, U of Miami, U of Rochester, U of Richmond, and Santa Clara. He was accepted at all of those and has received some very generous merit scholarships from some of them, making them affordable. (Actually, all of them gave him merit aid, but some not quite enough, and we are on a tight budget.) We also applied to U of Alabama as an academic and financial safety, and they came back with what amounts to almost a full ride scholarship, much more affordable than our state schools. As for his reach schools, my son was rejected from Stanford and waitlisted at Rice. (We have not heard back from Harvard and Princeton yet.)
So for anyone just starting this process, go ahead and apply to all your super-selective Ivy/Ivy-equivalent reach schools. But also pick some nice schools in lower tiers where you will be at the top of the applicant pool. If you don’t get into your reach schools, you might find that you get an even better offer at one of the middle of the road schools than you do at your in-state public school! And a lot of these are really, really nice colleges and universities!
Good luck to those of you still waiting on results, I know it is super stressful!
@greatkid Traveller is the name you’re looking for.
Thank you and to the other poster as well!
Adding on to the discussion here: 35 ACT, 2360 SAT, 3.85 GPA, plethora of state/national awards and solid ECs, Asian Male (lol). Rejected by Duke, Chicago, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford, and ED Columbia, while being waitlisted at Rice. Although I was accepted at WashU (which came before all of my rejections except Columbia), I am starting to feel like I only got in due to my incessant contact with their admissions office (aka it was a fluke). I didn’t take these rejections too hard at first, but my morale has slowly plummeted as I saw all of my similar friends get into the places I didn’t…
Just to preface this post, I’m a white male from Alaska with a 33 ACT, a 3.96 UW GPA, and a class rank of 3/335. I’ve also got plenty of strong ECs as well (at least I think I do).
I applied to mostly matches as well as a few safeties and three reaches. The only reaches I applied to were Vanderbilt, Carleton, and Penn. I was waitlisted at Vanderbilt and Carleton.
If I don’t get into Penn and don’t get off the waitlist for Vanderbilt, then I plan to go to either Tulane, Case Western, or Rhodes College. All three schools gave me great financial offers and all offer strong economics programs. I feel like I made the right choice when I chose to mostly apply to matches.
@yellowboy: You seem to think that college admissions is a giant scorecard that shows how good/awesome you are (vis-a-vis) others.
It is no such thing. Schools pick kids they want for various reasons in order to have a well-rounded student body and no one is held to the exact same standard as the next candidate (and showing love to a school is a good thing & good training for many aspects of life).
For that matter, what criteria they use to pick may have little relation to success in life. All college admissions does is show you what opportunities you have. That’s it.
And if you develop and take advantage of opportunities, 4 year from now, you could be farther ahead than someone else who got in to a better school but failed to take advantage of opportunities.
We are legal guardians to my niece. She is currently accepted to: CAL, UCLA, USC, Pomona, Vandy, and Georgetown. Wait listed at WashU. Deferred at Yale. Waiting next week for Princeton.
She eventually wants to go to dental school. She went to a private school out west–graduating in the top 2% of her senior class of 450 students. 2100 SAT, 32 ACT, going to major in a STEM. She is a URM, and has a hook also as a state ranked athlete (X country).