I’m in pretty much the same situation…
Rejected: JHU, USC, UC Berkeley, NYU Stern, Duke, Northwestern, Georgia Tech, UMich Ann Arbor.
Waitlisted: WashU St. Louis, Carnegie Mellon, Emory.
Accepted: BC, BU, UC Davis.
Still waiting to hear from Brown, Cornell, Columbia, UPenn, Yale, and Tufts.
I just really, really hope I get into one of the Ivies even though the chances seem to be really low.
I feel for all the kids who are finding themselves with either few, no, or unappealing options at this point. Your honesty is courageous, and I think important for future generations to see that this college admission thing is HARD, even for people with good/great stats. I think I’m going to start a new thread (using Osserpusser’s post #52 as a jumping off point) asking people in this situation what they think contributed to it…Honestly, I sort of feel like your parents/guidance counselors let you down…
Hang in there, @ItsSoCold! I’m pretty much in the same situation as you, except I’ve been waitlisted at my match school. I’ve gotten into my safety (UGA) but that’s pretty much it. (If you should know, I am 1/10 on college admissions.) Honestly, in my opinion, I realized that in the future what matters would be the job you acquire as opposed to the college that accepted you. I’m rooting for you
@SevenDad, I feel the same way except that most people posting here actually got in to at least one school that offers great opportunities for success later on in life (and even many state schools that aren’t difficult to get in to offer tons of opportunities for success to someone who’s bright, mature, motivated), so I’m hard-pressed to call many of these schools that kids have actually gotten in to unappealing; they may appear unappealing to an 18 year old, but what you do with the opportunities in front of you and the choices you make matter far, far more than how you do in the admissions game when it comes to success in life. That’s hard for most teenagers to understand (it was for me when I was that age as well), but that’s the truth of the matter.
I’d be curious to hear if anyone ever gets into a “reach” school? My son has a 34 ACT / 3.9 GPA (UW), lots of activities, etc. And his best friend has a 3.9 and a 35 ACT. They’ve both gotten into some really good schools, so we can’t complain. But they’ve gotten a ton of wait lists. My son was wait listed at Gtown, Wake Forest, Tulane, and Wash U. His friend was wait listed at UVA, UNC, Wash U, ND, and American! This has been a learning experience. I think, unless you have some hooks, you should never assume anything.
@PurpleTitan: To clarify…my use of the word “unappealing” is not my judgment on these schools…but more the POV of the applicants, at least that’s the vibe I get from reading a few of the threads. It seems as if many applicants are not truly happy with their “safeties”.
Having gone through a similar process with my kids for BS, we have always tried to emphasize that you have to be happy with your safety…because that might be your only choice.
BTW, I totally agree with you that “It’s what you do with the opportunities in front of you that counts”.
I wanted to thank everyone for the really nice “cheer me up” messages. I’m moving on. For anyone reading this thread in the future, rejection is really, really bad on Day 1—go out, eat some chocolate, have some pizza with friends, sleep on it. Then, after the shock wears off, go back and look at your options. I’m going to Georgia Tech, and it’s a great school for engineers. 6 guys to every 4 girls. Big city. I’m going to rock it–scholastically and socially.
@JJdad Yes, they do sometimes happen. Oldest D, got into her supposed reach schools of Dartmouth and Columbia–but decided on CAL–that was 9-10 years ago. Youngest, got into Yale last year, after being put on WL.
@akacesfan Reading through these threads, I think everyone should do just what you did…apply mostly to “match” schools. Go ahead and throw in some ivy/reach schools, and of course a sure-thing safety school or two, but maybe the most effort should be put into the matches. And have several, because it seems that a lot of top kids getting denied or waitlisted even at Tulane, which has not been regarded as a top-tier school. (Not to knock it though, I hear fantastic things about Tulane…just saying it’s not supposed to be as selective as Stanford, Duke, etc.) Perhaps what is happening is there are just too many top applicants at all schools, and there is a kind of trickle-down selectivity that’s occurring, where schools like Tulane and U of Miami are also getting flooded with far too many applications from top students. That said, these kids might need to seek out schools where they are truly at the top of an applicant pool that won’t be so full of 99th percentile students that they could get shut out. U of Denver comes to mind…my son really did not want to apply there, but it’s a great school and they offered him a great scholarship. He probably won’t attend, but if he had to choose between our state school Arizona State U and U of Denver, I can guarantee he would be thrilled to go to U of Denver. It just seems like there needs to be a realistic plan that takes into account what is going on with these selective schools (shutting out top students). Also, with all these top students being forced into lower-ranked schools, those schools should really benefit and maybe rise in the rankings over time.
Well, yes, @boolaHI, at those schools that admit about 10% of applicants, they happen roughly 10% of the time.
Having hooks help, however, and I’m going to wager that your kids had one.
Yup–one could say hooks galore. URM, (Native American and AA) female, STEM, and both were previously ranked HS athletes.
purpletitan, I think most of the posters are simply expressing their reasonable disappointment; they didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. Lecturing them about how they should have been more “realistic” about their chances seems rather tactless just now. Most of the posters had a solid chance at the schools to which they applied, but, even knowing one’s chances are slim, being rejected or waitlisted repeatedly feels personal and hurtful. Even when one has a safety school. Face it, especially for a high-stat kid, safeties are simply not as exciting as the big names that are turning one down, the schools they have been visiting, dreaming of, imagining attending–give them a chance to voice their feelings in a safe place, the better to get over them and move on to acceptance, without reproaching them for not instantly having the maturity you yourself have developed over the lifetime they have not had.
It seems as though the threshold for a reach school has changed. I know several applicants with ACTs in the 33-36 range, top 10% of class, all-state in music / athletics, tons of AP classes, tons of service, and they were either rejected or waitlisted by all the LACs they applied to in the top 20, like Swarthmore, Pomona, Bowdoin, Williams, Oberlin, Kenyon, etc., and some even lower. What seemed to be a match in previous years (Kenyon), now appears to be a stretch. When looking at the admissions data from previous years, it looks like these applicants would have been in the top half of most of the pools of admitted students in previous years. Here are my take-aways from this process and the half-dozen kids I know who applied this year… 1) the personal statement must be really important, because how else do you separate yourself from your peers? 2) Apply to a LOT of schools. Five is not enough. 3) make sure you like your safety, because it may be where you end up. My kids were happy with their choices, so that made life much easier when they didn’t get into anywhere else. 
@Marysidney
Not reproaching, just pointing out reality, and the reality is that most kids posting here got in to very good schools. They should be looking forward to the opportunities at the schools that want them instead of the schools they had a slim chance of getting in to* (because frankly, the opportunities at Very Good School A aren’t going to be vastly different from the opportunities at Very Good School B for a kid who is bright, mature, and motivated).
*And I don’t think that pretending that most high-stats kids have a solid chance at the very top schools helps anyone. The simple fact is that most high-stats kids do not. A school that admits 10% is rejecting 9 out of 10 applicants, and most kids who don’t get in will be high-stats (let’s face it, the unhooked kid with a 1700 SAT and 3.1 GPA isn’t applying to Harvard).
And finally, yes, maturity builds over a lifetime, and it starts now. The fact of the matter is that no one who succeeds has never failed. Everyone fails. It’s how you react to failure that shows your mettle as a person. The person who steps in to the ring again after losing 10 times earns more respect from me than the person who wins 10 times in a row.
@Bugspecial Did you consider schools like Union, Case Western & Bucknell? It seems to me there would have been a level of match schools between the Duke/Vanderbilts and the state schools.
@Shaker2008, yes, the admissions process was crazy and is getting crazier. And agree that the intangible squishy subjective stuff matters a lot.
Son has now been wait listed at Vanderbilt, Georgetown & Washington and Lee. He has been accepted to State Flagship’s Honors program and a strong (but not CC darling) LAC, which were his safeties. No rejections, but ivy day is coming 
He has a 35 on the ACT, 4.0 uw, 4.4 weighted, ranked 1/214, with good leadership roles, multiple varsity sports and while I haven’t seen the college recommendations, I have seen other (scholarship) recommendations written by his teachers and they have been outstanding. Today, I am thankful for his easygoing personality, which has kept him from being terribly upset by all of this. Mostly, I have to wonder, what exactly is a “match” school for these kind of kids? Seems like all the schools where there stats put them at or above the middle 50% are reach schools, and the next tier down seems to randomly reject them because they probably won’t attend anyway?
@allboys4me
IMO, Vanderbilt, Georgetown & Washington and Lee and all the Ivies is not a match for anybody, regardless of score/GPA.
“Face it, especially for a high-stat kid, safeties are simply not as exciting as the big names that are turning one down, the schools they have been visiting, dreaming of, imagining attending.”
@marysidney Yes, what you say is true for some high-stat kids. I think, though, that there is an even greater number of high-stat kids who happily choose to apply to the state flagship honors programs, or the LACs just below the elite level (the Rhodes & Sewanees rather than the Williams & Amhersts). These high-stat kids recognize value, a great fit, terrific teaching, research opportunities, etc and perceived prestige is of lesser importance to them. IMO parents and GCs do students a great service when they encourage them to recognize that they can be enormously successful in a wide variety of educational institutions, and not just the elites. Just one example: proportionally, Sewanee has produced more Rhodes scholars (26) than just about any other university in the US.
You applied to all reaches so it is not a shocking result.