Still deceiving though …
They have broken their acceptance by the individual subset of the SAT and ACt and not the total ACT or SAT results which will be more meaningful for some one to assess where they stand.
Not everyone who gets 800 in Math will 800 in Cr R or writing, so these stats still does not give us any clear indication and is deceiving. Still better than nothing.
ACT is full score and that is how people know you have a 30% chance at Brown if you score a 36.
Princeton published numbers couple of years ago indicating closer to 20% odds for people scoring 2300 or above. All it is saying is that you have better odds but when it comes down to it, 4 out of 5 with a score above 2300 still got rejected.
The OP is full of contradictions: "My message is that high schoolers should stop molding themselves to fit some standard and pursue what they love and present themselves as a person rather than a number. "
But entitles the thread **"‘Stop the haters’~ Ivy Acceptances with VERY low SAT" ** which obviously appeals the straw-grasping, AP stuffed, resume-padded, Ivy-awed wannabees hoping beyond all hope for some glimmer of light.
Im a Rising junior and feel the same ephemeral feeling of dread of the admissions process. I read this and at first was extremely mad, because I feel like so many of the applicant pool are talented, but still get rejected. I now realize that applying to the Ivy League schools and Stanford Gould be taken with a grain of salt and prayed for with luck. One can only strengthen his candidacy with the actions he or she took in his or her high school career. I feel like Chance threads for the Ivy League schools are pointless and a self esteem booster. I’m happy for you and congratulations, you’ve done something few highschool students could do… Get accepted into Harvard Cornell and Yale.
OP, congratulations. Its nice to see that many of the best colleges do in fact view applications holistically and don’t just look at test scores.
Clearly you had a unique skill or ability that these colleges wanted and the fact that you pursued it and acheived so much success at it, is to your great credit.
However, the question is, how likely is it for other applicants to be able to achieve a similar route into a selective college or university. Clearly the statistics indicate that with a SAT significantly below the 25% level (2080 for Harvard), the odds are quite low. So if you are in this category, you need to have something else, that in the eyes of the college, compensates for your low scores. Now its hard to know exactly what you would need to do to make up for a 1750 SAT, but I suspect that winning a gold medal in the Olympics, or being the best in the country as some other activity would be enough to do it, and your experience seems to bare that out. However these levels of success are beyond the abilities of most people, and for most it more realistic to try to get a 2300+ SAT (top .995 percentile) than it is to try to gain admissions from an extraordinary talent.
But again, congratulations and thank you for sharing your story. The fact that it was an unconventional route to gaining admissions makes it particularly interesting, and hopefully it will help others.
OP, still waiting to hear what your skill/talent is??
Curious that you would go to the trouble of posting such a lengthy missive, and then not reply with the information that at least a few of us have asked for?
I met a young lady at Yale that got in with a 1900. She had an amazing personality, very charismatic. I could see how she could ace an interview even if not everything on paper was the best. Honestly, I’ve heard of politicians that are super charismatic but this is one of the very few I met where I wanted to set her up with my son, shotgun wedding on the spot. It was uncanny.
I met another student at another Ivy that got in with a 1750. He was tremendously driven and focused. His score wasn’t the best but I think the disconnect was the quality of his HS. I don’t know but he was a very nice gentleman.
I really don’t mind a little stats diversity.
Yes, and your father is the president of the United States. :))) Nice that you had an opportunity to address nations, even during your high school years.
I mean … Bush and all other did it in Ivys.
this is definitely a ■■■■■. I’ve seen ENOUGH and i mean TOO MUCH of these cliche advice posts. Sheeesh. if you don’t have a high SAT and gpa and if you don’t meet the academic criteria for the school, chances, are YOU WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED!!!
Sighs…I still wish I had better scores and grades :,(
College admissions is (in my opinion) very subjective, and that’s what makes the whole process scary and unknown, especially for someone who is not a stellar student.
So many different factors go into admitting a student at Ivy Leagues or any college; Location, gender, race, major, essays…I think there’s a special reason why every student got in the school he/she did.
Congrats to OP
To all haters : There a guy from my school who got into Harvard around 2 years with 1700 SAT. Of course he was amazing : He played (and still plays) a major part in a political party ; but my point here is that he got in!
No one here has ever considered that maybe these Ivy leagues choose people with real life experiences who have not just had their nose in a book from preK to senior year? Congrats on getting into Cornell!
Teaching high school for over twenty yrs. has shown me that numbers are only part of the answer. We have many students accepted to the Ivies each year. What is always surprising is that some of our “number perfect” candidates and val. get rejected while some of our B/B+ students get in. If you met the students who get accepted you will find some interesting individuals who were able to shine outside the school building. Their entire lives were not dedicated to just getting in to an ivy and it paid off.<br>
Take courses that challenge AND interest you (whether AP or not), find a passion or two (not necessarily related to academics), and have other interests besides academics. Do not get discouraged by those who are posting high scores…you may be surprised…and so may they…
To provide a counterpoint:
I’m going into my junior year and my passion is literary criticism. Not reviews or anything popular, really dense, academic, literary criticism. It’s what I spend a lot of my time thinking about – and a lot of my time working on – but it’s something that I can’t put on a college application. It’s totally unsaleable as an EC too; I can’t go to a high school publication and try to get a five page essay published that only covers two sentences in a book.
So, what am I to do? I’m not athletic, I’m not a URM; I don’t have legacy status anywhere I’d care to apply and I can’t translate my real passion into something that’s eye-grabbing on a college application; but, I know that I need an education from somewhere decent (preferably good) to worm my way into the academic, slightly useless field I love with all my post-pubescent and pre-college acceptance heart.
It’s great that you’ve managed to go out and take the world by the short hairs OP but, I can’t be you. My best shot at a college admittance is improving my test scores. I’m an ‘conventionally’ good student; I plan to take AP tests in things like ‘Human Geography’ and I’m not ashamed of that, because it’ll help me get into a school where I can do what I’m passionate about.
OP, if I had to name a takeaway – and I hope that you don’t find it terribly condescending that I’m ‘naming a takeaway’ – it’d have to be this: you were lucky enough or talented enough to have a passion that fit somewhere on the common application, the rest of us don’t. We’re all glad for your success, but, please try to be a little more understanding about how we’re trying to achieve our own success.
EDIT: Just realized I applied to a nearly year-old thread. I’m smooth like that.
I will also reply to this year-old thread, and your months-old post. Just want to encourage you in your direction of literary criticism. How about pick an especially meaningful literary passage and write a VERY meaningful essay around that?
@DressingIron
I beg to differ that you can’t “use” that extra curricular. Passion shines through. Also OP that’s an awesome story!
@DressingIron: Totally cool passion and EC. Find a way to describe it, give titles of reviews, anything you’ve done or attempted. write about it in your essay, too.
Ugh you people can be such drags sometimes. I saw a guy get into Yale with an 1800 (Latino, firstgen, low income). GOOD FOR HIM! HE DESERVES IT! If he met their standard, then who are you to say he didn’t deserve it?
For some reason, people REALLY hate to be reminded that not everyone who gets into an elite school will have fantastic SAT scores. There are many other ways to be fantastic.
The problem with discouraging great students with low scores is that there are a handful of students like this every year who make the cut. If this is you, my advice is go for it, yo! Now, if you’re like a 3.3 with a 1700 and no ECs, like, of course you’re not what Ivys are looking for. But if you’re a 4.0, a 1700 who started a major charity as a sophomore at an underfunded school, take the shot.
It’s very difficult to try predicting where you’ll end up. A lot of the process is very difficult to decipher, though the standard “do well and you’ll be fine in admissions” seems to hold true for the most part. Maybe the admissions officers do know better than you do? I’ve known a lot of people who didn’t get into what they perceived was their best fit/top choice school and ended up at an institution that really allowed them to flourish.