<p>prefect-you are right I think it is more like 50-60% for all minorities/international etc. </p>
<p>There are other categories like children of professors etc. that also have a big leg up. I think what generally happens is kids that have a connection-child of donor/athletics/urm that it is understood that as long as you achieve a basic threshold for your test scores that you have a very good chance of being admitted.</p>
<p>TX- I was just referencing the schools that 20more was denied at. The benefit of applying to a school with 7-8000 students is that obviously things like athletics make up a much smaller percentage of the school population. What some don’t realize is that while the HYP’s of the world don’t do so well in football/basketball they actually have more sports teams than most major public Universities.</p>
<p>For example, an above average student-would say top 25% of class-got into Princeton from our school because he was a very good fencer.</p>
<p>OP: It’s hard for people to make any meaningful comments w/o knowing your other ECs, etc. If you have outstanding EC, I’d say you just have bad luck. Otherwise, that’s the aspect people need to strengthen if they want to stand out for an IVY application. </p>
<p>Plus, no IVY is not the end of the world. many successful people went to state universities. Don’t bog down by this. Move ahead. If you have potential, the future will show, no matter where you are. Just make sure you go to a good college, not necessarily an ivy though.</p>
<p>Princeton has an outstanding fencing team and clearly a recruited athlete from that sport is going to have a “leg up” as long as his/her stats meet a minimum threshold. A few years back Princeton took a student who had a C+ average (not a misprint) with correspondingly low SAT scores (for Princeton) who was a tall left handed baseball pitcher, and URM with a pro-athlete Dad. </p>
<p>As the parent of twins who went through this process last year, I understand the OP’s shock and hurt. However, as many others have said, the OP was accepted at some phenomenal schools, some of which are actually rated higher than a number of the Ivy’s on the dreaded US News list. (I don’t know if the OP cares about that.) I understand that they don’t have the name cache that some of the Ivy’s do, but you will find brilliant peers and interesting people at all of them.</p>
<p>I think it would be great if we could somehow convince ALL of next year’s applicants to refuse to state their race on the admissions forms. Think of how much it would confuse the admissions committees if everyone refused to provide the information necessary for them to carry out their quotas/preference system of admissions.</p>
<p>And on the violin playing remarks, our child actually attends a prestigious public magnet high school for the performing arts and, you guessed it, they also have racial quotas. It’s easier to get into the violin program if you’re not Asian – so being an Asian violin player would actually be a meaningful accomplishment, since half of the violin spots are allocated to non-Asians and URMs.</p>
<p>I think high achievers in Asian are very typical. So, they compete among themself when it comes to college acceptance. The school do not want to have all Asians but yet it is kind of unfair for those who work hard.<br>
My heart goes to those who is heart broken.</p>
<p>All that means is that your collective 3.96’s and near-perfect scores reflect just book-smarts, and not common sense.</p>
<p>These are colleges with single-digit acceptance rates. They turn down plenty of people with perfect or near-perfect stats. They make it ABUNDANTLY clear that they don’t just “admit by the numbers” and they don’t think twice about turning down the 4.0 for the 3.8 kid who they think is more fascinating. So why you would think that your high scores would make you more of a shoo-in than any other reasonably qualified applicant is beyond me.</p>
<p>Moreover, the OP personally got admitted to some fabulous schools - U Chicago, Middlebury, Carleton, Northwestern, Rice, and Vanderbilt. Why is he going on about not getting into the Ivies/MIT/Stanford? What, are they all under some collective delusion that the Ivies/M/S are on some kind of greater plane and offer greater opportunities and more of a golden ticket than any of the other universities? They are all GREAT. In the broad scheme of things, these universities and their opportunities are pretty much all the same – creme de la creme – and more opportunities than any one person can take advantage of. </p>
<p>What IS it with this unsophisticated prioritizing of the Ivies+MIT+Stanford as being on some even higher astral plane to strive for? It’s all good. Don’t you get it?</p>
<p>My heart <em>doesn’t</em> go out to people who were accepted at 6 fabulous schools but who whine about not getting into 8 other fabulous schools. If they don’t have the brains to see that these places are all fabulous – well, guess what, then all the perfect SAT’s and GPA’s don’t make them “smart.” At all.</p>
<p>While I am sympathetic with the OP and friends on their disappointment, I’m surprised that they were not prepared for such an outcome. The ivies and other elite schools fill their classes the way they want, not the way you might want. As previous posters have pointed out, they have many more qualified candidates than they need, and IMHO, bringing something unique to the table isn’t something to be dismissed. </p>
<p>Many other wonderful colleges and universities rely more heavily on stats than the elites, making admission more predictable. If you apply to elite schools, you have to be aware of how they select their students and understand it. If you don’t agree with their policies, that is another issue. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you want to support such an approach to filling a class by deciding to spend your money on an application fee.</p>
<p>Considering s/he appears to have applied to every single top school, with the possible exception of Caltech, my conclusion is that s/he cares very much about the rankings and prestige. Maybe that’s the part of OP’s problem. Hard to convince Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Duke, UPenn, Dartmouth and a horde of others, that they are each your #1 and you love them true and only.</p>
<p>They are hungry for the prestige of the Ivies – but they don’t realize the Ivies got that way precisely because they AREN’T the Caltechs of the world that are based primarily upon grades / stats (no offense to Caltech – just a different model). They want to play in that world sooooooo badly that they think it’s an appreciably different world from the world of the other fabulous schools they got into – but they don’t like the stated criteria. Well, then don’t play the game. No one said you had to. A teenager who really thinks that the Ivies+MIT+Stanford are on some plane far above a whole host of other top universities and LAC’s is just not thinking straight, and isn’t really all that smart.</p>
You should be aware that the Ivies don’t place the stats bar this high. The Ivies especially, expect reasonable stats, but they are far more interested in leadership (academic leadership (Intel finalists), EC Leadership, Community Leadership. They are looking for the power brokers of the next generation.</p>
<p>PG: are you saying that these students are looking at the colleges one dimensionally and not holistically :D?</p>
<p>BTW, Caltech looks at, and wants, much more than stellar stats. It’s just that what they are looking at is all math/science related (that one dimensional thing again).</p>
<p>Such harsh words from so many posters. It was a tough admissions game. You have my sympathy OP and friends. Good luck to you as you move forward.</p>
<p>Too bad the OP and friends didn’t look at the data describing who does NOT get accepted into the Ivies.</p>
<p>Example: Brown said NO to 80% of Valedictorians, 80% of those w/an 800 Verbal SAT, 75% of those with an 800 Math SAT, and 85% of Salutatorians.</p>
<p>Now, to be fair, that means one is 2-3 times more likely to be accepted if one is in one of those categories, but . . it still means that a super majopritty og hihgly qualified students do not get into the HYPed schools.</p>
<p>Their surprise is understandable, but the data are there for anyone who wants to look. Hopefully these kids also applied to other schools where they both “fit” the school’s profile and have a greater chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>That there are folks on this board with serious misunderstandings of probability and stats.</p>
<p>As Quantmech said, IF there is a random element to admissions (and I don’t think anyone has denied that there is) then applying to more schools in a given degree of difficulty (as long as the level of difficulty relative to quals is not such thats ones odds are ZERO) WILL increase the odds of admission. </p>
<p>Thus the strategy of applying to every Ivy, or every top 20 school, or whatever CAN be rational (at least if you ignore the time devoted to all those apps and the difficulty of doing quality work on school specific essays, showing interest, etc, the financial cost of the app fees, etc). We dont like that its rational, cause that strategy has costs for everyone else, from overworked Ivy adcons, to distorted admission rate stats - but the fact that its unfortunate does not make it irrational in terms of the interests of the applicant.</p>
<p>Kei-again I think that supports just how far some schools have strayed from admission based on merit and academic achievement.</p>
<p>When someone asks me about their kid getting into a HYPS I tell them the honest truth cure cancer or find a sport otherwise you don’t fit what they want.</p>
<p>But that’s nonsense. These schools, like every other elite school, have a mix. A mix of nerds-in-the-library and student-council-presidents. A mix of sciency types and arts types. A mix of cancer-curers and poetry-writers. A mix of athletes and of kids whose idea of exercise is lifting the pen from the paper.</p>
<p>I think people in this board have a point, 20more.
ECs are just as vital as your scores, and I have a feeling that you haven’t really done anything physical, all you are talking about is the geek stuff, so I am not surprised that Ivies rejected you, or, something in your application turned them off.
Since you are rejected you can call and ask them what was their explanation, although I think I know it.</p>