<p>I’m neither an athlete, legacy, nor a minority, and I just got into Vanderbilt (a school much higher ranked than the ones you listed) with a 31 on the ACT. I was definitely in the bottom 25th percentile for scores, my ECs, grades, and essays got me in. I know kids who get into top schools with 30s, too, and even more who don’t get in with 32+. Your theory is very flawed–scores don’t determine the fate of an application, especially when there are other good things that stand out.</p>
<p>With all due respect, you shouldn’t have expected to get into Notre Dame. I have a friend with a 33 ACT, good ECs, 4.0 uw gpa, and 11 AP classes who just got outright rejected. You also only took 4 AP classes, while most competitive applicants probably took over 8.</p>
<p>And that is your Problem…EC list too long??? You know what that tells Adcoms? I have no passion in my life…I am just gonna do a ton of ECs w/ leadership and be wishy-washy. Honestly if you had 2/3 ECs you were TRUELY passionate in, it woulda increased your chances, Btw how were your Essays</p>
<p>YOUJAR, we don’t have to look further than CC to look at some of the Inequalities in this whole admission process. My Example is a poster who goes by Silverturtle. Great poster, who did a fantastic job in creating a treatise for SAT preperaion. He had 2400 in SAT1 and 36 in ACT and other STATS galore. The only IVY he got into was Brown. I am not belittling Brown but that is the way it goes. Look at MIT posts today, why one poster is accepted and another rejected baffles me. Persiandad, your acievement is truly remarkable. In the end this is where CC helped me a lot.</p>
<p>@allabout SAT: Your continued bitter posts tell me you need to talk to your school counselor or family therapist. You are wallowing in your failure and trying to blame everyone and everything except yourself.</p>
<p>This old thread may go a long way toward explaining what happened to the OP: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1193457-esse-quam-videri-how-do-college-applications.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1193457-esse-quam-videri-how-do-college-applications.html</a>.</p>
<p>Not that the OP will believe a word of it, I expect.</p>
<p>I contacted the regional rep yesterday and was told “You really should not of applied to ND with a 1350 SAT score” interesting …this was the same person asking me to send in additional paperwork about a month ago. She said the competition was increased this year and the SAT was too low. Thanks for the advice… just confirmed my thread.</p>
<p>You’ve confirmed that an unhooked applicant shouldn’t expect to be admitted to a highly selective college or university with standardized test scores that are low compared to the applicant pool. </p>
<p>That’s not news. Nor is it quite the same as what you were ranting about in the beginning. Furthermore, when that rep at Notre Dame was asking you for more information, she was probably hoping to get something that would make you more competitive despite your bottom-quartile SAT score. It’s unfortunate for you that there aren’t many things besides dunking a basketball with two hands that get such applicants into places like ND, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame her for trying on your behalf. I doubt she was trying to lead you on; she had far too much work to spend her time doing something like that. </p>
<p>Your college decisions may have been all about SATs. And your decisions have obviously left you bitter. But you’re trying to generalize inappropriately from your own experiences. </p>
<p>Sent from my DROIDX using CC</p>
<p>Again, you’re not listening - that was 1350 within the context of the rest of your application. I’ll guarantee they accepted a few students with lower SAT scores than you - and not all URM, athletes, and legacies. 1350 was too low in the context of everything else you offered. </p>
<p>They want a package, and the different parts of the package balance each other. I don’t know how your schools weights your average, but your 4.0 weighted and the undweighter fair close suggests you didn’t take a particularly rigorous load of classes. The lower SAT score in the context of those classes suggests that your school may not offer much rigor. Combine that with a laundry list of ECs, rather than a balanced list of a few, and you don’t look like an appealing candidate. You look like a non-committal jack of all trades, who might not flourish in ND’s environment. </p>
<p>Let’s look at the common data set for ND:
roughly 16,000 students applied for 2012 admission, and 4,000 were accepted
Now, down to the next set of boxes, where they mark what is most important. Only one box is selected for “very important.” That would be rigor of secondary school record - how rigorous was yours?</p>
<p>Now look at your SAT scores compared to the profile in the CDS:
You report 650 Reading - that’s below the 25th percentile for admitted students (though just below, so probably 20% of accepted students scored 650 or lower, and 6% did in fact score below 600).
You report 700 Math - that’s above 25th percentile, but 52% scored 700 or better. That makes you average. Again, 48% of the admitted students has lower scores than you.
You don’t even report your Writing score - we don’t know if they look at it or not. I do note that they list information about ACT composite scores, but not subscores, which suggests they might in fact look at the total including all 3 parts, not just reading/math.</p>
<p>The Rep asked you for additional paperwork because she thought perhaps there was more to your story - maybe a compelling reason they should accept you with low average scores. Read the link provided above - in your essay or other “paperwork” did you explain why you founded a non-profit? Did you show passion for the work you did with that non-profit? The rep told you “scores” because they indicated you needed to sell yourself, and you didn’t. Note that YOU should not have applied with 1350 score - others may have done fine. It was not the scores alone that sank you.</p>