@lb43823 I know someone who got into Harvard but not into Northwestern! Dang your stats are way better than mine and I got into NU through ED.
But anyways, I don’t think it’s any use to fret over the fact that you got waitlisted at NU when Ivy decisions are coming out a week from today.
Even if you don’t get into the Ivy’s (which I think you will) I’m pretty sure that you will be successful at any school you attend - quoting from a previous year’s Harvard rejection letter: “The particular college a student attends is far less important than what the student does to develop his or her strengths and talents over the next four years”
"I skipped a grade. I have a legitimate reason for admission deferral. I could say that I want the year off so I can travel the world, and that way I will catch up with kids in my age group. It is not as bad as it looks. "
That is fine, but what is NOT fine is thinking you will have a better chance at acceptance at the colleges that rejected you in the first place. They keep records.
OR that you will do any better with other colleges the second time, UNLESS you have done something really valuable with your time off.
You need to really read this long thread- it will give you a perspective to the perils of thinking you will have better results the second time around.
And In order to reapply to college you will have to - ONCE MORE- #1 get NEW LORs from your old teachers who will NOT have seen you in their classrooms for over a year, and who have to write LOR’s for their CURRENT SENIORS. What kind of LOR’s do you really think you will get from them the second time around?
2- You also have to get another LOR and the transcript from you college counselor at your old HS.
And send in all your test scores, write all new essays, etc. etc.
Its WAY too soon to decide you will “try again”
@menloparkmom I don’t care about the waitlist to Northwestern. I am sure there were other qualified candidates. But even if I go to a not as prestigious school, I am still at least proud of my various research accomplishments throughout high school, as well as my scores and GPA and other math things. Getting in by luck chance for someone with extremely low scores and barely any ECs with does not mitigate the value of my accomplishments. I do not regret what I have done in high school, and I am damn proud of it. I won’t have someone who is obviously flying sky high right now to diminish the value of all the things I have done.
@patrisha727, Harvard SCEA has a much higher admit rate than NU RD, so that really isn’t all that surprising.
To the OP, you’re 16, so you lack maturity and awareness, but once you reach 40, you’ll realize that so long as your school is good enough (and RPI and GTech certainly are good enough), success is mostly about you, not your school.
I’ve known folks from RPI and GTech who have done terrifically and folks from Cornell who didn’t amount to much.
There are certainly some differences in opportunities as you go down tiers, but it’s actually a gradually declining gradient, not one where there’s a cliff between one tier and the next.
So the difference in opportunities between Cornell/Columbia/Northwestern and RPI/GTech/NEU’s program (and between Cornell/Columbia/Northwestern and Princeton/Stanford/Harvard) are fairly small and swamped by the difference in the individual qualities of each student.
@PurpleTitan he graduated high school in 2014 -he applied to northwestern and harvard both RD and got into harvard but not into NU - sorry I didn’t clarify that earlier
@patrisha727 Yes, but that is probably because he was way too good. He was most likely someone NU knew they had little to no chance of recruiting. In fact, colleges wanted him more than he wanted the college.
Probably an Intel ISEF finalist or something of the nature.
Let me just point the obvious out to you-you are harping on the fact that the majority of the students at lower tier schools do not have as much drive and not as much opportunity as those in the highest tier. I’m not going to argue that point with you now because you haven’t even received all of your decisions but you and I both know that even if you go to a lower tier school, you are going to be at top of the food chain getting most, if not all, the opportunities that the school has to offer. Who cares about all the other slugs that attend those schools, they will be getting your scraps! (By the way, I was one of those slugs and I’m doing very well so of course I am trying to be funny!) I just hope that your parents are being supportive and that they are trying to reassure you.
As much as it is possible for you, look at the next week as an adventure. You’ve done what you can do, now sit back and see what happens. Life is like that sometimes. Do what you can, then let go, since you don’t have any more control.
@educateddarcy Thanks so much. You along with @menloparkmom have been extremely supportive and helpful. I am going to relax and take it easy. No need for extra stress. So what if I don’t get in to an Ivy? Life will go on…and although I am not going to accept it easily, I will move on. And I will always be a fighter. Even if things don’t work out. This is just God’s plan, and hey life is to be lived and enjoyed. Not worried over.
@onceuponamom Thanks as well (I just read your post). And yes “Let it go, let it go, can’t hold it back anymoreeee”
I had an interview for Harvard in January with a UW-Madison law professor. We were talking about comparing an ivy league school’s academic environment with that of a state school (UW-Madison in particular). One of my concerns in attending UW-Madison versus an Ivy or comparable school was that I’d be surrounded by a bunch of students that don’t care about education and are just there for the party. I think his response was excellent. It went something like this:
“There will be kids of all types at every college. At UW-Madison or a state school, the “smart”, dedicated students will be harder to find, but they will still be there.”
The great professors will be there too. Many of them have educations from schools that are “better” than the school they teach at. It may be harder to get acclimated, find a group of like-minded, dedicated friends, and get to know the best professors, but it is still possible.
Also, it’s not over for you yet. We never know what will be in store next Tuesday. So much is “random” about the admissions process. Some counselors may be more/less willing to advocate for you at committee. Others might be searching for a particular student.
I wish you (and the rest of us) the best of luck on the 31st!
Yo dude chill the hell out. My friend got accepted to 0 of the top 14 schools he applied to, and on the last day he got into Stanford. You’re VERY likely to get into one of the top schools.
If you average your chances of admission across all top schools and say that it’s .25 (which is not absurd) then,
P(acceptance to a T10 school) = .25;
P(not accepted to a T10 school) = 1 - P(acceptance to a T10 school) = .75.
P(rejection from all top 10 schools) = (.75)^10 = 0.05 = 5%.
Acceptance to at least one top 10 school = P(acceptance into at least one top 10 school) = 1 - P(rejection from all top 10 schools) = 95%.
Now you can’t definitively mathematically predict that you’ll be admitted, but just playing around with some numbers shows that the likelihood of getting rejected from EVERY OTHER SCHOOL REMAINING is very LOW percentage. I would bet on you.
@adezar2 No offense, but I have seen that before. It is flawed. The schools are compounding variables that are not completely independent of each other. The chance of acceptance at one school correlates to another. It is good in theory and in a perfect world it would work, but since college admissions have some truth to them and are not based completely off random decisions, this does not work. And plus, 25% for admission to top 10 school?! What the heck?!
I am not revisiting the stress of an Ivy-league admission. I am just saying, that way of thinking does not really make sense
“The schools are compounding variables that are not completely independent of each other” Yes. This is correct. But those variables are in your favor based on your stats and achievements. the Chance of acceptance does not necessarily correlate to a chance of acceptance to another school when said schools are Harvard and Northwestern. Maybe between Harvard and Yale this is true. There was a girl in my highschool last year that only applied to HYPSM and she got into all 5. No safeties. Maybe yale was her safety since she got a likely letter. But i think she would have likely been waitlisted to a school like Northwestern.
And it also would have been smart for Northwestern to have waitlisted her, since I know that there was no way in hell she would go there
this ^^^ kind of mathematical nonsense spouted by @adezar2 is trotted out by someone every year.
INCREASING the number of top colleges you apply to does NOT increase your chances of acceptance at any one college.
EACH application is like placing a bet on a lottery ticket. IN SEPARATE LOTTERIES.
Does you chance of winning one go up because you bought tickets in 11 other lotteries?? NO!
Mathematically, your chances of winning the lottery in 1 state has no effect on your “chances” of winning another in a separate state. The same goes for College admissions. ~X(
had like 2380 SAT, 36 ACT. Placed 4th nationally in the Harvard-MIT math competition, USAMO qualifier, National Chem olympiad qualifer (top 100 in the US), had like a recommendation letter from the senator of our state, because of some volunteering stuff she did, did biomedical/neuroscience research at a good nearby university (said nearby university also has a top 15 med school in the country).
and was the undisputed/landslide president of every STEM-related club at the school
As a current sophomore at Northwestern, I haven’t met a student who has had a combination of resiliency, resourcefulness, dedication, and intelligence as this girl as of yet.
@adezar2 Welp. Thats all I can say. I am jealous, but I see why she obviously deserved acceptance. But one thing that kind of does get me a little heated about people like that is if they are THAT good, why apply to HYPSM. I mean all of them…she could have applied to two or three, or done SCEA to the one she wanted to go to, and then stopped. I mean, doesnt it just take spots away from someone else?
If I had gotten into Princeton SCEA, I would have just done MIT RD because that WAS my dream but Princeton SCEA is easier to get into than MIT EA…and I am not high caliber applicant like her.
