<p>Personally, I think it'll be stupid to apply only to Ivy leagues but every year there are students who do this mistake. Do you think there should be another better option for them? Now that most colleges have common application and we can apply only once a year ( I presume ), will it be okay for a student to waste a whole year and wait for the next year to re apply?</p>
<p>1) You don’t have to waste the year, it is wiser to use it productively. 2) In May of each year, NACAC releases a list of colleges who didn’t fill their class as expected and will take applications. They can look for colleges with spring admit too, maybe their state colleges have that option.</p>
<p>They can start at a community college, do well there, and transfer to one of their state universities, or some other state university if they can afford it, or a transfer-friendly private university.</p>
<p>If you have high stats and get rejected from the mid/high tier UCs, the system will give you an option to apply to a lower-tier UC like Merced or Riverside. </p>
<p>I guess they would not be considered bright then. How so?</p>
<p>I’ve always wondered, is there a solid reason that one kid with the seemingly perfect everything gets rejected from every top college? I know people say it’s a lot of luck but really how likely is it that luck turns out bad for 8+ schools? If every college rejected him, there must have been something colleges all saw that made them turn away. What could that be?</p>
<p>The super-selective colleges get more top-end applicants than they can admit. So, unless the applicant has something really special and attractive to a given college, in addition to top-end courses/grades/tests, s/he will likely be rejected. Top-end courses/grades/tests are typically a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to get admitted at a super-selective school. If you do not have a “hook”, you probably need some unusual achievement (e.g. state or national level extracurricular achievement, award, or recognition) to have a chance.</p>
<p>(@kei04086) With your stats, sign up for UCR’s guaranteed admission program during June/July, then include UCR in your regular UC application. Then you can stop worrying about not having a true safety.</p>
<p>It’s not something they saw, most likely, but something that they didn’t see: The lack of a hook. At the Ivies now, there are literally way too many non-hooked applicants with great (but generic) everythings for the number of slots that they have available for non-hooked applicants. Add in the fact that many schools now want to see a lot of passion for their school, so if you don’t show that, there’s no reason for any elite to admit you.</p>
<p>In any case, all this fixating on the Ivies is silly. Not only are there great schools in the tier below that can get you just as far or farther in life as the Ivies, but a little fact that most teenagers aren’t willing to admit to themselves (I know I wasn’t): In the US, it isn’t what school you go to that matters in how successful you are; it’s you yourself that determines how successful you are. So long as you’re pretty smart, if you’re humble, hard-working, hungry, and nice to people, you’re going to succeed. If you’re entitled, lazy, and an ass to people, having an Ivy degree isn’t going to save you. </p>
<p>what could it be? 1) The kid sounds like an entitled jerk in his/her essays (despite the gallery of ooohs and ahhhhs from proofreaders). 2) A LOR says something negative. </p>
<p>Either will tank an app like the Titanic’s iceberg.</p>
<p>@T26E4 Well really how do you prevent a teacher from bombing your LoR?</p>
<p>Ask teachers who like you to write recs for you. Do you have a strong relationship with any teachers who like you? Finding mentors and being good to them is, in general, a good idea for success in life.</p>
<p>@kei04086: Even if a teacher doesn’t like you or doesn’t think highly of you, I think he/she would answer truthfully if you asked him/her this question: “I’d like to ask you to write me a college LoR. Do you think you could strongly endorse me or would you suggest I ask someone else?”</p>
<p>I think *every *HS student should ask for their LoRs with this caveat.</p>
<p>College adcoms are skilled at detecting applicants who are a product of their environment. These are the ones who simply got “on the treadmill” after birth and got propagated through the process - till college application time.</p>
<p>They may have great SAT scores, have top grades, are great athletes from all the money spent on their training, have fed the poor in Africa, or have similar achievements.</p>
<p>Colleges look deeply to see if those achievements are because of the individual or because of the environment.</p>
<p>The Ivy leagues will take someone from the poorest family (academic achievement against all odds and diversity on paper) or the richer families (it is nice to have the president or governors kid at your school for the nation wide recognition and the “connections”) before they will take middle class unless that student is extremely bright with many unique EC’s.</p>
<p>@Ultimablade
I agree with the poorer families thing (from what I have seen), I would say the person from the richer family would need a “hook” tho else they need the exact same types of ECs as the middle-class people. </p>
<p>@kei04086
<a href=“College Admissions: Inside the Decision Room - YouTube”>College Admissions: Inside the Decision Room - YouTube;
<p>@Ultimablade: I disagree with your general assertions. Certainly top schools are cognizant of the princelings but you over-estimate those who apply and are otherwise academically qualified and would possess traits that are favored by the admissions committees. Your assertion of the “old boys network” of wholesale admission of eastern prep schoolboys into the Ivies was rife in previous generations but has generally faded. They aren’t immune but to imagine tons of slots set aside would be a mistake. How many of GWBush’s daughters were admitted to Yale? The one with the academic chops, not the other one. And your category of “richer families” is about 60% of the entire student bodies of those 8 schools. That’s a lot of celebrity kids – and that’s just not the case. There were plenty of “middle class” kids at those schools when I was in college. With ridiculously generous fin aid at some of them (HYP), I’d assert there are MORE middle class kids than before (at least at those three).</p>
<p>If someone applied only to Ivies, he/she is not so bright. It is a crap shot for any of them and rejection may happen from all of them at a chance higher than accepted by one.</p>
<p>@Ultimablade:
It’s not so much the very bright kids with lots of EC’s, but the very bright kids with a hook. So what do you do if you’re a very bright kid without a hook? </p>
<ol>
<li>Success in life in the US still depends mostly on you as an individual rather than the school that you went to. Top state schools can often get you where you want to go if you’re bright and motivated enough. You may even be able to land some nice scholarships at the less selective (but still highly-regarded) privates.</li>
<li>If you really, really want to get in to an elite private, I know that some of the Ivy-equivalents really like kids who love them, so find out which schools care a lot about being loved up, and start loving them up. They’re doing this for yield rate management, of course, but this still is to your advantage.if that school would rather take a bright kid with no hook who woos them hard over a bright kid with a hook who’s tepid about them. I know that Northwestern is one school who really cares about that aspect now.</li>
</ol>
<p>Actually, I would say yield management but also alumni donations. Northwestern really wants kids who really want to be there.</p>
<p>It’s good training for life, actually. I’d rather reward a kid who really wants something and works hard to get it than a kid who’s just superbright and coasts by on talent.</p>
<p>BTW, this new admissions philosophy at NU started after the school got the president of Williams (which has an exceptionally high alumni donation rate), so Williams probably operates the same way. </p>