What did I do wrong?

Applying to College Admission Stories
1

Hey all, been a long time lurker here and wanted to share my admissions story. To start with, below are my stats.

SAT I: 2350 (780 reading, 790 writing, 780 math), took this freshman year
SAT II: 710 Chinese, 780 Biology Molecular, 800 US History, 800 Physics, 800 Chemistry, 800 Math II
5s on 15 AP Exams, 4s on 2 (Physics B and Comsci A)
GPA: 4.55 (valedictorian)

Awards: Usual AP stuff, National Merit Finalist (a little burned that I didn’t land the scholarship itself), 145th out of 4000+ in UToronto Biology competition

Extracurriculars: viola in local symphony and science olympiad until 10th grade, did speech & debate for one year and placed in regional competition (had to give up owing to schedule conflict), 4 years of NJROTC air rifle Marksmanship (made varsity senior year, went to Phoenix for a national competition), 4 years of programming club (made secretary senior year), 4 years of jeopardy club (made treasurer senior year), served as VP of Chinese culture club, did a summer technology camp in freshman year, worked as a database intern at the local university between junior and senior year, tutored math and programming privately, wrote a 100,000 word unpublished novel (planning to get it out later this year)

Recs: had my history and math teacher do them, knew both of them very well and they should’ve been decent. Counselor one should’ve been all right.

Essays: centered my common app essay around writing my book and how I integrated my experiences together to create a finished work, had multiple people take a look for editing and ultimately positive feedback. Worked very hard on all of my writing supplements; tried to take a different bent and write myself as something other than your typical STEM nerd.

Demographics: 'Murican-born Asian male, upper middle class

My results (applied to 19 schools in all):

Harvard: rejected
Yale: rejected
Princeton: rejected
Stanford: rejected
MIT: deferred, then rejected
Caltech: deferred, then rejected
Olin: waitlisted for candidates’ interview, then rejected
Dartmouth: waitlisted, then rejected
Columbia: waitlisted, then rejected
UPenn Wharton: waitlisted, then rejected
UChicago: waitlisted, then rejected
Williams: waitlisted, then rejected
Harvey Mudd: waitlisted, then rejected
Rice: waitlisted, then rejected

Amherst: accepted but stiffed on financial aid, final offer was 50k/year after much wrangling
Cooper Union: accepted, final cost was 38k/year
UCSD: accepted w/ regents
UCLA: accepted
Berkeley: accepted (a little burned that I was offered Regents but didn’t receive it. At any rate it’s where I’m going, and I’ll be majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

This whole experience has had me wondering about my writing skills (prided myself on them before) and what exactly I did wrong to be rejected from a whole 15 private schools. After seeing some of the resumes posted here–I’ve seen people who placed nationally in Model UN or Debate competitions, won Intel science awards, or started up highly popular apps or nonprofits–I can understand that compared to them I’m nothing, and compared to them I had no chance for HYPSM and the like. But I’ll also see people who (in my opinion) were of comparable caliber, yet made it in to a lot of these privates. I understand that essays and “fit” play a substantial role in admissions, but I worked very hard on the former and saw myself as fulfilling the latter for a good percentage of the schools that I was either waitlisted or rejected from. Thus–what I’d like to ask is, looking at what I did what do you think?

If it’s relevant, as a whole my school did worse than last year; comparatively few people made it into the first-tier schools. The few that did make into places like Stanford and MIT, came straight out of left field even by their own admission. And at my school Berkeley is considered something of a given among high-achieving students, but this year many people thought to be shoo-ins were either waitlisted or rejected and the number of people admitted roughly 40% from last year. So on the whole I suppose I shouldn’t be disappointed; I’m looking forward to living and studying in the Bay Area either way.

2

Wow, you sound highly accomplished and qualified - honestly I am surprised you were eventually rejected from the lower ivies/top LACs/Rice/Olin because you seem over-qualified for them. Especially since other people from your school made it into Stanford/MIT, yet you were valedictorian!

You actually have similar stats as mine when I was applying (co2018), and I had very similar outcomes as you for HYPSM, but did eventually get acceptances to the lower ivies/top LACs (lol yeah, Berkeley was considered a given at my school as well; basically everyone got accepted there. Still, it just probably means your school (like mine) is full of highly accomplished people). I am also of the Asian demographic (lol). Honestly, I feel like for us, it really is a game of numbers, so I guess you just didn’t have super good luck this time around.

In any case, Berkeley’s engineering program is phenomenal, and I’m sure you’ll thrive there!

Also, your writing skills seem just fine. Don’t worry about it!

3

You’re going to Berkeley – the glamorous place that people from around the world want to attend but they either don’t get accepted or can’t afford. Here’s where Berkeley stands compared to the other universities you applied to on lists of global rankings:

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings
1 - Harvard
2 - MIT
3 - Berkeley

http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html
1 - Harvard
2 - Stanford
3 - MIT
4 - Berkeley

http://cwur.org/2014/
1 - Harvard
2 - Stanford
3 - MIT
4 - Cambridge (didn’t apply)
5 - Oxford (didn’t apply)
6 - Columbia
7 - Berkeley

https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2015/world-ranking/#/
1 - Cal Tech
2 - Harvard
3 - Oxford (didn’t apply)
4 - Stanford
5 - Cambridge (didn’t apply)
6 - MIT
7 - Princeton
8 - Berkeley

It looks to me like you applied to 2-5 universities above Berkeley internationally that did not accept you. If you look at rankings for Electrical Engineering that you will study, the global rankings are MIT, Stanford and Berkeley, or MIT, Tsinghua (didn’t apply) and Berkeley. So any way you slice it and dice it, Berkeley is anywhere from 3rd to 8th in the world. If you consider that it’s a public university and only compare it to public universities, then it’s number 1 across the board for where you applied. Can you get any better than number 1?

Bottom line is, who cares about all those rejections anyway? YOU ARE NOT “NOTHING.” You did absolutely nothing wrong, and could not have done anything more. You’re brilliant and you worked hard fulfilling your potential. Just continue doing what you’re doing, and don’t let anyone – not your parents, friends, teachers or total strangers and random others – make you feel inferior. As Elizabeth Roosevelt said, "“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Don’t consent!! Think of the 99.999 percent of the people out there that you’re superior to – in achievements and in opportunities before you right now.

Berkeley isn’t second class – it’s the top-ranked public university in the entire world. It’s first class, and so are you. Congratulate yourself and move on from the whole college application process. You succeeded!

4

I think part of it is you appeared like another Asian STEM nerd. Not sure what you need to get into top schools if Asian. There are lots of Asians at Harvard etc. I don’t know if they have hooks or better ECs or what. I am tutoring a student who should have close to your stats. Valedictorian, 2350 SATs, 4 800s on SAT IIs, 13 5s on AP exams. Looks pretty good to me.

Berkeley sounds like the best choice. However, the others you got in are probably a little more prestigious. Berkeley is a top university, but has a very large undergraduate student body. I don’t know if this is acceptable to talk about, but I have a Jewish name, and when I went to school, LACs like Amherst were almost impossible to get into if Jewish. At a LAC like Amherst, you wouldn’t be able to study engineering, and Berkeley has much better programs technically in the areas you want to study. Cooper Union is an engineering school, but pretty rigid about what you study.

5

I think one of the things applicants tend to forget is that schools aren’t just admitting students who COULD go there, they try to admit students who are a good match for their particular school.

6

You did nothing wrong. This admissions process is unpredictable. Best of luck at USB.

7

How were your interviews? As for the second tier non-Ivys, I think there might be something to the "yield protection"theory. You look so good on paper that some schools reject you because they’re sure you’re going to get better offers on Ivy day. I’m sorry they didn’t pan out but you’ve really got to trust that you ended up at the right school for you. Congratulations on such a fine school! They are lucky to have you.

8

Thanks all. As for my interviews–I thought every one of my interviewers (Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, and UPenn) were interesting people, and judging by the verbal cues and gut reactions from them I believe I left a very good impression on all of them. I’ve heard that the interview isn’t so much another opportunity for an aspiring candidate to stand out, as just insurance that the candidate is a good enough human being. Thus I don’t put too much stock in them.

And I’ve heard again and again the whole “fit” argument. If that’s the case–if all these schools have their own specific mysterious criteria they’re REALLY looking for in an applicant–how do you explain the people who horizontal sweep all the Ivies plus Stanford and MIT? How is it possible that one human being, one personality type, can fulfill all of the varied desires of these institutions? To me, the one thing that those people have in common is that they did something very BIG–whether it was going to Carnegie Hall, whether it was turning a profit on a high school startup, whether it was winning national Latin/Siemens/Trumpet competitions. That’s the thing that I look back on and realize now that I never really had. But then I’ll see people who lacked this home runner accomplishment, applied to even less schools than I did, and made it into a good percentage of the ones that they wanted–and hence I’m back to square one wondering where I went wrong.

Another lesson learned that I’m still smarting over is that need-based financial aid is a complete and utter farce. My parents told me stories of their friends’ children, who managed to horizontal sweep the Ivies and play them against one another to squeeze out thousands of extra dollars. One of the guys they told me about used his financial aid packages to Cornell and Brown to haggle down Dartmouth from 50k/year all the way to 35k/year! And to put things into context–this was a guy who’d won a Siemens award, and this was a guy whose parents made even more money and held more assets than mine. So the conclusion I’m drawing (and I freely admit that no shortage of its rationale comes from bitterness over my own situation) is that “need-based” financial aid isn’t based on how much money the student needs, but how much the college needs the student on campus.

9

I’m torn between wanting to go down the rabbit hole with you, and thinking that what’s healthiest for you is to only reassure you that you’re clearly a great candidate, you’re at a terrifically sought-after school, and your future is so very bright. All of that is very true. Let me suggest a topic that I never really see here. I suspect that “what it takes” to distinguish yourself to adcoms varies depending on your region on the country or background. I’m thinking you’re from CA? Public school or parochial or prep? I think that a 2300 SAT from a prep school in MA would get a yawn from an adcom, but from a public school in Appalachia would probably sweep the Ivys. When my own son was preparing to apply to Ivys last year, I had absolute faith in his abilities, but wondered how he might stack up against folks like you from parts of the country with so much to offer in the way of educational opportunities. We are neither CA nor Appalachia, but definitely from an underrepresented part of the country in small-town midwest and our public schools are ranked just so-so nationally. I just have to wonder if the adcoms are fully aware of this disparity and how it colors the resumes of our nation’s finest. They must.

Another thing on this topic is the teacher letters of recommendation. I was taken aback to read your predictions of “decent” or “alright” recs. With your stats, I should think they’d be stellar. But again, if you’re at a school that sees multiple students Ivy-bound each year, perhaps they are harder to impress. I get the sense that my son’s teachers all felt lucky to see one like him come through their classrooms even once in their careers. I feel confident that their letters were raves.

10

@Firebolt1176 First of all, you didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, you did everything we hear that will get you into these top schools. Your stats are great. You seem like an amazing and smart person who will be very successful in anything you end up doing. However, I believe that @sattut said it right. “I think part of it is you appeared like another Asian STEM nerd.” In addition, @community2605 is also true. “You look so good on paper that some schools reject you because they’re sure you’re going to get better offers on Ivy day.”

A student (in DD16’s school) with similar stats as you was accepted to Harvard this year, but he made himself look very different than thousands of other Asian students. He participated in a lot of sports, a football player, in addition to 2 other sports, student government, and etc. He will probably never play or participate in any of those sports or extra curriculum activities again, but it got him noticed.

I think for successful students who have always done well, it is very hard to accept a huge disappointment like this, but things like this happen again and again in life. You will always remember this but will learn from it. My mother always said this quote “One will never know what getting up feels like if they have never fallen down.”

UCB is a great school. You will do great and good luck.

11

You’re going to UC Berkeley for EE/CS and asking what you did wrong?

12

Be glad for what you have. The schools that rejected you thought that other applicants were more deserving of admission, plain and simple.

13

It’s not conspiracy theory, but schools do have quotas in favor portions of the country that don’t produce many top applicants. They also have quotas against certain big cities, like NYC; maybe that applied to SF and LA. They also have quotas against some ethnic groups and in favor of others. That doesn’t make it easy to get in from Appalachia or whatever. The preparation there would be poor, and getting top grades would mean less.

In addition to ethnic quotas, there may be geographic issues. Studying STEM is also probably not helpful for an Asian. OP’s applications, recommendations, and interviews must not have been that good. Otherwise, he would have gotten accepted at an Ivy with pretty much perfect academics.

14

@Community2605 Yeah, I’ve heard before that adcoms don’t just ethnically select, but also geographically select–hence where I understand that being in California may have worked against me here. However I attended a public school (granted with a large number of AP classes available) and stated specifically that I used none of those $3000 summer prep class rackets to take the SAT, so again I’m still wondering. I didn’t choose to grow up in this state any more than your son chose to grow up in his, so while I understand the need for geographic diversity I’m still smarting a little bit over how something outside my control ended up being used against me. That would be one component of the answer I’ve been looking for, I see.

Additionally–when I stated that my letters of recommendation went “decently,” I suppose that I was being conservative. I spent many hours outside the classroom talking with these teachers about things both in and outside of class, and to this day can safely say that both of them understood me as a human being. Obviously in your situation, hindsight being 20/20 and all that, you can say that your son’s letters worked one way or another. If there was no happy ending to his story, you’d be questioning at some level what his teachers really wrote. For me, I can only stick to my positive gut feeling at the time.

@TomSrOfBoston Well, obviously that. I suppose my real question is WHY and HOW others succeeded where I failed, so that I’d have some kind of meaningful lesson to take with me into the future.

I mean–even the absolute smartest and most accomplished person in my entire school (had national tier accomplishments in both liberal arts and STEM) far from horizontal swept the Ivy League; he didn’t make it to his top choice of Stanford and ended up with only MIT and UPenn–far from an easy sweep of the Ivy League. With out of the blue results like that, I’m still wondering just what exactly what was it that kept him and me out. All this could of course be resolved easily with a transcript of adcom internal communications, but I’ll be seeing my grandchildren graduate before I ever read one of those.

@sattut Perhaps so. The two things I was really hoping would set me apart from the Asian STEM crowd would be the novel and the marksmanship hobbies, but looking back I often question whether having the first one unpublished and stuck in development hell for a time and having the second being something of a red flag (like “hurr durr, we got a Virginia Tech wannabe-in-training here”) hurt me. Thoughts? Either way–I’d go through a hundred more rejections before I’d give either up.

The whole (yeah, I know Godwin’s law for College Confidential had to apply sooner or later) affirmative action thing is something I’ve pondered for a long time, and honestly after seeing all the arguments made for both sides I’ve concluded that it represents some of the ugliest elements of human nature. At the end of the day there’s really no “correct” answer for it, only “fair” ones depending on who you’re talking to. Trying to find the absolute correct solution just sets people at odds with one another and makes them pull one of a thousand arguments out of their pockets for their self-benefit in a zero-sum game over a 0.1% difference in DNA.

So the lesson I’d like to share on that is–no matter how much you may believe affirmative action hurt you, no matter how true it may actually be, it’s nigh-impossible under this political climate and situation to change anything about it. Instead accomplish something great in the future, and prove that you had diversity all along: diversity of thought, far more numinous than anything so arbitrary as skin color or genitalia.

15

The novel might seem like you were trying to hard. It is real easy to self publish, paper copy or as an e-book. Saying you have an unpublished novel isn’t so impressive.

Obviously, you didn’t impress with interviews, applications, and recommendations. However, it is sort of ridiculous that such perfect academics wouldn’t get you in better.

That being said, Amherst, Cooper Union, and Berkeley are all good schools.

16

Berkeley EECS is one of the most competitive programs in the US with ivy-like acceptance rates. I think it was your essays, especially the supplemental essays. By applying to ALL those schools, you probably spread yourself too thin as spending a good amount of time on all those essays is nearly impossible. Thousands of people who apply to the schools you mentioned only write that one supplemental essay whether it is for Stanford or MIT. That means more effort went into them so the essays are more polished.

I think you perhaps tried too hard to not look like an Asian STEM nerd. Colleges want to see your actual personality so if you actively tried to portray yourself as a “non-asian not STEM not nerd” because you think it would help you in the admissions process, then that might have hurt you as those top schools are looking for genuine personality, not necessarily someone pretending to be someone they’re not just to avoid the stereotypes.

I personally don’t think you were pretending as you look like someone that is very interested in literature rather than Math, but colleges may have thought that you were trying too hard.

Another possibility is that you applied to Engineering but since your essays were so focused on deviating from STEM, that might have raised some questions.

However, I mainly think that you just got unlucky. Ivies are a crapshoot, everyone knows that. Thousands of valedictorians get rejected every year, and a lot of the decisions that the committee makes is based on gut (a more humanistic view which is sometimes unreliable).

It’s good that you have moved on. Rejection at these colleges really don’t mean anything.

I wish you all the luck at Berkeley this fall!

17

Yikes. I’m stunned you didn’t get into a couple of the other schools. UCBerkeley is fantastic - especially if you’re a CA resident ($$). Still, it’s hard not to second guess, especially with such a string of denials. It could be anything, and, alas, you’ll never know.

Maybe your letters of recommendation, while glowing, were generic (i.e. the teacher could have written it about any number of kids. I found that teachers who get hit up for lots of recs sometimes have a variety of templates they use and then ‘customize’ - but the letter can still end up sounding generic with the same string of superlatives). The best letters are chock-full of specific, unique anecdotes that demonstrate your talents and /or who you are as a person. While you didn’t see them, it’s entirely possible that the ‘rave’ letters could have applied to any number of kids—not just you.

Maybe when admissions stacked you up against other candidates from your school there was always someone who, even if he/she had lower stats, filled a need that you didn’t (i.e. tuba player). Or maybe he/she had the advantage of URM or legacy or athlete. So it goes …

Maybe your essays were too much about your accomplishments and didn’t really tell a story. It’s really hard to write an essay that stands out. I’ve found that essays that focus on one thing and one thing only and then come to the expected closure about how this experience taught you to never give up blah blah blah all start to sound the same. Better to have an essay studded with anecdotes that may seem unconnected but then (surprisingly!) all connect the dots at the end. Somewhere there’s a small detail, funny observation, etc. that is memorable and strikes a chord. Somehow, the essay has to be surprising in where it takes the reader—not predictable.

Maybe your reader was having a bad day. Got a speeding ticket on the way to work, had a fight with his/her spouse. Maybe the admissions committee had just reviewed six candidates in a row with similar stats to yours. Maybe any number of things.

Certainly, there are plenty of people who get “shut out” – which you did NOT do! You got into 3 fantastic schools and are headed to one of the best in the world. Good luck.

18

I suspect that the other schools looked at your list, saw you were a California resident interested in CS, and assumed you were going to Berkeley (or maybe Stanford) no matter what.

Contrary to some beliefs, even Harvard protects its yield.

19

How did you manage to submit so many applications and make sure that your true identity came through for each of them. That you were authentic and sincere in the essays? Anyway it is all in the past now. You should relax and plan to enjoy UCB. It will be hard work for sure, but nothing that you can’t handle after your intense high school experience. Go forth and enjoy the next four years. Live in the moment and not the past.

20

In terms of SAT IIs and AP exams, OP would probably be 90th percentile or so at Harvard, and the SAT and GPA are almost perfect too. Part of it is ethnic quotas, but OP must not have made a good impression.

In terms of lessons learned, it might have been beneficial to have hired a good college adviser to help with what schools to apply to, essays and so on.