<p>A daughter of my father’s friend applied last year to several very prestigious colleges including Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Brown (do not remember the other ones.) She was accepted to all of the above BUT… was rejected (not even waitlisted!) from Brown. </p>
<p>This got me wondering…Brown must really want someone different than all those other top-knotch schools do. I mean I understand that without the good gpa and competent SAT/ACT scores, there isn’t much of a good chance, but what is it that Brown really considers important that other schools might not consider as important? </p>
<p>I don’t think this is a testament to Brown wanting different types of students so much as it is to that Ivy League and especially HYPS admissions are such a crapshoot. Maybe she had a 75% chance of admission to each individual school, and Brown was the one college out of four that didn’t take her. This kind of thing happens all the time. Take a look at some of the decisions threads from HYPS last year. A surprising number of people that get into Harvard get rejected from say, Duke or Penn, sometimes even places like Reed or Davidson. I think it is just the nature of the process.</p>
<p>In addition to the randomness and untrollable variables, each college also has its own supplement, and some of their questions can really shed light on the applicant. Good luck this year buddy.</p>