<p>So there are people with perfect stats, a lot of ECs, great recs and all that rejected from colleges? Don't tell me this whole college process is totally random; schools with great prestige don't do random things to climb up in their rankings</p>
<p>Bad luck, bad essays, and poor contacts. That’s all there is to it. Some people just get lucky and some people get unlucky. It really is a bit of a crap shoot once you have the near perfect stats to get into a prestigious university. </p>
<p>But I think the fact that you will end up wherever you are meant to be plays into it too. you may have all of the perfect stats, the ecs, great recs, and everything, but if you aren’t meant to go to a university, I think you will get rejected. You just aren’t a good fit. Its better that you go to a good fit. If you work hard to make it happen, things will work out no matter what (short of serious trauma or other things out of your control).</p>
<p>Pretty much everything that qdawg just said.</p>
<p>Someone with perfect stats could write terrible essays.
Or, maybe someone had perfect stats, mind-blowing essays, but bad teacher recs.</p>
<p>what if they, too, have written “mind blowing” essays?
I don’t think the college admission process is a crap shoot. Perhaps some people got lucky, but not all of the applicants got lucky. A large percentage of them are unhooked. More, do you guys think a college like Harvard play a random game of selection when you pay them $80 and your hope just to enter a random game? Come on, you guys know that is not the truth.
Take a look at silverturtle, for example. Even he was deferred at Yale.</p>
<p>If I were to guess, I’d say that colleges receive many students like that per year and they can only accept so few of them; if every alpha male and female was accepted to Harvard, then I would imagine that anyone with a 3.9 GPA, 2300+ SAT, decent ECs, etc. would be more tentative to apply, seeing the immense competition ahead of them.</p>
<p>I’d say that colleges reject the perfects to encourage the non-perfects to apply and hope. No college likes to kill dreams, and no one wants their dreams killed… why should those dreams die because someone else has a .1 higher GPA and a perfect SAT?</p>
<p>It still doesnt make sense. The number of applicants who have that kind of stats & everything is very small. Even if they’re all accepted, there are still rooms to accept others as well.</p>
<p>Because despite what all people seem to think stats =/= intellegence nor does it equal potential nor does it equal passion for anything. Realistically what’s the difference between 2390 and 2400? For the smartasses out there the difference is 10 points but if a kid that you’d expect to get a 2400 got a 2390 you wouldn’t be suprised at all thus they manifest as identical</p>
<p>Well, they would probably only be rejected from colleges who evaluate applicants holistically - who go beyond the stats. And the basis for a rejection might center around volatile tendencies that that individual is perceived to have. Or perhaps they come across as psychopathic. Or maybe the (elite) university environment just doesn’t seem right for them. Obviously not all individuals with perfect (or near perfect) stats would be happy at an elite university, let alone want to go to one in the first place.</p>
<p>^ Excellent points…</p>
<p>Arrogance.</p>
<p>Recommendations and Essays play a pretty big role. If you get a great letter and you’re at a school the college is familiar with, it’s going to be a big edge. Mediocre essays are also going to hurt a lot when there are a lot of people with those numbers applying.</p>
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<p>YEAH a lot of <em>those</em> kids are pretty cocky… /severely lacking in social skills…
[I’m not saying all! Just a lot.]</p>
<p>Also if kids have retested a bunch of times to get those perfect scores, I think they come off as neurotic… adcoms worry whether the kid will just crack when he gets his first A-.</p>
<p>Because they have to make room for URMs and legacies with 1900s.</p>
<p>^ â– â– â– â– â– .</p>
<p>You’re an idiot.</p>
<p>OP, can you give an example of some of these cases? I would think that no one with perfect everything has been rejected from a top school. I would think that because no one has perfect everything. If someone is rejected, something just wasn’t good enough. You can’t just say “Well, what if they got rejected and everything was perfect?” I don’t think that would happen. Someone with a perfect GPA and perfect SAT/ACT might have standard recommendations and a dull essay. Someone with great recommendations and an amazing essay may have made one too many academic mistakes along the way.</p>
<p>And don’t forget interviews. Some kids can really blow those without knowing it, and we can’t fully analyze personalities on a website.</p>
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<p>And one day you’ll be working for one of them. Get over yourself.</p>
<p>From my experience, perfect numbers don’t mean anything!! Thousands of kids have 4.0 GPA’s, 2300 SAT, 300+ hours community service. For them, it comes down to luck.</p>
<p>The people I know who’ve gotten into HYPSM, have a HOOK. I know 3 people who’ve done cancer research while in HS. 1 girl travels the world as an aid worker or something. 1 guy has recommendations from world famous artists. 1 guy is rich and has a legacy and connections. <— LOL. That’s the way it it…</p>
<p>^ Exactly.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if fit’s been brought up yet (closest who touched on it was enfield), but there’s that.</p>
<p>I also enjoyed [this</a> article](<a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/ivy_league/ivy-admissions.htm]this”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/ivy_league/ivy-admissions.htm).</p>
<p>That being said…many excellent students will succeed no matter where they go.</p>
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<p>if schools only allowed in smart kids, the school would be a dead zone with no social interaction. How many +4.0 kids do you know who have a solid social life (i.e. interacting, joining clubs, sports etc)? You need kids with slightly lower stats who can bring diversity to a place. Therefore some top students might not get into a certain school.</p>