<p>@lookingforward, haha not at all. Given your repeated comments on this post, I would say that YOU have a fixation with my friend who you have never met before. That goes BEYOND unhealthy. </p>
<p>Fact is I made the thread, partly out of frustration for him, and partly to find an answer for myself and my friends and family. Yet some of the responses have touched a nerve with me, and so like yourself, I felt the need to respond. </p>
<p>You are right I wasn’t poignant in telling his story. His story was not one of escaping a prison in a warring country, or dealing with a broken family. He did not have the means to start a national charity, or participate in international contests and programs. He did not have a life threatening disability and was not faced with his parents running off with prostitutes. He took initiative in the community and did what he loved. I find it ridiculous to think that he needs a poignant emotional tragedy to resonate with the American admissions system.</p>
<p>The other reason is because I do not believe that too much “poignancy” or an “emotional connection” should be present for you to determine his admissions.</p>
<p>@fireandrain Let me tell you something: He is CURRENTLY in a state where he is a little down on the motivation factor. Why? Because he is human. I don’t know what your conception is of Ivy League admits, but they are not emotionless robots, powering through every challenge thrown at them.</p>
<p>IN FACT, most modern Ivy students capitalize on their struggles and how they get out of them. Perhaps this will be one of those stories. However, his freshman year, at least would have been more productive, fruitful, and happy if he had been accepted to one of those four schools. Again, I am sure he will come out of this point of depression, but again, his options will be limited.</p>
<p>@lookingforward, Let me tell you something: He is CURRENTLY in a state where he is a little down on the motivation factor. Why? Because he is human. I don’t know what your conception is of Ivy League admits, but they are not emotionless robots, powering through every challenge thrown at them.</p>
<p>IN FACT, most modern Ivy students capitalize on their struggles and how they get out of them. Perhaps this will be one of those stories. However, his freshman year, at least would have been more productive, fruitful, and happy if he had been accepted to one of those four schools. Again, I am sure he will come out of this point of depression, but again, his options will be limited</p>
<p>You have an unusual attitude. Poor “friend,” can’t pick himself up. That’s why we periodically call ■■■■■.</p>
<p>This is NOT about escaping atrocities. Adcoms at Ivies don’t give special points for that or sharing a room with ten siblings or gunshots outside the home every night or disability. You have such a shallow idea of what tippy tops look for.</p>
<p>It is not national charities or international contests. It is NOT passion or “doing what he loved.” These admits are not endorsements for being a good fellow, a decent neighbor. They are very specifically about how that kid will likely fit and thrive in that U context, add to the campus vitality, make some headway as they value it. And even when they do see that potential, they end up with far more good kids than seats available. Why is that so hard to fathom?</p>
<p>Your friend didn’t make it into those colleges. That’s all. No utter poignancy in that. No loss to global security. No lifelong damage. Just a different direction he takes in his education. He will either prove out to be the worthy soul YOU feel he is. Or crumble. I am a s-load closer to the reality of admissions than you are. As are a number of posters here.</p>
<p>^Excellent post. My husband and I literally got hundreds of rejections when we first looked for jobs. And we had engineering master’s degrees with very high GPAs. We found work at the same firm, then were laid off four years later, on the same day! Four days before that, I had found out I passed my Professional Engineering exam.</p>
<p>Then my husband was laid off from a good job, five days before our second son was born. He went through many rejections after that.</p>
<p>We could have become bitter and given up, but that doesn’t help anything! We decided it would be better to work for ourselves than get laid off repeatedly, so we started our own firm 15 years ago. If that first company hadn’t let us go, we would probably still be sitting in a cubicle, working for somebody else.</p>
<p>I agree with the person who said that if your friend is really this fragile, those four schools made the right decision in rejecting him.</p>
<p>Here’s another way to look at legacies, and how much of a hook they offer: schools, especially Ivies, publish their legacy percentage. They know that it looks bad to accept too many legacies, but they receive a high number of legacy apps because legacy kids tend to know their parents’ schools well, and also to think they have a better shot at getting in. It has been documented in the past (I don’t have the citation) that legacy applicants have higher stats than non-legacies. So colleges are actually presented with a group of students that is both large and quite highly-qualified, but they have a quota as to how many they will accept, not wanting to go over the percentage that is considered desirable, given that they don’t want to be perceived as overly-privileging legacies. They are spoiled for choice, as it were, even more than in the larger group of applicants; just as smart applicants from New York are a dime a dozen, and thus may have a lower chance than a kid from Idaho, since colleges don’t want their class to be made up of only smart New Yorkers, legacies may actually be at a similar disadvantage. This is my theory, and I’ve talked to enough alums like Kansasmom who are formerly loyal alums who are now alienated to know that there is a real cost to colleges to deny legacies, but they do it. All the time. </p>
<p>Funny thing, ML- for that prompt about failure, many kids take it literally and write about failure. Not as many can write within that about how they picked themselves up and moved forward, saw some silver lining. Those that can, are reflecting a maturity, grounding, an attitude that success is often about what we do about the potholes. </p>
<p>Imagine some grad program asking about challenges and a kid writing he was rejected by four ivies and had to go to some state school. Life is tough. I say that to my girls: life is tough; it’s what you do next, how you rebound, go with the new flow, make lemonade, etc, that that can matter far more. </p>
<p>IT HAS BEEN A YEAR. You are not going to find an answer that pleases you, even though numerous possible answers have been suggested to you on this thread. (And if you don’t want input from strangers, why did you post here in the first place?) Get over it. Life doesn’t always work the way we want it to. In fact just this week a parent on this site lost her son to suicide. You/your friend need to get a life.</p>
<p>You say your friend is “probably the only student with a 2360 SAT AND valedictorian” at his college and yet also that it is “harder to stand out in a relatively unknown school.” Those two statements are diametrically opposed to one another. Do you not see that? In the environment of his school–which can’t be that unknown if it is a large public university–he could be the rock star. He SHOULD be in the honors college if there is one. He WILL be a loser in life if a year after rejections from some long-shot schools he is still wallowing in self-pity and refusing to accept the reality of his circumstances.</p>
<p>P.S. My observation that people might want this thread to end was just that–an observation. Just like a lot of us in the north would like winter to end. Even though we know it might not anytime soon.</p>
<p>Good points, lookingforward. I read an article by a pastor whose son had committed suicide. Instead of asking, “Why me?” he tried to keep asking, “What next?” I guess I don’t have much sympathy for a kid whining about not getting into a particular school. That’s way down the list of traumatic life events.</p>
<p>This whole thing screams ■■■■■. So this super fantastic “should have gotten into an Ivy” student couldn’t do better than a scholarship to a middling state school? If he is so spectacular, he should have gotten some major merit awards at some fantastic non-Ivies. This just does not ring true. A high school senior who thinks he knows more than the collective experience of adults on CC? This much angst over the admission results of a “friend?” </p>
<p>I might be missing something but there are many who attend state schools because they don’t want to pay for a top tier school. Couple of years ago, two local students joined UT despite getting into CS in Carnegie Mellon because their parents did not want to spend the money. If OP’s friend is so cool, these kids were cooler - 2400 for one and 36 for the other. </p>
<p>There are many schools out there throwing good merit money at a kid with 2360 that middle tier state school seems to be a wrong choice (I saw national merit in one of the posts?) compared to 4 ivies. I would chalk it up to not knowing how to make use of the attributes rather than going for Ivy or bust.</p>
<p>Now that’s a great set of quotes to juxtapose! (-: </p>
<p>I agree with others that if your friend’s current and future life is going to always be lived in the shadow of the great “tragedy” of being rejected from four colleges, then he’s his own weakest link. Folks made of stronger stuff would say “you know what? Eff them, I’ll show 'em!” and then go on to totally CRUSH their undergrad experience, all so they can have the great pleasure of turning down Cornell et al for grad school. </p>
<p>You’re not even saying that his life would’ve been different if he ATTENDED one of these schools, just if he’d gotten into one. He’s not attending any of the other great schools he got into. Why didn’t he choose one of those? Several of them offer FA on par with the Ivy League schools that your pal was hoping to attend, so costs could well have been similar. Of course, if he couldn’t afford those schools where he was accepted, he wouldn’t be able to afford Cornell et al…in which case he’d be at the same school he’s at now, albeit with the knowledge that he was admitted to An Ivy. And somehow that would’ve made all the difference in his life. Good heavens, barring depression I would be sadly disappointed if this was my kid a year after high school graduation. </p>
<p>The Arcidiacono paper was published in the Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 1, No. 5 (October 2012). As you know, with social sciences you can’t prove anything; you can only add evidence to one side of the ledger or the other. I still think the paper is much more impressive than anecdotal evidence, and until better research comes along, it will remain as my working hypothesis.</p>
<p>If your friend is truly extraordinary, it should be easy for him to stand out at this relatively unknown school. (Especially if he is the “only one” who was valedictorian with a 2360 SAT, which I strongly, strongly doubt.) Much easier than it would have been at Columbia, for instance, where his classes would have been crowded with valedictorians and other tippy top students.</p>
<p>The OP of that thread at 13 APs, a 33 ACT, 4.0 GPA and headed for a 3rd tier OOS public school, was able to get research published and do very well academically, and from there was accepted to several outstanding doctoral programs.</p>
<p>“True potential” isn’t magically unlocked only in the Ivy League.</p>
<p>The benefit of this thread - resurrected by OP from an year old story - should be to outgrow the Ivy obsession.
As parent of a kid with 4 wait lists from Ivies, I do want to see a move forward approach, not to perpetuate “Ivy or Bust” attitudes. I tell my kid that Ivies missed you and lets move on. Advice for a future student is to cast the net wider and discount some level of random/inexplicable exceptions and avoid getting fixated with “Labels”. </p>
<p>What qualifies an Ivy as an Ivy is the sports conference. That’s it. Sure they have the reputation of being the best schools ever, but being a good school does not equal Ivy. And I do think that schools want diversity. I have a friend that’s going to Cornell for basketball. She’s in a few AP classes has mostly B’s, and I’m not sure of her leadership or extracurriculars besides basketball, but she got in to play basketball. Schools seem to try and fill slots nowadays, not just pick good students. Cornell needed a super tall basketball star, and they got my friend. It’s just whatever the school is looking for at the time. </p>
<p>To the above kid claiming he was the only one with those scores. I am dejected because I didn’t get into my dream schools, Harvard or Duke (Stanford pleaaase send me good news tonight!). I have a perfect 36 ACT, 2390 SAT, 800s on all my sat II subject tests, 5s on all 6 AP exams through junior year, varsity letter for each year in tennis, pretty good ECs, valedictorian status, good essays, good recs, and a really good interview. I also have 5-6 strong leadership roles. In the end, based on my results, I think you just have to have one certain story, honor, or activity that really makes you memorable. I look back on my application last night, and I realized that I had a lot of stuff focused in the sciences, but I did not have any certain thing that just dwarfed the rest. I think I will end up going to Northwestern (again Stanford, pleaaaase!), but with admission rates dropping to nearly 5 accepted/100 applications, I think it is important to research individual schools, not just “the ivies in general,” recognize which one you love and fit well in, and apply EARLY. The acceptance rates for early applicants can no longer be ignored. </p>
<p>Thank you, friends, for allowing me some “sour grapes” ranting! My son did apply early action and was deferred to regular decision, and then rejected. He believes strongly that a well-rounded education and his academic pursuits greatly inform his music, so he chose not to apply to conservatory-only programs, despite his interest in a professional music career. Instead he looked at dual-degree programs, or universities with strong music departments and top-notch cello teachers. It could be that Yale picked up on his intense interest in music and saw a kid that was going to end up in music school anyway. The good news: He has fantastic choices! Accepted with merit aid to CIM/Case Western, Eastman/Rochester, Oberlin, Vanderbilt (full tuition scholarship), and Indiana. He can’t go wrong. I luckily bypassed this whole issue with my older son, also a gifted student and writer (he was a Presidential Scholar in the Arts in writing). Early on he decided he wanted a small LAC in a rural setting. I was relieved; I knew on paper he didn’t have the bogus “leadership” positions and volunteering that Ivies want. His time was better spent writing, obviously! He ended up at Kenyon and has had an absolutely wonderful experience there. My biggest discovery during the college search process was how many really wonderful schools there are! So my cellist is already over it and on to making his very hard decision…</p>
The paper you referenced showed the legacy vs non-legacy rank class rank difference averaged across all 4 years was 7.38%, without controlling for course or major selection. When controlling for course and major selection, the mean class rank difference changed from 7.38% to 7.35%. A change in class rank of 0.03% is not exactly convincing evidence of choosing easy majors, as you claimed earlier. A 7% difference in class rank is also not suggestive of a large portion being unqualified and unable to handle the coursework. </p>