@golfycashoah I’m hoping that will be me in 2 years 
Really want to go to Upenn
@lostaccount I am an Asian with pretty high scores (2350 SAT, 35 ACT, and top 10 in class of 900). Like many of my friends, I was rejected from all the ivy leagues (waitlist Cornell). I want you to know that I, and many of my peers, are highly self-motivated. True, I do take some classes to raise my gpa and am highly concerned with grades. However, I did it on my own accord, not my parents… I wanted to get into an Ivy League, it was not my parents goal. I plan on working very hard in college. I promise you most of the top ranked people at my school are not fueled solely by their parents’ ambition.
Can you share where you were admitted and what you want to study?
There are only a few industries that recruit from the top 15 or so schools, most notably finance and consulting. If you are planning to do something else, just about any of the top 50 schools will give you a fine education.
@hebegebe hi, I was admitted to NYU Stern and Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. After visiting both campuses, I decided Carnegie was a better fit for me.
Congrats upon your acceptances. I don’t think anything is shut out for you after graduating from Tepper. If you wanted to get into finance, a Tepper degree and some CS courses (yes I know CMU can make that difficult) can open a number of doors for you.
yoyohi, you got into two very good schools. CMU is an elite school. That aside, your own description of your motivators focuses on grades. There is a distinction many people don’t consider and that is the difference in what motivates students’ efforts. There are, of course, many ways to divide up motivation but for the sake of discussion, let’s choose extreme instances (although most students have a mixture of these two motivators) on a 2 categorical system: where a mastery vs a performance motivation represents the two extremes.
A performance motivation means that the person is fueled by the desire to be viewed in a positive light relative to others. Primary motivators include desire to get good grades, be the best, perform better than others, etc. These are students who will prioritize getting good grades over almost anything else. They are the valedictorians of the world and the ones that are driven to get the highest raises at work. They are competitive, not in a negative sense but in the sense that they want to be viewed as the best and to be the highest on the rating scales. They want to outperform everyone else. They will prep for tests until there is no way that they will encounter a question that they can’t answer. To accomplish this, they often are perfectionists. The closer they can come to perfection, the more likely it is that they will be on top.
A mastery motivation means that the person is fueled by a desire to understand their world. They are motivated to achieve in order to acquire useful tools that will help them to understand various topics. Their learning is fueled primarily because they find it rewarding to learn new material, be challenged and develop competency in areas that interest them. They may stop studying material when they feel they have learned it well enough even though they may not get the best grade in the class; They move on to their other interests/tasks. They are the ones who stay after class arguing a point after the bell rings and peers are heading to the mall or to study (and I mean they are debating about an issue not about a grade). They may spend more time on, say, a task in one class even though they may have already done enough to earn the top grade-but they want to explore some other feature about the research (for example). They are the ones who take what they learned in a class and try to put if to use.
Both types of motivation have advantages and disadvantages. And, in real life these are dimensional rather than categories. Also, the climate/values in a particular school or household can impact on the extent to which students are motivated by mastery or by performance.
Elite schools look for students who are fueled more by mastery motivation performance motivation. That means that schools seek students whose high grades are not achieved simply because the student worked for “good grades” but because the student generally approaches the world with a driving interest to master it- and become competent. And students whose backgrounds suggest that they are enthusiastic learners rather than competitive grade seekers are more likely to be selected.
REALLY? Why do people make that assumption, sometimes school is just effortless. Makes me think every perfect score kid should get one A- to show they can handle it! There is nothing wrong with showing consistent effort, ultimately you will do better than all those last minute procrastinators.
One of the most brilliant kids I know (not mine) had prefect grades and did a Siemens project that was so complicated the judges had trouble understanding it! She ended up lecturing to at a physics symposium.
It is all BS and admissions for the top stats kids is mostly based on race, ethnicity, legacy, athletics, money, awards and where you go to high school. Lets face it that 4.0 white girl from NJ is getting in after that 3.8 white girl from Arkansas. Even if both are the daughters of accountants and doctors. Even within a region certain high schools get kids in and certain ones don’t.
Essays can help or hurt a great deal but they have to either be fabulous (if you are below their 50%) or they have to be good and interesting if you are above. A boring essay will hurt you.)
In my area we live by several different districts that are similar ethnically (mostly white, some kids who can claim latino status because a grandparent was born in SA before moving here and going to medical or law school) and economically. The acceptance rates for HYPS and other top 20 schools varies considerably.
In one district known to have problems getting kids into top schools (excellent education, no one knows what the problem is), they usually manage to get a couple into Cornell (and that is considered a good year). A neighboring identical district usually gets at least one into a HYP, another into each of M, Columbia, UChi, Duke, Dartmouth (different kids) and most of these are not legacies and it is only the top 30 kids that apply to anything more than state or mediocre schools. We are in the east so Stanford is unlikely. Another school in the area is more similar to School #2.
The Val who was rejected from most top schools in District #1 was an EMT on his local fire department for years, played and volunteered in a team sport and worked part time and did the usual clubs and did not have parents who would have molded him.
The Val rejected the year before not just from Harvard but from Vassar, Haverford and a few others had a 35, above 760s on SAT 2s and ended up going to a safety. She is the Val there too, with perfect grades as a physics major. In her case she admits her essays were not great. This is honestly the worst result I have personally ever encountered. Most other kids in a similar position who went to different school districts get into Duke or Williams.
Another equally bad result was at a local average private school, Val with perfect grades and a 32, ended up with large merit at UMiami after not getting into any Top 20 schools at all (her classmates did so this one is hard to categorize as the mom swears the essays were amazing, did not personally read them).
Most other people who are not students in District #1 or the private school do fine. Perhaps they do not get into Harvard with a 2330, decent strong ECs and beng #6 of 300 but they get Dartmouth, UVA and Vandy.
The ones who are #1 - 6 of 300 with a 1600 and are (white) girls in STEM who have done research do get into HYPS. To be honest I have met very few kids who deserved to be at top schools who did not end up accepted at one. Maybe not their dream school.
@yoyohi , the worst demographic for elite schools, generally speaking, is a white girl with high everything from an affluent area. I am guessing Asians are the next worst demographic, followed by white guys.
@SeekingPam , there is nothing wrong with a Val going to their safety. Maybe that is the school the Val liked the best, or got the best merit from, or maybe he/she simply wanted to be a big fish in a small pond, or that safety offered some things that other schools didn’t. I do not like the idea that attending a safety school isn’t worthy of celebration. If the student chose the school, they should be happy to go there, and we should be happy for that student.
@lostaccount , I like your numbers, but you are forgetting a lot of people in your calculations. Home schooled kids, kids with exceptional circumstances, kids from private schools, charter schools, specialty schools, internationals, non traditional students, transfers, development cases, etc… I suspect you could easily add another several thousand students into your calcultions in terms of how many applications in total the top 25 colleges get.
Just have to give a shout out to my kids’ school district. This year we are sending a LOT of kids to really prestigious universities. The kids have a social media page set up to announce where they are all going. Every kid, whether going to U Penn or Podunk U, gets a lot of thumbs up. I was especially delighted to see that the kid who posted that he will be attending the local CC got as many thumbs up as the kid who is attending Duke. Here’s to you, kids of ______ High School, in ___________ County, NY!
@yoyohi, but why were your friends aiming for the Ivies? Did the ones who are extremely strong in one subject look at the UK unis (where they value that)?
Did they look at undervalued “hidden gems”? Did they think outside the box?
BTW, you got in to Stern, which would give you opportunities to go anywhere you want to go in business, so I don’t see much reason for complaint.
@Lindagaf I think the worst demographic for elite schools varies depending on major. for engineering , I would say Asian males have the lowest chance of getting in (and, generally, with females having a better chance of getting in due to underrepresentation). For MOST nonengineering majors, I would say Caucasians have the lowest chance of getting in, then Asians at a close second. However, some nonengineering majors in elite schools ,such as economics, are really popular among Asians and are also very hard for Asians to get into.
@Lindagaf I know all the details, I have personally spoken to the parents of both girls, they were not happy. The Val WAS NOT happy going to her safety. Neither was the one from the private school. Both were absolutely shocked at their admissions and then accepted it and went on. WHY would I celebrate something that a child is devastated about? Val at safety did not even get that much merit money (I have a friend whose son applied as #30 of 300 and a 2090 and he got the same merit she did). The bottom line is that most high stats kids who end up at safeties (NOT for money reasons) feel like they could have done half the amount of work and ended up in the same place and had twice the fun. As the parent of mostly good students I see exactly how much work they do as opposed to what some of their less academically inclined friends do. There is an opportunity cost to working harder and it seems some are rewarded in abundance and some not at all.
I am sure both will be very successful as they have excellent work ethics.
I personally do not think the white girl from NJ or MA has it as bad as the Asian guy in STEM from NY or CA. In School District #2 plenty of them were white girls with high stats. Got acceptances from Duke, Dartmouth, Williams and Harvard (SCEA). Nice kids but not really special other than having high stats.
@purpletitan Most of them didn’t apply to all the ivy leagues, just the ones they liked in terms of academics and social atmosphere (which is most of them xD). Also, obviously they applied to schools other than the ivies.
@yoyohi, sure. I’m just wondering how well they crafted their application strategy and how well they knew the odds.
Did they seek put hidden gems? Did they look to find places that may be undervalued?
@PurpleTitan most of us knew our odds and applied to several safeties and " low-reaches". Obviously applying only to the safety and low reach schools we liked xD.
Part of a good strategy is knowing that even if you have perfect GPA, top scores, leadership and service galore, any college that admits less than 15% is a reach. If you don’t have a hook to make you stand out it just might not be possible to get into an Ivy or similar school. I watched my daughter’s senior class and saw very few surprises. There are way too many people with perfect scores and remarkable applications with no perceived weaknesses. The disappointing part is that the difference in who is accepted often lies in things beyond the student’s control. Don’t assume it’s what you can’t see (the essays or interview etc.) - it’s most likely just circumstance and a game of musical chairs that offers certain types of students the chance to sit down before others.
Yep. ED is key.
3.85+ and 2250+ is hardly “half the class”. Maybe in a small, elite boarding school that’s half the class, but there are entire school districts without any students with those numbers. That superhigh GPA and test score combination is not as prevalent, by % of all applicants, as many apparently think it is. (3.85 unweighted… not weighted)
Point is, if you are in the top tenth of the top 1% of all applicants, you shouldn’t have to go to your safety if you don’t want to. If you do want to go to a top-50 private, that should be a forgone conclusion with those superior numbers. You’ve earned it.
Now – students probably wouldn’t need a program like that if they would mix in some lower reaches and high match schools…
And the “fit” factor would be tough to get exactly right. Students would just have to hope the adcoms could discern their interests and personality from the app. (so there would have to be ways to include fit areas in the app.)
I firmly believe race/ethnicity plays one of the biggest roles in determining college acceptances. Fair or not, it is what it is.
The point brought up by seeking Pam is worth considering. So the Val was unahppy about having to go to her safety school, and in fact, devastated. I hate to sound heartless but it seems that girl did a bad job picking a safety school. Far too many kids don’t research the safety schools and when that is the only choice, they are upset. I get that, but no kid should be unhappy and devastated. They picked that school. A safety needs as much diligence as any other school.
I find the concern about race, gender and ethnicity interesting. I don’t think it is as big a factor as has been suggested but I do think that schools don’t want umpteen students who are identical and whose high school careers were driven by focus on grades and/or by parents. We don’t need or want a grade grubbing competitive climate in our elite US schools. Those who practiced those skills for 12 years are unlikely to leave them at the door when they enter college.
But beyond that, where is the outrage about legacies who are primarily white? And where is the outrage that there is such disparity in US school districts with those from wealthy, usually white or Asian, communities getting all the goodies, so to speak. Where is the outrage about how unfair it is that the worst schools and the poorest schools are those where the students are black? Where is the outrage that we have International students with a lot of money-some essentially buying their way into public US schools and taking a substantial number of slots in public schools that should be earmarked for state kids?