@armian No that is not true, you are at a disadvantage as an Asian male. You are in an overrepresented group, which means that you are competing against other Asian males who may have much better resources (and high scores) to put together an application. Its not over until RD decisions come out, and hopefully you get into another of your reach schools. If you applied to any public universities you will almost assuredly be accepted as they are much more of a meritocracy than your reach schools, unfortunately none of them meet full financial need without loans. However, if you choose a public university out of the top 100 you could easily get a full ride.
Bottom line: You were a competitive candidate. But very few—even among competitive candidates—are accepted.
When my student asked her college counselor to call Amherst about why she didn’t get in ED, the answer came back “We already got one of those.” Perhaps the one that just came across their desk that they took looked just like you.
Dang, they were only looking for one?
@CU123 Love your sarcasm and concreteness. Basically, if they have what you’re selling, they don’t need more. They are putting together a community. I call my other daughter’s LAC, a community of unicorns. They only have 400 seats in a class, so they are looking for one of everything.
I cannot imagine a more stellar academic profile than OP’s. It is really sad and unfair this happened to OP, especially this is ED and he comes from a school with little experience with Ivy level admissions.
All I can say is hang in there and hopefully RD results are different.
Its too late now but some experience admission counselor should have looked over the whole application after the ED rejection and before RD submission.
Is it possible OP got blindsided by rec letters?
Of course we only are looking at EC’s and GPA/SAT scores, there is the other leg of the application and that is the essays, we can only assume they were average to below average. As a super unhooked applicant all three must be there or the application isn’t strong enough (and the three legged stool falls over no matter how strong the other two legs are).
It’s a shame he didn’t apply to some top schools through QuestBridge or some other service that might have boosted his application. He might have been a match to a great school with a full ride. However, Cornell isn’t a QuestBridge participant.
I will continue to hammer on this theme, shouting it from the rooftops if necessary:
It is not unfair. Sad? Sure. But not unfair. It is the way of the world when applying to colleges with a very low admit rate.
Why, why, why do so many people buy into the idea that a “perfect” (however that’s defined) record—even when the essays and letters are also equally perfect—not only merits, but should guarantee admission into any college anywhere? Seriously, I don’t get it, unless it’s a desire to ignore the randomness of college admissions and to cling to a belief that it’s somehow fully under the applicant’s control.
Well, it isn’t—it’s fully under the college’s control. (The one thing in the process that’s fully under the applicant’s control is which offer of admission to accept, unless that’s been waived by applying ED.)
^Well, life is indeed unfair and who says college admission has to be fair. And this is just one of those cases where OP is unlucky to be in a cohort in which it is hard to stand out even with perfect stats. Schools like Yale always say that academics is the most important part of an application and its reasonable to infer that with the stats and ECs OP should have had a better than average chance of being admitted ED.
Yes. But a better than average chance≠a high probability.
Some here need to quit beating up OP with this merciless speculation on what he did wrong. It’s possible he did nothing wrong. They get far more apps than they have seats available. Where do you get these ideas it’s gotta be this mistake or that flaw…or that one must be an underdog? Maybe save it for one of those target-less threads where you can vent.
If you don’t know, you don’t know.
Admissions is 0% or 100%. So better than average doesn’t help.
Do folks really, truly believe you only need the stats and an admit is guaranteed? Think again.
@lookingforward I don’t think people were trying to beat up OP, but instead answer OP’s question about possible reasons why he got rejected. Of course this is speculation because none of us were in the room when the AOs made that decision, so none of us have any idea of whether it was something that OP had control over such as a problem with is essay or a letter of recommendation, or whether it was because of being from an over-represented part of the country or an over-represented race.
I think these types of questions are helpful if (a) we were still in December so OP could take another look at his essays and ask his GC to look at his letters of recommendation to ensure there wasn’t something that might have been off-putting in any of those, or (b) OP doesn’t get into any of his top schools and wants to take a gap year and reapply next year. If OP ends up taking a gap year, and it’s determined that his essays and letters of recommendations were good, then maybe OP would want to apply to schools where maybe his geography or ethnicity would be a plus rather than a negative (midwestern LAC?) or wouldn’t matter.
OP, you have excellent stats and should be very proud of the work that you have done and everything you have accomplished. This will put you in good stead no matter where you go. I truly hope and believe one of your top choices will accept you. If not, too bad for them. You can succeed anywhere you go. And there is the gap year option if you’d like to try again. But, at this point you should step away from questioning this because there is nothing that you can do right now, and questioning the unanswerable will just drive you crazy or make you bitter. Please let us know your results when the rest of your decisions come out. We’ll all be hoping for the best for you!
@armian Look at it this way: Cornell basically said, “You’re a phenomenal student with astounding stats. We think there are other schools out there that deserve you more than we do.”
Be proud of what you have accomplished so far. Best wishes to you.
@armian Look at it this way: Cornell basically said, “You’re a phenomenal student with astounding stats. We think there are other schools out there that deserve you more than we do.”
Ditto. You sound amazing. Please get some sleep and know that great things are waiting for you somewhere.
I first posted this a long time ago:
I really like this story about former treasury secretary Robert Rubin.
After he graduated from Harvard, he wrote to the Dean of Admissions at Princeton, who had rejected him, as follows:
“I thought you might be interested to know what happened to one of the people you rejected. I just wanted to tell you that I graduated from Harvard Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa.”
“The Dean wrote me back, ‘Thank you for your note. Every year, we at Princeton feel it is our duty to reject a certain number of highly qualified people so that Harvard can have some good students too ! ’”
^ LOL!