Hey guys. I was raised studying a british curriculum (the A levels) and I applied to around 16 universities last year. I was only accepted immediately by penn state UP, and Northeastern. UIUC, BU and RPI waitlisted me, but I just received a rejection email from BU. My stats are not that bad, with an SAT 1 score of 2090 and SAT 2 physics of 760 and Maths 2 of 790. My high school GPA (unweighted) is 3.5, but my school is very rigorous. I just want to know why did a majority of the universities I applied to reject me? And for my stats, were UIUC, penn state and BU safeties for me? (I think my essays were above mediocre and my recommendations were near stellar).
UIUC does not accept recommendation letter and may not know your school profile. Your GPA of 3.5 is low while your SAT is mediocre for some of these schools. Also, you did not disclose the section score distributions. I would not be surprised by the rejections.
Why are you spending time wondering? Did you expect to be admitted by all? You have some great choices. I wouldn’t spend another second’s worth of emotional energy on it. Perhaps you reached too high and weren’t viable. Perhaps they didn’t see how much they’re missing and have lost you as a potential contributor to the school.
Who cares? Who’s to know? Move on and welcome to the USA.
I’m sorry, you were accepted by Penn State and Northeastern, and you’re actually whining?
A lot of people don’t even get ONE acceptance. Be grateful for what you’ve received. Plus, a 3.5 GPA isn’t very high for those schools.
I know if feels random if your grades, SAT and class rank are within range for a particular school (assuming that was the case here - only you and the Common Data Set can tell for sure) and you still aren’t admitted - but most good schools have more students ‘in range’ than they can admit, so it gets down to other factors. Your SATIIs are impressive and I’m sure you had excellent recs, but other factors still come into play: what part of the country are you from, did you need financial aid (if it’s not need blind admissions), how many men/women applied vs. their ideal balance, what skills/ECs/aptitudes do you bring that they may need (time for a new tuba player in the marching band?), what kind of studies might you do, what kind of life experience do you bring…and there is no way anyone will ever be able to tell you why you got a ‘yes’ here and a ‘no’ there.
You got into some good schools. If you aren’t happy with the choices available, take a gap year and reapply to a different set of schools next year.
Northeastern is excellent. My son got waitlisted by a school ranked lower in every area than the school he is attending.
BU is generally NOT a safety. They also tell kids that they would rather see an A in a regular class than a C in an AP class, which is the opposite of what some schools like (some schools value rigor over GPA).
And Boston is a pretty neat area for someone coming from Mother England…
I don’t understand all of the backlash from some of the posters on this thread. The OP simply wants to better understand why he didn’t get into certain schools. Wouldn’t we all if we were in a similar situation? To claim the OP is “whining” or “ungrateful” is rather rash and unwarranted, especially given the fact he is British and isn’t entirely familiar with the American application process.
To actually try to answer the question of the OP, a 3.5 gpa is rather low for some of those schools. Your SAT was solid, but could have definitely been improved to better your chances. My guess is also that your extracurricular activities didn’t excite those schools (I can’t be sure…you didn’t include any on your post). But you have a solid resume here, so as a result you got accepted into a quality school in Northeastern. Congrats!
To answer the second part of your question, Penn State appears to be a safety, yeah. I assume you applied to Illinois in the engineering department. They are a top 10 school in engineering, so naturally they have to be very competitive.
You say that you were “raised studying a british curriculum” - are you an American citizen or green card holder? If not, please note that your application at many schools is read with a different eye, as there is a different pool of students (and a different limit for the number of students) for international applicants.
Additionally, being waitlisted means that you were qualified for those schools, but they had more qualified applicants than places. The rejection from BU simply means that they have closed their waitlist.
Why you were waitlisted from those schools is something that no one can tell you.
You are a US citizen who has been educated outside the US. This makes admission only very slightly easier for you than for a true international applicant. 2 out of 16 is not bad at all for an applicant in your situation given the list of places that you applied to.
Unless your own high school can give you solid evidence that other students like you have been admitted to more of the places on your original list than you were admitted to, then you have nothing to complain about. If your high school has evidence that you would have been admitted in an earlier year, then someone from your school may want to have a chat with the admissions offices at the institutions that rejected you this year (but wouldn’t have last year), and find out anything that they can about the current admissions situation. This won’t help you at all, but it will help your high school provide better advice to applicants in future years.
If the rejections match the universities that you listed on a previous thread I would say Harvard, Cornell, UPenn, Berkeley, Rice, Tufts, UChicago, and Michigan (OOS) are reaches for virtually every applicant. So, if those were indeed schools that you applied to, the number of rejections you report would be in line with many students’ experiences.
Given what you said you are looking for in a school, PSU actually seems like an ideal opportunity. I think you will be very happy with your educational experience in Happy Valley (no, not that one!).
To put my two cents in, I may be biased but as somebody who used to live in Boston in the 90’s when Northeastern was still mostly a commuter school, there are only 2 reasons to choose Northeastern over Penn State:
You really like their required/guaranteed internship program.
You really don’t want to live in the boonies or are just itching to live in Boston.
Otherwise:
Penn State is more highly ranked for almost any major, including engineering and business.
It’s also at least $10K/year cheaper tuition-wise (and even more if you include cost-of-living).
It’s a much bigger school, so if you do decide to change majors, you’ll likely find it there.
There’s more school spirit, thus its alumni network is a lot stronger and the Career Center is just as good as NE.
It’s also a major research university unlike Northeastern, if research is your thing.
Much of that may have been true in the 90’s but NEU has changed a lot.
Northeastern is ranked higher overall by US News. For business, Bloomberg ranks NEU higher. In the rankings game, Northeastern is currently winning if rankings are your measure.
NEU offers plenty of majors. I can't think of a single field where you would really struggle and find significantly more at Penn State.
Northeastern is a large research university as well. Penn State may be better, but there's no lack of opportunity at NEU.
Co-op is not the same as internships at all. One gets you up to 18 months full time work, the other is generally part time during classes or over the summer. On top of that, 50% of NEU grads get full time job offers from co-op.
Penn State will be cheaper and does offer more of the classic college experience for sure. It’s a great school. But today, they are easily peers, even without the co-op program.
Hey guys! I was born in California so I am no green card holder. I do understand that my uw GPA is low, but my school takes in examination papers from a singaporean mad mathematician who loves to see kids fail. Actually, no one ever got a decent A without luck. In the beginning, I actually wanted to study in the UK, but then decided in the brink of time to go the the US despite not having prepared for the SATs at all.
So yes, I do understand that Penn state is a public ivy and Northeastern is an excellent school and that I am lucky, but I expected better chances. I got rejected from BU, Rice, Duke, and even UC santa barbara, and am waiting on RPI to reply regarding my waitlist.
Another question to boost my choices: Is penn state a safety school? How is its reputation viewed among others? And is it one of the top of the Big 10 academic wise?
Penn State is not a safety for anyone. It is a very good public university. If you take advantage of everything that Penn State has to offer you, you can have a good future.
I think I see what you are asking…a “safety” is different for everyone…while PSU may be a safety for a 4.0/2400 candidate, for your scores, it is not. Nor is NEU or BU. Don’t think you are going to your “safety”, bc you are not:)
I am a bit puzzled with NEU accept vs BU rehect, but likely they were looking for different things, and you had what NEU wants is all. Don’t try too hard to figure tha out bc there are so many points we can’t see.
Sadly, colleges admissions won’t get to the nitty gritty of one mad math teacher who enjoys failing kids! your guidance counsellor may have explained that, esp if all kids have to take the class. My S GC gets annoyed bc the foriegn language teachers are grade deflators who seem to enjoy it, sayin, well, no one has to take my class! It is what it is.
Honestly, you had almost no chance at Harvard, Rice, etc. You were too low in the score average spread…So I would say you got into one match and one high match. Not bad at all! Good luck!
Thanks guys! I feel much better about my choices now. Before I thought the schools that accepted me are known to accept the ‘leftovers’, but I guess I was an idiot!