Why was this student admitted to Yale SCEA?

Chance Me / Match Me!
21

<p>Euclid496 in his own words about himself:
[quote]
Chances for MIT et al.
Please evaluate my chances at MIT (EA), University of Chicago, Princeton, Carleton College, Harvey Mudd College, Yale, Harvard, and Brandeis University.</p>

<p>I take the most challenging course load available at a competitive prep school in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am a white male and double legacy at MIT. Essays, recommendations, supplementary recommendation, and interview are all superb. School does not weight or rank.</p>

<p>I will retake the SAT I in December in time for regular admissions.</p>

<p>SAT I: 800 M, 760 W, 630 CR
SAT II: 760 Math IIC, 760 Biology M, 740 Math IC</p>

<p>GPA: 3.89 uw / 4.21 w
Decile: Top 10% (uw) in a class of 57</p>

<p>Grades:</p>

<p>English 9 A-/A-
Geometry Honors A+/A
Spanish II A-/A-
World History I A+/A
Physical Science A/A-
Jazz Band A (fall semester)
Digital Imaging A (spring semester)
Computer Science and
Information Technology (required) A+ (spring semester)
PE Contract: Ice Hockey P
Lacrosse P (received letter)
Community Service: Music Education P/P</p>

<p>English 10 A-/A
Algebra II Honors A-/B+
World History II A-/A-
Spanish III B+/A-
Biology I A-/A-
Life Drawing A+ (fall semester)
Intro to Computational Science and Modeling A (spring semester)
Health (required) A+ (spring semester)
PE Contract: Hockey P
Lacrosse P
Community Service: Immigration Rights P/P</p>

<p>Intermediate Spanish I
(Centro lingüístico conversa, Costa Rica) A</p>

<p>English 11 A/A-
Pre-Calculus Honors A+/A
US History A/A
Spanish IV AP A/A
Biology AP A-/A-
Chemistry Honors A/A-
Chamber Music A+ (spring semester)
PE Contract P
Community Service: Music on TAP P/P
Music Theory I (SF Community College) A (spring semester)</p>

<p>English 12
Calculus AB
Twentieth Century America
Spanish V Honors
Physics Honors
Studio Art History (spring semester)
The Art of Problem Solving (fall semester)
Life Drawing (spring semester)
PE Contract
Community Service
Music Theory II (SF Community College) (spring semester)</p>

<p>AP Scores:</p>

<p>Biology--5
Spanish Lang--3</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:</p>

<p>Summer of 2002:
- "Modeling Complex Systems in StarLogo"--Two-week summer workshop at the Santa Fe Institute with funding from MIT.</p>

<p>Summer of 2003:
- "Cyber Defenders Institute"--Two-week summer workshop/internship directed by Los Alamos Nat’l Labs, and held in conjunction with the 2003 Summer Teacher Institute at San Juan College.</p>

<p>2003-2004 Academic Year:
- Played guitar for the 3rd Jazz Band in the NM Jazz All-State Festival.
- Received 3rd place in the Senior Physics Division of the Northeastern NM Regional Science Fair and 2nd place in the American Junior Academy of Science Paper Competition for a project in cosmology.
- Received the American Vacuum Society Regional Science Fair Award.
- Participated in the NM Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge, achieving first-round finalist position, and winning 1st place runner-up and the Sandia Nat’l Labs prize for creativity and innovation.
- Performed post-modern music with the Santa Fe New Music Youth Ensemble for their annual "YouthFest".
- Contributed articles and poetry to school publications.</p>

<p>Summer of 2004:
- ¡Pura Vida! Prep in Costa Rica 2004--One-month summer Spanish program at the Conversa Language Institute with work/cultural immersion activities.
- Volunteered as an online computer programmer/teaching assistant for the NM Summer Teacher Institute.</p>

<p>2004-2005 Academic Year:
- Played the guitar at local venues and at the year-end Youth Fest with the Santa Fe New Music Youth Ensemble.
- Attended workshops on the performance of contemporary and avant-garde music.
- Performed with the 2nd Jazz Band in the 2005 Jazz All-State Festival.
- Participated in the UNM-PNM Statewide Mathematics Contest and organized biweekly math club meetings to study recreational mathematics problems.
- Received first place in the Senior Team Division of the Northeastern NM Regional Science Fair for a project in game theory.
- Contributed articles and poetry to school publications.</p>

<p>Summer of 2005:
- Santa Fe Institute Summer Internship Mentorship Program--Six-week summer internship doing research with SFI scientists.
- Volunteered as a personal teaching assistant at the NM Summer Teacher Institute, teaching computer programming, modeling, and science to NM teachers.</p>

<p>2005-2006 Academic Year:
- Contributed to school publication.
- Volunteered as a teaching assistant at the NM Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge Kickoff.
- Performed with the Santa Fe New Music Youth Ensemble.
- Assisted local contemporary music organization with educational workshops and concert production.
- Raised money to commission and premier a new work of music.
- Participated in a school-sponsored math club.
- Attended the “New Mexico Young Researchers Banquet.”
- Participated in the NM Adventures in Supercomputing Challenge.</p>

<p>All Years:
- Took weekly lessons in classical, contemporary, and jazz guitar.
- Participated in a guitar/fiddle trio, performing music at the Santa Fe Farmers Market and other local venues.</p>

<p>Employment:
- Musical Performance, June-August, 2002-2005
- Software Testing at Flow Science, Inc., October 26, 2005-present</p>

<p>Scholastic Distinctions:
- Honor Roll (all years)
- New Mexico State Scholar (’05)
- University of New Mexico Star Scholar (‘05)
- AP Scholar (‘05)
- Award for excellence in advanced Spanish classes (‘05)

[/quote]
</p>

22

<p>Damn. Wrong again. Kerry has never revealed his SAT scores. It was Gore in the 2000 election: 625 V, 730 M. And Gore went to Harvard.</p>

23

<p>Gore was roomates with Tommy Lee Jones (the actor)</p>

<p>how weird is that?</p>

24

<p>Hey CCers:</p>

<p>I apologize for my very rude post. Reading these “chances” threads had convinced me that my classmate’s stats were inadequate for Yale. I reread my post and your comments, and I see that the stats are quite adequate, even exceptional.</p>

<p>I’m sorry I caused such a disturbance.</p>

<p>euclid496</p>

25

<p>Bush out of Phillips Andover Kerry out of St Paul's Academy</p>

26

<p>this thread is over.</p>

<p>euclid got owned.</p>

27

<p>euclid496 apology accepted. So is MIT your first choice and what you are waiting for? You are very accomplished and waiting is hard. I am sure it doesn't feel to comforting to see this girl accepted and wearing her Yale merchandise while you wait, and wait and wait. </p>

<p>Be a sport and congratulate her. Celebrate her good fortune and achievements. Please let us know how you are doing in April I'll be you will be celebrating for yourself. Nice post of apology.</p>

28

<p>Hahaha someone's a little snarky.</p>

<p>I don't think you're giving the full picture here, euclid. To me, this reeks of bitterness.</p>

<p>Fark affirmative action. That wouldn't get her in, and you know it. Does she play any sports? Crew? Tennis? Football? Underwater basketweaving?</p>

<p>You might have thought her essays were verbose, but you self-proclaimed your essays to be 'superb'. Way to be the humble one. Your 630 CR undermines that claim. Needless to say, I'm not impressed.</p>

<p>Obviously you're upset. If you go to "The Saint Michael, John, and Luke Advanced Prep School", have your entire family legacy at MIT, and have spent your entire high school life doing recreational math problems...then you expect to get into MIT early. But, you didn't.</p>

<p>This thread is here for your own vindication - so that you can visciously say "see, she only got in through Affirmative Action". You know that's not what got her in. Be honest with yourself. There were hispanic and black candidates with better SATs who got rejected.</p>

<p>I doubt her resume was three lines long.</p>

<p>Try to be honest next time.</p>

29

<p>Because she was better qualified (according to the adcoms) in meeting Yale's institutional needs than all those rejects.</p>

30

<p>yea i got waitlisted from Yale with much better stats (2300, 780/760/740 sat IIs, tons of research stuff)</p>

<p>but since im a white kid from NY, i dont diversity their campus in anyway.</p>

<p>so yea, although her stats are low, the fact that she is a minority from new mexico makes up for that.</p>

31

<p>yeh.. u guys are pretty hard on the guy.. he had a question thats it. we all get bitter and we all get jealous.. its in our nature. we cant gang up on a guy who does somethign openly that we just do personally. but anyway yeh i would be suprised as well. She isnt that much of a outstanding student for yale. seeing that a kid from my school had an amazing application but got rejected from Yale. Im pretty sure affirmative action had somethign to do with it ... give those numbers to a white male or asian male from the suburbs and you got yourself a thin letter of rejection</p>

32

<p>I can't imagine why one would think one is God's gift to humanity because of answering three additional questions on a standardized test correctly.</p>

33

<p>She has great stats, especially her GPA and rank. She may have had very strong essays and recs. And I'm sure the hispanic thing didn't hurt her.</p>

34

<p>Euclid: your apologies are accepted. Only a man can recognize when he screws up.</p>

<p>Excalibur: you are so dumb. I wish there are more schools out there which can differentiate between a good students and a "good" student. The former can be from any economic niche (rich or poor) and works hard at school and participate in EC because he/she loves it. The latter is from an advantaged family and has parents who would sell they mothers just to have him/her in college; this student participate in EC just because he/she wants to include that in his/her resume. Excalibur, you belong to the second group of students. I have no respect for poeple like you.</p>

35

<p>mini: amen hallelujah!</p>

36

<p>
[quote]
you think this is bad?</p>

<p>try 1950 ED into Princeton.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Blah, maybe they have a 4.0 GPA and ranked high? SAT scores aren't everything.</p>

37

<p>GUYS PLEASE LETS END IT WITH THIS///</p>

<p>I truly respect all your opinions.. i understand how people got offended when others ignored the achievements of this candidate and just blamed affirmative action for the acceptance. But we must all accept the fact that we cannot truly come to the conclusion of determining a student's acception to mere Stats. If you guys werent aware.. Harvard could fill up its Freshmen class with all candidates with 2400 sat scores and 4.0 gpas. but the thing is they dont.. why? because then their school would be so BLAH.. nothign special about it.. yeh ok so they studied hard for their SATs and some brilliant kids thats it.. no diversity no athletes no extracurricular candiates etc. you get my drift?<br>
Also we cannot be ignorant and say Affirmative action does not play a significant role in ones descision. A very humerous quote by dave chappelle in one of his standups "I dont think i should get an advantage if hes better than me but if were the same.. **** him".. i mean thats just for a little humor but its true in a sense that minorites will always have an advantage. But on the other hand dont go whining about it because you are not the best. Harvard can get a whole class better in scores than you so please no more comments .. you were just not appleaing to them on that day on that time and to that person. And its how that admissions officer feels on that day too. </p>

<p>So ultimately was that hispanic girl deserving of a Yale acceptance? Maybe that admissions officer liked somethign about her.. maybe he or she was in a good mood and just said ok.. maybe it was a freak accident and it got dropped in the acceptance pile. No matter how you look at it you cannot take away her achievement of an acceptance. Unless you are the most well-rounded student in the world you my friend have no right to speak because i am pretty sure someone with higher standards than yourself could of gotten rejected as well. </p>

<p>Whoever she is go and congratulate her , dont mock her.</p>

38

<p>She deseves it!!!!!!!! you dumb****</p>

39

<p>no she does dumb****. generally someone with such scores are thrown out of the applicant pool. read that book A for Admission. Besides her sat is below the average admittee score by a good deal. Her rank is kind of bad. Consider this. 23% of american high schools decide to go to college. 77% aren't even competing cause they just want a diploma. so she is just slightly better than the average american college applicant. the average american applicant does not go to yale. It is pretty obvious that this is a case of affirmative action. Sure, she did "good", but if she were an asian, she would not have had a ghost of a chance.</p>

40

<p>Affirmative Action was more than likely used but you know what?</p>

<p>Who cares?</p>

<p>What we rip each other's throats out about on this board makes little difference in her acceptance or the system, so let's just get on with our lives. We all have better things to do than ponder the details/ethics of this--one side will be say "she DESERVED IT!!!!!11cos(0)", and the other will say "she had NO QUALS WHATSOEVER and should go to COMMUNITY COLLEGE!!!!!!!!11(sinx/x)" The truth is somewhere in between.</p>

<p>At least Euclid and a few others were mature.</p>