basically what this thread is saying: only one thing has to go wrong for you to be rejected, but a ton of things have to go correctly for you to be accepted.
Great advice. I will definitely keep this in mind when I apply to schools.
So glad to hear that @practicetest27 . Your response is exactly why a lot of senior posters keep coming back to CC.
That’s exactly correct. That’s the reality of the competitiveness of most of it now. Take nothing for granted, expect anything, perfect your applications, and don’t over-personalize or over-analyze what may have happened. I hate to sound cold about it, but the reality is – to borrow a line from Godfather I – “It’s not personal; it’s just business.”
I remember reading a thread (a couple years ago?) that linked an article about the shockingly short amount of time the average application receives at a selective school with loads of applications.
That helped us.
Also, I think that @Lindagaf is not suggesting we go around pointing these things out unsolicited. Both she and @itsv had some very helpful information for kids and parents who come to the forum asking what went wrong. Some come just to vent, and that is perfectly fine, but some really want (possible) concrete answers, and those answers may help them process the very difficult news.
Unless you consider adcoms perfect in judgments, they make mistakes often and are biased also. Luck is definitely a factor. Some kids’ stats are awesome but they just don’t stand out among the crowd in a good way.
I do not agree that they make mistakes “often.” There’s an occasional wrong judgment, but overwhelmingly, they decide based on institutional needs, which are neither “wrong” nor “right.” They just are.
I actually think post #40 is brilliant. That’s it to a “T”. I may share that with my students, @kalons.
And also on a more positive note, the school may have realized something you didn’t about why that school was not a good fit for you, and you’ll probably be thankful you didn’t go there.
@Publisher, hm, I don’t know why I didn’t see you tagged me, so sorry for the delay.
From USNWR on how they calculate their 2018 rankings
"Student selectivity (12.5 percent): A school’s academic atmosphere is determined in part by students’ abilities and ambitions.
This measure has three components. U.S. News factors in the admissions test scores for all enrollees who took the SAT critical reading and math portions and the composite ACT (65 percent of the selectivity score).
U.S. News also considers the proportion of enrolled first-year students at National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes or the proportion of enrolled first-year
students at Regional Universities and Regional Colleges who graduated in the top quarter of their classes (25 percent).
The third component is the acceptance rate or the ratio of students admitted to applicants (10 percent). "
So Yield Protection seems to be a tiny percentage that it shouldn’t matter much, but evidently every point matters when schools are trying to be ranked #10 rather than #15. as an example. I think it should come off altogether.
What comes into play for kids applying to the most selective colleges, at least for many who might be looking at this thread, is acceptance rate. Many students would be able to temper their expectations a little more easily if they thought that instead of being one of the “lucky” 4% who get into Stanford, they will be one of the likely 96% who don’t.
Perhaps already been said, but I’ve seen a lot of kids in real life and here on CC who are stars in their community, who are accustomed to being celebrated for various school/sports/community achievements. They come to expect that all that translates into being one of the “anointed” destined for HPYS.
However, a student who is Val, with above 1500s, captain of x country, president of NHS, plenty of service hours, is very accomplished and may be the top student in that school, but there is likely at least one similar student in every high school in the U.S. I think we do a disservice to kids if we blow their accomplishments out of proportion or put them on a pedestal (and we definitely knew kids like that in our high achieving high school).
Can people give stats?
I have a 1520 SAT and a 35 ACT. My unweighted GPA is 4.0 and weighted is 4.66. I’m 3rd in my class of about 240. I’ve got pretty decent ecs: varsity soccer 4 yrs, track 3 yrs, president of science national honor society, treasurer of student council, treasurer of foreign language honor society, co president of international club, peer counselor, treasurer of math national honor society, key club, probably others can’t remember. All AP and honors classes with 5s in most and 4s in a couple. Didn’t have that much community service, probably the weakest part of my app. I hope I have good recs, I mean I think the teachers who wrote them like me at least. Idk how to judge if my essay was good or not but I feel it was. I mean I was accepted into Cornell so it had to have been pretty decent.
I applied to Syracuse’s college of engineering and was waitlisted. I honestly can’t wrap my mind around it. Please someone help me I’m falling apart.
@ugh1234 I’m sorry its so frustrating. The main point of this and several other threads is that highly qualified students are being rejected and wait listed left and right this year. You are clearly highly qualified. No one will be able to tell you definitively why you were not accepted. Where else did you apply? Were you accepted anywhere? In other words, do you have a place to go next year? If not, the excellent people on this forum will chime in with suggestions of what to do next.
@ugh1234 Syracuse sounds like it was your safety school. They sensed that in your application. They do not like being used as a safety. You got into Cornell, enjoy it.
https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=130 says that Syracuse lists “level of applicant’s interest” as “very important”. Since you appear to be “overqualified”, they may have assumed that you were applying to them as a “safety” and are unlikely to matriculate, especially if you did not do whatever they consider “showing interest” beyond applying (see http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1626043-ways-to-show-a-high-level-of-applicants-interest.html for an older discussion on that).
But Cornell is a perfectly good school for engineering. Assuming that it is affordable, why not just go there and forget about Syracuse?
@gallentjill , it’s not just this year. This has been happening long before I joined CC four years ago.
@ugh1234 , sorry you are upset. Please read the original post and post 3 again. That should help clarify things for you. If Syracuse was your top choice, your best bet would have been to convey that by showing it in as many ways as you could have. It’s probably just a very competitive program. And please stop cutting and pasting the same post onto multiple threads, @ugh1234 .
Mate, you got into CORNELL!
@MrElonMusk He states “I was accepted into Cornell so it had to have been pretty decent.”
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