Would this count as one of those admission horror stories?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Yale University
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<p>So everyone I'm sure has that one example of that kid that you thought was the next Einstein but Yale disagreed and sent him the rejection letter. I know of those people, and I know it happens, but I was still shocked in this one case. I won't go into details for privacy reasons but basically he/she was the valedictorian of a top 200 public high school, a pretty high level nationally ranked athlete, (not recruited cause of sport type though), 34-35 ACT score, SAT II average of 780ish, and is internationally recognized in the sciences. He/she also has about 400 service hours and is president of a major service club along with other top ECs. He/she also has pretty good story (bad medical problems and has had about 4 major surgeries in HS alone). </p>

<p>Do you think it's odd the result wasn't at least a waitlist? I hear Y rarely denies people EA?</p>

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<p>Yale rejected about 1/3 of its SCEA applicants this year. Anything we would say will only be conjecture no? Of course he’s not the sum total of what you’ve listed. What was in or missing from his essay and LORs?</p>

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<p>LOR from one teacher was TOP TOP notch. (I.e. highly respected teacher saying that this student is one of the best ever and the teacher had examples to back it up. This kid is a genius). Also, this teacher writes very, very good letters. All the kids at my HS want to get letters from him/her. second letter was pretty good too
Essays: wrote about athletics (I hear that’s risky)?</p>

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<p>I know all Ivies deny 2400/36 er valedictorians, but…just sayin’</p>

<p>You mentioned ACT is 34-35. Yes, that’s good. But do you know how many 36s there are? Two in my daughter’s average public school on one ACT sitting date. Also…several 2400s. And of course this means these are also 4.0 + weight top 10 kids in the school (of 700-800 kids). These kids have 8-14 APS, and they’re nearly all a score of “5”. They ALL participate at a high level at their passion (be it music or athletics, etc.). They ALL have fairly unbelievable volunteer hours, and leadership positions. Beyond that, well…I also hate to give detail so we don’t establish the school, but…these kids are winners of many team state championships, national contests, first in state for things like Siemen’s and Presidential Scholars, National Merit Finalists, AND … “a bag of chips” (such as doing outside research with local companies). My own D is BARELY in the top 10% at this school, and she’s a National Merit Semi finalist. And this is a VERY average school. This is ONE school in ONE state. And there are truly 10 or more kids whose stats show them to be highly qualified for top 10 school. Will they all be admitted to every one they apply to? Nope. </p>

<p>Let’s take top 10 colleges and average 1500 per school (and that’s generous, at least based on the fact that Ivies are 1100-1300, but I’m too lazy to look up the others. There are now 15,000 freshman seats for EVERY kid in the WORLD. Gosh, that’s the same number as National Merit Finalists. ONLY the top 1%. So, though your friend might fall into that category, so do many more kids than 15,000.</p>

<p>Legacies, URMs, athletes, internationals, under represented areas/states, feeder schools, those who donate money, and the famous…must all be represented. That doesn’t leave that many seats. There simply aren’t enough slots for the talent. AND…the statements that they’re “building a class” is true. There is another CCer who got a likely letter at Columbia (pigsatsea). I looked back to her stats and they were not quite as good as your friends. BUT…supposedly Columbia NEEDS female engineering applicants. They need to be great/qualified…but you MIGHT find someone with better stats who isn’t admitted for one reason or another. Same with race, location, or anything else the college “needs” that year. It is TRULY holistic. But meant to make the class they want, not holistic in the sense that everyone gets the same breaks because they read your application thoroughly. If they haven’t had a concert level pianist lately, they might need one more than what skills your friend offers. </p>

<p>It’s just impossible to analyze outside the confines of the admissions office. You’ll make yourself crazy. I’ll bet your friend gets into one of his other top choices.</p>

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<p>I would hardly call the public school listed above “average.” The average public school doesn’t even offer 8 AP’s.</p>

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<p>R124687: Two ACT 36s and several SAT 2400s at your “average” school. You must be kidding. Check the national stats before you make such a claim.</p>

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<p>It’s true that “several 2400’s” does not an average school, or for that matter probably any school, make. But the spirit of R124687’s post is absolutely right. I would expect a candidate with that profile to get deferred and then rejected instead of rejected outright, but maybe something in the essays or teacher reqs raised a flag, etc. That’s not to say candidates with that profile don’t get in w/o being legacy, recruited athlete, URM, development case, etc, but the odds are very much against it – maybe a 20% chance of being admitted. And the school profile does not suggest an underrepresented state so no tip factor there either. The truth is for the unhooked and untipped, admission to HYP is highly unlikely. The outcome in this case is, at most, mildly surprising.</p>

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<p>Heh, I like post # 5 & 6, gotta agree. What the OP lists as a Horror story is just real life. Here’s a real horror story: Starting the 2 1/2 hour drive home from a Yale visit this last spring It begins to rain. Wife and son finally get home 7 hours later, its still raining, and the sun roof leaked the whole way home! Wife was not happy. Having my son accepted would make that just a fond memory. funny that.</p>

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<p>FYI, for those interested:</p>

<p>2009 stats
<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/sat_percentile_ranks_composite_cr_m_w.pdf[/url]”>Higher Education Professionals | College Board;
297 SAT’s with 2400</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.act.org/news/data/09/pdf/National2009.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/news/data/09/pdf/National2009.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
638 ACT’s with 36</p>

<p>935 perfect scores, with a handful held by the same individuals = approx. 900 perfect scorers</p>

<p>20,000+ high schools means < 1 perfect scorer / 22 high schools</p>

<p>3,300,000 seniors = approx. 1 perfect scorer / 3660 students (99.97+ percentile)</p>

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<p>I’m sure the student mentioned above in the OP will get into a fine school and he/she will excel. Good Luck.</p>

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<p>While his academic credentials are outstanding, what do you see in him that sets him apart from the thousands of other applicants with outstanding academics?</p>

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<p>This doesn’t make sense to me. What does “pretty high nationally ranked” mean? Top 10? Top 100? Yale offers 35 varsity sports and would certainly be interested in recruiting a nationally ranked athlete. Does Yale not offer the sport? What sport is it? Even if Yale doesn’t offer it (like figureskating, for example), they would probably still be interested if he were one of the tops in the country.</p>

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<p>What does this mean? Did he receive an award for a competition that would put him near the top in the world or nationally?</p>

<p>From the information you’ve provided, I don’t see any one thing in particular that would make this applicant stand out.</p>

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<p>Descartesz :</p>

<p>Thanks for posting the statistics.</p>

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<p>Lest you think I’m playing fast and loose with hard numbers, calling this school average…it really IS average around here. I guess I’m not adhering to the letter of the law when I use the term. Let’s just say it’s nothing special, in a “nothing special” state. So…typical for the area. And only 1,2,3 go to any of the Ivies in any given year. So, what ya’ll are zoning in on is the fact that I said there are several perfect scores. Even if you don’t have them at your school…there ARE many schools with many kids with absolutely stellar numbers. </p>

<p>I guess, in my head I’m leaving out the tiny rural schools. But we have what seems to be a very average number of NMFs, VERY few kids go to Ivies, it’s “ranked”, but BARELY…think the 500s. FOR A PUBLIC, it’s a good school. But it’s LARGE, so there are opportunities. I don’t know of ANY schools in our area that offer under 8 APs. </p>

<p>Example…Presidential Scholars just came out. That’s only 40 (ish) kids per state. I’m sure most states will be picking from only perfect scores. I know the kids I saw on the list in our state (those for whom I know the scores) all had perfect scores. My own D with a 34 didn’t come CLOSE, of course. Numbers expand exponentially when you go doward to a 35…and then to a 34. Because you don’t personally know a lot of these kids, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We have schools in our area with close to 30 National Merit Finalists. At ONE school. So I’m just saying that OP might not have much exposure to the fact that these stats are not that uncommon. </p>

<p>Bottom line, what I’m getting at, whether you think I’m playing fast and loose with the numbers, is that OPs friend is great - BUT…there are many many many similar kids…and many of those kids don’t get into their dream school. It’s a tough time to be a freshman, THAT much is sure. So good luck to ya all!!</p>

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<p>Nice reply descartesz. It is definitely not common to have two 36’s in one high school. Our high school graduates about 150 kids every year. I would categorize our school as pretty average. We have NEVER had one single 36 since we’ve been administering the ACT in our school. My daughter got a 35 which was the first time anyone has had above a 34. There are only about 4000 COMBINED 35’s and 36’s out of about a million and a half kids taking the ACT. Add the 2180 kids scoring a 2350 and above on their SAT and you couldn’t even fill the entire freshman class at the HYPSM schools with 35-36 ACT’s and 2350-2400 SAT’ers.</p>

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<p>One more thing, we do not offer any AP classes, and have never had a single NMF. It’s a whole different world in schools with under 200 kids. We have no kind of test prep classes either, which may be on reason we haven’t had sterling numbers on standardized tests.</p>

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<p>Mustang: Your mention that the reason you don’t have “sterling numbers” because you don’t have test prep makes me want to let you know that this school particular high school serves the very highest income AND…the very lowest income levels in our area. It is quite diverse, inner city to near suburb. My daughter has never done any test prep. I won’t list her scores here but I will say that, while test prep can probably help some people…it’s not the reason for these scores. Of those kids I know in this score range, none of them did any test prep. Just sayin’. And I’m trying to respond nicely since y’all seem to be getting ruffled just because I’m letting OP know some of the reaons one can’t ASSUME they will be accepted to an Ivy. He may think his friend is exceptional, and he is. But there are a LOT of kids working VERY hard to turn in those same numbers.</p>

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<p>There’s literally no difference between a 34-36 ACT or a 2200-2400 SAT (literally, you could have four careless errors and go from a 2400 to a 2240), and every admissions officer with half a brain realizes that. This kid didn’t get rejected because he only had a 34 ACT (really, I can’t believe I just said only for this; a 34 is impressive). Just look at the admission statistics; Yale’s RANGE is 30-34 meaning that his 34 would have put him at the 75th percentile of YALE ADMITS (meaning that 75 percent scored at or lower than a 34). What many here on CC forget is that they do not admit statistics; they admit people. All a high SAT or ACT score indicates is that you’re probably rather bright and could academically thrive at Yale, nothing more. As well, the same goes with a 3.8+ GPA. OP, I wouldn’t be surprised if he came across as rather arrogant in his essays because that’s the only way I could see a rejection being given as opposed to a deferral. Anyways, it was not statistics that brought your friend down, as some of the people on here seem to be attempting to say and I don’t understand how someone could say that pigsatsea has low statistics, when she clearly doesn’t.</p>

<p>Of course, you’re probably going to attempt to provide a rebuttal, but just imagine yourself in an admissions committee and attempt to propound your argument that because this kid got one more question right on the SAT than some other kid, the kid who got the one extra question right is the one who deserves to be admitted. The argument, quite simply, is ludicrous because, as I previously said, they’re admitting people; not statistics.</p>

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<p>Actually, no. Given a smooth distribution of perfect scorers across the country, we could expect that only about five or six states can fill their 40 slots with perfect scorers. See
[List</a> of U.S. states and territories by population](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population]List”>List of U.S. states and territories by population - Wikipedia). CA, with 12% of the population, could expect to have about 108 perfect scorers. PA, with 4.1%, about 37. MN, with 1.7%, about 15. And indeed I know that MN’s Presidential Scholar cut-off goes to about 35 in the ACT and 2360+ in the SAT.</p>

<p>(Actually the ACT score cutoff among Presidential Scholars is determined not by composite but by sum-of-sections, 144 being a perfect perfect score and probably rarer than an SAT 2400, but I think the general picture is clear).</p>

<p>R124687, I don’t mean to pick on you. I actually agree that for schools like Yale there are so many very high test scores and grades that they become less important as other criteria are turned to when making final decisions. Unless we have seen the entire application portfolio, we ought not be surprised when a high-scoring student is turned away at a highly selective school.</p>

<p>What I am trying to work against, by supplying an accurate statistical picture, is the general tone on CC that these kinds of scores are pretty common in the overall picture. They are not. I know that there are a few schools and regions in the country where they aren’t rare, but such schools themselves are far more uncommon than those familiar with them are wont to believe.</p>

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<p>He/She has much better accomplishments then what Im posting but since his/her stuff is identifiable through like googling, I have to be vague. My HS is uber competitive (last year two Asian girls that were barely top 10%, though school doesn’t rank, got into a top ivy and a top LAC; they had no hooks). Also, another girl last year that didn’t even take what is considered at our to be a top level schedule got into ALL of HYPSM. The kid that got denied makes even the best my school’s seen look dumb. I know Yale denies lots of qualified applications but I’m still shocked IMO</p>

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<p>I am going to be redundant… admission to a top school is a crapshoot. Everyone knows it! </p>

<p>Yes, sometimes the people who are admitted and denied seem arbitrary.
Yes, your friend had solid stats.
Yes, many times the unexpected ‘mediocre’ ( only CC thinks 2200 is average) students get in.
Yes, many times the expected students with top everything get rejected.</p>

<p>Trying to figure out why he was rejected will only make you think the admissions process is even more random. HOWEVER maybe there’s a reason for his denial. Yale obviously had its reasons whether it be too many science people or just the fact that he wasn’t a good fit. I like to think optimistically and believe that there’s a reason he got rejected: its just not the school for him. And who would be the best judge of this? YALE! </p>

<p>Maybe he’s meant to go to Harvard instead and his rejection forced him to work harder on his essays for other schools. It can be surprising, but I’m sure it wasn’t arbitrary and there was a good reason for it. I’m sure he will be very happy on April 1st with his many acceptances!</p>