<p>Aw, collegeisfun, thanks. I will most probably be going to NYU. I didn't really want to go to Cornell since it didn't have a journalism program until I found out that someone with way lower stats had been accepted there while I was rejected. It just made me feel like I had worked for nothing these last 4 years.</p>
<p>
[quote]
OK. So here is the formula:
Efforts + Luck = Success
[/quote]
While there is some truth to this on the whole I would say it differently. Did the OP say the Val at my school was rejected by ALL top colleges or did it only mention Cornell? I'll buy lunch for the OP if the Val as rejected by all the top schools to which she applied. Given talent and effort in almost all cases people will do very very well ...maybe not exactly the path they planned ... but very very well never the less. In this case the door to Cornell closed and a new door opened ... who knows maybe the other top school she attends may prove to be a better fit ... and I would guess in 4 years she'll be gushing about her school with no thoughts about Cornell.</p>
<p>50 % of the accepted class of dartmouth are only valcetorians</p>
<p>paleridden.....What other schools did you consider for Journalism? Was Northwestern a consideration?....BTW, NYU is a great choice and what could be better than living in NYC!</p>
<p>our valedictorian got rejected from cornell and dartmouth</p>
<p>only had two kids get into ivies (penn and brown)</p>
<p>i read that ~45 percent of dartmouths acceptees are valedictorians...</p>
<p>3togo notes,"I'll buy lunch for the OP if the Val as rejected by all the top schools to which she applied"</p>
<p>Response: How do I collect on my lunch? She got outright rejected from 4 ivys! She got into her local state university honors program and Emory and Brandeis. She was waitlisted from 4 schools too.</p>
<p>come on vals r overrated. I got into columbia and i'm no val. In fact the kids who got into stanford, georgetown, brown werer not vals. Val is overrated. I could have been a val had not my transfer.</p>
<p>Well, I'm glad that the Ivy League schools place ECs, personality, and passion high among qualities that they evalute when choosing prospective students! Grades are not everything and many certainly deserve to go there.</p>
<p>The thing people are not realizing or forgetting is college is a business. do they want the bookworm who stays in thier dorm and studies all the time. or do they want people who volunteer and contribute to society and bring a positive image to the university. they want people who are out going and will be a resource to the college not a person who is self concerned and doesn't contibute the the college community and at large.</p>
<p>Abike11, our top two students weren't just bookworms. They both participated in pit orchastras. The both were on marching bad. They were both in plays, and one was the ass't director of a play. They both were school ambassadors to newly arriving students. The both were in Tri M music honorary society and played two instruments.</p>
<p>How much more can they have done!</p>
<p>you know not all val's are created equal, so ur #1 could be #5 at my school and my #1 could be #30 at another school. and what if ur val didn't take the most challening course load like #11 in ur class. so those are all factors with gpa and class ranl. i think people are putting too much emphaizes on val's</p>
<p>1200 SAT. Leadership skills up the a s s .
Profitable Hookah Business.
Passion.
IB.</p>
<p>Accepted to Cornell.
Done.</p>
<p>I agree that people over-rate vals. I am 1/177 and got waitlisted, even with a rigorous courseload and good standardized test scores and ECs (including leadership in a couple of areas). I think the crop of candidates at the top schools this year made competition extremely intense.</p>
<p>A friend of mine at another school, who is also a Val, was rejected from Vanderbilt and I was accepted. I would say his stats were somewhat better than mine. So, there is also a certain amount of randomness in the admissions process. </p>
<p>In addition, the adcoms are not perfect... something may strike their fancy in a particular application while another adcom may hate the same thing.</p>
<p>hahaha, our val applied to like 20 schools and got rejected from 16...</p>
<p>he has above a 5.0 weighted GPA and has a 4.0 unweighted. he has also done tons of scientific research...</p>
<p>^^Ouch!^^ That's a kick in the balls! :/</p>
<p>i know. especially since a lot of lower ranked students (such as myself and a few others) got into the schools he got rejected from.</p>
<p>hahaha, well congrats on your acceptance(s)!!</p>
<p>one of our valedicorians got into Princeton, the other got into Duke. three people got into Cornell, inc. me, who were outside the top 5 %</p>
<p>i know that admission officers are assigned regionally, so only a certian amount of applicants can get accepted from thier region so they fight for the best ones to be admitted. Has anyone seen that movie "How I Got Into College" with Lara Flynn Boyle. That movie gives insight into how adcoms select applicants for admission</p>
<p>Taxguy, from this post and others it looks like colleges aren't giving much respect to your high schools "top 20" status.</p>