epiphany

Like others, I also have seen the exceptional stat on the top of the graph who is rejected, despite a small cluster of others with similar or not quite as high stats. I think that there are some significant stretches, wild guesses, & rationalizations on this thread -- as to the typical pattern, or possible pattern, of such rejects.

The reason I say that is that some of us have made a practice of investigating this. It's more possible to do so when the school is quite small, the students' profiles, personalities, preferences, etc. are quite well known, & there is much sharing of info going on. Very often this investigation includes directly questioning those applicants before or after admissions decisions.

Here are the only patterns I have found:
1- unimpressive e.c.'s, and/or very few of them
2- nonchallenging courses. (In our school, it is virtually not possible to "skip courses" that a rigorously selective college would require, so I'm surprised to see several statements about this on this thread. But naturally it's possible to take no or few courses with an Honors or AP designation if the student chooses not to, or doesn't qualify.)
3= **the most common stated reason of all** -- inattention to the application, unenthusiasm about it, lack of focus as to statement of purpose, or cockiness. ("I blew it off.")

Unless one or all of the above 3 are true, I have not seen any student get admitted to some Ivies & not others, from our school, ever. What I have seen, though, & often, is Ivy-admits (include cross-Ivy-admits) wait-listed over & over, year after year, by the high-profile LAC's. Typically, such Ivy-admits can only get in to a highly rated LAC if that student is a legacy at the LAC. That has been the consistent history from our school.

On the low end -- the irregular admit with a lower data point on the graph, over "higher" rejects -- it has indeed been true that this is a hooked applicant. In the cases I have investigated those have never been "just" legacies. In one case it was legacy + big donor; in all the other cases it was athletic recruit and/or URM.

And as to the comment about mental illness & behavior issues, I have never known one such student at our school (and there have been several with "issues") whose academic performance was not affected by an untreated or unaddressed situation, ever. They have never been at the top of any graph.

There are still many students & many parents who just do not see how important the *focus* and the *fit* are, on the application: how that is articulated, how that is backed up by the student's record, how it is reflected even in the essay, etc. I don't care how these three are often grouped together: Harvard is not Yale is not Princeton. It is possible to "belong" at all 3 of them, but less frequent that the application to each makes that clear. Not to mention Columbia, Penn, et al.

epiphany

...also, with regard to Possible Reason #2, although, yes, it's theoretically possible, that also has never happened, because any high-scorer at our school would never take non-challenging courses, & never has. There's an expectation on the part of the administration that you take at least to your level of capability. The students similarly expect that. You would be seen as quite the oddball if you were taking classes beneath your potential.

Also, somewhat paradoxically I suppose, the students taking non-Honors courses do not have high GPA's. All of the high-GPA students are taking only rigorous courseloads & levels. Perhaps this is true also at similar demanding privates.

So while the reason #2 is possible, at our school it would be highly improbable. (And to date has not been true.)

chocoholic

At our HS, many of the students who were accepted to HYPSM etc. were waitlisted and subsequently rejected at excellent schools like Boston College, Emory, Georgetown, Lehigh etc. And that is the point I was trying to make .........

mathmom

Since our version of Naviance uses weighted scores, you have to be getting top grades in weighted courses to end up at the top of the chart. I have no idea what the reasons are for those few rejections at the top end, but I do know a number of kids in our school who only got into one of the HYPSM group.

CountingDown

Our Naviance data uses unweighted GPAs. If they used weighted, it'd be a lot more useful to us, since that reflects strength of schedule, which is a real strong point for DS1. Of course, our HS also includes in GPA classes that my son took when he was 10 years old!

Treetopleaf

Thanks for all the info, epiphany. Is the above experience due to the LACs knowing of the Ivy acceptances, or is it an issue of fit I wonder?

I find the scattergrams interesting. (I didn't look at HPY etc, I was looking at average LACs and Big State schools). My aim was to get a better idea of student body stats.
In some cases (scattergrams for a given college from a given HS) it's pretty clear that anyone below a certain grade point and/or below a certain test score wasn't accepted.
In some cases I can look at the graph and get a better idea of the range of accepted students than I get from knowing the average ACT or the 25th/75th scores.
I'm looking at one scattergram right now that has all acceptances (except one outlier) above 3.5 GPA and most (but not all) ACT scores of 28 or higher (4 below 28, 16 at or above). The average ACT is shown as 29 but in this school's case it would be more accurate to view it as an approximate minimum for the majority of students. One ACT in the teens and 3 in the lower 20s pulled that average way down. Same thing with grade point - average shown as 4.05 but the majority were above that, again with a few 'oddballs' pulling the average down.

Some of the large schools show a sizable region of mixed acceptances and rejections, probably because different programs have different requirements.
Some schools show no rejections at all. Some show no students above a certain ACT score.

I also find the list of schools applied to very interesting. I'm still trying to figure out whether choices are based on popularity or what??