Admission Stats 2010--Read 'Em But Don't Weep

10mwil
Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:44:13 +0000

It does seem to me (a high school senior this year who applied to Dartmouth and Cornell, rejected at one, guaranteed transfer at Cornell) that many of the top schools do encourage students who have no chance to apply. I applied to 21 schools and almost all of them put forth the obviously untrue “everyone stands a chance” thing–except Vanderbilt. The Vandy admissions officer who gave the information session was very clear: she literally said not to send SAT II scores if they aren’t over 700, and that what they look for is A’s in the hardest classes–not just that you challenged yourself. She didn’t beat around the bush or make it seem like everyone actually has an equal shot. I really appreciated that and I wish that more schools took that approach.

I don’t regret my choices to apply to many top schools, as I am pretty happy now, but I do think that ALL schools could save money, stress, and time for themselves and applicants if they made their criteria explicitly clear. Rejection really does hurt!