Chance an Asian olympiad grinder to HYPSM [US citizen outside the US, 4A* predicted A-level, 1550 SAT, physics, cogsci, math]

[thumper1]

@fightingsalmon I’m going to link a thread here. It’s an older thread but college admissions have only become more competitive since this thread was written. The student in this thread was a NMF, class val, excellent SAT score, excellent LOR, excellent essays, very very refined ECs. No one expected him to be rejected everywhere he applied as a HS senior, but that is what happened. He didn’t really have a true sure thing on his application list. He landed very well on his feet after a well crafted gap year, but his senior year in high school was not a happy time. You don’t want to be this student.

Here is the thread. Please read it all.

No Acceptances: One Kid's Story - A year later...

Part I of III Sorry this is long but some posters have pm’d me about our story and I thought it would be of help to re-tell it. One year ago I posted a question here on CC – “We’re Picking up the Pieces …but what went wrong?” My son had applied to eight schools, been rejected at five and waitlisted at three. I expected to get a few responses and see the thread disappear deep into the archives of CC. Little did I imagine that one year later, not only would I still be posting about the progress, but an entire cyber family on College Confidential would still be going through it with me. For the benefit of those of you starting out on college applications, or – hopefully not-- for those of you who may find yourselves in our position, this is the story of one kid’s worst case scenario and how he made the best of it. I’m re-telling it here by way of my own original posts and those of other CC posters whose advice was so vital to the journey. Thanks to all of you! My original post o…