<p>Besides the oft-mentioned Washington U and eponymous Tufts, what schools are known to have issues with Tufts Syndrome? I have a friend with 1530 CR+M and a 3.3 GPA (no, not me) who was rejected (not even deferred) from Beloit early action.</p>
<p>3.3 GPA and 1530/1600 is not an automatic in to any non-state college. Especially if they have other problems (i.e. discipline), or applied for FA. I don’t see this as Tufts syndrome, unless your friend was also accepted to MUCH better universities. But that rarely happens with universities like Beloit, as reducing their 73% admit rate to 65% likely won’t significantly increase the USNWR rankings. And if it was Tufts’ syndrome, your friend woulda been deferred.</p>
<p>No disciplinary problems, involved in decent ECs, and very competitive private HS with no grade inflation. And 1530/1600 is pretty damn good, considering Beloit’s 75th percentile is 1380 and they have a 93% EA acceptance rate. Considering he was deferred from Yale and denied at Beloit, I think there has to be some degree of Tufts Syndrome involved. Anyway, the point of this isn’t my friend, it’s what schools are known to use manipulative admissions practices.</p>
<p>George Washington’s scatter plot looks pretty bad! They clearly reject or waitlist if you’re stats are too good. They seem to be the most blatant.</p>
<p>Pomona is sick of being Stanford’s back-up school. So if you have super stats you are really going to have to convince them you love Pomona best or they will reject you.</p>
<p>IMO there was No Tufts Syndrome involved. His grades killed his chances.</p>
<p>Coureur, thats just inane… there are plenty of kids with super stats at pomona (5th highest SAT score range in the nation), including people who have both perfect 2400’s and 36’s.</p>
<p>But Beloit’s average GPA is 3.4! It must have been his essays…Beloit cares about essays more than anything else on the application.</p>
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<p>But these Pomona students do not have the off-the-charts ECs and leadership potential to get into Stanford, a school which rejects perfect 2400’s and 36’s all the time.</p>
<p>Moreover, Stanford has greater (racial/ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic) diversity than Pomona. The university also has more world class athletes than any other in the nation.</p>
<p>For an “unhooked” candidate, Stanford is as hard to get into as HYP.</p>
<p>One must be very careful not to equate prestige and selectivity with SAT scores.</p>
<p>Many of them do have these EC’s you speak of… in fact i distinctly recall a student on CC who got into stanford but not his first choice, pomona, last year. Of course it has more world class atheletes (who are probably not up to par academically), Pomona won’t accept a bonehead who can shoot a basketball or throw a football. Every student athlete at pomona chose pomona because of the academics, not because of the sports. Not to mention Pomona dominates its conference in many sports (even had a player go to the Boston Red Sox last year). Also the legacy card at pomona doesn’t have as much as a factor as it does at Stanford and the ivy league schools. In addition, Pomona is one of the most diverse liberal arts colleges, the last entering class had the second most number of african americans out of any liberal arts college.</p>
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<p>Now if you had played nice, I’d have left well enough alone, but since you didn’t…</p>
<p>Acceptance Rates: Stanford (approx. 7%) vs. Pomona (approx. 15%)</p>
<p>Yield Rates: Stanford (approx. 70%) vs. Pomona (approx. 40%)</p>
<p>Incidentally, it seems as if even some CC members can’t tell the difference between Pomona and CAL STATE POLY Pomona: </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/45133-cal-state-poly-pomona-17-acceptance-rate.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/45133-cal-state-poly-pomona-17-acceptance-rate.html</a></p>
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<p>I don’t think that one piece of (unverifiable) anecdotal evidence means much of anything, but that’s just me…</p>
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<p>It means a lot, actually. It’s like that story I had, about that kid who got into Harvard with enough merit aid to fund weekly ski trips to Iran despite having a 2.6 GPA, no activities, and an incomplete application. That story might not have been true (or, rather, it was unverifiable), but it is a good counter-example to all the kids who automatically assume that you need to be a good student and an outstanding person to be competitive in the Ivy Leagues.</p>
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<p>Those names are unnecessarily similar.</p>
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<p>I am going to go out on a limb and say that your story is not true, especially since Harvard does not offer merit aid…</p>
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<p>Yeah, but as I said, they had to convince Pomona that they really loved the place and wanted to go there. For example, unlike HYPSM, Pomona actually keeps track of who visits the campus and who doesn’t. Sure they have some kids enrolled with great stats. Good for them. But the school is not afraid to reject kids with high stats in favor of kids with lower stats if they think the high-stat kids are really headed to HYPS and don’t have their heart set on Pomona, presumably to enhance their yield (i.e. Tufts Syndrome). I’ve seen it happen repeatedly at our local high school. Sorry if I insulted your college Anonymous91, but that is definitely the reputation Pomona has here in our area. They earned it over the course of many admissions cycles.</p>
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<p>If it’s not true or not verifiable then it’s not a good example of anything.</p>
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<p>We often say that </p>
<p>Time is Money –> T = M
Knowledge is Power –> K = P</p>
<p>We also know </p>
<p>Work = Power x Time –> W = PT</p>
<p>From these three equations we get M = W/P = W/K</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Money = Work / Knowledge.</p>
<p>To make money you need either work hard or have less knowledge.</p>
<p>This debate (Stanford v. Pomona) is based on premise that an AdCom (and others) can clearly differentiate, rank, and agree (on an objective basis) which students are better. In other words that the marginal (last) student admitted to Stanford should be/is better than those admitted to Pomona. That view is clearly flawed (dare I say, ridiclously so).</p>
<p>First, they are both top schools with more well-qualified applicants than they can/want to accept, which means some great candidates are not admitted. Second, the admissions process is a art, not a science. There are so many complex (and subjective) factors that enter into admissions decisions. Perhaps the student had a great interview at one school but not another, perhaps one colege wanted to make inroads with the high school of the applicant but the other school didn’t, perhaps the orchestra at one place needs a new bassoonist, perhaps some obscure department has expressed a desire to see more students admitted with a particular idosyncratic interest, perhaps the applicant had a friend of the family e-mail the admissions dean at one college but not the other, perhrps the quirky, plucky, funny essay was a hit with one reader and a flop with another, etc.</p>
<p>Even if the Stanford admissions pool was the exact same, but the AdCom was made up of 10 different people, that difference alone would mean that some number of students who were rejected would have been admitted and vice versa. The class would be different… 8%, 10%, 15%, 25% different? </p>
<p>Certainly, small LACs want students who want that particular type of education. It wouldn’t surprise me that some appicants to bigs Ivys (and their equivalents) are more skilled than others at also expressing enthusiasm for Pomona and as a result Pomona admissions decision reflect that fact.</p>
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<p>The only way to tell is to find out the cross-admit rate. What do you think the rate is? 50-50?</p>
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<p>It isn’t. I just said that. Yikes.</p>
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<p>And you might be right about that. The problem with debating colleges is that so much of this is subjective. Any one of us can churn out horror stories about perfect applicants being rejected from all their dream schools while the human equivalent of soap scum gets free rides and merit aid to anywhere they want. Apart from statistics and data taken from either the college’s website itself or from the media, almost everything you can say about any college is anecdotal and relies heavily on your personal trust in the poster making the claim. We can go around in circles forever arguing about whether or not Pomona or Stanford are “Better” than each other or are more selective or have “Tufts Syndrome” based entirely on anecdotes.</p>
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<p>No, you didn’t. You said that the story “might not have been” true…</p>