Please do not feel worthless. The game is not won in high school. There is much life ahead and many versions of winning. They all look like contentment. The sooner you arrive there the better. Good luck.
You have a 3.8 unweighted. That is very good, but it is not unusual. There are LOTS of kids with 3.8 or higher GPA.
You got into a top 25 university. There are probably a million high school seniors right now who wish that they had gotten into, or wish that they could afford, to go to a top 250 university. I am not sure about UVA, but if they wanted to Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, and Amherst could probably fill their entire incoming freshman class with students who have an unweighted GPA higher than this. Getting into Princeton or Yale with an unweighted 4.0 is a long shot for everyone.
You are saying nasty things about fellow students because you resent their success. You say “I’m bitter, angry, and depressed”. This might be a reason that you didn’t get into where you wanted to. Being white probably didn’t help, but being Asian probably also didn’t help your friend who you are now no longer talking to. You say that you have a “rather impressive and lengthy academic profile”. Congratulating yourself on how good you are doesn’t usually come across well to others.
Getting into a top 25 university is a huge success. You have nothing to be bitter or angry about. If you don’t learn to appreciate the good things that have come to you and the huge opportunity that you have been given, then you will miss a lot in life.
@confus3d Chin up! You’ve done some amazing things in such a short life span! Be proud that you’ve gotten into a top 25. That’s not to say that I don’t sympathize with you… you’ve poured your blood, sweat, tears, heart and soul into your HS career with the goal of getting into those schools that in turn rejected you. But please don’t let your bitterness linger, take hold of your life, and make you obsessive about your friends. It’s unhealthy, a waste of time and you’ll miss out on really enjoying the end of your senior year and the summer.
Many times, like you’ve suspected, factors such as money and/or ethnicity are what these schools are looking for…sometimes it’s a person’s compelling essay that gives someone an edge. It’s hard to tell. Once you’re settled at your college hopefully you’ll be so busy enjoying classes and your new friends that you won’t have time to dwell on all this.
Hindsight is 20/20 so the saying goes. You may not see it now, but at the end of your undergrad years you may just be surprised at how things will have turned out 
Maybe your Indian Hindu friend’s dad did pull strings, but I doubt it. Unless they donated several millions to Yale, they saw something in your friend. But that’s another, separate issue. Students with better hard stats than yours get denied from top schools all the time. I know personally several students with near perfect SAT, GPAs, NMF who got denied from Berkeley and UCLA. They had to go to top 50 schools instead. They also had friends with lower hard stats get into higher ranked schools.
I agree with @MaineLonghorn. The OP resonates with self-pity, resentment, and entitlement. If that kind of attitude came across in his/her application, it would not be received well. Disappointment is fine, but wallowing in self-pity and focusing on what others achieved is not productive. Move on. A top 25 school is a fine achievement, and no one will be laughing.
I wonder if OP realizes that there are literally tens of thousands of applicants out there with qualifications just like his or even better. There isn’t nearly enough room for all of them at the same handful of prestigious schools that they all apply to and want to attend.
There is a reason you weren’t supposed to be at those other schools. Someday you will discover it and see the gift that life just dealt you today.
In the end, everything will be ok.
If it’s not ok, it’s not the end.
Enjoy the journey.
Get over it an move on. You have good reason to be bitter but sublimate that by overachieving at your accepted school and hate the Ivy League in sports - that is easy enough after all. Besides, quality people do not peak in high school - you have time.
OP wrote: “The weakest point of my profile was probably my GPA - since I took exclusively AP or high honors courses and my school doesn’t weight GPA, required courses in STEM I had little-to-no interest in dragged my GPA to roughly 3.8 - weighted, it’d be something like a 4.2 or .3, I’d imagine.”
GPA is arguably the single most important aspect of college applications, so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that you didn’t get into your top school choices. Given that there are thousands of students with more rigorous courses and with much better GPA that end up with similar results as yours, you should be happy to have been admitted to one top-25 school. Those applicants with the similar stats as yours that do get admitted to top most selective colleges have something else in their applications (recruited athlete, URM, mega donor, legacy, conservatory level musician, etc.).
Your disbelief, anger and frustration is understandable, but your emotional reaction does not match today’s college admissions reality. Your reaction was based on your IMAGINATION of what the college admissions are like. The reality is quite different. So, be happy with the top-25 college, do well at the school, and apply to your dream grad school.
If you are the first one in your family to apply, I see the confusion and disappointment. The first time around is a real eye opener to understand just how competitive it is, and how hard it is for unhooked students to do well in the elite college admissions game.
I like the poster who stated “You did nothing wrong.” You did a lot of things right too. It’s worse for kids whose parents don’t understand how competitive highly selective college admissions can be, and they sometimes blame their student for not getting into HYPS. I hope this is not happening to you.
Try to understand that college admissions is a changing landscape. You did your best. It’s okay to be confused and sad that you didn’t do as well as you had hoped, but now its time to cut yourself some slack and do the best you can with the hand you were dealt. There are many roads to success, outside of HYPS.
Something perhaps to think about?
I see you whining about others who got admitted to schools you did not, playing the race card as a victim of reverse discrimination, and bragging about at all of 18 years old your “rather impressive and lengthy academic profile” as though tone-deaf to how this sounds.
You’ll never know why you got turned down, but you will know how you reacted. One is an area under your control, one is not. Maybe college has already taught you your first lesson…
Your feelings are real so you shouldn’t be judged on it, but you need to get to acceptance on this as the classic theory says (denial-bitterness etc.). I would try not to be so competitive, and look at things as win-loss, one upmanship. Also the more you think negatively the more negative outcomes you’ll attract.
Also you can do what a lot of other people who were rejected by the ivies and ended up in a state school - they knew they were as talented and they outworked them, didn’t take things for granted, learned networking and communication skills and ended up in a better place. Admissions officers make mistakes, if they didn’t, they’d be able to predict interest rates and be retired. Tell yourself this was a mistake and have a chip on your shoulder, it will serve you well, rather than more of these feelings.
Be mad, be sad, grieve what might have been.
Then move on.
There are plenty of paths to success and they don’t all run through Yale—very few of them run through Yale! I live in an affluent neighborhood full of professionals and successful business people. Most of my neighbors went to state schools. Some started in community college or took a detour through the military. What they have in common is hard work and the ability to cease opportunity.
Go to your college and take advantage of everything offered, academically, socially, everything.
@confus3d, I don’t know it you’re still there, but I’ll respond in case…
I think a part of this problem is the huge emphasis in our culture on branding, prestige and image-consciousness. It has probably always been so, but social media has put it all on steroids. It’s so hard to separate substance from surface values in anything anymore, and college ranking and selection is probably a part of this.
In the scheme of things, any top-25 school is a very elite school, and extremely difficult to get into, when you look at the sheer numbers of students applying. The caliber of teaching, of your peers, and of opportunities should still be stellar. You have done well. Don’t let any ranking lists play with your self-esteem and try (though it’s hard, given our culture’s values) not to let your fear of anyone’s perceptions kill your happiness. You probably know there are several ranking lists, and while most include roughly the same schools in the top 60 or so, there are some surprising reshufflings, depending on the ranking criteria. So much of the rankings is a matter of splitting hairs, and much of what makes any given school unique and valuable involve qualities not easily ranked… This is just my own opinion (and I am certainly not the most qualified on CC to make this judgement) but I would venture to say that within any given group of say, 40 schools ranked similarly, the “fit” for your own personality, financial needs and program/major preferences is much more important than the very specific rank of any given school. You will find many peers you will be proud to call your classmates at your school; you will be challenged; and you will have abundant opportunities during and after your college years IF you make the most of the experience.
Have you grown up with a lot of pressure from family and schoolmates about getting into Ivy and other top-ranked schools? If so, it would make sense that you are feeling what you are feeling (including the bitterness and jealousy), or is this a mostly self-imposed competitiveness and brow-beating? Are these the values that you REALLY want to embrace, or are you mostly feeling this way out of fear of being judged and ridiculed? Dig deep inside and you might figure out the answer. Try to be kind to yourself…nothing and no one can take away the accomplishments that you have. Also, you don’t have to play the comparison game with others…one has to know where you were accepted and where you were rejected. If some one flat-out asks where you were accepted/rejected, ask them "“why do yo want to know?” to set some boundaries. It’s none of thier business! I can think of several students on CC who actually chose schools ranked lower than others that they were accepted to simply because they liked (through their own ranking criteria) their chosen schools better.
Rankings and disappointment aside, is there anything you feel excited about with regard to your accepted school ? Is it possible that you could come to love it so much that you wouldn’t trade it for a Dartmouth or Princeton? Try to focus on the possibility of happiness, and let your fears, embarrassment and jealousy go. Tell everyone who asks you about college what you like about your school and why you chose it (rather than focusing on who chose you.) This positivity is your best weapon (if weapons are even needed) against snobbery and one-upmanship. Another good cliché: living well is the best revenge You can turn this around. And, as others have said, if the school really isn’t a good fit for you (rankings be damned), you can transfer,
Plus, college isn’t the goal but a means.
A CEO that I want to read more on to figure out how he has been so successful in various different fields (and has been described by an ex-GS banker, who’s sure to have known many smart people, as one of the smartest guys around) went to a UC. And not even a top UC. He went to UCSC. Then he was incredibly successful at one place. Then he got a master’s from Stanford. Then he’s gone on to revolutionize a different but related field.
All right, this opinion may be unpopular, but as a current college student and former overachiever in high school, I have to give this opinion.
First off, go back on my previous chance me thread from two years ago and look at my stats. I know the system. I’ve been there.
You list your achievements like they’re some “golden ticket” to a good college. They’re not. Your 34 ACT, while its excellent when compared to the general population, is at most “acceptable” in elite college admissions. People with perfect 36s get rejected all the time. 9 AP Courses? In what subjects, and what scores? Not all AP exams are made equal, even if its all 5’s in the hardest tests, its still not very impressive when compared to the top academic achievements ( the average amount of AP exams taken among me and my Asian friends in college during high school was 15). If anything, taken at face value, your AP exam numbers are average at best.
“thousand hours of community service with prestigious organizations and positions (served over 200 as the Red Cross of my region’s Chairman of Youth Management), two varsity sports actively being played, a published thesis in an optional political science program, multiple shorter works in transit and a currently unpublished full-length novel finished”
Do you know how much fluff you’re placing in these achievements? These positions/experiences have no value if you’re looking at them at face value in terms of trustworthiness. There is no “prestige” in volunteering. Its to better the community, for purely altruistic reasons. If anything, you mentioning prestige hints that you were gunning for hours to put on your college resume. Two varsity sports? Im sorry, but were you any good at them? Did you have any achievements to prove that you were actually somewhat competent at them like a state or regional cut? At my old high school, varsity basketball was super hard to get into, but varsity swimming(I was the captain, I know) and track literally took anyone with a pulse because of how the competitions were scored. Simply being on the team means nothing. A published thesis? Are you kidding me??? I’m sorry, but as a college student who recently published his first real scientific publication (and a former Siemens semifinalist), you literally get nothing notable done in academia unless you really work at it full time for an extremely long period of time. There are no shortcuts. Unless you ate and sleep political science 4+ hours a day after school everyday like a real political scientist who publishes 1-2 papers a semester, that thesis was probably pure fluff published in a super low tier journal if at all. You probably thought it would “sound good to adcoms”, and thats fine, but it has no real achievement value.“Shorter works in transit and a unpublished full-length novel”. I can send a article to Nature( the best scientific journal), and say that its “in transit”, but it means nothing and is completely worthless until Nature actually accepts the article. How good is that novel? I can fill up 300+ pages with words in a day. It wouldn’t sound good, but it would still be a “unpublished full-length novel”.
You’re trying to fluff up your achievements, and adcoms know that. Stop being so entitled. Stop thinking you deserve to go to a top school. Your achievements aren’t that special, they only sound good because you’re purposely wording them in a way that to a outsider might sound good, but to someone who actually knows what they’re doing like a adcom, they’re quite insignificant.
It’s like complaining you were not born great looking etc. Life is all about trying to do your best with what you have been given by God or genetics or luck. You have been given this first lesson at this age: consider it as a challenge and realization to motivate yourself. You will get rejected many times in your life but there are many ways to skin a cat.
The OP hasn’t been on the site since the day he started this thread. I’m going to close it so that people don’t waste their time responding any longer.