Did I shoot too low?

insanedreamer
Mon, 07 Mar 2016 05:56:39 +0000

Congratulations on getting into Penn! You’re getting an education at one of the best universities in the world.

The fact is, that as stellar as your stats were, there’s no guarantee you would have gotten into Stanford or Yale - because most everyone who applies to those universities has outstanding stats/ECs (applications to the colleges are pretty much self-selecting). In other words, Stanford only selects 6% of students who are more or less like you, which means that no matter how good you are, your chances of getting in are about 1/20. That doesn’t mean the other students are better than you, but Stanford only has room for so many. You might have gotten lucky, but there’s maybe only a 10% chance you would have gotten in.

If given a choice, would you have taken 1/10 odds at Stanford over 10/10 odds at Penn (since you’re already admitted)? Probably not. Don’t worry about what might or might not have been.