<p>But the phrase “no realistic chance of admission” has a very technical meaning here, and it’s circular. “No realistic chance of admission” doesn’t mean that they aren’t fantastic students, and potential world-beaters. It only means that they aren’t quite as perfect-looking at 17 or 18 as some other fantastic students and potential world-beaters.</p>
<p>At the schools my kids attended, I don’t know anyone who applied to Harvard who wasn’t a fantastic student and a potential world-beater. With one or two exceptions, everyone who applied to Harvard or Yale wound up at some Ivy-equivalent college, and one of the exceptions to that is absolutely tearing up the track at her large public. (She only applied to six colleges; when Yale rejected her, there was really no near-Yale on her list.) Among the students Harvard and Yale rejected was a kid who two years later was the principal author of a full article in Science. He probably had “no meaningful chance of acceptance” because he was only #10 in his high school class, and Harvard/Yale had never dipped below 6 or 7, and it was a strong class, too (there were three other kids who were accepted to one or both of them). If you could do the admissions in retrospect, he would be the first one taken.</p>