<p>is it all about the in state requirements? does it make private acceptances a little more fair?</p>
<p>It all depends. Different colleges have different requirements. What examples do you have in mind?</p>
<p>It’s possible they didn’t view you as a viable candidate (they were your safety and thought you would not attend).</p>
<p>state schools are usually more numbers oriented. private schools like the ivies usually have a little more room to decide more holistically?</p>
<p>Maybe by the time the person applied there was no more room? Maybe it was a school with rolling admission or something? Or it could be like Erin’s dad said, they saw the kid wasn’t going to go and didn’t bother. It’s the reason I didn’t list any of the schools I’m applying to for my safety’s application even though they asked.</p>
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<p>To give you one example, public schools in California are legally barred from using race-based AA. But most private schools still do.</p>
<p>Sometimes it depends on the program to which the applicant applies. To note one famous example, George W. Bush was rejected by the law school at the University of Texas in Austin, but accepted by Harvard Business School.</p>
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<p>Well, if you’re going to invoke various grad school programs, then you can surely find numerous examples. For example, I’m sure you could find plenty of people who got into the PhD program in chemistry at Dartmouth, but would have no chance of ever getting into that program at Berkeley, for the simple reason that the former is ranked #74 and the latter is ranked #1.</p>
<p>sometimes, Ivys can just be by luck.</p>