<p>The transcript is important for rigor as well as GPA.</p>
<p>A poor essay means the student did not spend time on it nor feel that it was important enough to get guidance on. There is a chance that you are not a great judge of essays, and your Harvard supplemental essay is better than you thought .</p>
<p>A LOR which has “top 5%” in all categories but the teacher has no comments is suspect. A LOR that gives a few examples of what the student is like is better.</p>
<p>My understanding is exactly as the Amherst College college process is noted. Once a college sets a minimum cutoff for rigor, grades, and test scores, no fantastic essay, no special circumstances, no amazing LOR will get your app out of the trash heap.</p>
<p>That is <em>not</em> to say that Ivies, for example, don’t consider legacies, athletes, and URM separately, and use much lower cutoffs, such as 3.0 GPA vs. 3.5 GPA or 1300 CR + M instead of 1450 CR + M. But if you are none of these three categories, and you are applying to any Ivy, your 3.0 GPA will result in no review of your specific situation.</p>
<p>Colleges do make decisions about whether they want every single accepted student to be completely sold on their school. Some are more that way, some are less. If you are SCEA to Harvard, and your Harvard supplemental essay is okay but not great, they need to decide if that’s okay or not. What other reason would be compelling to them to take you?</p>
<p>Your chances to get into Harvard are poor like everyone else’s. I agree that the valedictorian thing is meaningless. If your school is known, colleges know that they have a zillion valedictorians and don’t care. Note that the point is to have one student give the valedictory, the speech at graduation, so having more than one is an odd choice and does point to both grade inflation and trying to increase their students’ college chances (with little result you report).</p>