Wait. What? I’m going to disagree with that. I’d hazard to guess that 80+% of adults that are told that someone has a high achievement in MTG are going to think it doesn’t matter at all. Like if you said you were a top ranked Call Of Duty player. It’d be like ‘Okay that’s nice but what are going to be when you grow up.’
Note the sky high GPA and standardized test scores and average AP scores around 4.
HS rigor can vary a lot and honestly, American standardized tests are easy.
Even most AP tests (compared to other uni entrance exams around the world), aren’t hard. Note that good UK unis (the ones around the level of UMich) require the equivalent of 3 AP’s with 5’s in each of them.
Oxbridge and LSE (and maybe Imperial and UCL as well) require 5’s in 5 AP’s.
@SatchelSF Wholeheartedly agree. Making SAT testing harder would create the distribution of scores so students would know where they truly stood. If they are one in 10,000 they would know. It makes it easier for colleges to discern who has hyper ability from who has just ability. I have heard so many on these boards states that anyone can do the work once they get into X, Y, or Z. Just not true. So many come from schools where everyone gets an A in every subject. There are tons of low performing schools. Students there actually think they are prepared for higher education and sadly they aren’t always right.
And Satchel you are right, no one in my high school who wanted to go Ivy applied to Brown. It’s reputation was too low. The only stretch in those days was Harvard. And MIT. That’s it. The rest were accessible.
Things change honestly doing dozens of AP classes and creating some numerical record to prove you are fit for higher education doesn’t say much. I think applicants need to demonstrate that they are the student who is going to go out in the world and be the one who does things. I don’t any of that in most posts. At all.
" it’s not clear at all that - absent the exogenous factors of increasing numbers of smart East Asians - the true pool for “top” colleges has grown that much at all. "
First you throw out the assertion that the AOs at top schools are too dumb to recognize true talent and now you’re claiming that it’s just additional numbers of smart East Asians that account for a larger talent pool over the last thirty years… I’m having trouble figuring out if you’re punking us here.
“Making SAT testing harder would create the distribution of scores so students would know where they truly stood.”
No, it will only enrich the test preparation schools and make students spend more hours in test preparation without any more added value to their real intelligent.
I agree. Michigan (or Harvard for that matter) is not going to choose the student with a 99.99% score over one with a 99.7% score simply on the basis of standardized testing.
i’m not sure why you ever considered northwestern as a safe acceptance… it’s acceptance rate is in the single digits… case western reserve is a different story. they fill much of their class through ED/EA/ED2, so you have to have a great reason for/show interest when applying during the regular decision round. regardless, this year has been very tough for applicants. you have a great acceptance to uofmichigan, something thousands upon thousands do not.
Super-selective colleges and students who go on to attend them are only a tiny part of the SAT and ACT markets that the CB and ACT market their tests to. So it is no surprise that the SAT and ACT difficulty is aimed at the broad middle of US college-bound high school students, rather than the top-end.
Then why could it make those distinctions before? Specifically, pre-1995? The real reason the test was “de-sensitized” at the top was to try to narrow racial differences, which had become embarrassing for the test makers. As in any comparison of distributions with different means, the largest differences will show up at the tails.
The tests are too easy. Make them harder, and you will not enrich test companies. In fact, people will be daunted by the extreme difficulty of achieving very high scores and simply accept their place in the distribution. People forget that no more than 1% of people can really be in the top 1% and ditto for the top 0.1%.
@gallentjill your post #33 is on point. I think there has been an over exaggeration of the value of being a “pointy” candidate. I have had numerous conversations with AO’s, including senior ones, at Yale, and yes, they are trying to build a “round” class, but that consists of individually pointy and round candidates. Based on S’s and D’s friends (S at Yale, D at a highly selective LAC) and what I know and hear about their classmates, there are probably more “round” classmates than truly “pointy” ones. Of course the “round” candidates are extremely accomplished in many areas. I do think that when candidates try to fit or engineer themselves as a “pointy” candidate they risk the following; (1) the level of “pointiness” they have achieved is really not that great relative to other pointy candidates in that area; (2) their application comes off as forced/not genuine and is inconsistent with other parts of their app, especially LoR’s; and (3) the area of pointiness they choose has limited “spots” in a round class (and then see (1)). I also think the social/community contributor factor cannot be overlooked. From the Yale admissions page:
"Many years ago, former Yale President Kingman Brewster wrote that selecting future Yale students was a combination of looking for those who would make the most of the extraordinary resources assembled here, those with a zest to stretch the limits of their talents, and those with an outstanding public motivation – in other words, applicants with a concern for something larger than themselves. He said, “We have to make the hunchy judgment as to whether or not with Yale’s help the candidate is likely to be a leader in whatever he [or she] ends up doing.” Our goals remain the same today. Decade after decade, Yalies have set out to make our world better. We are looking for students we can help to become the leaders of their generation in whatever they wish to pursue.
As we carefully and respectfully review every application, two questions guide our admissions team: “Who is likely to make the most of Yale’s resources?” and “Who will contribute most significantly to the Yale community?”"
While the quote is Yale specific, this concept of what schools look for is pretty consistent across all highly selective colleges.
@OP, you will probably never know why you didn’t get in in the schools you listed. The thoughts thrown out by other posters may be correct or wildly off base. No one actually reviewed your essays and LoR’s, we just have a list of EC’s and we are not admissions officers. You certainly have qualifying stat’s for those schools and the ones you are waiting on. If the prior rejections/waitlist were “Tufts syndrome” related, you still have a shot. If it is any conciliation, my brother had stat’s similar to mine with better “leadership”. I had gotten into 3/5 Ivies I applied to, so we thought he was a shoo-in. Turned out he was only accepted by UM, his “safety”. He got over his disappointment, had 4 great years at UM, spending I year abroad at Cambridge and is currently a very successful doctor at one of the top research hospitals in the Midwest. You make the best of what you are given.
My best friend with stellar essays and stats got rejected my a ton of schools like that (Georgetown, WashU, JHU, etc, a lot more 20-40 ranked schools)
But she was still accepted into MIT. Don’t worry.
The 1980s SAT was not difficult for strong math students to score 800 or high 700s on the math section, which only tested algebra and geometry.
For many, it was harder to score 800 or high 700s on the verbal section, because that section was mostly a English vocabulary test, where “more difficult” questions used more obscure vocabulary words (and that was not generally what immigrant Asian students tended to do better at, if that is what you were hinting at).
There are kids on this forum for whom Michigan is a dream school and they were denied. I’m sure they don’t want to hear that it’s your safety and you’re not happy about being admitted.
I think you were set up for failure. The schools you’re applying to aren’t safeties, and your counselor shouldn’t have told you they expected you to get into an Ivy. High stats alone won’t get you into those schools, and the thing that makes you stand out is very specific. Will some colleges like it? Probably. But they may not be the ones you want most.
Wait until you have all your acceptances in. Then choose from among your affordable options.
Wait, so Michigan, WUSTL, Case Western and Northwestern are in the same “tier” as Yale, Princeton and Stanford? Maybe the “Tier 2” appellation is a little too blunt, but come on folks, really. Lighten up on the OP. All great schools, yes. Same “tier”? No.
As the great scifi writer Philip Dick wrote, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” (Still trying to figure out exactly how precisely that is relevant, but somehow it “feels” like it is.)
You are wonderful young man, in the end you can only going to one school, so cheer up!
IIRC, back in the day, the top 100 schools were listed in the USNews as tier 1. Maybe they stopped the “tier” rating for reasons like this. Michigan, CWRU and NU are top schools. To insist that they are not in the same “league” (not speaking about football) as elites is myopic.
OP: It stings, I’m sure. But be grateful your safety is a world class top 25 uni and not the local CC. A little humility goes a long way, especially with kids who have been rejected from your safety posting here daily. Trust me on this.
Maybe tomorrow things will look a little different and you will feel better about it all.
Tomorrow, the ivy release date, will likely lead to more of these “its so unfair” laments. Good luck tomorrow, but enjoy your fabulous acceptance.
So my white girl who didn’t miss any questions on the math section is a victim of the College Board not capturing the full range of Asian ability. Got it. 
We don’t know that being male is a disadvantage. A smaller proportion of men attend college, and overall women comprise 55-57% of college students. Some schools like William and Mary, etc have higher acceptance rates for men as do many LACS. The Prez of W and M, when describing concerns about too few men, said that he didn’t want the school to be known as the College of Mary and Mary.