<p>Keep in mind though, the majority of kids who get accepted into Yale don’t post on CC. Who knows, maybe if one had the statistics of all of the SCEA acceptees, one would find that the standards are actually lower. A reason for this is matriculation rate. The statistics of CCers are generally stratospheric. Yale may consider them overqualified and defer them (which Yale does A LOT) because it believes that a lot of those kids will end up at Harvard or Princeton or another school that kids perceive to be “superior.” A surprising statistic I got from the 371 best colleges book from Princetion Review evinced that 68% (I think) of kids who get accepted actually matriculate. At first glance, this figure seems friggin’ low! However, by college standards, it’s actually really good. Still, it is 68% and Yale may be aiming to up the rate to compete with Harvard’s (around 85% I believe). Matriculation rate is considered by colleges to be extremely important because it constitutes a significant part in rankings. The higher up a college is in US World and News Report, the more prestige it naturally gets. So basically what I am saying is, don’t panic if you see phenomenal kids get rejected by top schools–they may simply be too good. I think people overestimate the quality of kids who attend Ivies because let’s just face it, we don’t know anything about the majority of those kids. The few kids who actually come out and reveal themselves, like on CC, are usually the more dedicated ones–they actually bothered to search out sites like these. I think what happens to the more surprising rejectees on this site is that every school thinks that that particular individual will get into a better school and so defer or waitlist them, Harvard happens to run out of space, and so by an unfortunate twist of fate the excellent student is somewhat stranded. Another possiblity could be that that individual came off as extremely proud and arrogant (it happens a lot if one gets 2300+ SAT’s and is the leader of no less than 50 billion meaningful EC’s). This is no fell-sweep generalization, this is simply my guess at what happens to some very bright kids.</p>