<p>One thing to remember about the MC, and to console yourself over if you’re a finalist and don’t get it, is that the odds of winning the MC are actually much lower than even gaining admission to a Ivy. When you count all the nominating schools, and the fact that many of those have more than one student competing at the school level for their single nomination, and then the fact that of the school nominations, only a small percentage become finalists, and then of the finalists, only a fraction are offered the MC, the percent yield is quite a bit lower than Yale’s this-year acceptance rate of 7.35% So as always, it’s less about having the “best resume,” because we can assume that all the students being considered for the MC have very strong resumes, Ivy-level resumes, and more about the MC building a class of 50-odd unique individuals who complement each other. As a friend of ours said who’s an admission officer for an Ivy, “We could go down the list to the next 1,250 students, and they’d look just as good.” Read the posts of students accepted at HYP, and you’ll see plenty who were rejected at two or three wonderful schools, and then accepted at one of the “top three.” Some people think that’s strange, but it’s not like algebra – it’s inexact. It isn’t personal, so don’t take it personally. Take it as a huge vote of approval that you were selected by your school, and an even bigger vote of approval if the MC folks named you a finalist.</p>