<p>A caution - since this comes up often. A rejection is NOT a reflection of a student’s weakness. This is, for the most part, a competition among the best and the brightest with not enough room to accommodate them all. </p>
<p>The schools are not just recruiting bright, hardworking students - but also a class diverse in interests, backgrounds, aspirations. A student’s success - with all things being equal - may depend on who else is in the pool that year.</p>
<p>My extreme example is that a school might desire a Tuba player to fill out the orchestra. But if that’s the year they get a lot of applications from Tuba players and one happens to live in Wisconsin (or Montana or…fill in blanks for state with low enrollment) the nod might go to the one who lives in the underrepresented state. Or if the school gets a lot of applications from urban kids, they might favor one who lives on a farm.</p>
<p>Does that make sense? So many people fixate on stats (grades, scores) that they miss the aspects of an application that might tip the scale - and even then - it works only if no one else in the applicant pool has similar attributes - otherwise the Adcoms will argue with each other until one of the students is chosen. The other - who will be declined, is still a strong candidate and might have gotten the nod in a different year.</p>
<p>They’re still a good kid. The universe just had a different path in mind.</p>
<p>Many of us advocate choosing a broad range of highly selective schools to maximize the student’s visibility.</p>