<p>He was waitlisted at Princeton, so his ECs must have been good enough. Also got into Yale, even though he was rejected at Harvard, MIT, Penn and Stanford. </p>
<p>You can’t make any generalizations in super-selective admissions. The same application can get you into H, but rejected at Y (D’s situation). You look at the H acceptance and say, “Good enough test scores, ECs, GPA, essays, etc. to get you into an Ivy college.” You look at the Y rejection and you say, “Must be missing something–lack of ECs, test scores could have been higher, essays probably are problematic, etc.” The same application!</p>
<p>The best you can say is that Yale was looking for an apple to balance out their fruit salad and you were an orange.</p>
<p>I don’t envy Princeton trying to re-create the admissions season in question. A lot of time has passed and I’m guessing that copious notes weren’t taken at the time.</p>
<p>As to why sue Princeton and not the others? Princeton probably doesn’t have a graduate program in what he wants to study, perhaps?</p>