Read Sally Rubenstone’s responses to the question, “How Does a Near-Perfect Student Get Denied Almost Everywhere?” and see if anything could have impacted your own situation:
Can you all address @khuman’s ECs in light of his post #13? It doesn’t appear that his involvement was somehow too light.
The thing is, when students post this question and they get an answer like that which implies they had something lacking in their application because they were also lacking in what they spent their time doing the past 4 years, when in fact the truth is that people can be a perfect candidate for a school and fully qualified and not get in. Most who get rejected from those schools are as good as those who do get in. Schools often want a well- rounded class. Statistically, it is much, much more likely that a person posting this with stats like the OP didn’t get in because he was in the 85% of qualified candidates who were not accepted rather than that he was lacking. I think kids who come here posting this questions are often in shock and feeling very low. A post like that will make them feel even worse when they may be quite vulnerable. I don’t think personally it is a helpful reply, either.
Right. Admission to top American privates for undergrad isn’t a measure of your worth or even your academic chops (or ECs, or a lot of things). They want to fulfill what they desire (to form a well-rounded class, or whatever the heck else), but from an applicant’s perspective, it may make no sense. Plus, they take in a relatively tiny number of applicants each (compared to their peers and top unis in other countries like Oxbridge, LSE, Imperial, Tokyo, Kyoto, Waseda, and Keio) for a country as populous as the US, so far more qualified applicants are rejected than accepted. Kids who could get in to Oxbridge are rejected.
Not that it matters. You can only control what you can control, and the only thing you could assure yourself of is admission to UT-Austin, which has a ton of resources and a lot to offer (with one of the biggest endowments of all unis in the world and research facilities to make an Oxford don jealous).
You can achieve pretty much any life goal you have set your eyes on going there (including a degree from a fancy elite private for grad school if you do well in undergrad). And grad school admissions tend to be more “fair” and objective.
Sports only matters if you are recruitable. Race does matter in that schools who are looking for a diverse student body are creating a cap of sorts for Asian students, and as such, you are competing against all the other high achieving Asian kids (which is why the Asians at Harvard had higher stats). As such, it’s pointless to ask why someone with lower stats got in and you didn’t as that might not have been a slot that was available to you.
Unless there’s something you’re leaving out, the obvious answer is that you applied to 7 schools all of them reaches. You’re lucky to have been waitlisted at two of them.
I remember several years ago a similar question rose on this board. That person also was an excellent candidate in many ways, and Asian, but his essay turned out to be generic. If I’m remembering correctly, his father had attended Northwestern and that rejection hurt him the most. What was wrong with his essay? He spelled out, basically, his resume. “I did this and did that and got that award” etc. Essays like that don’t help the school understand him as a person. I worked in admissions for a top school for a short amount of time. One task I had one day was that I was given a stack of applications, like about a foot tall. All were excellent candidates, all happened to be Asian, and my job was to go through the essays, all of them in detail. I was about the fourth reader or more. I was given this task by the head of the department. The head of admissions was frustrated because all of the essays were of this sort. They summarized this project and that project and the other great thing that the person had done, but the essay never told about the person. My job was literally to go through each essay and circle ANY details that would give insight into the individual. Why? Because while all of them were qualified, none could be admitted without knowing who they were as a person. In other words, with nothing but a resume to go on, none could be accepted. The admissions committee didn’t have enough information and so, with great frustration, the committee was forced to put them aside for other candidates. Note that they were looking for ways to accept them. Switching back to the other person who posted to this board several years ago, I can’t remember what he decided to do in the end but one thing that was considered was taking a gap year and reapplying with a more personalized essay. FYI. Perhaps some of this info is helpful?
Everything is relative.
I think your GC should never have jumped to that conclusion and they certainly shouldn’t have presented it to you as a fact. High stats kids get rejected from college all the time. It’s not just stats and how much you do that matters. You have to do the right things and show how you fit what the school wants.
It sounds like you have an affordable option. That’s great news. Some students apply only to academic and/or financial reaches and end up with no good options this time of year. I’d quit comparing yourself to your classmates and commit to blooming where you’re planted.
@Dustyfeathers To me, your post comes off as Asian applicant’s as a group don’t know how to write college essays. I think if a kid is smart enough to be in the top 1 percent stat-wise, they would be smart enough to know what colleges are looking for in essays, especially with all the resources that are available to them in this information age, and given the many use an outside college counselor. At top 20 schools, I do believe it is a disadvantage to be Asian, strictly based on race. As noted above, there appears to be a limited amount of spots for Asians applicants at schools such as Harvard (like other top school who literally get to pick which of the top applicants they want), and as such, Asians are competing against each other in the same way International students compete against one another for x number of slots.
I’m sorry you are disappointed with your outcome. It stings to be rejected. On the upside, UT Austin is a great school and there are many students there with top stats. I feel confident you will find your people and love it there when you give it a chance. Still, I understand well how difficult it is after all of that work, both before and during the application process, to face an outcome you weren’t expecting. You clearly are a strong, hardworking student who will do well wherever you go. Good luck.
Here’s how I see it.
-None of your other schools can beat UT in football.
-UT is one of the top feeders for Wall Street for a reason too.
-Austin is weird and they like it that way.
-Perhaps the best local music scene outside of Nashville.
-Better weather comparatively.
-Academics are world class.
-Medical schools and great hospitals.
-vibrancy
-fantastic research
-large international community
-travel abroad programs as good as any school
-money for graduate school
-logistically easy and low key travel
-iconic and cool school gear
-nearby and less expensive spring break options which can be fun down the road
Sometimes we look back at things and what appeared to be a setback was in fact a blessing.
If my last girlfriend didn’t dump me, I never would have met my perfect wife, sort of thing.
Did I mention football? It’s fun to go and wear your longhorns proudly.
Here’s a few other possible causes:
[ul][] essays came across poorly due to choice of topic or content
[] ungrammatical writing in essays (the thread title and OP’s post are a bit disfluent; a longer essay might bring out more of this)
[] not having strong letters of rec (a good grade in a class does not automatically mean a teacher will like you)
[] tanking during alum interviews or giving a sense of entitlement
[] did not demonstrate interest in the schools (esp. those worried about yield)
[] exaggeration on EC list
[li] school disciplinary record[/li][/ul]
"I, for one, do not believe there is a bias against being Asian. "
Well the judge of the Harvard case would disagree with you. She said this:
“admissions officers’ implicit biases that disadvantaged Asian American applicants in the personal rating relative to white applicants”
“Burroughs conceded, though, that so long as race-conscious admissions policies exist, they “will always penalize to some extent the groups that are not being advantaged by the process…She recommended that admissions officers participate in implicit bias trainings”
Implicit bias of course is bad because you don’t even know you have it.
“That person also was an excellent candidate in many ways, and Asian, but his essay turned out to be generic. One task I had one day was that I was given a stack of applications, like about a foot tall.”
I wonder if you got a stack of black, Hispanic or white applicants that were considered generic and asking to find out who they really are.
“assuming race/ethnicity is the x factor is just wrong.”
Well you could be wrong in that as well, why couldn’t it have been based on race? Recall that Asians are going to get penalized (the judge) and it’s the simplest answer (Occam). I’m biased of course, but unless there’s actual evidence saying it’s not race, I’ll go with the Penn Law grad and Oxford philospher.
Race plays a large role in admissions to the most highly selective universities, including all the ones targeted by the OP (even UTA, which changed to a top x% by school approach to achieve some semblance of racial balance).
As I see it, race impacts admissions two ways: (1) if you set aside slots for certain races, that automatically takes away spots from other races (2) within certain races, the bar is set higher as per the facts from the Harvard lawsuit.
Yes, there’s a lot of subjectivity going on, including among applicants. One thing I find sort of amusing among the handful of Asian American friends I have is their near universal condescension toward LACs many of which IMO would have welcomed an applicant with the OP’s stats and perhaps even geographic contribution (although TBH Texas is becoming less and less underrepresented even in NESCAC.)
My point is that if you are only going to define “preferable” as schools with acceptance rates in the single digits, you are inevitably going to wind up in the unenviable position of “drawing from an inside straight”, to use a poker term.
@khuman. I would accept your spot on the waitlists, write a letter of continued interest, and hope for the best. If the best is UT-Austin, that is an excellent choice. There is a lot of speculation that elite schools may have to dig deeper into their waitlists due to COVID-19. There’s no harm in keeping your options open while also maintaining reasonable expectations.
As others have said above, it is likely that you did nothing “wrong”. There are more qualified applicants than there are spots available. Based on your record thus far, you will succeed at college, wherever you end up.
OP, your counselor was probably not very familiar with the landscape of the top privates college admissions. He should have been aware that at those schools admissions are by cohorts. In your unhooked cohort----not 1st gen, not low income, not RA, not URM, not big donor, not alum, not faculty etc----your stats and ECs are quite mediocre (I hate to be so brutally honest) but this will help you come to terms and feel better. Among unhooked admits at these schools many have 1600/36, 10APs all 5s, and top national awards. You have to put your profile against others in your cohort to assess your chances. Had you done that, you and your counselor would have had more realistic expectations, and the rejections would not have felt so devastating.
Sorry things didn’t work out as hoped. But the schools you listed MUST be considered reaches for any unhooked applicant. Acceptance rates are typically in the single digits. And simply put, there are many many more well qualified applicants than there are spots available. Things such as essays, recommendations and ECs can help to distinguish some applicants.
Hopefully you applied to UT-Austin in which case you have an excellent college option which will allow you to have a great 4 year experience and get wherever you want in life.