Top student did not get any desired college

College Search & Lists
41

On other threads, @privatebanker has done a really great job of explaining how the numbers work, breaking it down. So it’s not about you not finding a place in 2000 or 1000 kids (just making up a number), but rather a MUCH smaller subset when you knock out “hooks”, demographics (ethnic, sex, geographic), etc. That’s how they build the class, so you were shooting for a very competitive situation with a much smaller number of seats than you thought. THEN, so many, like yourself, vying for those seats have impeccable stats.

I recall a quote from the Dean of Admissions at Harvard (or some very high ranking position at Harvard) stating they could replace their entire admitted class with the next group and not lose any academic rigor, intelligence, etc. That is what you were up against in a very narrow lane.

You may have success coming off the waitlists as many of these schools share cross applicants and each kid can only attend one school.

Good luck!

42

While most schools were in the single digit admit range, Emory and Case are not. And remember that this student had guaranteed admission UT-Austin, so it only made sense to aim higher.

So why no admission to Emory or Case assuming no red flags on essays or recommendations? I believe that yield protection is a real issue. Colleges want to admit students that they think will attend. If those colleges thought this student would not attend, they could very well pass. But if the reaches also reject, a student can end up nowhere. In the OP’s case, he has a very good fallback in terms of UT-Austin.

I think I see a bit of this on my son’s college application results this year. He did far better on his reaches than on lower ranked schools, and it wasn’t a case of spending less time or attention on those applications. Those colleges just didn’t see a “fit”.

I think that Vanderbilt should have been on the list. Among the top-20 schools, they are the closest to merit based admissions as can be seen on their Naviance scattergrams.

43

Want to note again that it simply comes down to numbers. All 30 or so schools I consider Ivies/equivalents in the US offer about as many undergrad slots relative to the country’s population as all 2 of Oxbridge in the UK (so if you include LSE, Imperial, and St. A’s among Ivy-equivalents, the US offers far less). But the numbers look even worse for nonhooked applicants (the vast majority of applicants) outside of the ED rounds. Top American privates now fill half (or more) of their class through ED/SCEA and half (or more) of the class will be hooked in some way. What that means is that it’s exceedingly difficult for a non-hooked applicant to get in to top American private for undergrad. Being stellar academically probably only guarantees admission to a school at the level of UW-Madison these days (also Toronto, McGill, Edinburgh, St. A’s, probably Imperial, as admission to non-American schools for undergrad is more similar to grad school admissions and more objective). Even UT-Austin would be a reach for you if you weren’t a TX resident. Fortunately for you, however, you are, so you’re guaranteed admission to a good school that offers lots of opportunities.

44

Good point, @hebegebe, yield protection is real. Then again, I don’t see the point of paying more for CWRU over UT-Austin anyway. Even Emory (unless costs are about the same or the family comes from money so don’t care about spending 6 figures).

45

“your stats and ECs are quite mediocre”

As others have posted, definitely not mediocre for a place like Case, their 25/75 is 1370 to 1490, the OP at 1550 is probably at the 85th percentile. Emory is 1420-1550, at 75%. Even for Asians at place like Stanford, 1550 is 50th or 60th percentile. The issue for OP is again that for being an Asian from TX, he/she would need state, if not national awards (science fairs for stem say, essay contests, speech/debate for non-stem). Those standards are not needed for other races.

Rice and Case have been known to practice yield protection, interesting point. I was talking to an adcom at one of the colleges OP applied to and he mentioned to a person asking in an info session that 1520 was a strong score.

46

OP was competing for rather limited number of slots with other unhooked applicants from similar racial, gender, geographical, and interest categories. There just wasn’t enough for the OP to stand out among that group for the top-tier schools. For the 2nd-tier schools, yield protection played a role, as these schools are known for such practice. This is the dilemma students with similar profiles face when selecting the proper mix of colleges to apply for.

47

Even if OP did believe that he would be accepted somewhere where the rates of acceptance are in the single digits, he did apply to enough of them to bring up the odds considerably that he would at least at one of them, provided of course, that there was (were, subjunctive?) no bias or yield-protection involved.

48

It depends on the correlation of the admission processes/standards of the colleges OP applied for. If the correlation is high, applying for multiple colleges doesn’t increase the odds. On the other hand, the odds would increase if the correlation is low.

49

Yup. Like the lottery. Two tickets does not increase odds at all. Same odds for each ticket. Like flipping a coin. 10 flips are heads. What are the odds of tails on flip 11. That specific flip is 50 50 if the flips are conducted uniformly. In that case of course ultimately 50 50 would lead to a tails. But schools aren’t even close to 50 50. It’s probably 1 in 50 for students, unhooked are many top schools. Hyps. 1 in 500.

Harvard offers approximately 250 unhooked spots per gender for the world each year. Out of that 250. 30 maybe high performing Asian males from the us. Maybe. From Texas it maybe 5 to 10. 10 spots out of the whatever number of Asian males. Perhaps 5000 maybe more.
It’s 1 in 500. And the flips are arbitrary and not uniform. Those are the real odds imho when I’m thinking about it or asked by a friend.

50

College admission decisions are not independent events.

51

Yes, but you know that they may represent semi-independent events, to which the concepts of probability analysis can be applied.

52

I get your point but I think your numbers are low. For the class just admitted, a Harvard was roughly 25% Asian-American of the roughly 2000 students admitted, or almost 500 students. I suspect that most, perhaps 80 percent are unhooked, or about 400 students. Or about 200 males.

This is very true. There are a surprising number of students that get admitted to three or more HYPSM colleges, probably 200 or more. Many of them know each other from participating in the same competitions beforehand.

53

@ucbalumnus . . .

Please give me a for instance why they’re at least dependent, besides his being unhooked, because we’re talking more than just Harvard’s involvement. Please be specific wrt the OP. ECs? He stated them in a subsequent post, while a lot of the people in this thread were arguing among themselves.

54

@khuman - here is the thing. You are an excellent applicant. Unfortunately, there are, in the group of kids who apply to these very selective schools, thousands of kids with very similar profiles: great grades, great SAT scores, working in a lab, charity, president, etc.

Moreover, these kids are strongly weighted towards STEM. Since none of the colleges are interested in only accepting students for STEM majors, that cuts the number of places even more.

Except for CWRU, it is likely that none of those colleges accepted more than 2% of the STEM students who applied as regular decisions applicants. Since they are looking for a more diverse class, they will, often, accept kids whose ECs and other activities are not totally focused on STEM, but demonstrate more breadth.

Now, those articles, where where they published? I am surprised that you weren’t accepted to CWRU, at least, if indeed you have peer-reviewed publications in press/published.

On the other hand, your GC may have done a poor job in making sure that your accomplishments were highlighted, that your essay was good, that your recommendations were correctly written

The fact that your GC OK’ed that list of reaches, and then told you that you were likely to get into one of them, and did NOT make sure that you matches and safeties which you would be happy to attend, makes me think that your GC may be the reason that you are not being accepted to a college that you would be excited to attend.

However, that is all in the past. As others have pointed out, since you are at the top of your class, you have automatic admission to UT Austin, which happens to be one of the top universities in the country. That is aside from the fact that Austin is an awesome city. I mean, it has bats!

As for getting off the wait-list, it only depends on, A, how much love you show, and B, how many accepted students decide to attend.

What is your chosen major?

55

There was another reply that mentioned Vanderbilt as a Top 20 that still looks at grades and test scores. WashU as well. Surprised that the OP did not include them on the list. Rice as well.

Those 3 are possibly the only Top 20s where grades/test scores still are important.

56

AOs at Case, Rice and Emory were fully aware that OP would be a shoo-in at UT Austin given his class ranking. Unless they were prepared to offer substantial aid that match UT cost they know there is little chance OP would choose to enroll. Of course, for OP its really nice to have those offers.

57

Other than the guarantee admit to UT-Austin (congrats !) did you have any safety or mat h schools? Your list was way top heavy.

58

@khuman, none of us can probably say why you weren’t accepted at those schools. All are super selective, maybe with the exception of Case Western, which is still a very selective university.

But you have a great option in UT Austin. My daughter was just rejected out of state there, is Hispanic, with a 98th percentile ACT and a very good GPA, and a varsity athlete with tons of ECs. (I didn’t get into UT for my MBA and I was super mad, but in the end I went to a school that I loved.)

You will hear this over and over, and it might not be obvious now, but things happen for a reason. I’m betting that you will be extremely happy there, because it’s such a well respected school in nearly everything, and Austin is one of the best college towns out there. If that’s not the case, and you are unhappy, there is always the chance to transfer, and because you are paying in state tuition now, you will have saved a ton of money over the other schools to use later.

If you worked so hard to be the #1 in your high school, which is quite an accomplishment whatever the high school, you will likely have the same work ethic at UT. If you want to go to grad school, being the top percentile there will look as good as being middle of the road at any of the other schools, maybe better. UT has a great reputation with grad schools and employers.

If your parents are hard on you, or you are hard on yourself for not going to an Ivy or similar, please try to get over it. In the end, few people will care where you went to college. (I work in the business tech world and no one cares where I went, even if it was a very good school). They care about your experience, what you know, your skill set, and your ability to get along with your teammates to not cause disruption to the company. I encourage you to read “Where you go is not who you will be”, by Frank Bruni, a writer for the NY Times. Excellent book that puts it all in to perspective.

Take a deep breath. Many of us didn’t get into the exact schools we wanted, but for nearly all of us, in ended up working out.

59

@Khuman, if you are still following this thread, my heart goes out to you. You are an OUTSTANDING student with an IMPRESSIVE record. You did nothing wrong. If you were waitlisted at NU and Cornell, then I think we can safely assume that there were no “red flag” problems with your essays or LOR. I wish you would have gotten into one of your reaches outright, so that you could feel good rejecting an Ivy of T20 school in favor of your great value state flagship. UT Austin is an amazing school.

If it is any consolation, my son, who is also Asian male, got into NU and Cornell. The reason I think this should console you is because I think your record is better than his, and I’m his mom! Your GPA/test scores are the same, but your EC’s are stronger. A published first name author? How wonderful. You will definitely succeed wherever you go. I think the difference for my son’s result had to do with race in a more subtle way. Our GC reached out to her Cornell contact to see whether he might be a good candidate for ED, which we were considering at the time. Her contact said “Yes, because we don’t get many apps from Asians from the midwest!” Had you applied from Chicago, your result could have been very different. As it is, Texas is the seventh most represented state at Cornell for the Class of 2023 after New York, California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

If you are going to be waitlisted, this is definitely the best year for that with all the uncertainty and disruption from coronavirus. Send your deposit into UT Austin and look into your housing options and other programming. And then knock those LOCI’s out of the park to NU and Cornell. Note that in Cornell’s announcement last year about its Class of 2023, the first mention is about the diversity of the class and how it is “unprecedentedly diverse, with 55 percent of those admitted identifying as students of color, including both underrepresented minorities and Asian-Americans – the highest percentage in university history.” Cornell does want students like you.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/03/accepted-class-2023-students-most-diverse-ever

I think it is very interesting that you are an Asian American student from Texas who attended a majority minority (Latinx) school. This is a strength, not a weakness, so lean into it. In your LOCI, be sure to connect how Ezra Cornell’s motto about building a university where “any person can find instruction in any study” applies specifically to you and the opportunities Cornell would offer you, both inside and outside of the classroom.

As for NU, I believe a preference for Chicago Public School students may have pushed my son’s application into the accept pile. I’m not sure if you did this in your essay, but in your LOCI, you might address why NU is such a good fit for you in terms of intellectual curiosity, community involvement, and your personal characteristics. See https://admissions.northwestern.edu/apply/the-fit-factor.html

Approach these outstanding tasks methodically, to put your best foot forward with your two waitlists. And then forget about it and get excited about UT Austin’s great programs and opportunities. My son would have applied to UT Austin but the TX open carry just weirded us out too much. But he would have loved to have taken part in the History Department’s Frank Denius Normandy Scholar Program on WWII. I know we tend to take the opportunities in our own back yard for granted, but there are so many top-notch programs and opportunities at UT Austin that you should get excited about, once you pick yourself up from this big disappointment. But rest assured that you are Ivy League/T20 worthy, and no one can take away your record of achievements to date or your future success. Good luck to you @khuman!

60

FWIW the OP hasn’t been back since the day this was posted.