I know that, especially recently, many of the elite schools like HYPS are getting increasingly difficult to get into, and they are mostly just accepting those extremely smart, outstanding, discovering a cure to cancer type students. But I was just wondering if anyone knows of surprise acceptances to these schools? Like someone who might not have gotten into UCLA but somehow got into Harvard? Maybe not such an extreme example, but something like that, just to relieve some of the pre-application nerves that I know a lot of us must be experiencing
1 Like
Oh yeah, “holistic view” scares a lot of us. There are definitely some cases of extremes. Some applicants are way less qualified, but still manages to get in. That’s why they say essay / character matters.
What schools are you looking at? I’m thinking Princeton SCEA…
@pnguon u Have you specifically heard of any? I’d like to know. And I’m thinking about Harvard SCEA personally. Good luck to you
I know of no such students. None. Sometimes average students are encouraged by relatives or friends to apply to Ivy League schools with claim that the schools want their student body to reflect the US or that the schools don’t just want those top students. That is not true. The Ivy League schools do only want the top students. They don’t want their student body to reflect the US and they don’t throw in a few B student to round out the student body. Others may be surprised that a given student is accepted to Ivy league level schools but that is usually because the other people don’t know about the student’s achievements. The achievements are not always classroom achievements. Brilliant musicians, olympic athletes,accomplished actors, etc…may be admitted even if their grades are not top notch. But they have accomplishment that are widely recognized and that elevate them to outstanding candidates. But a B student with a few ECs they are passionate about won’t be getting offers from Ivy League schools.
On a happier note, there are a ton of great schools that accept a wide range of students.
1 Like
I will add, though, that I answered the question I assume the OP intended to ask rather than the one asked. UCLA is very difficult to get into. Outstanding students may get into Harvard and not get into UCLA-because UCLA is very difficult to get into. But a student who gets into Harvard is going to be outstanding. Some outstanding students don’t get into UCLA. . But I think the OP was underestimating UCLA and was using it as proxy for a far less competitive school than Harvard. So I answered the question under that assumption. In other words, I answered the question in terms of whether there are average students who, by surprise, get into Ivy League schools.
1 Like
Someone from my school was waitlisted from UIUC and got into Brown and Harvard.
1 Like
Character matters because character matters. Holistic selection entails consideration of factors beyond grades/scores. But, those factors don’t take the place of or trump good grades. The point is that it is not enough to just have great grades and scores. The point isn’t that you’ll be admitted even if you don’t have great grades or scores if you have good character.
I think that once you get into a certain selectiveness, it’s kind of a crapshoot. I got into Brown, but I got waitlisted at Amherst. There might be certain things that admissions officers are looking for in a class at one school that are overly abundant at another. It’s also possible that a school might deny a student because of yield reason (I think this is known as Tuft’s Syndrome?)
But I mean, there’s always going to be anecdotal evidence – “My neighbor’s grand-nephew’s third cousin’s aunt’s best friend’s daughter was a B-student, and she got into Harvard!” The truth is that everyone’s chance’s at school’s with low acceptance rates are, well, low. And the higher your stats are and the stronger your extracurriculars, essays, etc. are, the better your chances are. Which doesn’t mean that you have a “good” chance, but.
If you want to find specific examples, try looking up the official accepted/waitlisted/rejected threads for ED/EA/RD for the schools you’re interested in here on CC. I know the ones for Stanford have helped me to remember that it doesn’t matter what other people have always done, because everyone’s circumstances are different.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about for Harvard SCEA results for the class of 2019: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1714730-official-harvard-university-2019-scea-decisions-only.html
1 Like
I do know someone who got waitlisted at UCLA and accepted to Stanford (though waitlisted at Harvard). She was definitely a special case- someone with a special obstacle through life and managed to overcome it. I guess Stanford just felt that was more important to them than SAT scores, which UCLA may have found more important. It also depends on the year you apply…if you’re one of the best tuba players in the nation, but that school doesn’t need a tuba player it doesn’t help. But if another school wants to improve the caliber of the band, you are in luck
@valedictoriangod I stalk a lot of decision threads and have seen many of those. I’ll definitely show you if is stumble across any in the future.
Good luck to you too! 
I had a student a few years ago who was denied at UMich and accepted at Stanford and Princeton. But I’ve known thousands of students and her case is the only one like it that I’ve seen, she was not a US citizen (although she attended a top US boarding school), and the UMich denial was far more surprising than were the Stan/P’ton admits.
I know one last year got accepted by Stanford with low stat but quadruple legacy (parents and grandparents).
Many of the kids we know who have been admitted to HYPS are either legacy, development, recruited athlete, URM or some combination of the above, who have grades and scores are lower, sometimes significantly lower than the grades routinely tossed around on CC.
Most unhooked kids that get into these schools will tell you their acceptance was unexpected, unless they were Siemens, Intel…etc. finalists. And they have no idea what it was about their application that caught the AO’s attention.
My son got into Penn, but was waitlisted by UCLA, Cal Poly SLO and WUSTL. Penn was the only highly selective school he got into. (He applied to Stanford, Penn, Dartmouth, MIT, Vanderbilt) He got into all other schools with an admit rate of 20+%.
He was very unhooked and a very uneven candidate.
The problem with comparing highly selective state schools (Cal, UCLA, UMich, etc) with highly selective privates is that highly selective state schools usually have to more heavily weight GPA so that their schools aren’t seated with only high stats kids from the better school districts. The state schools typically aren’t allowed to consider ethnicity, to help round out their student bodies, so they use GPA to give a boost to those from weaker K-12 schools.
Yeah, but [the kid I mentioned](Unexpected acceptances to elite schools? - #12 by marvin100 - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums) had straight A’s and a 2400 (single-sitting). Really a head-scratcher.
I do think some schools will think the OP kid will go somewhere else, and want to have an acceptance letter go to someone with a higher chance of attending that school.
A kid at my school got denied from UChicago but accepted to Penn and Dartmouth. I also got accepted into Boston University which was very unexpected for me given my stats