<p>Does anyone know whether it affects you to send in supplementary information in early March? Because I sent in an additional letter to Carleton and Northwestern and was wait listed at both. It was a basic update letter from my debate coach to inform them that I had recently won the state Debate championship. I know that Carleton is very competitive, but I wasn’t really expecting to be wait listed.</p>
<p>So here’s my deal:
State Champion in Debate
13 AP/IB Classes
3.94 UW gpa
State-Qualifier in Cross-Country
Varsity Track & Field, Distance, 3 years
400 + hours of community service
1920 SATs
710, 610 SAT II’s
Essays – lauded by all who read them, including professional essayists</p>
<p>I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything of that sort, but If someone like me didn’t get admitted, just who did?</p>
<p>Those are great stats, no doubt. The honest (and perhaps frustrating) answer is that most people who did get in probably have similar qualifications, but at a school as small as Carleton, they probably really have to cut hairs to fill all the niches of the class. Maybe they just had a lot of very strong debaters and/or track people this year. Maybe your geographic area was just particularly competitive and they needed to spread the wealth. You are certainly qualified, and its likely the decision was caused by factors out of your control. Its the unfortunate nature of admissions at the most highly selective LACs now that they can no longer clearly accept the 1200 “best” applicants, because there is no clear 1200 best, so they just have to create a highly qualified and diverse (in all forms: interests, geography, race, religion, socioeconomics, etc) class out of the excess of deserving candidates.</p>
<p>I highly doubt that your letters would have caused you to be waitlisted; as a matter of fact, the guidance counselor at my school urged everyone to send updates to their colleges the way you did, only we did it in early February (early March may have been a little late, but not much, if it all). LACalum is right–colleges are really trying to create a diverse mixture, and seemingly trivial things like geography and extracurriculars gain a lot more weight in that context.</p>
<p>I hope the college decisions that reach you in the next few weeks will be kinder. Your grades, strength of curriculum and extracurriculars all sound stellar. But your standardized test scores are below the 25th percentile for both Carleton and Northwestern. I fear this was the deciding factor at both.<br>
Northwestern’s Debate program, much like Carleton’s Quiz Bowl teams, holds national titles and is perpetually top-ranked. You may want to make contact with their program director (if you haven’t yet done so) given your recent state debate title and make sure he’s aware of your interest. It could tip the balance.
Good luck.</p>
<p>I was waitlisted. I’ll be hoping they have room this year for some kids off the waitlist. I am from MN so that is hard too. They don’t rank their waitlist I don’t think so . . .</p>
<p>“I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything of that sort, but If someone like me didn’t get admitted, just who did?”</p>
<p>Good runners and debaters aren’t hard for small liberal arts colleges to come by, especially ones with better standardized test scores than you had.</p>
<p>It was the Utah tournament – I won for Extemporaneous Speech, and yes it was under the national forensics league. I also qualified for Nationals in Public Forum debate.</p>
<p>I’m not too broken up about being waitlisted anymore, since I got into UC Berkeley a couple days ago. Lol. Sorry for complaining to everyone here. I just needed some place to let out a little bit of my college frustrations.</p>