<p>I just received a decision from Bucknell University stating that I was waitlisted. Im not saying that Bucknell was a safety, but it was a school that i thought i was going to get into.</p>
<p>only sent 1 act score: 33 composite</p>
<p>mathl level 2: 740
Chemistry: 700</p>
<p>gpa: 4.4 weighted (all ap courses)</p>
<p>multiple awards, nothing national but sevearl awards for essays and I was inducted into the cum laude society at my high school</p>
<p>Is there any chance that Bucknell did not accept me because they thought Bucknell was not my first choice? Not to sound to cocky, but do they defer students who may be over qualified? Please answer me honestly. Thanks</p>
<p>Elite schools, in which i would include Bucknell, have an overabundence of qualified applicants and are even less likely to be strictly numbers driven. I would not jump to the “must have been overqualified” justification, or Tuft’s syndrome “protecting yield” immediately. You don’t list your EC’s which could be possible factors. Or it could be a luke warm letter of rec, or more likely your essays may just not have clicked with the admissions committee. It could be as simple as one line in your essay that put-off a member of the committee as you can see from this recent peak inside the decision making process at Amherst: </p>
<p>You are not “over qualified”. Get over yourself. Bucknell is very competitive, particularly the engineering school. In recent years, many kids from our high school who have been accepted at Carnegie Mellon have been rejected or waitlisted at Bucknell.</p>
<p>ethnicity: white
income: middle class
school: private, very small
location: northeast
gender: male</p>
<p>extra curriculars: math and chess club, a lot of caddying (wrote main essay on this), golf and ice hockey, volunteer at boys and girls club</p>
<p>Thanks to all for answering honestly, It just seemed to me that applicants were accepted with significantly lowers board scores. But like olivertwist said, numbers aren’t everything.</p>