<p>Most sincere congratulations to all those acceptances out there! Get off this website and go party your weekend away! :)</p>
<p>Having received rejections from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, and Stanford, I just wish to put this question out there - what are they looking for? Are these specs really not sufficient to be genuinely competitive or even waitlist material?</p>
<ul>
<li>International student applying for financial aid</li>
<li>Graduated high school in 3 years because finished all available courses early (e.g. took AP Calculus BC in freshman year)</li>
<li>4.0 unweighted GPA; 4.53 weighted GPA; Valedictorian</li>
<li>2280 SAT Reasoning; 800 SAT Physics; 800 SAT Math 2</li>
<li>11 AP 5s (Calculus BC, World History, Statistics, Physics B, Physics C: Mechanics, Chinese Language, Psychology, Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, Microeconomics, Biology, English Language); 3 AP 4s (English Literature, Comparative Government, Macroeconomics)</li>
<li>Intel ISEF 2009 1st Place Team Project, ISEF 2010 2nd Place Team Project</li>
<li>Co-founded small technology company</li>
<li>Business English editor at 2 citywide magazines</li>
<li>Community service (disaster relief, etc.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Sincerely asking; all feedback is welcome. Thanks!</p>
<p>You have astonishing qualifications. Theoretically, ISEF and your technology company should be enough to make you competitive even if your grades weren’t awesome (which they are). In reality, everyone who applies to those schools has similar qualifications or connections or potential, so unless you have something really unique to offer (you got your scuba diving and pilots license at ten years old, you summitted Everest at fifteen, you speak a dying language and evolved an effort to restore it, etc.) it’s a complete crap shoot as to whether or not you’ll get in.
I was in the same boat graduating a year early, except I did it because I hate my high school, not because I exhausted everything. I got into Dartmouth, Harvard and U Penn (not Yale, Princeton, Pomona, Columbia), and probably for my art and common app essay, because nothing else was that interesting.
I do classical stone relief sculptures which is pretty unusual, and I also do realism in clay and all 2D forms (I have a few national awards). My essay was about a fiasco during my freshman year as one of the editors for my school’s paper. We started printing features on issues that affect teenagers (sex statistics, drugs, child trafficking in our area, student homelessness, homosexuality, etc.), and the administration threatened to cut the class if we did it anymore, and did some other underhanded things, so we hired a lawyer and contacted the press and that sort of thing. The principal was replaced, district policy was changed and a friend and I started another paper (LLC) and fund-raised several thousand dollars to print the first issues. It’s not that my academic performance was that spectacular (2260 SAT, 33 ACT, awful SAT IIs, only 3 AP scores thus far and three more AP classes this year), I think I was just a little different. I also had an internship and a short-term job in IT at a research institution, but I doubt that tipped the scales, that’s not that uncommon among ivy applicants. I’m a female with a specific interest in prosthetics that I wrote about with enthusiasm, and a general interest in engineering at schools where that isn’t really the most common major. And… I’m really poor?
I also think I was probably fairly nonchalant in everything I wrote. Because I’m just not a formal person. That may have been a bit different, but to be honest, I was just on the lucky side of the crap shoot. </p>
<p>My brother got into all of the ivys and was waitlisted at Stanford (where he eventually went). He is insanely intelligent D: He could probably tell you the name of any leader of any movement of any sort in any country in world history. He’s pre-law. He wasn’t very unusual at all, except he did a lot of theater and won some notable national awards ($60,000 Elks scholarship was what eventually got him into Stanford). I think he had a 2290 SAT? So again, complete crap shoot unless you have a Nobel Peace Prize or something.</p>
<p>Great to hear about you and your brother! You both sound “insanely intelligent,” and wish you all the best ahead no matter what school you choose. </p>
<p>I understand that there are no guarantees in this line of business, but am I to assume that everyone who was accepted either had better specifications or spoke Etruscan/scuba dived at ten years old?</p>
<p>What are they looking for? From internationals, ability to pay.</p>
<p>Even from the need-blinds? Isn’t that a tad too cynical?</p>
<p>Yeah international applying for aid could have done it.</p>