<p>Ah, I was rejected from Stanford SCEA. And I was extremely bitter at first, but I have come to terms with my rejection. I would definitely say that they emphasize test scores and major achievements a lot less than other schools seem to. And I’m not making any claims without experience. I have perfect test scores, minus my 2390, and major awards and they rejected me. So it’s true. Stanford reviews holistically.</p>
<p>I think that definitely makes it harder to get into, especially because a huge part of the acceptances are athletes. Holistic review means that you can get perfect test scores and qualify to the USAMO and USABO and still be rejected. You have to be more than that.</p>
<p>I’d still say there’s a distinction to be made here. I definitely agree that Stanford’s admission process is different from the Ivies. But as long as the admission rates are essentially the same, that doesn’t mean it’s harder. Just different. Maybe harder to predict. But not harder to get into.</p>
<p>(Now, if it’s actually true that “a huge part of the acceptances are athletes,” then the true admission rate would be lower, and it could then be considered harder. But I doubt the effect is that significant.)</p>
<p>This is all looking at it from an outside perspective. Once you start looking at it from an individual applicant’s perspective (like Anonymous93’s post), things are obviously different. For example, if you have stellar scores, awards, etc., but don’t convey a unique personality through your application, then Stanford might be harder to get into (because as Anonymous93 said, they’re looking for something more). Just looking at the schools objectively, though, all you can say is that the processes are different, not harder, since the admit rate stays the same.</p>
<p>Okay. I’m glad I’m not the only one who has this point of view. Haha. </p>
<p>I almost feel like not even finishing the Stanford app because I have little chance, but I know that would be foolish because then I’d have 0 chance…even though that’s what i feel it is anyways. lol</p>
<p>Btw, I’m applying into wharton at penn, probably one of the harder to get into at penn. Maybe not as bad as stanford though. haha</p>
<p>The only bummer is that I visited Stanford’s campus and know what I’m missing when I’m rejected. Felt like paradise there, and I love california (especially during these dreary winters in the chicago suburbs. Well, at least Stanford isn’t my first choice. haha</p>
<p>“Btw, I’m applying into wharton at penn, probably one of the harder to get into at penn.”</p>
<p>Isn’t Wharton THE hardest to get into at Penn? Honestly I think getting into Wharton without a strong business/economics background (not implying that you don’t have one) is more difficult than getting into Stanford.</p>
<p>@LBloom, I agree with you, sort of. All these schools are incredibly hard to get into. And it’s different for each person.</p>
<p>Being an athlete at Stanford definitely helps you. They have one of the best, if not the best, college athletics program in the US. Stanford recruits heavily, especially during SCEA. If you google news articles for Stanford, all the results include something to do with Stanford’s athletics. From my school, the only person ever accepted was a baseball player with a 29 ACT who got recruited for the team. This year, 4 people got accepted that I know. 3 were athletes.</p>
<p>And acceptance rates don’t tell you a lot. For example, athletes bring down the acceptance rate. Furthermore, I personally believe it’s easier to win major awards and get high SAT/ACT scores than to stand out in a crowd of 20,000+ amazing applicants.</p>
<p>yea, I’m pretty sure wharton is the toughest to get into (<10%) </p>
<p>I really don’t have a strong econ background per se. I just have an interest in it. I’m technically in an “AP Political Science and Econ” course on my schedule, and doing well in it, but that doesn’t mean anything. </p>
<p>Honestly, I really don’t have a hook to get into Penn. haha</p>
<p>Although I applied to Ivies (minues Columbia/Brown) + Duke/Stanford, my prediction is that I only get into Cornell, Duke, and maybe Dartmouth if I’m lucky (they have a draft of my essay that isn’t as good as the final one, and my peer evaluation was just average).</p>
<p>Anonymous93, we’re saying basically the same things! I’m just trying to make the distinction between the processes being different and one of the processes being harder than the other. The schools are looking for different things, so whichever is “harder” to get into will be different for each applicant.</p>
<p>And of course acceptance rates don’t say much, they just offer a standard method of comparison between the schools. Both are equally selective–that’s all you can get from the acceptance rate here.</p>
<p>You have to stand out for admission to either the Ivies or Stanford. Major awards and high scores alone won’t get you in either place, just check the Yale EA Decision thread.</p>
<p>Hahaha, yeah, I see that we agree on all the differences. I think that we disagree on whether or not different necessarily means harder.</p>
<p>I just think that it’s harder to be special than to be smart/good at winning awards. Not that this is any sort of guarantee in Ivy/Stanford admissions.</p>
<p>I’ve only had one rejection letter (about which I cared) so far, from TASP, and I kept it. I think they’re good for reminding yourself that you’re not all that, because most of you guys who received them so far and most of us who will be getting them are pretty close. Sometimes we need reminding.</p>
<p>I applied early to UChicago and MIT. Deferred both places. The mail was electronic (for some strange reason, I never got a hard copy in the mail)</p>
<p>As soon as I saw the “thank you for applying to” i was like “aw !@#$”. :)</p>
<p>There are a lot of theories I have come up with. Punishment for retaking tests (2380->2400, 790->800 Chem) seems to be the most popular on the board. There’s also the possibility that they were filling up certain spots in EA (legacies, athletes, minorities, etc.) and I didn’t fall into any of them. Yale could also be putting very little emphasis on the numbers, and although I still feel I am a strong applicant disregarding the tests, I can see why I would not quite make the EA cut.</p>
<p>Why would you retake the SATs if you were 10 points away from a perfect score? I doubt that at that point they would look at your application any differently than they would if had earned a perfect score the first time around.</p>
<p>It may be a combination of those theories. The numbers clearly matter – a lot – but they’re not everything, and once you’re over the threshhold (2300 or so) any increase probably only helps modestly. The bottom line is there are very few slots and lots of people competing for them. If you think about it, since Yale is the only one of the big 3 with an early application, most of the candidates who are in the range for HYP apply to Yale early. (Sure, Stanford gets some of them and MIT gets many of the tech types, but a large portion undoubtedly go for Yale.) Then couple that with the very few slots available for the unhooked. Of 700 or so slots available, almost 50% go to URM’s, recruited athletes, legacies, and development cases. (There actually are people who buy their way in; I’ve seen it at my school). It’s probably an even higher percentage in the early period when most of the athletes come through, but let’s round to 50%, which leaves 350 or so slots. Of those, half will be the gender you’re not, so now we’re down to 175. Then some of the slots go to internationals, so maybe we’re at 140. Finally, we have to factor in geographic diversity. If you notice, many of those admitted in the early period were from “off” states, where garden variety CC candidates (albeit exceptional candidates by any other measure) will tend to stand out among their peers. So now we’re down to, say, 100 or 125. Competing for those 100-125 slots will be lots of people with very high stats, incredible EC accomplishments, and “EC diversity.” There will be TASP participants, Bronfman Scholars, figure skaters, debate champions, math olympiad winners, Siemens winners, award-winning writers, musicians, actors, artists, etc. Yale has to take someone from each of the food groups. So each applicant is effectively competing against others in his/her niche. And the upshot of that is that the chances for any given candidate who’s not a specialized superstar – even a supremely qualified candidate – are low. And if the candidate is an ORM, they’re even lower. At that point, it’s going to come down to almost arbitrary factors like did something about your app (multiple retakes?) annoy someone?, do you seem like the kind of person your regional adcom would like?, did your essay topic strike a cord with your reader?, etc. To me it’s just about supply and demand – and luck. But the good news is that if you expand the exercise to the top 10 or 15 schools, the supply and demand situtation gets better for someone with your crredentials and the luck will even out.</p>
<p>heh, and i don’t wanna beat a dead horse but my friend last year (asian male 2300 SAT) applied to every ivy league and was rejected. still ended up at a decent school though.</p>
<p>pigs - my dad decided to start worrying about that very same thing today. He told me I should forget about yale, princeton, etc, and apply to the community college down the road ‘just in case.’ I was like, omg, thanks dad, way to have confidence in me D:
But I’m really worried now that I’m not going to get into any of my top choices.</p>
<p>christainsoldier - are you still considering yale even though you’ve been deferred?</p>
