Having read your latest replies, I think now that you were unlucky in the grand scheme of admission interaction between your school and colleges. You are a very articulate young man with great potential, and I am quite certain that better news will await you in RD.
@Par271828nt said it very well in post #13:
“All that you need to know is you have tried your best in the past few years. Step back. And move on.”
@xsi103920 Son’s HS had 40 or more applications to each of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn and Cornell every year (fewer to Dartmouth and Brown). Naviance scattergrams showed fairly predictable results everywhere except Princeton.
At the other IVY’s, there were pretty clear zones on the scattergram where you could see that kids with those stats had pretty clear chances.
From that one particular HS, applicants to Harvard and Yale, with a GPA of <95.0 and an SAT under 2220 (median SAT for the school at that time), for example, odds of admissions at either school were pretty close to 0. With a GPA of 96.5 or higher UW and an SAT of 2350 or higher gave a 40% or better chance of admission. Bring it up to 97.0 and 2380 and it went to >65%.
For Princeton, the odds stayed pretty much the same for the entire range >95 GPA and >2200 SAT.
Based on the experience at son’s HS (rated #1 public in the US last time WSJ rated HS - so not in any sense an “average” school.) I’d tend to attribute your results to Princeton randomness, rather than any malevolent intent on the part of your GC.
Don’t take their decision personally, I suspect you’ll have better results other places RD.
Hi @tdy123,
Your post is pretty helpful. The data you presented seem to indicate that
for Princeton, once your academic results (e.g., SAT, GPA) are above a certain level, other factors become more relevant (e.g., getting your SAT 10 points high, alone by itself, does not give you any advantage, as long as it is high enough). And perhaps the threshold they use is different from that of other schools.
And I agree and wish the OP has better luck at other schools.
Princeton no longer publishes deferred rate, however, old news stories list very low rejection rates. For example, the link at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2013/12/714-students-or-18-5-percent-offered-early-admission-in-third-year-of-u-s-early-action-program mentions only 1% of Princeton SCEA applicants were rejected, which was less than 50 students from the full SCEA application pool. Instead the overwhelming majority of SCEA applicants were deferred.
Princeton may reject more than 1% of SCEA applicants today, but I’d expect that they still defer the vast majority of applicants and reject few. Looking at the past 4 years of decision threads on this site, I didn’t see any forum posters from this site rejected during SCEA. The OP also mentioned nobody from his school has been rejected from Princeton SCEA during the past 4 years. This also suggests the rejection is not simply because he was international.
So contrary to popular opinion, I think it is likely that there was a significant problem with the OP’s application. It isn’t clear what that problem is unless “very problematic reasons” refers to something that typically is an auto reject. If not, maybe the school’s GC has some ideas. If nobody else has been rejected SCEA during the past 4 years, it’s a reasonable query for an applicant as qualified as the OP. However, I’d suggest being very careful about how you phrase the question, avoiding anything accusatory and anything suggestive of blame.
If your prep school is a top-tier feeder the GCs & HoS have the relationships to call & ask what’s up with the rejection. Totally fair to ask them to call-esp as you say they were surprised. Been there / done that.
I agree that an outright rejection for this kind of candidate seems odd because my understanding aligns with @Data10 's. There are two things that might help.
First, ask your CC to give Princeton a call as @collegemom3717 suggests. Any top prep school, especially one that is getting several acceptances, has a relationship with the AO. They could get valuable feedback for you. It could be that there is a soft quota for students from your country and they have filled it. (Schools had a lot more trouble getting visas for students last year, btw, and it varies by country.) It could be something related to FA. It could be that th err y have changed their policy for certain groups of students and are no longer leading them on with deferrals.
Second, if you truly suspect that your CC may have written something problematic or have made a mistake, make an appointment to see the head of college counseling. Do not accuse your CC of anything but ask if you could get a second set of eyes on your application. While it is probably too late for you to change an essay, etc., I would think that if there is anything truly wrong that the CC should have caught (or had any part in), it can be changed by your school with the simple explanation that they made an administrative error.
And know that all may be fine. Hopefully, you have some less selective schools on your list as well where you would be happy. The acceptances at schools like this are always hard to understand.
At first glance, an outright rejection for someone with OP’s qualifications raises a red flag. That said, I have not been able to find any recent stats on the deferral rate for Princeton SCEA applicants. It may be that they have significantly reduced the deferral rate in recent years as has occurred at other schools like Brown. Also, the fact that OP is an international applicant may have been a factor. I doubt that a GC at an Ivy feeding boarding school would sabotage OP’s application, but none of us (including OP) have anyway of knowing for sure. Bottom line, nothing OP can do about it now, and it’s best to forget all about Princeton and hope for the best in the RD round.
In recent years Princeton has been deferring about 70% of applicants during the SCEA round and rejecting about 15%. This year, in my part of the country, the SCEA rejection rate was nearly 30%; maybe the new dean of admissions has opted to reduce the number of deferrals? In any case, that 1% figure was an anomaly and definitely does not reflect the current landscape.
The upshot is that the OP was not alone in being denied admission, and the rejection is not necessarily a harbinger of future admissions decisions.
Why would it be in your GC’s best interest to see her student rejected from any school, let alone a school like Princeton? Think about that.
I think also that under the administration of the new Dean of Admission at Princeton, policies and directives can be expected to be different, resulting in changes to the patterns on outcomes observed in the past.
Nevertheless, OP is a fine young man with great academic qualifications; better results will await him in RD.
I also agree that Princeton rejects only a small percentage of SCEA applicants outright in the initial round. They were usually deemed obvious rejects by adcom. A clear flaw in any one aspect of an application is all it takes for a rejection. None of us knows what that is, but the OP is in the best position to speculate. S/he must have some reason to suspect GC’s recommendation had something to do with it, and her/his instinct could be right.
As another posted stated above, with new admissions leadership at Princeton this year, policies and practices may have changed. No one here knows with certainty the proportion of SCEA applicants that were deferred and rejected. OP being an international student is an important factor here.
Summarizing a few comments above, inserted with mine.
A Few Suggestion: Ok to find out the facts; keep an open mindset and tone; stay positive; there are many options and hopefully things will work out for the OP.
@everyone who responded! thanks for all the replies / interests, regardless of your perspective and whether or not I agree and disagree with it, there are definitely so many un-knowable factors like you’ve all stated that complicate matters, unknowable to even me. so I appreciate it all 
To clarify, I did not apply for financial aid! (An important factor as an international applicant.) Starting to get a bit worried as so far RD decisions have not gone better for me, even at schools with “average SAT / GPA” metrics significantly lower than mine (“safeties” In the traditional sense) but will wait it out and try to stay positive. Good luck to everyone!!
Dear @xsi103920 ,
I was actually thinking about you. So thank you for posting and letting us know where you are. In any case, it’s like a week away. Stay put and hope for the best. I hope something will work out for you. Take care.
(I just want to share. At our school, a teacher says that a number of kids wait for another year and apply again, and many work out better. I hope it’s not relevant to your case, but, just in case, you should know there’s always hope and there are many ways to get a good education. Stay put. NEVER give up.)
Applying for ‘financial aid’ should have no bearing on the decision. At least not if Princeton holds to its claim of being ‘need-blind’ for international applicants too.
Post #33 leads me to believe that you will need to rethink your LoR’s and essays if you should decide to take a gap year and reapply.
@OverseasFather I meant for other universities; I also did Liberal Arts Colleges.
The story does sound strange. I do not think your CC intentionally did something bad, but perhaps s/he put someone else’s transcript or evals in your file? You know, foreign students’ names can be confusing. I had this kind of mix-up happened to me personally. Luckily it was just a finals grade and easily corrected.
If you cannot get into any decent college, I would ask your principal to look into your application file.
@BKSquared I really don’t think it was my essays because I’ve gotten so much positive feedback on them from peers, my school’s appointed college admissions writing coach, out of school EC mentors, and even a personal writing coach and spent literally since last summer on each one and made them really tailored to the school and who I am. The LoRs do make me worried and raise a question in my mind. I have been waitlisted at one “target” school so I will try to get off that waitlist first.