As an alum known to be more involved in this admissions process as an interviewer, etc. I’ve been asked to read a handful of essays over the years and some have been truly terrible. Likewise, after doing > 100 interviews over that time, some have raised serious red flags that I shared with admissions. As others have said you can’t sit back and say one kid got in over another because of grades/scores/EC’s/hooks because you are not seeing the entire “package” only seen by admissions and you are not seeing the bigger picture of how they craft a class. Of course it is distressing to get bad news at this time and it is natural to seek an explanation. The answer is there are just too many fully qualified applicants seeking too few top 20 spots giving admissions the latitude to make subjective choices. For those who take as much (or even more) time to find their matches and safeties that thrill them this process works out just fine.
6 Likes