EPTon a side note, it doesn't matter much where you go for undergrad even if you aspire for very good med or law schools. tell your sister to work hard wherever she ends up and learn something from these rejections, everything works out.
Elite Colleges Reporting Record Lows in Admission - Page 2
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9933 Posts
on a side note, it doesn't matter much where you go for undergrad even if you aspire for very good med or law schools. tell your sister to work hard wherever she ends up and learn something from these rejections, everything works out. | ||
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Myxomatosis
United States2392 Posts
No one really deserves getting into an elite school solely on the basis of their SATs or GPA anyway. Those don't tell an admissions committee anything. On April 03 2008 11:02 Romance_us wrote: Another thing I've noticed that isn't being mentioned here is ALUMNI. If your daddy and his daddy went to Harvard, guess what? Your chances of being admitted just increased a tenfold. Pretty sweet, huh? Legacy is fair game in my opinion. If you donated 4 years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars of your family's money to a school, the school does owe your kids a better shot of being accepted. Legacy may piss you off as an applicant, but once you're in I guarantee your views will change at least a little bit. Hindsight is 20/20 Also legacy really doesn't guarantee shit anymore. I know plenty of people who got rejected from great schools despite having 2/3 generations of legacy. | ||
micronesia
United States24670 Posts
And no, it is not retarded, but I disagree with it strongly. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
best solution is to bring the ivy prestige down to earth. | ||
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Deleted User 31060
3788 Posts
It's not like the ivy league schools are so much better than other schools, either. UC Berkeley is just as good as many Ivy leagues (perhaps not Harvard or Princeton, but still), and there are tons of small colleges that can provide the education and opportunities that the Ivy Leagues offer. Conclusion: Prestige is all just a mindset. | ||
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Daveed
United States236 Posts
About your sister- I'm sorry about her situation, but, well, this is life. A lot of people face this kind of disappointment every year, and it's pretty rough. I hope she gets over it soon, and does great at university. An "elite" school doesn't guarantee success, and a "mediocre" one doesn't doom you to blue-collar work. Also, in reply to all these people chiming in with their "personal stories" - how do you know? It certainly doesn't seem like you knew these minorities that well personally. How do you know if they didn't write an especially touching essay, or did had some difficult background to overcome - how? Affirmative action does give rise to these two problems: one one hand, it allows certain people to "cheat" the system, and on the other, it encourages this sort of resentment toward minorities. But- what about it? People are their own people, and not just a set of numbers. It's not just what you could do when people handed you tasks and told you to do them; it's also what you can take into your own hands and create something more. High school is such a short period in our lives; does it really matter then, if this person took AP calculus, and this person didn't yet? Ten years from now, will taking a class a few years ahead give a significant advantage to the former? This is one of the difficult problems that admissions officers have to answer, and, at least at my school, I feel that they've done a great job. I mean, a freshman class here is pretty darn varied. Sure, it's a little on the academic side, and there are plenty of people who come in with lots of advanced credit or university experience under their belts, but there are also those who never have before. But they're smart, and they've got great work ethic (yes, there happen to be more underrepresented minorities in this group). And you know what? After two years, save for the ubiquitous group of elite kids who never left the top, you can't really tell the two groups apart. I feel that there are two very different views on the way college admissions should be done. It seems that people have been championing one view in this thread, that one should be judged almost exclusively on the quality of their achievements (though titles like "captain" and "president" are meaningless without concrete evidence that you did things. But the college admissions officers have more responsibility than that. They don't just admit people with numbers and trophies; if things were done like that, we could have long replaced an admissions panel with a set of programs. They have to use their judgment too, when they see the human side of applicants. And this type of judgment is hard to come by. It's difficult to figure out if this person will be the same student they were in high school and excel at college life... or if they'll end up the same as in high school. | ||
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tiffany
3664 Posts
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Last Romantic
United States20661 Posts
Yes, I'm bitter as an Asian male with a 4.3 GPA, 2400 SAT I, several 800s, 780s, and 750s on my SAT IIs, 7 5's on AP tests, etc. Also captain of speech/debate team, varsity cross country/track runner, President of 3 school clubs, assistant editor of school paper, Chinese school top of class, piano MTAC top level, National Honor Scholar, National Merit Scholar, Presidential Scholar, National AP Scholar I got into 0/4 Ivies, 0/4 other private schools applied to. I received admission to UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles, (neither of which factor race into application). Where will your sister be attending next year ? | ||
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tiffany
3664 Posts
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Last Romantic
United States20661 Posts
Essay-wise, I think they were fine. I blame my GPA - which basically means it was my fault for not working hard enough. I mean, sure, part of it might be the admissions process, but I do think I could have done better. Ah well, UCLA and UCB are decent. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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Daveed
United States236 Posts
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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fanatacist
10319 Posts
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Caller
Poland8075 Posts
On April 03 2008 14:43 Last Romantic wrote: Affirmative action really is trashy. Yes, I'm bitter as an Asian male with a 4.3 GPA, 2400 SAT I, several 800s, 780s, and 750s on my SAT IIs, 7 5's on AP tests, etc. Also captain of speech/debate team, varsity cross country/track runner, President of 3 school clubs, assistant editor of school paper, Chinese school top of class, piano MTAC top level, National Honor Scholar, National Merit Scholar, Presidential Scholar, National AP Scholar I got into 0/4 Ivies, 0/4 other private schools applied to. I received admission to UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles, (neither of which factor race into application). Where will your sister be attending next year ? Wow, that's absolutely ridiculous. I'm an Asian Male with a slightly lower GPA and SAT, and my ECs are far worse than yours are. Yet I at least got a W at cornell and you didn't get into any schools besides the UC's. WTF. what might have happened is the mid level private schools you applied to figured you would get into an Ivy and go there, and so denied you for their "yield." then the ivys didnt take you in b/c they're balls, and you got screwed by the "Tufts Syndrome" US News and World Report Rankings. | ||
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
On April 03 2008 15:29 Last Romantic wrote: 4.3 is a tad low, yeah. Essay-wise, I think they were fine. I blame my GPA - which basically means it was my fault for not working hard enough. I mean, sure, part of it might be the admissions process, but I do think I could have done better. Ah well, UCLA and UCB are decent. I don't know. It's not like places like Stanford or Harvard are blinded by political correctness. Obviously I can't say for certain, but I think there was probably more you could've done. Did you go have interviews everywhere? | ||
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Equinox_kr
United States7395 Posts
On April 03 2008 11:16 Raithed wrote: watch, theyll be like NO SORRY WE DONT LIKE YOU BAI. :< | ||
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TheMusiC
United States1054 Posts
On April 03 2008 13:25 Sunyveil wrote: Ivy League schools are jokes. It is much, much easier to get into an Ivy league school than it is to get into a top level conservatory or arts college. 7% acceptance, so what? Eastman's acceptance rate for music composition is less than 2%. I don't even want to think of Julliard's acceptance rate, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 1% for several of its programs. It's not like the ivy league schools are so much better than other schools, either. UC Berkeley is just as good as many Ivy leagues (perhaps not Harvard or Princeton, but still), and there are tons of small colleges that can provide the education and opportunities that the Ivy Leagues offer. Conclusion: Prestige is all just a mindset. ?? Juilliard/Eastman/NEC/Cleveland etc etc. all have low acceptance rates mostly because 3/4 of the people auditioning for them shouldn't be auditioning in the first place. A lot of it also has to do with whether or not you've had lessons with the professors you're auditioning for, whether you showed improvement, how you responded to the prof's teaching, etc. If you want a truly low acceptance rate, look at Curtis, some years they'll have several studios with 0% acceptance (like their oboe studio last year, lol). Getting into college is harder and harder now, kids are just going insane on grades and extracurrics :x | ||
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Billabong[LovE]
United States5 Posts
On April 03 2008 14:43 Last Romantic wrote: Affirmative action really is trashy. Yes, I'm bitter as an Asian male with a 4.3 GPA, 2400 SAT I, several 800s, 780s, and 750s on my SAT IIs, 7 5's on AP tests, etc. Also captain of speech/debate team, varsity cross country/track runner, President of 3 school clubs, assistant editor of school paper, Chinese school top of class, piano MTAC top level, National Honor Scholar, National Merit Scholar, Presidential Scholar, National AP Scholar I got into 0/4 Ivies, 0/4 other private schools applied to. I received admission to UC Berkeley and UC Los Angeles, (neither of which factor race into application). Where will your sister be attending next year ? You got rejected from everywhere because your transcript reads like a robot. I think you'd be more suited to go to a CalTech or an MIT than an Ivy. Like others have said above, there is no "formula" for getting into an ivy league or else automated robots would be the ones operating admissions. It's about whether or not your achievements were a prediction of how successful you will be and how much you will grow (passion plays a big part in this and can be seen in admissions essays/interviews/recommendations) in college or if they were simply a means to an ends to getting into a good college. Sounds like the admissions committees saw your apps as the latter. sorry bud. I don't want to seem like I'm putting myself on my pedestal, but this is just coming from someone who was admitted to Harvard, Cornell, Yale, AND Juilliard. | ||
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SpiritoftheTunA
United States20903 Posts
On April 04 2008 02:01 Billabong[LovE] wrote: You got rejected from everywhere because your transcript reads like a robot. I think you'd be more suited to go to a CalTech or an MIT than an Ivy. Like others have said above, there is no "formula" for getting into an ivy league or else automated robots would be the ones operating admissions. It's about whether or not your achievements were a prediction of how successful you will be and how much you will grow (passion plays a big part in this and can be seen in admissions essays/interviews/recommendations) in college or if they were simply a means to an ends to getting into a good college. Sounds like the admissions committees saw your apps as the latter. sorry bud. I don't want to seem like I'm putting myself on my pedestal, but this is just coming from someone who was admitted to Harvard, Cornell, Yale, AND Juilliard. good job, asshole ^^ | ||
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