Most surprising admission stories of 2025
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Anonymous
| What are some of the most surprising admission stories (successful or unsuccessful) that you've heard about or witnessed this year? From your family, your circle or your kid's school? Anything jump out? |
Anonymous
| Girl at our school. Probably a smart kid, probably good test scores, but not a top student and without top rigor. Got into Northwestern journalism. |
Anonymous
Same for our private. Also northwestern. The student is not at the top of the class and doesn't have high rigor. |
Anonymous
Oakton has students going to Stanford, Penn, Cornell, Duke, Rice, UCLA and 3-4 to Cal. Perhaps typical for McLean, Langley and TJ but haven't seen such schools in the 6+ years I've observed. |
Anonymous
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This reddit post was eye-opening:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1k1v6b3/the_college_admissions_process_is_baffling/ |
Anonymous
What I think is happening: at some level, and this may be in the final shaping of the class done by the admission director, yield algorithms end up overtaking less-impressive, but still "qualified," academic stats, in terms of the final admission decision. Lower stats mean more likely to enroll. It will be interesting to see what happens, but enrollment management algorithms are playing a bigger role than ever. |
Anonymous
I hate the parents who claim to know the gpa and schedules for other people’s kids. Mind your own business. You don’t know all that you think you know. FFS! |
Anonymous
Sorry I didn't put that correctly. I meant that yield algorithms end up overtaking academic stats in importance, such that less-impressive but still qualified stats result in acceptance, whereas high stats lead to a lower yield score, which ultimately hurts getting an admission offer. |
Anonymous
Another dumb reddit post. Nothing new. Some kids get rejected, some get accepted. Usually not an issue unless it's a URM and someone has a grievance. |
Anonymous
This. This idea of knowing who are the top students in the class is totally perplexing to me. Maybe because my kids are at a public school? And don’t tell me if I don’t know it obviously isn’t my kid. Not everything is visible to everyone else. |
Anonymous
I thought he showed a lot of self-reflection actually. With surprising results. There was one GREAT comment explaining the baffling results....not sure if this person is in admissions or not: "Because kids get brain rotted on reddit thinking that they understand how college admissions actually works when y'all have no clue. They don't care about easy vs hard APs, that is something that exists on reddit. There is no threshold ACT or GPA that makes you "safe". Counting ECs is pretty pointless. College applications are well rounded and are trying to get a picture of who the student is. And no, that's not different than a job. Jobs do interviews. Some colleges do as well. If your jobs hiring committee had to accept a few hundred to a few thousand people every single year, you better believe they'd be having people write essays. By the way, have you ever heard of a cover letter? You don't know everything about your friends applications, even if you think you do. From your post alone, I don't know your friends test scores, I don't know if they applied to stupid colleges compared to your choices, I have no idea what your USC buddy actually does that you don't count as EC that a school might, I couldn't really care less if someone got a C in math once, it's pathetic that you even know that. It's not your business. It's okay that you don't understand why admissions make their choices, why are you ranting like it's your problem, or that it's a problem at all? Congrats dude, you did bad in high school and will struggle in college, that has nothing to do with your friends. I'm glad you apparently have good persuasive writing. Colleges want to create a good academic environment. They look for balance. You need good enough grades, good enough test scores, and then there's a million things that make it impossible for an outside eye to weigh students. They like athletes, they like leadership roles, yeah. They also like when kids have cohesive ECs that speak to their intended major- but then, if that major has too many robotics captains trying to come in to do CS, then it might be a problem. Programs aren't created equally. Colleges have been known to attempt to figure out a students character through their writing or interviews, it's literally one of Harvard's admissions pillars in their own website. You know what else they prioritize heavily? Letters of recommendation, something I don't think your post even mentioned. It has never been a game of just take the highest numbers. It is subjective. It's not really your place to have a problem with it." |
Anonymous
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Not sure if this is a surprising admission story or financial aid story, but my kid was accepted to their Pick #1 SLAC and Pick #2 SLAC. Price is the determining factor for our family.
Pick #1 gave generous need based financial aid package with admission (institutional grant, no loans). Pick #2 gave even more generous merit based financial aid package with admission. Kid sent Pick #1 their financial aid letter from Pick #2 and said that while Pick #1 was their first choice they were going to have to go with Pick #2 unless they could match their offer. Pick #1 came back with increased need based aid package that exceeded that of the other school which sealed the deal for the kid. I didn't realize that schools that don't offer merit aid could compensate in this sort of way, but am happy it worked out like it did. |
Anonymous
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Most surprising?
DD's best friend from the same private school, had TO success at many (maybe 4-5) top 25 schools this year. Not a STEM major. |
Anonymous
Impressive! Madison seems to have more kids at Ivies/JHU/Georgia Tech/U Fla than in prior years, too, based on my unscientific perusal of the acceptances announced. And many fewer at UVA/Wm & Mary than in prior years. |
Anonymous
kids in smaller private schools know who is in the advanced classes (most rigor) and have been around classmates for 4-12 years. they know a lot about each other. They may not know exact numbers, but they know who is taking what, how engaged they are in classes, who does what activities, who gets in trouble, etc. |