1600 and Rejected?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is Asian American male from MCPS magnet school. He was rejected from many top universities with 1600, 4.8, NMS scholarship, national level EC, loads of volunteer work, published work, internships etc - for CS. We were told to apply to MIT for CS adjacent courses like Applied Math. My kid was not interested.

There were three main reasons -
- a lot of people apply for CS in top schools like MIT that are Asian- American males like my kid with perfect everything.
MIT cannot take majority of super qualified candidates because it does not have the seats and they want diversity of race and experience. And secondly, from his magnet school, every single person in STEM applied to MIT. Last - a large number of kids in the magnet program have similar profile. So the only differentiation is if they are URMs or women.

Do I mind? No.

Colleges should give the opportunities to the kids who will benefit the most. My kid is going to be ok at UMD. And in fact the 360K that he saves gives him the leg up that going to college does not give.

No university is going to accept 20 kids from the same high school graduating class even if they all score 1600 and are incredible in every way.

That is one of the big downsides to the really strong magnet programs. MIT gets dozens of applications every year from the same school and can pick any random one without having to look twice

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is Asian American male from MCPS magnet school. He was rejected from many top universities with 1600, 4.8, NMS scholarship, national level EC, loads of volunteer work, published work, internships etc - for CS. We were told to apply to MIT for CS adjacent courses like Applied Math. My kid was not interested.

There were three main reasons -
- a lot of people apply for CS in top schools like MIT that are Asian- American males like my kid with perfect everything.
MIT cannot take majority of super qualified candidates because it does not have the seats and they want diversity of race and experience. And secondly, from his magnet school, every single person in STEM applied to MIT. Last - a large number of kids in the magnet program have similar profile. So the only differentiation is if they are URMs or women.

Do I mind? No.

Colleges should give the opportunities to the kids who will benefit the most. My kid is going to be ok at UMD. And in fact the 360K that he saves gives him the leg up that going to college does not give.

No university is going to accept 20 kids from the same high school graduating class even if they all score 1600 and are incredible in every way.

That is one of the big downsides to the really strong magnet programs. MIT gets dozens of applications every year from the same school and can pick any random one without having to look twice

Do you mean no highly selective university will accept 20 kids from the same school? Because many flagship universities certainly accept 20+ kids from high schools in their state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is Asian American male from MCPS magnet school. He was rejected from many top universities with 1600, 4.8, NMS scholarship, national level EC, loads of volunteer work, published work, internships etc - for CS. We were told to apply to MIT for CS adjacent courses like Applied Math. My kid was not interested.

There were three main reasons -
- a lot of people apply for CS in top schools like MIT that are Asian- American males like my kid with perfect everything.
MIT cannot take majority of super qualified candidates because it does not have the seats and they want diversity of race and experience. And secondly, from his magnet school, every single person in STEM applied to MIT. Last - a large number of kids in the magnet program have similar profile. So the only differentiation is if they are URMs or women.

Do I mind? No.

Colleges should give the opportunities to the kids who will benefit the most. My kid is going to be ok at UMD. And in fact the 360K that he saves gives him the leg up that going to college does not give.

No university is going to accept 20 kids from the same high school graduating class even if they all score 1600 and are incredible in every way.

That is one of the big downsides to the really strong magnet programs. MIT gets dozens of applications every year from the same school and can pick any random one without having to look twice

Top boarding schools in the country routinely accept 20+ from vy pluses as a group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how so many of you can be so flabberghasted that 1600s get rejected. Colleges have been saying forever that test scores aren't the be all and end all.

Yes, but it's now coming out that they are rejected for not having the right color skin, "likeability", "creativity", connections, popularity, blah blah blah. Where have you been?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is Asian American male from MCPS magnet school. He was rejected from many top universities with 1600, 4.8, NMS scholarship, national level EC, loads of volunteer work, published work, internships etc - for CS. We were told to apply to MIT for CS adjacent courses like Applied Math. My kid was not interested.

There were three main reasons -
- a lot of people apply for CS in top schools like MIT that are Asian- American males like my kid with perfect everything.
MIT cannot take majority of super qualified candidates because it does not have the seats and they want diversity of race and experience. And secondly, from his magnet school, every single person in STEM applied to MIT. Last - a large number of kids in the magnet program have similar profile. So the only differentiation is if they are URMs or women.

Do I mind? No.

Colleges should give the opportunities to the kids who will benefit the most. My kid is going to be ok at UMD. And in fact the 360K that he saves gives him the leg up that going to college does not give.

Great attitude! And yes, that 360K saved will go a long way to starting out in 4 years. UMD CS is amazing, no need to pay a fortune for MIT really. And with that attitude he will do just fine

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how so many of you can be so flabberghasted that 1600s get rejected. Colleges have been saying forever that test scores aren't the be all and end all.

But not their special snowflake....Colleges want balanced classes and balanced people. Perfect scores are not the entire package.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This was some time ago when the SAT was out of 2400, but know someone who got a 2400 single sitting and graduated salutatorian at a very competitive public high school. He was flat out rejected Harvard early action, didn’t get into Stanford either which was his second choice, but ended up getting into 3 ivies, Duke, and full ride to 2 state schools. Picked Duke and now has a top-tier career for his age.

It clearly worked out for him so this isn’t exactly an uncommon story. The flat out Harvard rejection is pretty surprising though

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how so many of you can be so flabberghasted that 1600s get rejected. Colleges have been saying forever that test scores aren't the be all and end all.

But not their special snowflake....Colleges want balanced classes and balanced people. Perfect scores are not the entire package.

Yes, you always need the right color balance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how so many of you can be so flabberghasted that 1600s get rejected. Colleges have been saying forever that test scores aren't the be all and end all.

Yes, but it's now coming out that they are rejected for not having the right color skin, "likeability", "creativity", connections, popularity, blah blah blah. Where have you been?

This may be what you tell yourself, but it is not accurate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was some time ago when the SAT was out of 2400, but know someone who got a 2400 single sitting and graduated salutatorian at a very competitive public high school. He was flat out rejected Harvard early action, didn’t get into Stanford either which was his second choice, but ended up getting into 3 ivies, Duke, and full ride to 2 state schools. Picked Duke and now has a top-tier career for his age.

It clearly worked out for him so this isn’t exactly an uncommon story. The flat out Harvard rejection is pretty surprising though

Not surprising. There are more than 24,000 public HSs in the USA. There were more than 24,000 US valedictorians ahead of him. And this is not counting all the HSs in the world that must have had their own valedictorians. In short, he needed to have tried harder!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was some time ago when the SAT was out of 2400, but know someone who got a 2400 single sitting and graduated salutatorian at a very competitive public high school. He was flat out rejected Harvard early action, didn’t get into Stanford either which was his second choice, but ended up getting into 3 ivies, Duke, and full ride to 2 state schools. Picked Duke and now has a top-tier career for his age.

It clearly worked out for him so this isn’t exactly an uncommon story. The flat out Harvard rejection is pretty surprising though

Not surprising. There are more than 24,000 public HSs in the USA. There were more than 24,000 US valedictorians ahead of him. And this is not counting all the HSs in the world that must have had their own valedictorians. In short, he needed to have tried harder!

Single sitting 2400s were much rarer than being valedictorian though. But getting into 3 ivies and going to Duke is still a major win

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am curious if you personally know kids who scored perfect on SAT (or ACT) who received rejections and which schools.

(Please no "OMG don't you KNOW that 1600s get rejected ALL THE TIME?? It's not some automatic ticket!" Yes, clearly I do. Just interested in anecdotes about perfect scores.) Thank you.

I'll start. I know a kid with a 1600 who got rejected from Michigan and goes to Harvard now. Probably received other rejections, but I don't know about them.

Likely rejected because they knew the student wasn't going to end up there.

[Anonymous]

Happens at UCLA frequently because of the extreme number of applicants to the school

[Anonymous]

Just about every college has stated that once you hit a certain score threshold that hits the 50% range, it doesn't matter about the marginal differences. Hence, a 1600 doesn't carry any significance over the 50% accepted applicant score for acceptance.

MIT is even blunter as the head of admissions has stated many times. They care about a 750+ in math and then want 700-750ish at least for verbal. Once they see those scores you are moved on to the next round, and they don't factor them into your application again. In fact, if you already achieve those scores and take the SAT again it hurts your application. They understand someone who received a 1450 taking it again, and they understand anyone scoring below 750 in math taking it again...but if nail a 1550 on first sitting, then they don't want to see another score.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just about every college has stated that once you hit a certain score threshold that hits the 50% range, it doesn't matter about the marginal differences. Hence, a 1600 doesn't carry any significance over the 50% accepted applicant score for acceptance.

MIT is even blunter as the head of admissions has stated many times. They care about a 750+ in math and then want 700-750ish at least for verbal. Once they see those scores you are moved on to the next round, and they don't factor them into your application again. In fact, if you already achieve those scores and take the SAT again it hurts your application. They understand someone who received a 1450 taking it again, and they understand anyone scoring below 750 in math taking it again...but if nail a 1550 on first sitting, then they don't want to see another score.

Curious how you know this ?

A 750 in math is a low for MIT.

I do not believe that being above a school's 50% range is enough.