Ivy day 2026

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD is in at Harvard! Rejected from all other ivies she applied. Was down down down after opening all the portals and Harvard was the last one she opened.

She has no hooks, white girl, cheerleader, lots of volunteer work, president of student council, does part time work at a fast food place, most likely in top 10% of her class for GPA, 34 ACT. We are in MCPS.

Congrats. My sense is this is the type of girl that won't fall apart getting B's at Harvard. They need more students like her who won't complain about the new grading deflating structure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD is in at Harvard! Rejected from all other ivies she applied. Was down down down after opening all the portals and Harvard was the last one she opened.

She has no hooks, white girl, cheerleader, lots of volunteer work, president of student council, does part time work at a fast food place, most likely in top 10% of her class for GPA, 34 ACT. We are in MCPS.

Congrats. My sense is this is the type of girl that won't fall apart getting B's at Harvard. They need more students like her who won't complain about the new grading deflating structure.

Which major?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid got into Dartmouth as a legacy kid (after being rejected at a SCEA school) and is disappointed they were rejected from Penn, Columbia and Brown. I want to knock some sense into them and tell them how fortunate they are. I'm embarrassed to tell any other parents this (most of whom would be over the moon with my kid's options), but instead I'm posting here on DCUM and wondering where I went wrong as a parent...

The problem is that right now the world has been unfair to him, and it hurts. Validate that, and then remind him of all the ways the world is unfair in his favor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid got into Dartmouth as a legacy kid (after being rejected at a SCEA school) and is disappointed they were rejected from Penn, Columbia and Brown. I want to knock some sense into them and tell them how fortunate they are. I'm embarrassed to tell any other parents this (most of whom would be over the moon with my kid's options), but instead I'm posting here on DCUM and wondering where I went wrong as a parent...

The problem is that right now the world has been unfair to him, and it hurts. Validate that, and then remind him of all the ways the world is unfair in his favor.

Huh? The world hasn’t been “unfair” to him. There were just more qualified kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Waitlisted Harvard and Princeton. Rejected Brown (legacy).

Wonder if same kid went to the base school, results would have been different.

Huh? Base school?

I believe this is TJ kid.

[Anonymous]

Our family friend’s son was confident (overly so, imho😔) he’d get into one of the Ivies. He was getting so emotionally distressed after last night’s disappointing rejections. He was a regular high stats kid but with mediocre ECs. Any suggestions on how to console him? It’s hard to tell him his profile was not nearly good enough for any Ivy without hurting him. (We know many high stats kids with much better ECs getting shut out of the Ivies. They’re, though somewhat disappointed, weren’t surprised at all.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In at Princeton and U Penn.

1540 SAT
Fairfax Public
2 sport athlete (not recruited)
Fund raised $4000+ for non-profit
President of investment club
3.9/4.0
9 AP's
3 years volunteer work at animal shelter
2 summers working in retail

No hooks, white, male

Wow, it got to be something special, rec letter from vvip?

LOL, his two teachers and supervisor at the animal shelter wrote this letters. But I think he only sent supervisor to some colleges only for some reason.

The only special thing I see is he took a couple of courses that are non-core against all advice. We thought he is just following his interests at that time. His interest turned out to be a girl who is taking that same class. Bombed that class. Went on to repeat that again with the same result which took down his grades which were otherwise all 4.0 in core classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD is in at Harvard! Rejected from all other ivies she applied. Was down down down after opening all the portals and Harvard was the last one she opened.

She has no hooks, white girl, cheerleader, lots of volunteer work, president of student council, does part time work at a fast food place, most likely in top 10% of her class for GPA, 34 ACT. We are in MCPS.

Congrats. My sense is this is the type of girl that won't fall apart getting B's at Harvard. They need more students like her who won't complain about the new grading deflating structure.

That structure is just a proposal from the faculty, hasn’t been adopted. There may be grading modifications but no Ivy is going to want to expose the kids who enter needing some remedial help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In at Princeton and U Penn.

1540 SAT
Fairfax Public
2 sport athlete (not recruited)
Fund raised $4000+ for non-profit
President of investment club
3.9/4.0
9 AP's
3 years volunteer work at animal shelter
2 summers working in retail

No hooks, white, male

Wow, it got to be something special, rec letter from vvip?

LOL, his two teachers and supervisor at the animal shelter wrote this letters. But I think he only sent supervisor to some colleges only for some reason.

The only special thing I see is he took a couple of courses that are non-core against all advice. We thought he is just following his interests at that time. His interest turned out to be a girl who is taking that same class. Bombed that class. Went on to repeat that again with the same result which took down his grades which were otherwise all 4.0 in core classes.

Did he raise money for the animal shelter or somewhere else? What did he do as a fundraiser?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD is in at Harvard! Rejected from all other ivies she applied. Was down down down after opening all the portals and Harvard was the last one she opened.

She has no hooks, white girl, cheerleader, lots of volunteer work, president of student council, does part time work at a fast food place, most likely in top 10% of her class for GPA, 34 ACT. We are in MCPS.

Congrats. My sense is this is the type of girl that won't fall apart getting B's at Harvard. They need more students like her who won't complain about the new grading deflating structure.

That structure is just a proposal from the faculty, hasn’t been adopted. There may be grading modifications but no Ivy is going to want to expose the kids who enter needing some remedial help.

I don't understand this honestly. Isn't everyone who enter a top college have top grades in relevant AP exams.

Are there Top colleges accepting students who didn't take the AP exams and done extremely well?

Frankly if they are accepting kids without prefect AP sores then thats ridiculous. The vast majority of kids who apply to these colleges are very privileged. These kids have access to all kind of resources imaginable. If they can't even do well on AP tests frankly they don't deserve to be admitted. It's such a low bar to cross given all the resources they have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD is in at Harvard! Rejected from all other ivies she applied. Was down down down after opening all the portals and Harvard was the last one she opened.

She has no hooks, white girl, cheerleader, lots of volunteer work, president of student council, does part time work at a fast food place, most likely in top 10% of her class for GPA, 34 ACT. We are in MCPS.

Congrats. My sense is this is the type of girl that won't fall apart getting B's at Harvard. They need more students like her who won't complain about the new grading deflating structure.

That structure is just a proposal from the faculty, hasn’t been adopted. There may be grading modifications but no Ivy is going to want to expose the kids who enter needing some remedial help.

I don't understand this honestly. Isn't everyone who enter a top college have top grades in relevant AP exams.

Are there Top colleges accepting students who didn't take the AP exams and done extremely well?

Frankly if they are accepting kids without prefect AP sores then thats ridiculous. The vast majority of kids who apply to these colleges are very privileged. These kids have access to all kind of resources imaginable. If they can't even do well on AP tests frankly they don't deserve to be admitted. It's such a low bar to cross given all the resources they have.

The kids who need the extra help generally are not coming from a place of privilege, instead the complete opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our family friend’s son was confident (overly so, imho😔) he’d get into one of the Ivies. He was getting so emotionally distressed after last night’s disappointing rejections. He was a regular high stats kid but with mediocre ECs. Any suggestions on how to console him? It’s hard to tell him his profile was not nearly good enough for any Ivy without hurting him. (We know many high stats kids with much better ECs getting shut out of the Ivies. They’re, though somewhat disappointed, weren’t surprised at all.)

Simple, show him other high stats kids rejected.

It's always a problem, either parents or kids themselves are overly confident because they don't know the outside world.
I knew a kid ED a T10, ends up at an unknown college just better than CC, when schools don't tell you what is your rank, and most of kids can having lots of As, that's bound to happen. Like the one with 4.1 weighted GPA, thought he or she should get in UVA or at least VT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD is in at Harvard! Rejected from all other ivies she applied. Was down down down after opening all the portals and Harvard was the last one she opened.

She has no hooks, white girl, cheerleader, lots of volunteer work, president of student council, does part time work at a fast food place, most likely in top 10% of her class for GPA, 34 ACT. We are in MCPS.

Congrats. My sense is this is the type of girl that won't fall apart getting B's at Harvard. They need more students like her who won't complain about the new grading deflating structure.

That structure is just a proposal from the faculty, hasn’t been adopted. There may be grading modifications but no Ivy is going to want to expose the kids who enter needing some remedial help.

I don't understand this honestly. Isn't everyone who enter a top college have top grades in relevant AP exams.

Are there Top colleges accepting students who didn't take the AP exams and done extremely well?

Frankly if they are accepting kids without prefect AP sores then thats ridiculous. The vast majority of kids who apply to these colleges are very privileged. These kids have access to all kind of resources imaginable. If they can't even do well on AP tests frankly they don't deserve to be admitted. It's such a low bar to cross given all the resources they have.

The kids who need the extra help generally are not coming from a place of privilege, instead the complete opposite.

They don't admit many of those kids though. Go to any Ivy the students are so homogeneous it's scary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In at Princeton and U Penn.

1540 SAT
Fairfax Public
2 sport athlete (not recruited)
Fund raised $4000+ for non-profit
President of investment club
3.9/4.0
9 AP's
3 years volunteer work at animal shelter
2 summers working in retail

No hooks, white, male

Wow, it got to be something special, rec letter from vvip?

LOL, his two teachers and supervisor at the animal shelter wrote this letters. But I think he only sent supervisor to some colleges only for some reason.

The only special thing I see is he took a couple of courses that are non-core against all advice. We thought he is just following his interests at that time. His interest turned out to be a girl who is taking that same class. Bombed that class. Went on to repeat that again with the same result which took down his grades which were otherwise all 4.0 in core classes.

Then it must be essay move the needle. So many much better stats, EC kids rejected by Princeton and other Ivies. Congrats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our family friend’s son was confident (overly so, imho😔) he’d get into one of the Ivies. He was getting so emotionally distressed after last night’s disappointing rejections. He was a regular high stats kid but with mediocre ECs. Any suggestions on how to console him? It’s hard to tell him his profile was not nearly good enough for any Ivy without hurting him. (We know many high stats kids with much better ECs getting shut out of the Ivies. They’re, though somewhat disappointed, weren’t surprised at all.)

Simple, show him other high stats kids rejected.

It's always a problem, either parents or kids themselves are overly confident because they don't know the outside world.
I knew a kid ED a T10, ends up at an unknown college just better than CC, when schools don't tell you what is your rank, and most of kids can having lots of As, that's bound to happen. Like the one with 4.1 weighted GPA, thought he or she should get in UVA or at least VT.

In this day and age, there’s tons of free information online. I honestly don’t understand how this could happen. Perhaps stubbornness?