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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If some people believe that it is more difficult as a so-called "STEM" major to get into schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.--schools that do not admit based on major and do not require students to declare a major until after sophomore year--why not just apply as an easy humanities major?  I am assuming that like most applicants to these schools, the Verbal and Math sections of the SAT are both stellar.  I am also assuming that the APs in high school were both STEM and Humanities.

So, why torture yourself? [/quote]

Because STEM kids often want to do a lot of stem things in high school. [b]Plus, the system works for the vast majority: true top unhooked stem kids can get into at least ONE ivy/T15 stem private (Stanford, MIT, JHU CMU Rice Northwestern Duke Chicago...)or at least one of UCB /GT /Michigan OOS. It really is not that hard for the true top ones. Most get into more than one among this vast group[/b].[/quote]

I don't know if this is true.  I know of a truly amazing top unhooked STEM kid at my kid's school who was going for chemical engineering.  He was deferred and then rejected from Penn.  Was waitlisted at Harvard, Cornell, UMich, GT, UCB and rejected from the other schools you listed.  He is attending Univ. of Washington (in Seattle).  He was not one-dimensional either - he was concermaster of the orchestra and also played Bass in a popular school band and was part of a group that won a STEM competition.[/quote]

Then he was not top. Full stop. He did not have top grades and scores or he did not have top rigor. There are many students targeting engineering who do not take the hardest level of physics and math at the school and knock out 5s on the AP. And 770+ on math. That is mandatory for unhooked Mich, GT. For Penn/ivies the concertmaster is a boost if you have the former stem quals, but it is also expected that in addition to top stem there are top-level english classes, hardest history APs, and foreign language through AP. All with top grades to be as close to 4.0uw in all areas as possible (unless at top top boarding or private where only 1 or 2 students have a true 4.0 uw yet 15 % of the class goes to ivies).
 That is what it takes unhooked. I have never seen one who had ALL of that not get in to at least one of the schools you mentioned. Never. [/quote]

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