Reply to Disappointment

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Disappointment"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Anyone else facing a lot of disappointment during this cycle? DD got into a couple target schools + most of her safeties... Rejected or WL from the rest. She was (imo and told to us by many others) a great applicant - High stats, great ECs + essays, LORs... Her interviews all went very well, especially JHU. She applied to JHU EA and the rest RD, and we're from NOVA. Intended major is BME (biomed engineering).
 
Stats:
4.0 UW/4.7 W GPA
1570 SAT (800 M, 770 R&W)
14 APs, all 5s

ECs:
- A few regional awards (STEM)
- 200+ volunteer hours @ local hospital
- [b]Founder of non-profit[/b]
- Research w/ prof at T30
- Competitive summer program for BME
- Lots of community service

Results:
JHU EA - Deferred -&gt; Rejected
Princeton - Rejected
Brown - Rejected
Dartmouth - Rejected
Columbia - Rejected
Duke - Rejected
UVA - WL
Cornell - WL
CMU - WL
UNC CH - WL
VT - Accepted
W&M - Accepted
Lehigh - Accepted
UPitt - Accepted

DD is incredibly upset and so are we... JHU was her dream school but she relied on UVA + CMU as well. Anyone here confused and facing a similar situation?We all were convinced that DD had it in the bag - Worst of all is that many of her classmates w/ lower stats and worse ECs have gotten into a few of these schools.[/quote]

It stinks. Hopkins legacy kid here rejected at 1560, perfect grades, ECs, bilingual, etc. Did not expect as many rejections as we got. But lived where they ended up.

I would say just look forward. Make the most of where they will be. No sense going in bitter.

Also, admissions seeing through these “nonprofits.” Maybe yours was impressive and noble, but WSJ and WaPo both have written about this  “founded nonprofit” thing can be a bit of a bogus resume padder [/quote]

Agree.

Plus, the OP surely emphasized her daughter  doing “ -Research with Prof at T3O” when she wrote her daughter’s essays filled out her daughter’s common app.

But the whole “wrote a peer-reviewed research paper” gimmick is also getting tired.

It’s a red-flag to universities now.[/quote]

+1. I have actual researchers in my family. They aren't clamoring to supervise summer high school students. Also, what were the hospital volunteer hours? It's impossible to get volunteer hours in a NOVA hospital unless there is a connection or you work in the gift shop. Everyone knows the non-profit stuff is BS. [b]OP DD's application seems entirely manufactured and boring[/b]. [/quote]

This is the heart of it. I am out of the game now, one out of college, one in college now. We lived this disappointment too with our first one. It opened my eyes to the fact that this profile of the OP is like thousands of other top students.

Graded are great, but so are others. Test scores are great. Princeton rejects hundreds of kids with perfect SATs.

Something else has to make a kid shine, and “founding nonprofit” is absolutely not it these days. Something else in that application, whether the essay, something specific in a letter of recommendation, a lived experience, passion project that shows drivers and commitment, etc., has to make the admissions officer sit up and *notice.* OP profile doesn’t [/quote]

Yep.

It’s why the good CCO will recommend listing an out of left field EC/pt job or sometimes even just a hobby. It personalizes the stem kids where this phenomenon is most prevalent.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics