Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:It could have easily happened to me. I was rejected from my safe school. For whatever reason, though, my reach school accepted me. I was rejected from VT, ODU (safety), and George Mason. I was accepted into RPI. Go figure. This was in 1982.
I thought admissions was much more predictable back then......interesting.
PP. apparently not. I had a really bad sophomore year -- bad concussion before the realized the severity of concussions, and was in a haze for the second half of the year and finished with really crappy grades. I also did not retain anything from Feb on. I ended up with 2 D's 3C's and a B (phys-ed).
As I came out of the fog in the junior year, I started doing better: 3A's, 1B, 1C and a D (Chem teacher was a certified a-hole). But, SAT's were 1200 (which was good in 1982 -- harder test) with subscores of 800 Math, 400 verbal. Senior year was much better: 4A's and 1B, but is was too late.
I also did some projects on writing instructional software for the school on teaching physics.
The net result was some numbers looked really bad, (GPA was 2.4 when I applied), SAT's mixed. The schools that just looked at numbers rejected me (ODU, VT).
RPI wanted an essay and cared more about recommendations. I wrote about writing the software for physics. My recommendations came from the physics teacher and CS teachers who both talked about what I did.
(My sister was also a student at RPI).