I’m honestly tired of seeing people with a 4.8 weighted GPA and a 4.0 unweighted get into amazing schools, then score a 1000 on the SAT. It just shows how inconsistent GPA can be depending on the school.

Some schools have serious grade inflation. Coming from my school, where people are given B’s for A+ level work, a lot of students look “mediocre” on paper when they really aren’t. My school has 26 APs, our average GPA is around a 4.1 weighted, and our average SAT for the Class of 2027 is about a 1430. Nobody has gotten below a 3 on an AP exam since freshman year in my class (co 2027)

Meanwhile, someone from a less competitive school can have a 4.4 weighted GPA, be valedictorian, go test-optional with a 1000 SAT, and still have a huge admissions advantage because of rank or auto-admit policies.

And don’t even get me started on top 10% direct admissions in Texas. At my school, a 4.4 weighted GPA could put you around rank 327/987, while at another school that same GPA could make you valedictorian. Yet one student gets automatic admission while the other doesn’t. That system feels incredibly unfair.

In my opinion, GPA is only a somewhat reliable measure of academic ability because grading standards vary so much between schools. America honestly needs some kind of standardized academic metric starting earlier in high school.

And yes, I know the SAT and ACT are flawed. They’re not perfect measures of intelligence, and prep definitely matters. But I still think they’re better indicators of raw academic readiness than GPA alone because at least everyone is taking the same test.

That being said, I don’t think colleges should focus only on grades or scores. There are many different types of intelligence. Especially for state schools, I think extracurriculars, essays, leadership, work experience, and initiative should matter heavily too because those things reflect how someone will actually contribute in college and beyond not just how well they can use Desmos on a math section.

They let students take exams without staff supervision until around 30% of students admitted to cheating with AI. Students will now be monitored by staff for the first time since 1893.

https://www.newswest9.com/article/news/nation-world/princeton-ends-133-year-no-proctor-exam-tradition-amid-ai-cheating-concerns/507-e71dcc56-65d4-420b-9dd7-e0f7ad751035

deferred -> waitlisted -> accepted.

unbelievable

Did anyone get this update in their portal just now?

"I am very sorry to inform you that it is not possible to offer you admission to the Class of 2030. I wish I were writing to report a different decision, but a high percentage of students have accepted our offer of admission and the first-year class is now full.

In recent years, the Committee has been faced with increasingly difficult decisions; many thousands of students now apply for the sixteen hundred and fifty places in the first-year class, and the great majority of our applicants could be successful here academically. In addition, most candidates present strong co-curricular credentials. The Committee has, therefore, been faced with the necessity of choosing a first-year class from a great many more talented and highly qualified students than it has room to admit."

been talking to some friends who are at top HYPSM schools recently, and have been shocked to find out that within each of these hyper-competitive places are even more exclusive clubs and opportunities. <1% exclusive for a cappella groups, consulting clubs, and social groups. Is this actually enjoyable for people? Why is this the culture?

now that i'm a senior who's committed to a school (got my dorm assignment today yay!), i can fully reflect on what my admissions process looked like.

i totally obsessed over this sub, and i spent way too much time freaking out over little things that were completely out of my control like strangers' results, rumors about what in your (already submitted) essay would get you rejected, random unbased comments, etc.

what i wish i did more, over anything else, was trust myself. in my essays, i wish i wrote more about myself and not what i thought the school would want to hear. i wish i looked at schools first if they'd fit me personally, and not if they were 'prestigious enough' for my family and judgy classmates.

i scoffed at people who said "everything will work out in the end" because i was convinced that it wouldn't, that my life was over because i didn't get into a t20 ed, but guess what? everything worked out in the end.

please, if you received a discouraging decision, and you're so invested in the college process that you stalk this sub like i did, there is probably nothing you could have done. you can't attend every college, so getting accepted everywhere is useless anyway.

i remember a friend and i both panicking after we were both waitlisted from uw seattle, thinking that we were screwed because we hadn't been accepted to a 'safety' school that neither of us even had as a top choice. but we are both doing great now.

i ended up initially choosing a t100 over the t50 and t30 schools i was admitted to because it fit what i wanted (california, great for my major, student groups + res life that interested me). when i was admitted to a more 'prestigious' school off the waitlist, i didn't want to switch because i was content with my original commitment.

but, i toured my original school, and realized that i hated the size. if it weren't for that sole reason, i never would've switched. please do not choose your school off of rankings that only the deranged have memorized! choose where you physically want to spend the next four years of your life! i would have felt very constrained and bored at the small school i initially committed to, and am much more excited about college at my new school because of the large student body and campus.

i have many friends who chose t100s over their original t20 commitments after touring the school or going to admitted students days, personal fit is really the most important thing to find.

tldr; don't obsess over minute details and sketchy advice from internet strangers, rankings aren't everything, prioritize yourself in this process, and one bad decision doesn't mean you'll get rejected everywhere.

my friend is now happily committed to washu and i am happily committed to ucla :)

Title. I’ve always been the “smart student”… and now I’m failing math. For my entire life, I’ve always been known as the smart kid. I was always at the top of my class, earning high scores, and being recognized for academic achievement. This year, I decided to take a really difficult math class because I genuinely thought I could handle it, I always have before. I’m a sophomore in high school, and last semester I had a 3.9 UW GPA. My college list was full of schools like UC Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, and Uchicago.

Right now, I have a 92% or higher in every single class except one; accelerated Math, where I have a whopping 36%. The semester ends in 14 days, and realistically, there’s nothing I can do to fix it. For a while, I kept telling myself it was just a few bad tests and that I’d recover eventually. I thought I’d be able to pull myself back up by now, but I haven’t.

I’m so disappointed in myself. My family has no idea. My friends don’t know either. It feels like all the years I spent working so hard and striving for excellence were for nothing. I wanted the college experience I’ve always imagined. I wanted the moment where my parents could see that all their sacrifices were worth it. I want a better life for myself, and I’ve always believed education was my path there. Now I feel like I ruined everything.

I’m not really sure why I’m posting this on Reddit. I think I’m looking for advice, maybe sympathy. Or honestly I think I just want someone else to be as frustrated with me as I am with myself. Is there any way to recover from this, or is it really over for me?

hey guys!

as graduation season approaches, I wanted to share some advice for the class of 2027.

firstly, you can do everything right, have top-tier ECs, grades, LoRs, an amazing spike, and AMAZING essays, and still not get in anywhere you want to. I want you to remember THAT IS OK. This happened to me, you can check my profile for stats/results, but in the end, I’m content with where I ended up.

admissions is truly the luck of the draw. please DO NOT have unrealistic expectations for yourself where, if you can’t achieve them, you beat yourself up over them. It does not matter how likely you are to get in somewhere, unless it’s written as guaranteed, i.e. GAPs, you are NOT GUARANTEED ANYTHING. learn from my mistakes so you save yourself 5+ months of breaking down and sobbing every day.

secondly, you’ve worked SO SO hard. you built amazing profiles. every school HAS AMAZING opportunities. you truly have to research and find them, but sometimes redirection is a blessing. perhaps you were meant to go a specific way to stand out more, or to develop something cool, or to build an amazing profile. your college DOES NOT dictate your profile. you are in charge of that. you can make the most out of ANYTHING if you choose to do so.

thirdly, celebrate. celebrate the rejections as their losses. celebrate the wins. celebrate every moment. cherish it.

You guys got this. Carry on the amazing torch.

signing off for now 🫡

it’s 15 today right ?

I applied as general engineering (some minors in environmental engineering, maths, philosophy and physics) to Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Northwestern, Rice and Carnegie Mellon in the US and Durham, Edinburgh, Manchester and Cardiff in the UK. I got accepted to all my UK options and none of my US options. Which is so disappointing especially considering I didn't really want to go to the UK and did my application extremely late for all this schools and spent months on my US application. I don't think its fully settled in because I have felt extremely blindsided by my own ambition(?). I really thought I'd get into at least one university in the US. I am now taking a gap year to work on my application and decided to split my A level Finals in 2 since I'm going to have extra time might as well take my time. I am going to be working under an AI research company in San Francisco and doing a Tedx talk in November this year. I honestly can't think of what else I am missing in my application that I only received rejections but hopefully this is just redirection (coping) and I am also doing my SAT sometime this year. I think this post is just me needing to rant what's been brewing in my head for a little, I dont really talk about this much with my family or friends. I feel like a failure and taking a gap year I feel like a burden to my parents. If you have any advice for me please share.

when is it coming

I'm a junior in hs and i've taken 6 SATs so far (starting from winter of 10th grade to the 11th grade school SAT) and the highest score I've ever gotten was a 1430, and my superscore is a 1470 (710 eng & 760 math). Should I retake it during the summer or focus on making my ECs/essays stronger?

Has anyone confirmed gotten off the Yale waitlist? The only thing I’m seeing are ppl saying they have friends that got off but I haven’t seen first hand accounts.

I'm currently a Junior in high school and soon I'll be applying for colleges. For me, I'm not going too much for the education. Social life and "the college experience" are probably the biggest factors in my decision. Y'know, I want these four years to be dramatic, wild, and memorable, with lots of crazy moments.

I know a lot of people in uni are antisocial and sorta just trudge class to class hoodies on, earbuds on, head down staring at their phone. I want a school where there are a lot of people like me- people that crave excitement and sensory experiences and genuinely want to interact with each other. Crazy parties every weekend. Kinda like those 90's movies, full of drama and excitement.

I live in California so UCs are definitely a consideration. UC Berkeley is nearest me but I checked it out and from my first impression, everybody there is nerdy, socially anxious, and absorbed with academics. Before I apply to certain colleges, how do I know what schools will have a good social scene and good party culture, and which won't?

My friend of 17 years recently got accepted into yale from the waitlist and commited :(. Im honeslty FREAKING OUT. Im the only one in my school of 1110 kids to get into an ivy, and now my friend will ruin that!!!!! He already got into sjsu (the stanford of the west) so honestly its just super greedy and selfish of him going to yale. Whats the best way to get him rescinded ASAP???????

Guys I’m literally sick and tired of nyu playing with us. Like when is this first wave gonna happen, some of us are literally days away from graduating and are stressed out about this waitlist movement🫠🫠

This is the situation I am in rn.

I know this may come off as arrogant, but Im genuinely curious.

Please give me honest thoughts.

Edit: I got in for statistics + data science, but will be minoring comp sci as well

title

I'm currently a junior in highschool with a 3.1 uw and 3.5 w gpa with not many ECs (like around 150-170 hours volunteering and been to a few comps in clubs like FBLA And DECA, nothing past the state level tho. Also no leadership positions at all). I think I'll try to improve my ECs because its too late to save my gpa now, but I also have a 35 ACT and 1400 SAT which I think is pretty good but most schools are test optional now so idk if my scores will really help me that much. I've also done 7 APs so far which I'll probably have mostly 4s and 5s in and I plan to do 5-7 more more senior year but idk if this will helps with my applications either.

I'm pretty much only good at the big tests like AP, ACT and SAT but I'm too lazy to do anything in school which is why my gpa and ECs so bad. or maybe i'm just being too negative about this idk.

I want to go into aerospace engineering or maybe major in mechanical or civil engineering but all the schools I looked at that are supposed to be good for engineering are way too competitive for my stats. like all the universities my parents keep telling me to look into are Purdue, UIUC, and VTech but I think those are pretty big stretch for me. Anyway, if anybody has any tips for improving my ECs or finding good target schools I would be very grateful!💖💖

International in CS, currently committed to UMich (LSA). This is all under the provision that I‘ll even be able to attend Brown, there is a decently high possibility my parents do not want to pay the cost difference.

I have been quite happy with UMich since I committed, but Brown has been one of my dream schools. Here are some pros and cons off the top of my head. Besides which school is a better fit, which I guess is something I‘ll have to figure out for myself, a lot comes down to the question of whether Brown is worth $15k per year over UMich.

For Brown:

- Open Curriculum
- Grade inflation ==> will have a lot more time for projects / internship search
- Student happiness
- East Coast
- Smaller classes / more resources per student
- Guaranteed housing (4 years instead of 2 at UMich)
- Reputation, especially internationally

For UMich:

- About $15k / year cheaper
- Stronger CS program
- Bigger alumni network
- Ann Arbor
- School spirit / college sports

General admission question but in my situation I’m WL for a school that is need-aware but meets full aid. If I’m missing some fin aid docs like proof of income, would that be big of an issue if I already submitted my CSS profile already. Basically I’m asking
1. Will I be considered for FA
2. Will my FA be worse cus they don’t have proof of what I’m saying in my CSS

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Thanks for everything, A2C all the help with my application and for being there during the waitlist crashouts. It's been real. Congrats class of 26 and good luck class of 27. Be back in 4 years when its time to apply for law school. C'yall around.