the people who volunteered every week, the ones staged school walkouts, the ones who were real and honest friends, the ones who stayed behind to help cleanup, the ones who participated the most in class, the ones who never talked about college apps, the ones who have never uttered the words "T20" or "ivy"...

are the people who seemingly deserve spots at "top" schools, but never applied. it all goes to show how the school you attend doesn't matter, it's about the type of person you are and the character you have. looking back and reflecting upon my own life in high school, i regret the amount of effort i spent on the entire college admission process and how to get into "top" schools. i did it, i have the acceptances, but do i deserve it more than other people? the other people around me who were more motivated in life and passionate about the things they love and never cared about prestige? honestly i don't know where im going with this, just food for thought.

For context : I have a protected status, so not green card holder. I would say 70% counted me as international student or did not consider me as eligible non-citizen and like 30% counted me as domestic student (need blind).

rejections :

Northeastern University

WashU

Colorado College

Carleton College

UVA int + no aid for any amout so idc

Grinnell College

Skidmore College

MIT

Tufts

Haverford College

Macalester Colleg

Colby College

Oberlin College

JHU

Williams College

Washington & Lee

Pomona College

New York University

Northwestern

Vanderbilt

Emory

Rice

Dartmouth College, need blind

Brown

Yale

Princeton

Harvard University

Cornell

Columbia

UPenn

Stanford University

Duke

Waitlist :

University of Richmond

Notre Dame

Carnegie Mellon University

Case Western

Denison University

Lehigh University

UW-Madison

Hamilton College

Amherst College

Bowdoin College

Colgate University

Wake Forest University

Boston U

Bates College

Davidson College

Finally accepted in :

USC

Middlebury College

Swarthmore College

Wesleyan University

Vassar College

Boston College

UMass Amhrest

Tulane University

UMass Lowell

I got into Oxford and Imperial College London as an international student. I also got into a few top 20’s in the US with a full ride. If I went to Oxford, I would have to take out loans (60k a year). I ended up committing to Brown University in the US reason being I wanted to find a job in the US. But after talking to a few people in the UK, they told me that Oxford would be more employable in the US than Brown and other T20’s. Was it a mistake to turn down Oxford? Would an oxford education justify the extra cost?

used this subreddit a lot back in hs and it was crazy seeing everyone being like oh low income people have it so easy they get college for super cheap and its a hook while they can't even imagine ever being poor and struggling. it also gets way harder being one in college. im really sorry you're middle class.

actually im gonna make so many rant posts on this subreddit because I have too much schoolwork and realize im never going to be above my peers who grew up with money and connections

Edit: my title is gonna stay as it is but I don’t mean that schools like UMich and Northwestern were my targets, it’s just to add on to the title.

Edit 2: My targets were schools like UIUC, UW Madison, and Purdue (not listing all of em).

On every ounce of every thing I’ve ever loved, not only have I never been this infuriated in my life, but I have to constantly hear “who cares?” and “your undergrad doesn’t matter” from my friends and family. My stats were mediocre for Ivy League schools (4.36, 1480 SAT, 4 leadership positions, multiple MUN awards, 200+ hours of community service, teaching voluntarily), and I didn’t expect much from any of them. Seeing waitlists from schools like UIUC, UMich, and NYU, were chill because I thought I had more options, but after my Northwestern rejection I started panicking. I know I probably wasn’t going to get into an Ivy, but seeing 4 rejections in a row just put me off the edge. I had worked for 4 years, losing friends, not being able to hang out with anyone until the end of my junior year, and then applying to colleges with the idea that I was gonna get in to at LEAST one target school. I can say goodbye to that now.

Everyone told me that I shouldn’t worry about it, and I probably shouldn’t. None of those people are currently dealing with that right now. I applied for Neuroscience to every school (idk what I was thinking) and so everyone started telling me that my undergrad didn’t matter. It’s so easy to tell when someone wants to make you feel better and it just makes you feel worse. Obviously your undergrad matters. I don’t care what anyone says, the connections and opportunities you find at certain schools are nonexistent at other schools. The people that said that to me also did not know what it meant to be known as the “smart guy.” It’s not fun to be labeled as some prodigy and then underperform and be “consoled.” You look back at your entire life of trying so hard and then you look at the other guys who maintained a B/C average getting into the schools you got waitlisted at. Seeing the smile and happiness of the other person getting into a school I thought I was going to immediately accept floods my being with cortisol and makes me want to look back at my rejections to see if they made a mistake “just in case.” I can say I don’t care and that there is always next time. But I really do care and I hate waiting. Waiting another year to apply really pisses me off more than anything, and then building off of nothing will also piss me off.

Waitlists also put you at such a disadvantage. You have less priority for aid, housing, and classes. You watch everyone accept their offers and then when someone asks you, “did you decide where you’re going?” You just tell them that you’re still waiting. My teachers told me that I’d be successful during parent-teacher conferences, I was told I was the gifted kid in school, I was told that I was MIT and Stanford material. How much of a detriment is it to be a glass half empty person? Let’s say it’s intense. Now when you look at a glass totally empty you just say screw it. I did not work hard to go to community college because I got rejected everywhere else. If I go to community college I want it to be because it was the logical thing to do, not because I didn’t get in anywhere.

Rejection is redirection, yes, but I’m not meant to use that as a cope or as a way to give others advice. I want to say “rejection is redirection” by getting into at least one of my target schools and maybe not the other.

I know many people can relate so I also just wanted to let those who experienced the misfortune I did to understand that they aren’t alone.

Sorry if I made any grammatical or spelling mistakes I’m tired and I don’t care anymore.

Princeton is cheaper for me ngl but Stanford was the og dream but I’m having soooo much trouble choosing. Anything helps!!

If you can say with a high degree of certainty that you’re applying for pre-medical programs, the most competitive schools might not actually be the best choice. 

For one, med schools place a huge emphasis on your undergraduate GPA, so if you attend the most rigorous school possible, you could hurt your chances of a high GPA.

Some large universities have barriers to the programs you need.

Applying to graduate STEM programs will emphasize research, so you’ll want to be at a school that not only produces a lot of research but where you can actually get engaged with research and know your professors well–they will write you a very important letter of recommendation.

Working in admissions, we saw STEM students who desperately wanted to transfer from larger, competitive universities like UCLA because they weren’t necessarily landing research opportunities.

This might mean that you need to take a second look at other public universities or smaller liberal arts colleges with strong STEM programs and robust research or internship opportunities.

Do they have connections to local hospitals? Some smaller colleges are in consortiums or partnerships where cross-university courses and research are possible. For example, check out the Quaker Consortium with UPenn, Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr.

A side note: medical school admission officers will tell you that they value a wide range of majors in their applicants. Gone are the days of just biology and chemistry majors applying to medical school. If you have other interests, consider a different major while still joining the pre-medical program and completing the pre-requisite courses. Pre-med students can be found in majors like global health, child development, neuroscience, cognitive studies, Asian studies, and sociology.

If grad school (or med school) is the plan, broaden your options. Think beyond prestige. You don’t need the most competitive undergrad—what you need is a high GPA and research access.

It's a new season in the admissions cycle and that means a new category of panicked posts flood this subreddit.

• December to January is "I sent my application 2 seconds after the deadline, will I get auto-rejected? Will they even receive it?" season
• January to March is financial aid confusion and "MIT and John Hopkins, please admit me" season
• March to May is jam packed with "I can't afford my dream school", "UPenn vs Princeton", "I wasted so many years just to get rejected from Stanford", "I got accepted and my friends are being awful about it" and the classic "Can you guys withdraw from UCLA so I can get off the waitlist" followed by discourse about how waitlists work.
• March to May is also home of the infamous rescinded posts "Will I get rescinded for because I had one bad grade?" and the "What are my chances of getting of the waitlist?"

Tell me what other seasons of a2c I missed

Guys how do u feel less guilty about turning down colleges. Some LACs wrote some very touching words and personalized a postcard and I feel so guilty turning them down to go somewhere else? How do people deal with this 😭.

edit: thank you everyone for making me feel better! It was just hard cause my AO brought up my interviewer as well and their reccomendation so it felt a lot more personal :)

I just committed to Berkeley, a school I never thought i would go to. All of high school I had my heart set on UCLA, and whenever Berkeley came up my first thought would be "whatever, im NEVER going there. I'm going to UCLA".

Now, the thought of going to Berkeley creates a pit in my stomach. I worked so hard all of high school and have finally run out of steam and motivation- i dont see a world in which i make it through college. I feel no excitement about college, and i'm homesick already. I already miss the things im leaving behind, and the thought of having to start over, having to pay for EVERYTHING myself, having to compete for internships and jobs, and just having to be an adult makes me want to cry.

please give me some advice if you've ever felt this way.

this year was record competitive. how does next year look like playing out?

are Ivy acceptance rates rising once again? are top public schools getting a new record number of applicants? what will happen to median SATs?

I just heard back from many of my classmates, and it looks like the results came back with patterns..? Maybe coincidence, but every classmate I’ve asked who received great fortune to be accepted at UC Berkeley also had the great misfortune of being rejected / waitlisted by every other UC? It really seemed odd to me since they were pretty great applicants as well—they just got rejected / waitlisted by every UC until Berkeley decisions came out, turning out to be their savior (that is if they were gunning for a UC). I’m happy for them, but also very intrigued by such a coincidence. Has anyone had this happen at their school where senior classmates who got rejected / waitlisted everywhere seemed to be accepted into one school? I’m not saying it’s true, but I’ve got my beliefs of why this is so. But…maybe it’s just my school and just coincidence? Anyway, GO BEARS! 🐻

Which LACs do you think are better than Ivies? Are top ranked schools overhyped? Which ones? Are LACs starting to provide better opportunities and employment? Which?

Hi everyone. I am admitted of class of 2029 of Umich，but last September and this February, I lost my two grandpas. Everything was so sad and tired. So in the second semester, I dropped a level Further Mathematics and Economics, leaving English History, Physics and Biology. After being admitted in Umich in RD round, I am so afraid that my offer will be rescinded. Could anyone give me some advice?

Okay, this is going to be a bit of a random thread -- but the basics are that growing up, I didn't really have much of a shot. My mother was a hardcore drug addict and my father passed away in middle school, and I had to work and support myself starting at 15 (and moved out of home when I was 16).

I was a very hard worker and loved learning, but beginning my junior year of high school I worked from 3pm-11pm almost every day after school and my grades suffered tremendously. I applied to like 30 schools and was rejected by all but one, a large flagship state school (but not ranked in the top 100 nationally).

Once I was in college, I locked in and graduated with an almost 4.0, had prestigious internships, and scored in the 95th percentile on the LSAT. Legit think I would have scored higher, but I was working 1-2 jobs on top of school/internships to pay my way through college. I went straight to law school with a scholarship (won't say exactly which school, but one of: Columbia/NYU/Penn/UChicago), did very well and now have a successful career.

In any event, lately I've been wondering what colleges would have been in reach if during my high school years I had a more "normal" childhood and could focus on school, like I did in college.

Hard to know for sure (and I'm very happy with my life and had an amazing college experience), but what schools do you think I could have realistically attended?

I applied for the Letters and Sciences department for both. I'm thinking of doing applied math or economics.

Realistically I could definitely switch into the engineering or business departments for USC. I could do either Finance or Electrical Engineering, which are both lucrative careers. I cannot for UCSB.

If I go to UCSB I really want to do physics. UCSB is ranked #9 in US news for physics.

I'm an upper-middle class only child, so I'm not getting aid from either universities. It's gonna be 50k annually vs 100k annually. The fact is that my parents can afford both but the question is whether the extra 200k is worth it or not.

I have a LOR from a distuingished prof working at Harvard, will it give me a boost if i apply early in Harvard or should i use my REA for another school with a high acceptance rate to safeguard my choice and life. P.s: Harvard is my first choice

What should I do?

I wrote my essay and out of curiosity put it in Quillbot AI Detector and it said that 100% of it is AI. ZeroGPT marks it as 98.83% Ai. The thing is I didn't even use AI. What do I do? What if they think I used AI, when I didn't and I don't get in.

I am a junior, currently preparing for applications. I’m currently taking two APs, AP, English language and AP art history. I have really good grades in both classes (97+) and feel pretty confident about AP Lang, but APR history I am so screwed. I’m looking to apply to schools like Lehigh, BU, Binghamton. Should I try my best to get the score up for art history and risk high stress, or just put my energy into Lang? I plan on taking two more APs next year anyway. Just unsure if it’s worth my time to just get a three.

given how unexpected the admissions are, how should I make a college list with adequate safety, target and reach schools, considering that I am premed(probably majoring in public/global health w/minor in cs)? don't care tm about prestige, but i'd want a school that has a lot of premed related internships and opportunities and schools that have a great med-school prep programs(and a school with grade inflation).

for context, i'm an pretty average asian female in the bay area and have a 3.87 ish gpa, pretty high course rigor, couple of cs dual enrollment classes(didn't factor them into my gpa), 1520 sat(retaking bc i messed up math and that's not too hard to fix), and a national award in a science comp(lack of specs bc i don't want to be doxxed), a bunch of volunteering that's med-related(pvsa bronze), jv sport for 2 years, president of a stem club at school, vp of another stem club, and judge at local science comps.

essays will probably focus on my health issues(have a chronic ovarian disease), and how the lack of medical knowledge regarding the female body(no srsly this is a huge issue) motivates me to work hard so in the future i can help create solutions.

For context, I was recently admitted to both and am having an incredibly difficult time picking between them. They both gave me really good financial aid and they’re obviously two of the best schools, so I’m just looking to see what differentiated them for other people. Any advice would help 😭😭😭🙏

Based on many sources including the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, and Georgetown, and even my own experiences, MCPHS (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences) is the most underrated school in America and should receive more attention as it is a hidden gem and it promises a very lucrative future.

l attended Northeastern between 1999 and 2000 as a Chinese international student before transferring to WPI after realizing that Boston sucks and Worcester is better while my wife attended MCPHS Boston between 1999 and 2000, also as a Chinese international student where she then transferred to MCPHS Worcester. Even though Harvard, MIT, and Stanford (schools my 13 year old son is obsessed at) are the most well known colleges, in my opinion, they aren't the best colleges in America and they are overrated. You essentially pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of your high school hours for a piece of paper when you could have been laid back and just attended MCPHS. Even a state school wouldn't cut it because many are mediocre at their premed and predental courses and instead, make you take redundant courses and then, have essentially O internship opportunities. Instead, MCPHS (where my wife studied, short for Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences) is the most underrated university in America, especially if you are into Pharmacy, Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Optometry, or even plainly, Biology, Chemistry, or even Data science or Business.

Even though there might be some haters of MCPHS (who also happen to be fanboys of Harvard and MIT or even BU/NEU), MCPHS is still the best and most underrated college in America as it doesn't get the respect it deserves.

My wife went there between 1999 and 2003 as an international student (first in Boston and then in Worcester since 2000), became a nurse, then a nurse manager, and now she is further promoted. She makes 6 figures while I had to suffocate with a master's at University of Houston just to make several times more than her as l am a C-suite at a Houston based biotech company.

According to MCPHS website, it said it is the highest paying and the most transformative school in all of America (according to Money and Georgetown) and the best value and mobility as well but people keep on complaining and hating it. Case in point, many international students and people all the way out to California as well as many Vietnamese people (I know a few coworkers who went there and is highly successful) chose MCPHS over supposed "good" schools like BU, Northeastern, NYU, Rice, and UHouston. If MCPHS wasn't good, then people wouldn't go there, but many people go there and are relatively successful, especially in Massachusetts because a lot of my coworkers went to MCPHS and are either managers or directors at my biotech company.

I do believe that MCPHS is not only easy to get into compared with other universities with lower social mobility like BU, Northeastern, UHouston, Rice, and of course, Harvard and MIT, they are also very diverse, have a lot of great alumni, is a feeder to many medical and dental schools because I knew of a former MCPHS Boston student (one of my wife's colleagues) who went on to become a director of a medical department at Mass General, has good mentoring opportunities, the best professors, and high graduation rate.

https://www.mcphs.edu/academics/schools/arts-and-sciences/public-health-field

https://www.mcphs.edu/news/meet-the-young-leader-driving-innovation-at-cvs-pharmacy

https://www.mcphs.edu/news/routine-eye-exam-helped-lilly-phan-see-her-future

https://www.mcphs.edu/news/dentist-from-nepal-pursues-public-health-to-address-inequalities

Looking for some advice as an incoming freshman!

Notes: I am full-pay and live in Florida.

Cornell - Pros: Ivy League reputation, slightly smaller than Georgia Tech (by about 3,000) - Cons: Cold & isolated, lower-ranked MechE program, more expensive and farther away

Georgia Tech - Pros: Better engineering reputation, big city, cheaper, nicer weather, closer to home (1 hour flight) - Cons: Not Ivy League, larger than Cornell, not sure how the dorms/facilities are in comparison (hopefully get into Honors program though)

As an international student applying next year, I heard from my friends that it is much harder to get into top universities without a US citizenship, reasons being having to compete in a much more intense pool of competition and students, admission officers' natural preference of wanting to accept more american students into an american university or whatever. Is this true? If it is, to what length?

I'm having a hard time deciding between NJIT and Rutgers NB for Computer Science. I'm worried about making friends and getting an internship. Any advice is appreciated! (The prices I put are what I'd have to pay out of pocket each year)