When Perfect Scores Aren’t Enough
April and May can be tough times for even the most diligent high school senior. Despite their great ACT/SAT scores, excellent grades, and numerous extracurriculars, most students find that thin rejection letters are more common than bulky acceptance packages.
Take Navonil Ghosh, for example.
Navonil has perfect ACT and SAT scores and awesome grades. He attends a magnet school that offers him unique challenges. He's swamped with top notch extracurriculars in a variety of fields that emphasize his well-rounded abilities. He's also well supported at home since his father quit his job to help get Navonil to all of his actitivies and events.
Yet he was rejected at 80% or more of the schools to which he applied, including Harvard (his dream school!), MIT, and U of Penn.
Why was he rejected? And what does it tell us about college applications?
It actually tells us quite a bit. You see, Navonil stands as a perfect example of the attitudes that I see in many of my students when they first come to work with me. Here are three things that you can take from his case and use in your own applications:
1) Perfect Scores Aren't Everything - In theory, Navonil is the perfect student. With his dreamy scores, you would imagine that every school would want him. But he actually proves that schools are looking for more than just good stats. Something about Navonil's application didn't meet Harvard's criteria...and it wasn't his grades/scores.
Students don't realize that prestigious schools care less about scores than other schools do. Everyone who applies to Harvard has great scores. Only a very few have the interview, essay, and recommendations that make up a great application. If you want to stand out, perfect scores alone aren't going to cut it!
2) You Have to Diversify - The list of schools that Navonil applied to is top-notch. In fact, it's all too top-notch. It's obvious that he believed that getting into a great school meant applying to a lot of great schools and hoping for the best. I often see students like him filing out dozens of applications hoping for their dream school to admit them.
Unfortunately, that's not the best plan because it spreads your efforts out. There simply isn't enough time to apply to every Ivy League school and have each application be fantastic. Students should pick a few hard schools and focus on them relentlessly while looking for other schools that will give them money and an easy acceptanc letter. If Navonil likes engineering and science, I would have recommended Arizona State, a lower-tier school where his scores would have netted him a $50,000+ scholarship.
3) Get Used to Rejection - Harvard admitted less than 10% of this years applicant pool, the lowest admittance percentage ever! Other Ivies were exactly the same, seeing more qualified applicants than ever before and letting less than 10% in to their colleges. When applying to these schools, every student needs to acknowledge that it's very likely that he or she won't get in to any of them.
I'm not telling you not to apply! Far from it! Apply early and work your tail off to create the best application you can. But ask yourself, "Am I applying to Harvard for the programs or the name? Is there another school I can find that would give me everything I want without making my life miserable?" The answer will probably surprise you.
As for Navonil, don't feel too bad for him. He did manage to get into Rice and CalTech, both great schools that other students would cut off their right arms to be admitted to. The article doesn't highlight that because it would undermine the writer's overall point that this was a truly negative experience. Just remember that even reporters who cover high school students want to push a certain angle on the story regardless of the facts!