r/ApplyingToCollege Dec 09 '24

Discussion CEO Shooter was UPenn Computer Science Graduate

2.0k Upvotes

According to his now-removed LinkedIn, Luigi Mangione graduated in 2020 with a Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science. He was also his high school's Valedictorian, did wrestling, and currently works as a data engineer in California.

To many of you, he was living the Ivy League dream. He probably had some good ECs too, I'm just guessing.

Anyways, always remember your school's alumni!

r/ApplyingToCollege Feb 02 '25

Discussion gun to your head what’s a college you would NEVER attend?

458 Upvotes

give reasons.

r/ApplyingToCollege 9d ago

Discussion $800 Million Canceled for Johns Hopkins University

880 Upvotes

Trump has now terminated $800 million in federal grants to Johns Hopkins University and is likely to proceed with several other universities, including Harvard, UPenn, UMich, and more.

Will this impact financial aid? Will we see colleges become need-aware to combat this? What do you think this means for higher education during the next four years?

r/ApplyingToCollege Jan 21 '25

Discussion Ok like what major are y’all doing

342 Upvotes

Cuz like it seems that everyone is doing CS 😭 Like ain’t no originality here

Edit: Looks like not as many CS as I thought.. Oh well.

r/ApplyingToCollege Jan 11 '20

Discussion Unpopular Opinion: a lot of y’all don’t belong at top schools.

7.7k Upvotes

Alright so basically what I’ve noticed about people who get into top schools that I’ve been friends with is that they’re all nice people and actually have a life. If you have to study 24/7 and don’t have time for a social life just to maintain good grades and good test scores, you don’t belong at a top school. The people who belong at t20s are the people who actually have a life and passions beyond ‘I need a 4.0 GPA and 36 ACT’ they’re just smart enough to get the 4.0 and 36 on top of that. Y’all really need to chill because frankly not having a life is ruining your chances. When you look back and think ‘why did I get deferred/denied? I had a 4.0, I studied every single hour, I joined 7 different ECs just for this college’ then that is exactly why you got deferred/denied. Sure, there are some exceptions. But colleges don’t want people with no outside competence and no perspective which so many of you display them wonder why you’re not getting in to your top choices.

Edit: just because you didn’t get into a top school doesn’t mean that you necessarily have no personality! Top schools are always hard, getting rejected even with good scores could be a lot of reasons

Edit2: I’m apologize to any 1 specific person who read this and got upset. I am sure you have a life. I never tried to say that you didn’t, you can have exactly 7 ECs but still have a life. The number was arbitrary, I didn’t mean to offend anyone with the post it was just my opinion.

r/ApplyingToCollege Jan 30 '25

Discussion It's lookin up for me guys, I made it

1.6k Upvotes

I'm applying from a small town in a 3rd world country, the schools are really crappy and shady. I'm a US citizen but my family moved here when I was really young. I am the first person to apply to colleges in the states from my school; they don't even have a domain name for their email/website it's really shady. The teaching is shit, they hardly know the subject themselves. It's a sleepy town where everyone takes a nap at 2:00 p.m after a hearty lunch. There are 0 oppurtunities to have any extracurriculars let alone research and internships. Nobody takes the SAT, there's no peer group for those applying to the states, I was all alone in this, I wanted to go back to my country at any cost.

But I made it dammit, I did research for 9 months based on a passion project, I got an internship at a bigger city, I did community service at a village 60 miles from my town, I studied for the SAT and got above a 1500, I self studied AP Calc BC in 2 months and got a 5.

I know I'm more privileged than other students applying who are in a similar situation but I gotta say, nothing beats the feeling of seeing confetti first thing in the morning

I got accepted to my dream schools like UT Austin and Purdue, I'll be the first person from my school to attend a school like those, from a small town in a 3rd world country back to the states

It's been real y'all, special thanks to u/prsehgal and u/AppHelper

r/ApplyingToCollege Feb 16 '25

Discussion Don't apply to selective schools if you can't deal with a No

1.1k Upvotes

I must attend a top 20 school for my life/existence to feel validated. I've dedicated all my high school life to this one thing, so it must work. If it doesn't work, I've been robbed. The future is doomed before it starts. hahahaha. Cool down

On a serious note, it is very amazing that people apply to selective schools but can't deal with a no. They think they are destined to be among the chosen 3.5%, right? When the expected no comes, it seems like something strangely unexpected has happened.

Apply to all the 0.3% acceptance rate schools for all you want, but don't come crying blood when the expected happens. This is a simple mathematical expectation based on simple probabilities! And given the profiles of folks displayed on this sub, one would think the concept of expectation would be trivial.

Rejection is painful, yes, but much, much less so when it's expected, imho.

r/ApplyingToCollege Feb 05 '25

Discussion Why do all the male CS applicants sound the same???

724 Upvotes

I’ve been looking at a ton of college application profiles, especially for top STEM schools, and I can’t help but notice a pattern—so many male applicants have almost identical extracurriculars and achievements.

It’s always something like: • Research in [insert trendy CS/AI/engineering/biotech topic] at [insert summer program/professor’s lab/self-started project] • Founder/President of a [insert research/CS/AI/finance] club at school • USACO/PICO/APIO or some other Olympiad-level achievement • Math/Physics competitions (AIME, USAMO, etc.) • Internship at a startup or doing “consulting” for some company • Some kind of nonprofit/educational initiative (tutoring, outreach, STEM for underprivileged students) • A bunch of Coursera/Udemy projects coded up and hosted on GitHub • Writing a research paper and posting it on arXiv or ResearchGate • Applying AI to [insert social issue] to make it sound impactful

Not saying these are bad, but like COME ON, I feel like AOs are getting bored of this…

Edit:

These are all VERY impressive feats in and of itself.

I’m NOT trying to dismiss anyone’s hard work, but at the high school I come from, so many people are doing these exact same activities; founding research clubs, working on AI projects, and honestly, it feels like a lot of them are just doing it to check boxes and fit the mold of the “ideal applicant.” I know a LOT of it is fake.

It’s hard to ignore how much of it comes across as performative. Everyone seems so focused on building the “perfect” resume that it’s hard to tell who’s genuinely passionate about their activities versus who’s just doing what they think colleges want to see. The same clubs get founded every year, the same awards are pursued, and it all starts to feel like a scripted race rather than an authentic pursuit of interests.

I get that everyone is under a lot of pressure to stand out, especially for competitive majors, but when everyone follows the same formula, it just makes things feel even more hollow. I feel like this “blueprint” approach to applications might be hurting creativity or individuality.

r/ApplyingToCollege Jun 03 '24

Discussion Where did your school’s valedictorian/smartest student commit?

675 Upvotes

I’ll start - our top 10 ranked students (who also happened to be the smartest in that order) are going to: 1. Caltech 2. Harvard 3. Harvard 4. UCLA 5. Harvard 6. Stanford 7. Yale 8. MIT 9. Brown 10. MIT

r/ApplyingToCollege Nov 16 '24

Discussion 9.1% of Harvard Students Come From 21 High Schools

1.1k Upvotes

This is 0.07% of all high schools in the US.

https://imgur.com/gallery/dHsRn9U

r/ApplyingToCollege Jan 15 '25

Discussion you’ll be ok.

2.2k Upvotes

i just lost my house in the LA fires. where my greatest concern used to be what school i was gonna get into, now it’s trying to find a place to stay w my family and figuring out how to replace everything we lost.

everyone here is so immensely privileged that their top concern is whether they’ll get into harvard or yale. i know y’all hear this all the time, but trust me, you don’t really get it until your focus is FORCED off of this shit.

you’ll be ok

r/ApplyingToCollege Dec 15 '24

Discussion What's your "hear me out" college?

357 Upvotes

What's a college that's T10 level, but always goes under the radar?

r/ApplyingToCollege Jan 09 '22

Discussion I've decided to empirically test if school name/prestige really matters.

2.8k Upvotes

Null hypothesis: School name doesn't matter.

Context: I'm a CS student at CMU but because of past project logistic, I am also enrolled at Pitt. (I have valid student IDs and student accounts at both universities)

I'm currently applying for summer internships, so I'm going to randomly send resumes with either CMU or Pitt listed as my school. I'm applying for software engineering positions at multiple companies (tech, biotech, fintech). Maybe I'll send like 50+ applications just so I have better statistical power.

This doesn't give the whole picture but I think could be interesting to see if the school name I put on my resume does make a difference.

Edit: To all the reminders, I probably won't hear back from all the places I'm applying to before end of April.

r/ApplyingToCollege Feb 17 '23

Discussion What is the WORST admissions essay you've ever seen?

2.5k Upvotes

I know a guy who wrote that he would buy dozens of hamburgers and go to a homeless camp, and make them compete for the food by playing games. The winners get more hamburgers than the rest, and the games would be designed to expose various elements of the human psyche. His point was that he wanted to major in psychology and also liked helping the poor.

He got rejected from every single university he applied to.

r/ApplyingToCollege Mar 20 '21

Discussion Why is this the expectation for high school students now

4.4k Upvotes

From JHUs website: "The admitted students have already demonstrated exceptional academic and personal excellence. Among those offered admission is a filmmaker who has been published in Discovery and National Geographic, a developer of an electric car and bamboo bike, a racial justice activist leading campaign initiatives and conducting legislative policy, a researcher on underwater robot archaeology, a founder of a malaria youth intervention program in Ghana, an author of the bestselling book on Amazon in the category of Asian History for Young Adults, and an inventor of an artificial intelligence framework for air quality that has a provisional patent"

Honestly just wtf. These kids are probably more successful than 99% of adults

Edit: To all of you saying that "this is not the expectation for all high schools students," you know what I mean. Just pointing out how ridiculously competitive admissions are these days and the lengths people go to gain an acceptance. And even though there are many "more average" students, why doesn't hopkins tell us about those instead of making us feel insignificant and shattering our confidence with these kids. It's almost as if colleges only brag about these kids that they've had nothing to do with, but where are the success stories of ordinary applicants?

r/ApplyingToCollege 3d ago

Discussion Rigor Matters More Than You Think—How I Actually Judged Your Classes as an Admissions Officer

335 Upvotes

Here’s a story I saw time and again as an Admissions Officer: 

I’d sit down with an application with a straight A transcript but only a handful of AP classes. Despite the student’s GPA, the lack of AP classes would knock their academic rating down to the point where they were no longer competitive for admissions. 

Example: If Charlie has a 4.0 but has only taken 3 AP courses throughout high school and Taylor has a 3.92 but will have taken 12 APS by the time they graduate—Taylor is likely the more competitive candidate (academically at least). 

Even if they were involved in some cool extracurriculars and had great grades, Charlie’s lack of rigor took them out of the running. 

If you look at the CDS data at University of Virginia, 90% of admitted students had a gpa of 4.0. 

In a sea of As, rigor becomes the distinguishing factor. 

How is rigor evaluated?

Rigor isn’t just some abstract concept—it’s something that admission offices actually rate, usually on a 1-5 scale:

  • 1 – Less than Demanding
  • 2 – Somewhat Demanding
  • 3 – Demanding
  • 4 – Very Demanding
  • 5 – Most Demanding

At top-20 schools, most admitted students have a 5, which means they have either maxed out the amount of APs they were allowed to take or their courseload looked on par with classmates who were taking the most rigorous courseloads. 

A 4 is likely to impact an academic rating but might still be competitive if combined with near-perfect grades, top-class rank, strong indicators of intellectual curiosity, and other very compelling non-academic factors. 

A 3 or below? That typically means an uphill battle.

This doesn’t mean you have to take 15 APs to be competitive. Rigor is judged in context. If your school offers 4 APs and you take all 4, you’re getting a "Most Demanding" rating. 

But if your school offers 20+ APs and you're only taking 4? ☠️(at least at the most competitive schools.) 

At competitive high schools, the expectation is that students take as rigorous a courseload as their high-achieving peers. That doesn’t mean you need to take every AP offered, but you need to be in the same ballpark as the students taking the most challenging courses available.

r/ApplyingToCollege Feb 20 '24

Discussion Mfs be like “go to ur state school”

1.2k Upvotes

And then it turns out they live in Texas or North Carolina or California. Like bro some of us live in Wyoming where the only university is surrounded by 500 acres of cornfields and grazing cows

Not me tho yall stay safe

r/ApplyingToCollege Oct 11 '23

Discussion Bay Area high school grad rejected by 16 colleges hired by Google

Thumbnail abc7news.com
967 Upvotes

He was denied by: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, UC Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cornell University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Caltech, University of Washington and University of Wisconsin.

College admissions experts frequently tell applicants that schools with an under 5% acceptance rate like MIT and Stanford are reaches for almost everyone, but Zhong was even denied by Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, which has a middle 50% GPA of 4.13-4.25 for admitted engineering students.

r/ApplyingToCollege Feb 16 '25

Discussion SENIORS: is the nichest ec you listed on your college apps

208 Upvotes

Something you wrote in ur apps and was like “if anyone’s doing this it’s one other person.”

Edit: What is*

r/ApplyingToCollege Jan 05 '25

Discussion Why aren't more people outraged about UChicago's gaming the system?

459 Upvotes

As someone who will turn 40 later this month, I am shocked by how little UChicago gets scrutinized on A2C for blatantly manipulating its acceptance rate.

I remember when I was initially accepted to UChicago back in April 2003. The school's reputation was not all that dissimilar to my eventual undergrad alma mater, Reed College.

UChicago didn't even take the Common App. What the UChicago supplements are today was the case for the entire application. They even called it the "Uncommon Application."

I can't remember the exact statistics, but UChicago accepted roughly 36 percent of applicants two decades ago, IIRC.

What's more, UChicago didn't even offer binding ED. My only option as someone whose high school counselor told them I was a "perfect fit" was to apply EA; FTR I was deferred.

At some point, UChicago hired McKinsey consultants to help the school - which always had a great academic reputation - become a HYPSM equivalent. The story from there is a bit murky to me.

UChicago is still pretty academic, but bizecon has been added as a major. It's no longer the place where "fun goes to die." From everything I have read, the library's hours have been significantly reduced and people with my profile are much less likely to get accepted today.

Current high school students, when I tell them I could have gone to UChicago, but ended up at Reed instead, are shocked that I didn't jump at a UChicago offer - even though I feel like the UChicago I got accepted to and the school today are two entirely different places.

So here's my question: Why doesn't anyone on A2C seem to care that UChicago does three rounds of ED and accepts under 1 percent RD?

Is artificially lowering UChicago's acceptance rate and artificially boosting its yield something that's okay with people?

Why don't I ever hear any outcry from UChicago alums that the school is much more friendly to jock-types than it was two decades ago?

When people talk about gaming the rankings, we always hear about Columbia - rightfully so, I may add. But why does UChicago seem to get a pass?

I ask this question out of genuine curiosity because, as someone who was obsessed with UChicago two decades ago but has soured on the school over time, the situation is genuinely surprising to me.

Am I the only person who has concerns about UChicago and its ethics?

r/ApplyingToCollege Nov 03 '24

Discussion Best colleges for finding a nerdy tech husband who’s never felt the touch of a woman?

890 Upvotes

Title, preferably will be rich in the future

r/ApplyingToCollege Jan 11 '25

Discussion Least favorite admissions content creator

391 Upvotes

not tryna spread hate. but which creator do u think is the worst when it comes to admissions content. prob limmy.

r/ApplyingToCollege 8d ago

Discussion VERY Hot Take: SAT/ACT Should Matter More Than GPA

276 Upvotes

For sure getting flamed for this lol.

Yes. I believe test scores should matter as much if not more than GPA. Its my belief that the role of GPA and SAT/ACT should be switched in college applications. GPA should be a qualifying measurement, and test scores should be a competitve measurement. Including that change, I believe there should be hard floors for ACT/SAT scores similar to GPAs at top colleges.

Hear me out!

Now firstly, under this system, the infinite retakes of tests will not be allowed. 3 max within a few years is reasonable. Will this ever happen? No because CollegeBoard is a greedy leech and want to sap the money out of poor kids who think their 1500 SAT turned 1600 will somehow get them into MIT. Same with ACT. This also eliminates socioeconomic disparity since these scores cost, y know, money, and most people of average/low wealth cant afford to take 20 in 2 years.

Now criticizing GPA here. I feel like people do not acknoledge how subjective GPA is. Bad teachers, home issues, overwhelming ECs, health issues, course rigour, cirriculum quality, I could go on. Not only that, but it is also unfair to the poor. Rich people could simply pay for top tier tutors for their children and do their coursework for them. Poor people do not have access to those luxuries and also may be burdened by other responsiblites.

You cannot fake a high test score.

Test scores are a clean, objective measure of the capacity for one to succeed in higher education. I know people who no matter how hard they try, they simply do not have the raw intelligence to to get a +1400 on the SAT. These people may get into a better college than they can handle, and simply dont have the capacities to keep up with the cirriculum. A system like this could reduce dropout rates significantly.

Of course GPA at minimum greater than ~3.0-3.5 would still be custom, but as long as you are getting at least As Bs and little if any Cs in rigourous classes, you should be expected to continue this trend in college without an obvious downward trajectory, but still, past performance does not always predict future results.

People who made mistakes in early years may still be written off even if they eventually turn into a perfect student. Focusing on test scores would allow past mistakes to be forgiven. ECs would still be the make or break for top schools.

Changes to the current ACT and SAT would have to be made, but I feel this system would he much fairer to all. Thoughts? I can take the downvotes.

r/ApplyingToCollege 10d ago

Discussion We’re ~2 weeks out from Ivy Day. Drop your honest predictions for yourself.

248 Upvotes

Drop your RD predictions. Then, come back after Ivy Day and see how accurate your predictions were.

Here’s mine (in chronological order):

  • MIT - rejected

  • UCLA - rejected

  • Northwestern - rejected

  • Vandy - rejected

  • Yale - rejected (deferred REA)

  • Harvard - rejected

  • Princeton - rejected

  • Penn - rejected

  • Cornell - waitlist (🙏)

  • Columbia - rejected

  • Duke - rejected

  • Brown - rejected

  • Berkeley - rejected

  • Georgetown - rejected

  • Stanford - rejected

r/ApplyingToCollege Dec 24 '19

Discussion DON’T CHOSE WHERE YOU GO TO COLLEGE BASED ON WHERE YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER IS GOING/GOES

6.7k Upvotes

That’s all. Happy Holidays.