What Are My Chances?

What are the chances a student with exceptionally high standardized test scores will get accepted to the most selective colleges and universities in the US?

This is a question that gets asked thousands of times each year in one form or another. The answer is, to put it bluntly, not good. There are numerous reasons why this is so but it really all comes down to numbers, but numbers that are more important than test scores. Students with scores in the top 1% on the SAT, ACT, IB, A Level, etc. almost all apply to at least one highly selective school and there are not enough spots in the top 20 ranked schools for all the student around the world who have scores in the top 1%. In addition, schools offer admission to a not insignificant number of students  whose scores are not nearly as high as many applicants who get denied admission.   What follows is a specific answer as to why schools with acceptance rates below 10% make it difficult to predict who will get in.  I was asked to answer the question below on the website Quora.com. I hope that anyone with high scores will extrapolate from my answer so that it proves useful to planning which schools to apply to and what to expect.

What are my chances at MIT & Ivies RD as an international student from Romania (1540 SAT, 800 SAT 2 Math and Physics, 111 TOEFL)?

First of all, congratulations on your great performance on the SATs and TOEFL. As you must be aware, your test scores put you in the top 1% of test takers around the world. But as you also must know, standardized tests are just one factor in the admission process to the most selective universities in the US. Nevertheless. tests scores for students who will be offered admission must be in the top 1% except for a tiny group of students who are not given special consideration

Those who tell you that admission to the Ives is holistic and therefore that tests scores do not mean that much relative to the rest of the application need to rethink whether giving this information that is inaccurate helps anyone except the schools who do not wish to underscore just how important scores are to most students who receive an offer of admission. While there are some people for whom scores are not a major factor virtually every one of them fall into the Special Admit category; athletes, under-represented students, a few legacies (most legacies have to have high testing) and development cases (parents are billionaires), and a few outliers in other categories.

Unless you have a very compelling personal story, as an international applicant from Romania you must not only have great scores, but you also must have a transcript that demonstrates you are at or near the top of your secondary school class and a set of recommendations, essays, activities and honors and awards that are also at or close to the top 1% relative to college going population.

What I am writing here applies to most if not all students from Romania (and many of the other countries around the world). You must have exceptional academic credentials as there are more than a few top students in your country applying to this set of schools each year. Most of the schools you mention will not take more than 5 (if that) students from a relatively small country like Romania. Universities are interested in enrolling students from around the globe and since they limit the percentage of international students to, on average, about 10%-12%, it does not take long for all these spots to be filled. The best secondary schools in Romania (and a number of other Eastern European countries) produce students who, like you, are not just strong in math and science but far more fluent in English (at least in terms of testing) than most in the US. The star students from Romania are vying for perhaps 30 spots total at the top 20 or 30 ranked universities in the US. Let me be clear-- I am talking about spots and not students. One student may end up getting 7 of these spots. It is virtually impossible that 30 different students from Romania (or almost any other country in the world except for China, Korea, Singapore and India) will get accepted to top 20 schools in the US. Once again, this level of competition is not limited to Romania, but to virtually any country

There are individual exceptions of course when it comes to testing and academic background. A student who has been a refugee from Syria and is now in a European country and has done well may receive an offer of admission even with low scores and less than top academics because the personal circumstances are so compelling. But students like this are very rare indeed.  It is worth mentioning that students like I have just mentioned do have a chance to earn scholarships to attend a group of secondary schools called United World Colleges. The campuses are located around the globe, but all share a commitment to providing the full IB diploma degree to international students from around the world. The philanthropist Shelby Davis has donated a billion dollars to the UWC mission so that low income students from around the world can attend these schools. It may be that a student from Romania (or any other country including the US) may be able to earn a scholarship at the UWC and then be offered a spot at a top US university. Mr. Davis has also provided funds to a select group of colleges to support UWC students. As a result, students who attend a UWC have an advantage in the admission process because Mr. Davis wants schools to enroll UWC students and given his generosity schools like to accommodate him when possible.

I mention the UWCs and money because the ability to pay has become, in many cases, far more important to many universities than the score a student earns on the SAT. In other words, the vast majority of international students who are offered admission to the top ranked schools can afford the exceptionally high tuition and fees. While it is true that the Ivies and MIT will meet all need if an international student if offered admission this does not mean that the ability to pay will not be taken into consideration in the admission evaluation: People often assume that the Ivy League colleges are need-blind for all students, but this is not correct. Brown University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania offer need-blind admission to domestic applicants, but not to international students. Of the Ivy League institutions, only Cornell University, Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University provide need-blind admission to both domestic and international students.

In your case it may be that a student with lower scores and a less impressive resume from Rumania might get in because they can pay all the fees. Or it may be that because your family can support your education you might receive an offer over a student with “better” academic qualifications. The ability to pay (even among some of the schools that say they are need blind—a different topic I cannot address in any detail here), has become an increasingly important factor in the admission decision. Schools are interested in offering financial aid to low income domestic students because it adds the kind of diversity they think will help society as a whole. While they would like to do this for international students the reality is it costs almost $300,000 US to cover 4 years of education at elite private and public universities and colleges. If you can pay for all or most of your education, you will be in a much better situation than those who need money. In Romania it is rare to have full paying students which is another reason that there are so few of them on elite campuses.

I have been, up to this point, describing how you might or might not be a good candidate for highly selective schools based only on your scores and your ability to pay. The last thing I will do is talk about how you should consider how to create a hook that will help you stand out so that you might be one of the handful of Romanian students who will be offered admission the top universities. The example I am going to use is not one I suggest you use yourself. It applies to me and my interest, but it should serve as an example of way you can approach the process that will help you demonstrate your own interests to the schools you most have an interest in.

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Dear Professor Chignell,

Thank you so much for previous email. I am grateful that you would consider working with me on my research on the ethics of E.M. Cioran. While he has a strong reputation in Western Europe and the US, he was neglected during the Soviet period and his work was not taught at any of the universities. I wish I had the chance to participate in your Hope and Optimism project, but I know I will learn a great deal from the projects that are currently on-line. It seems as if you are interested in ethics not just in an abstract philosophical sense but in practical way as well. Your work on ethics and food demonstrates this. While I have not read nearly as much Cioran, as I would like I do think he was also a practical philosopher who found meaning in describing the failure of meaning to be universal. Do you think that there would be enough of an interest in philosophy and pessimism that there would be students interested in forming a study group on this topic? Thank you again for responding and thank you specially for your offer to help me pursue my interest in Cioran should I enroll at Princeton….

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The above is a fictional email that a fiction me would write to Professor Chignell at Princeton if I were a Romanian student. It is true, however, that I have a longstanding interest in the Romanian philosopher E M Cioran. He pessimistic aphorisms are both darkly funny deep and he makes reading Nietzsche akin to eating a light lunch. I searched through some of the philosophers at some of the Ivies and came across Professor Chignell’s name. He is interested in ethics and his project on optimism is in some ways  the antithesis of Cioran (yet he does say this on his website: “In 2017, I finished co-directing (with Sam Newlands) a multi-year $5m grant on Hope and Optimism: Conceptual and Empirical Investigations (there's a healthy dose of Despair and Pessimism too).”

What I am trying to show by my example is not that students should imitate my interest in Cioran. Instead, they should take something they are passionate about in their own lives and then search for faculty at the schools they are interested in who have similar interests. The students, should, to put it simply attempt to start a conversation. The topic of the conversation should have nothing to do with admission (well almost). It should focus on the faculty member's area of expertise and demonstrate the student's knowledge of and interest in the same field. Ultimately, the outreach has to do with finding a mentor at a school. Should the student be admitted and enroll she will have someone on the faculty to talk to on day 1. But for those who are focused on "getting in", there are benefits. When a school like Princeton wants to know why the fictional me would be interested in attending I can cite that I have had an ongoing conversation with a faculty member and I have been given a green light on future research on Cioran and pessimism. This would be what consultants and admission officers call a hook, the thing that grabs the attention of an admission officer beyond test scores and grades. It can end up being the thing that helps the student to stand out from among a large group of students whose numbers are nearly perfect

I don’t advise students making up interests. I want students to search for with those faculty who really do share common passions. To be clear, the person receiving the email does not have to be a faculty member. It could be the person who runs a club or a service organization. But learning how to network is a life skill that transcends admission and even undergraduate education. In addition, more schools are now tracking demonstrated interest in determining which student to accept. Email conversations can prove interest far more than just visiting a campus and taking a tour. 

Finding a way that will help admission officers remember you as someone with a unique interest will help. So will writing a great set of essays (something I have written a great deal about on Quora and on my blog, so I won’t repeat this here).

I hope you will also consider other schools besides the ones you have mentioned. I am almost certain you could earn merit money to some schools and the data shows that if you do well at any strong university, regardless of whether it is top 10 or not, you will have great options afterward. Create a realistic list so that you have options. The schools you look at turn down about 95%  of those who apply.  No matter how good you are, there are no guarantees. So hedge your bets.

Best of luck.