r/ApplyingToCollege

Curious with this phenomenon - some very wealthy alumni donate a ton to their alma mater, and then don't send their kids there. For example, Jon Gray (President of Blackstone) went to UPenn and even met his wife there, but they sent 2 kids to Duke and 2 kids to Yale. Bill and Melinda Gates went to Harvard and Duke respectively, but sent their kids to Stanford. Michael Bloomberg went to Johns Hopkins, but he sent 1 kid to Princeton and 1 to NYU. All of these people were mega donors to their alma maters but didn't send a kid back. Why not?

Say someone doesn't have exceptional ecs/story/essay/awards; however, they simply have like 1580+ SAT and 4.0 gpa. What level college would be willing to accept them?

Say would T20 schools admit this type of student just to pad out their admit stats? SAT and gpa seem to be important stats for colleges, and say the student is paying full tuition, would that boost their chances even more?

I'm very curious since it would make sense on a college standpoint.

Is it just like Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton? What about T10s in general (Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Caltech, Duke, Yale, Columbia, Penn, UChicago)? Are lower ivies and other top privates worth it over state flagships?

I submitted my application to Yale yesterday and just realized that under "relationship to recommender" I put "sexual."

I meant to put "school."

Do I email them or will that draw more attention to it??

I genuinely dont understand why anyone is even applying to CalTech in 2026?

First of all its so hard to get in but even if you apply and by some miracle get in, the education for undergrad is not even that good i think. They only care about grad students and research anyway. why would anyone pay all that money just to get taught by a depresed phd dude who only wants to do his research project and whatever

And if you want a technology institute why not just go to MIT or Georgia tech? If you can get into CalTech university you'll probably get into MIT and georgia tech anyway. Quite literally every other technology institute is probably better because at least the student population is more than a combined total of 300 people. And who would want to live in pasadena anyway.

So why is anyone even applying to CalTech in this day and age?

how much does being a child of staff help in harvard admissions? My dad is not a professor but has worked there for 20+ years. I don’t have stellar extracurricular, but I have good grades, high AP exam scores, etc.

I’m a child of 20+ year staff member at Harvard, as well as legacy at Dartmouth. I know that Dartmouth has a much higher acceptance rate for legacy in ED, but it’s binding. Harvard has non binding EA. I know it would be hard to get into darthmouth RD but I don’t know how I would feel about never finding out about harvard, if I were to get into ED darthmouth

Title basically. Context is I am finishing choosing my classes for senior year and wanted to take AP bio. However I have done biology olympiad since sophomore year and also self studied and got a 5 on the ap my junior year. My school only offers AP bio to seniors. I wanted to take it because I’m really passionate about biology and wanted the opportunity to learn it in school. I’m scared AOs will see this as less rigorous since I already know the curriculum. Is it weird to email admissions offices about this? Would they answer me and tell me if this lowers my odds of acceptance?

Hi im going into my senior year and like an idiot I have put zero effort into looking into colleges because my academic record is very rough so I gave up the dream of going. The First 2 years my gpa was a 1.53- im looking into what I can do to help raise that gpa because part of the reason it was so low was to severe personal struggles that kept me out of school for basically the entire year but my parents did not withdraw me from school which caused literally all my grades to be zeros for about 3/4s of that year. I transferred to a different school, the next year was mostly the same just f/d/c grades. Finally last year things got way better and somehow when I looked my gpa last year it was a 3.8. So my gpa is terrible I really wanted to go to a Florida college or some sort of nicer college not like ivy or anything but the dream school was Uni of Florida but thats not happening. Some of the state colleges were I live high acceptance rates and my brother went to one and I hear that can help, But I really dont want to go to that college I really wanted to go out of state lol. My question is it to go to a state college or just go to community for a person like me?

Hi everyone!

Our names are Patrick and Cindy, and we are fourth-year students at OSU in the Stamps Eminence Scholarship Program, a full cost-of-attendance scholarship. We wanted to share our experiences with applications, OSU, and Stamps Eminence, and hold a space to answer any questions.

The Stamps Eminence Scholarship Program is a merit-based, full cost-of-attendance scholarship, meaning it covers tuition, room, board, and fees, with funds still left over. In addition to the financial benefits, the program provides Scholars with a tight-knit community, research and networking opportunities, funding for enrichment opportunities, and more. You can find lots more information about the program and current Scholars on the website.

https://honors-scholars.osu.edu/eminence

Patrick studies Economics and Biomedical Science and plans on pursuing an PhD program in Economics. Cindy is studying Neuroscience and Psychology, intending to obtain a PhD in Clinical Psychology.

We'll also note that Stamps Eminence helped us get some other wonderful opportunities during college, including a Truman Scholarship (for Patrick), a Goldwater Scholarship (for Cindy) and research fellowships at Harvard, OSU, and UPenn. We cannot stress enough how wonderful Stamps Eminence is!

We are happy to answer questions you all have about OSU, the Stamps Eminence Scholarship Program, our degree programs, or anything else.

We do not represent the official views of The Ohio State University.

how much do they still care about legacy?

I mean yeah, it is getting harder every year with acceptance rates dropping and ec and grade inflation being at an all time high. But, a lot of people (including me) are heavily influenced by people that are promoting their own services? All I am trying to say is that despite what people say on social media,reddit, etc (I know are not good sources of information) I keep on seeing people at my school getting into schools like Georgetown and Northwestern on full aid or close to full aid while having what all those influencers would describe average extracurriculars. So is it really as hard as people say?

Hello, I'm a Nigerian I'm currently trying to apply for filmaking/screenwriting university in US, does anyone know universities with high acceptance rate and are very good. And would be able to make it easier to enter Hollywood.

Quick backstory: We've lived in another country all his life and just moved back to the U.S. a few months ago. He's going to start sophomore year next week. He's trilingual.

Being ambitious, he wants to go to an ivy/T20. I did some digging and it says that most top colleges "recommend" 3-4 years of a LOTE all 4 years of high school.

He did take an ancient obscure regional language of our home country from sixth grade to freshman year and from grade 6-8 he took a third language too. So he technically has one year of Language Other Than English in HS.

He's one year late to the american high school system (so he has to take some extra classes for graduation) and he wants to take a career pathway (something this school offers) instead of a language like spanish.

QUESTIONS
- is the 3-4 years language "recommendation" actually a soft requirement?
- if NOT, does not taking a language hurt his application?
- if it DOES hurt his application, how much?
- And anyways, any general related advice is appreciated.

Thanks.

Im a rising senior and have like no extracurriculars. Im looking to apply for buisness finance. What extracurriculars should I do?

I saw someone on TikTok saying they got into Colombia and had TikTok editing and writing fanfiction for their activities. I sew, write fanfiction, and blog, and edit on TikTok, but I only have 2 activities left. Which ones should I include?

Past week was rescinded from Berkeley and now im desperately trying to enroll at some other uni
i reached out to ucsd, vtech, ucsb, uc davis and they said reapply or take a transfer
waiting on msu n cu boulder
ive emailed vtech for deferral to spring sem
what chnace do i have
would love any help or guidance

Cool ECs, decent awards, good grades, and a high SAT. This could get me into a t20, the only problem is a lot of people at my school either match or exceed me in all of this. ECs and awards are a bit more vague, hard to tell what colleges will like. Here is the problem:

I have gotten straight As for freshman and sophomore year, but I went to a new school and got a singular B my junior year. Hoping for straight As senior year. This doesn't sound that bad, but I am confident that 60% or more of this school got straight As (albeit its a very high ranked high school).

Given that this school does not report GPA or class rank, how cooked am I for top colleges. Am I even competitive for schools which all my peers will apply for like MIT and the ivies, since that B on my transcript simply does not exist for most students at my school. I do have a sort-of excuse and really high AP/SAT math stuff, but I feel like some colleges (knowing this school's tendencies) might throw out anyone's application who has a B, even though a B at a normal school is not that big of a deal.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

For my other stats:

• weighted GPA 4.29, unweighted 4.0
• class rank 15 out of 445,
• 1 AP soph year got 5 on AP World,
• 4 APs junior year and got 4s on all of them AP calc AB, AP chem, APUSH, AP art.
• intended major is pre-health/medicine related (bio, chem)
• i have pretty good extracurriculars like paid jobs, community service, and volunteering

now my sat is 1370. which isnt that good but i'm also from a low-income family so i read that those who practice hollistic reveiw can see that like im not rich and dont have resources for that. but i have aps and such so idk.

the schools that im questioning submitting it to have 25th percentiles of like of around 1400-1450. idk if it'll help with anything or just make it worse? so should i submit the sat?

When I was younger my mom put me in swimming classes and piano lessons. I didn’t hate swim but I never tried so I never moved up or made it on the swim team and I absolutely hated piano. And every time my mom said she was gonna put me in another sport I would get so mad. Like I seriously don’t know why but when I was a child I was lazy and didn’t want to do anything outside of school (except art classes and make youtube videos, lol). When I quit piano my mom told me “you’re gonna regret this in the future.” Younger me, only focusing on whether or not I enjoyed playing piano at that moment, didn’t understand why quitting would be a bad decision at all. And now I have figured that out the hard way… If I had continued piano and actually tried back then, I would end up having a long term, strong extracurricular, showing dedication and commitment.

But even then I unconditionally hated piano so it’s not like I could force myself to continue. I didn’t like anything my parents put me in when I was younger and because of that I have no super long term ECs. Everyone at my school does a sport and is super good at it because they’ve been doing it since they were young. I don’t play a sport at all. And even if I were to join a sport for the first time at my school I’d be against a bunch of people who’ve already known what they’ve been doing for years.

I wonder why I was like that. I guess back then I didn’t understand the concept of putting in effort and improving, all that I thought was to just attend the lessons and do whatever the coach told me to do with no self motivation because it was an extracurricular my parents chose for me and not something I personally wanted to do. This also makes me wonder how other people my age were willing to do the lessons their parents put them in back then even when practice was challenging. Maybe I was a stubborn child? Has anyone else gone through this?