Why a 1550 SAT, 3.95 GPA White Female Got Rejected by Ivy League Schools — And How To Prevent That

The Wall Street Journal ran a popular story recently about how competitive Ivy Leagues are this year - “Extraordinary Isn’t Always Enough”.

They profiled Kaitlyn Younger, a white, middle-class female from Texas with a 1550 SAT, 3.95 unweighted GPA, 11 AP classes and founder of her school’s accounting club. Among other things, Younger sang in the choir, directed and performed in about 30 plays and had a part-time job.

Younger’s guidance counselor characterized her as “extraordinary”.

She got rejected from Stanford, Yale, Harvard, UPenn, Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, UC Berkeley and University of Southern California .

Younger will attend Arizona State University, which admits 88% of applicants.

The Journal interviewed two private admission consultants who basically said Younger got rejected because she was an over-represented, middle class white female who wanted to study business and did not have extraordinary extracurriculars — and she would’ve “had a good shot” for the Ivies 20 years ago.

Younger’s high school guidance counselor added, “I don’t know what else she could have done.”

Actually, I do.

To preface, I’m a Stanford graduate and award-winning professional journalist. I also run a boutique college admission consulting business that specializes in essay coaching.

Younger's application had several weaknesses she could've remedied:

-Personal statement: the story says Younger (who did not hire a private admissions counselor) wrote about her depression and anxiety that caused the two Bs on her transcript.

As an admissions coach, I always use the personal statement to highlight a student's strengths. The essay is an opportunity to sell yourself and discuss your Zone of Genius. Why focus on the Bs?

Outstanding applicants need a special hook, like child prodigy golfer or Hollywood star. (Tiger Woods and Reese WItherspoon were both in my class at Stanford.)

Do you want your hook to be "depressed/anxious"?

-Mental illness: students need to be very careful about writing about mental illness, if at all.

While it's illegal for colleges to discriminate against students with mental illness, there are some schools that probably do.

Furthermore, elite schools are high pressure, highly competitive environments. Admission officers may be concerned about whether a student who's struggled with mental illness can handle the intensity, or whether the stress would exacerbate her condition.

Consider your application like a job interview.

Colleges present themselves as institutions that help you grow as a scholar and human being but they are also businesses looking for people to help them meet their budget (i.e. pay full tuition), grow their endowment, and bring prestige to the school. (That’s why college football coaches are paid millions while some adjunct professors with PhDs are asked to work for free.)

-Grades: Younger had an unweighted 3.95 GPA but ranked number 23 out of 668 students. The number 1 through number 22 students at her school were likely applying to the same colleges. Without a "hook" or specially recruited category (race, class, athlete, donor, alum) it would be essentially impossible for a number 23 student to get into an elite school. In fact, a university like Stanford can fill its entire class with valedictorians.

Younger could've tried to bolster those Bs by taking community college or online coursework — at a more advanced level than those classes — and earning As.

If she really wanted to explain the Bs, Younger could've used a supplemental essay question to write a one- to three-sentence explanation that focused on her joint pain (and not the mental illness it contributed to, see above point.)

—-

Yes, Younger is in an over-represented category as a middle-class white female.

But I don’t think that’s what primarily contributed to her denials. To me, the most glaring problem was focusing the personal statement on depression and anxiety.

Younger had the grades, test scores and extracurriculars to put her in striking distance at some of the schools on her list.

If she’d worked with me, perhaps she would’ve experienced different results.

What has been your experience with college admissions? If you were an admissions officer, would you admit a student who talked about depression and anxiety as the main focus of her personal statement? What do you think contributed to Younger’s denials?

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