Perfect, But ...
Consider Aly Berger, a senior at Hockaday. A top student, she earned perfect scores on five Advanced Placement exams and is taking four more Advanced Placement courses this year. Yet Harvard, Yale and Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, which isn’t in the Ivy League, rejected her. Duke accepted only 11.3 percent of applicants. She got into Dartmouth, the honors program at the University of Virginia, Georgetown University and the London School of Economics.
“So much of these admit rates becomes colleges boosting their numbers by getting people who aren’t competitive to apply,” said Berger, 18, who volunteers every Sunday at a shelter for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. “I’ve gotten into many good schools. It hasn’t really bothered me.”