(copied and pasted from somewhere else)

I am a top student and I have a decent SAT (>2300) and a fair assortment of extracurriculars; however, I am unsure if it would even be worth the money to apply to top-tier Ivies: in particular, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Given that admissions are becoming more and more arbitrary ("holistic"), I am worried that it would simply be a waste of my time and of the application fee. Would it be a good idea to give it a try anyway, or am I just wasting my time?

I have a decent application but it is not especially strong in any one regard. My test scores and grades are alright when compared to the rest of the Ivy admission pool, and I do have a summer research internship along with a tutoring/college prep company I started as extracurriculars (along with the usual: piano, various clubs, etc.) but nothing major and no awards at a national or international level (save for the unimportant CollegeBoard AP awards). Based on College Confidential results threads for those universities, it would basically be a complete gamble--there is hardly any discernible rhyme or reason to admissions these days. People similar to me have been accepted, waitlisted, and rejected. It could just be a total waste of time, especially when I admittedly do have other perfectly fine options for college.

MIT has their own separate applications and aren't on the Common Application. Caltech's deadline hasn't approached yet (so I might still apply).

I will be sure to let everyone know how my applications turn out.

As far as undergraduate applications go, all the University of California campuses used the same application. I found it to be fairly simple to fill out; adequate documentation was provided to clarify any vague wording. I did find myself slightly irked by their request for us to list out our entire high school transcript by hand, although given the popularity of the UCs it is somewhat understandable. It was, at the very least, much better than the quaint "ApplyWeb" system which public Washington schools use.

Posted by CyclopsCaveman

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Good luck to you, man! You're a fairly smart and dedicated dude, I hope you get accepted!

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Thank you, although I daresay that I am a lot less intelligent and dedicated than most people imagine me to be.

Posted by Celice

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Ah, I didn't know you had to do high-school by hand. I transferred into a UC (I'm at Davis ), and we did have to manually say our classes, but I'm guessing it was a teensy bit easier 'cause most UCs have the basic IGETC to compare classes from outside their school into their own. High-schoolers have a bit more 'splainin' to do :p

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The system that the UC system uses to classify high school classes is simply esoteric; I'm not entirely certain why they persist on forcing it upon everyone, particularly seeing as how the vast majority of applicants likely end up filling out the classes incorrectly anyway because they can't be bothered to read the extensive documentation on the matter. Moreover, the fact that they discount any "Honors" classes that were not taken in California seems exceptionally self-centered to me as well. I suppose, though, that being a public California university system, I cannot truly fault them for doing so.

Overall, though, it was not excessively irritating.