My Child has 1580 SAT, 4.0 GPA, but received rejection from top schools!! (UChi, MIT, etc) Why??

It’s obvious you’re very narrowly focusing on academics.

As I said in the comments: there are over 37000 high schools in the United States.

That means if only the very top student applied to top schools (* which we know is not the case, it’s a lot more than that), you’d have 37000 valedictorian (or equivalent) applicants.

One way I like to approach college admissions is in terms of Fermi Questions. Let’s aggregate together the top 25 schools and call them roughly peer schools.

There’s roughly 50,000 freshmen from these top 25 schools.

First, let’s consider the above before we’ll factor in 1) yield, 2) who’s actually competitive and qualified, 3) other factors (like extracurriculars and fit).

So if your son was a valedictorian ignoring all other factors and calculations, it is possible that he would be accepted at some institution in the top 25.

Let’s now factor in yield or yield rate: which is a percent of those who commit (or matriculate) divided by all acceptances. For the top ~15 universities, this is now around 80%. Columbia and Duke are closer to 60%. Let’s even be generous and say it’s 50% on average across the top 25 schools. (It’s not, and that number is lower than reality.)

That means out of 50,000 freshmen who matriculated, there were 100,000 acceptances. Which means, on average, a valedictorian who applied to all top 25 schools might receive on average 3 acceptances.

Now we’re getting into some more advanced factors:

First, “competitive” and academically qualified: so obviously more than those who are the valedictorian will apply. Some salutatorians apply. I’ve seen some people who were ranked 5th out of a graduating class of 507 (still top 1%). I’ve never said that only valedictorians should apply — I generally think that competitive is roughly the top 2% for Americans for a lot of top universities.

(And if you split it up for any one university, these are largely going to be reach schools for all people.)

On the negative side, if you expand the number of applicants who are qualified (with over 4 million Americans in high school and NCES thinks 3.6 million Americans going on to higher education), let’s say the top 72000–80000 now apply — roughly doubling the number of applicants — that also halves your admit rate, or any one of those people might get just over 1 acceptance given yield.

(Plus I could write a lot more on academics like rigor of course load, challenging oneself, whether a school is competitive, etc., but 18 AP classes and 4.0 unweighted in my mind indicates competitive and qualified.)

***Side note: there are some people who aren’t academically qualified and would like to believe they are the exception rather than the rule (maybe hopefuls who look at “holistic admissions” thinking their pedestrian achievements and academics might possibly qualify) but college admissions is not a lottery. Applying is not the same thing as buying a ticket.

Last, let’s take into account other factors.

Extracurriculars are often the determinizing factor with all academics being equal. Most families and kids these days know that extracurriculars are a big deal, especially for private universities and the most competitive public universities.

Anyone can take classes from community college or OCW or edX or any number of online formats. Or if you have a course syllabus, you can get the textbooks and self-learn.

Private universities are looking for more than just book worms: some are looking for people to organize their clubs and student activities. Others are looking for good athletic ability or world-changers.

A kid who is 18, is valedictorian, and was an all-state athlete or a kid who is 18, is salutatorian and was student council president — those two are a lot more impressive (and demonstrates they contribute to their community) — than say, a book worm.

Furthermore, we can talk about FIT.

Wanting to go to a “Top 25 school” is like wanting to date a cheerleader or wanting to date a hot guy.

I’d hope there are multiple reasons for applying to any particular school and that one should only apply to schools for which one is a great fit (academic, social, financial, type of education, setting, weather, etc.)

And on the flip side, MIT Admissions (as a few other schools also do) outright tells you what they are looking for (See Below):

What we look for | MIT Admissions At MIT Admissions, we recruit and enroll a talented and diverse class of undergraduates who will learn to use science, technology, and other areas of scholarship to serve the nation and the world in the 21st century. https://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/what-we-look-for/

Take it seriously. They assess you on this, and figure out the applicant’s “fit.”

It’s not the same as “whether or not the applicant THINKS she or he is a good fit.”