Road to Ivy Paved With Rejection Letters

The dreaded thin letter from college admissions offices is cluttering mailboxes in record numbers this year, but you'd think the elite of the elite would be safe. Not so, reports the Austin American-Statesman, which talks to local top students, including one who capped his impressive high school record with perfect scores on his SAT and ACT but failed to sway Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, and others.

The overall acceptance rate hasn’t dropped, there's just more graduating seniors this year—a fact providing little comfort for one student whose only acceptance came from her backup school: “I’m in the top percent of my class. I’m a varsity soccer player. I mentor eighth-grade girls. I was extremely surprised. I was like, somehow, somewhere, they’ve messed up.” One counselor advises students to broaden their choices. (More college stories.)