A student can get into a top-20 school while being rejected from a less selective one because admissions decisions depend on what each college needs that year, not a fixed ranking. One sibling was denied from a lower-ranked school while their brother got into a top-20 school two years later.
That's why the same student can get into a harder school and then get denied from an easier one in the same season. It's not always about you. Sometimes it's about what that particular class at that particular university in that particular year needs. We've watched this play out with siblings from the exact same household. Older brother, strong student, denied from a school ranked well outside of the top 50. And then the younger sister, 2 years later, comparable file, admitted to a school inside the top 20. Same house, same values, same family support, but different years, different institutional needs, different juries. If the process were purely a formula, that should not be possible. It happens all of the time. So here's the takeaway: stop ranking schools by prestige alone and start researching fit, because fit is where the institutional need and your case actually overlap, and that overlap changes every single year.
