School Rare

Accepted as a transfer from tier 4 school to three Ivies, is this rare?

So there is this kid at the place I work at, he does internships there. He finished high school with a 3.4 GPA, grades were better every year but his freshman year started out rough, he maintained a 4.0 his senior year and a 3.8 his junior year.

He also said he went to a competitive magnet school where all courses were honors level, he took three AP courses and he took the SAT once, made a 1960 on it. He retook it after his first year of college and made a 2180 on the SAT.

The kid attended a small tier 4 university in Georgia and today he showed me his acceptance letters, he was accepted into Columbia, Cornell, and Penn as a transfer student.

He did a lot of volunteer work but he managed to go from tier 4 to Ivy, how rare is this?
he had a 4.0 college GPA

It's not common for the Ivies to accept a transfer at all - several won't take any. But, when they do, it's usually a student that likely would have been accepted had they applied there first or at least was as qualified as other students there.

Your friend has an exceptional record and is obviously selected for success in whatever he attempts. For people in that group of students, being accepted to an Ivy isn't uncommon at all, that's what the Ivies want.

What this provides an example of is that it's not as important where someone learns - it's important that they learn. Some people are in a group that will excel no matter where they are, your friend is probably one of them.

Note: the "everyone is the same" and "we are all equal" folks won't agree with my observation here and will attribute his success to some external influence such as luck, money, contacts, etc... While those things do help some people - there really are some people that are simply geared for advancement.

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