<p>There are a few threads asking about bright kids who attend "less selective" schools. I'm curious about the students who attended schools with stats that put them near, if not in, the bottom 25%. How did things turn out? What factors led to the decision to attend a school that was seemingly out of their league? Would you make that same decision if you could do it over again?</p>
<p>Great post!</p>
<p>I wish anyone luck trying to tell parents and kids not to reach for schools where their kids/they will likely struggle academically. It’s the “third rail”! An anecdote:</p>
<p>When asked for advice, I tried once to talk a neighbor out of sending his kid to an Ivy where my cousin struggled as a pre-med and where I was pretty sure the neighbor kid would also struggle. How naive I was! The neighbor looked at me like I just shot his dog. He wanted validation, not advice. Never again! </p>
<p>Because of the general neurosis about college admissions, the issue you raised is the most important and least discussed on this website. And because of dissonance-reducing behavior, it takes at least 2 glasses of wine before most folks will admit they over-reached. I admire my cousin’s guts getting through pre-med and med school after the soul-crushing experience he had. I also admire his candor in admitting he would have been better off at Penn State.</p>
<p>Just my two cents and your mileage will vary. But it’s a very interesting issue.</p>
<p>yup…so many posts about getting into the highest ranked school possible…You have to wonder if those kids in the 25% struggle.</p>
<p>Agree! Great post. I’m helping a mentee with college and he’ll be applying next year. I’m very interested to hear from students or parents of students who attended a school where their “stats” rightly or wrongly indicated that they were in the bottom quartile of those accepted in terms of academic performance.</p>
<p>Somewhere I read a comment that half the kids celebrating their acceptance to Ivys will eventually be in the bottom half of their class. It’s an interesting overlooked point.</p>
<p>What it may come down to is what major or courses the student will select.</p>
<p>Some majors tend to attract the higher end of a school’s student body (e.g. philosophy, math, physics, engineering), while others tend to attract the lower end of a school’s student body (e.g. pre-professional majors other than engineering, or business at schools less competitive than good state flagships; many schools have some social studies majors reputed to be “easy”).</p>
<p>But also note that the most selective schools (since Ivy was mentioned) have mostly students who are near maximum for high school academic stats, so even a “bottom 25%” student based on high school academic stats may not actually be bottom 25% in college, since the high school academic stats make little distinction when everyone is at near maximum.</p>
<p>It is also worth noting that a study at the University of Oregon found that SAT math scores were highly predictive of success or lack thereof for majoring in math or physics, but that various studies mention the weak or no predictiveness of the SAT for college success not limited to specific majors.</p>
<p>I was less than a second-tier student if one went by my HS GPA(Bottom half of my graduating class) who ended up at what most considered a first-tier LAC(Oberlin). </p>
<p>Not only did I not struggle…I was puzzled at how so many college classmates who were topflight students in HS were struggling in many courses I had no trouble with. Was a bit of a weird experience going from being the class clown/mediocrity in HS to being the one classmates came to for academic tutoring help within a semester…and with money to boot. </p>
<p>Granted, I attended a highly competitive…some would even say cutthroat public magnet high school.</p>
<p>My daughter was admitted to a top 20 university and was well down in the bottom 25% with regards to SAT scores, academic achievements and HS grades. She had some struggles, was on academic probation one semester and overcame all the obstacles. The schools have been at this for a long time. The selective universities have plenty of exceptional applicants. They admit students who can succeed. Remember also students are not picked just because of SAT scores and grades. Personal attributes, drive, passions, special interests, special experiences and lots of other factors go into the selection process.</p>
<p>My S attended a top 5 LAC where he was relatively low compared to its SAT medium scores. Like edad’s experience, my kid struggled and spent much of the time overcoming obstacles, not the least of which was a severe suffering to his confidence and ego. While it is true there was a range of students to some degree (i.e. others struggled too) and he had his strengths (the AOs saw something), it was probably not the college experience either he nor his parents would have wanted for him. I would say that finding a school where you think your kid will have some success and balance is well worth it, even at the expense of parental ego. But it takes a brave student and parent to buck the ridiculous pressure to shoot high or choose the “lesser” school.</p>
<p>I don’t know what stats anybody had coming in (to Harvard). But judging by graduation honors, I do know which of my friends were in the bottom half of the class in grades.</p>
<p>In my circle, they’re fine. Some of them were laser-beam focused on an extracurricular, and now have successful careers in the EC field (choral conducting; journalism; acting). Others went to med/law schools that don’t get a lot of Harvard kids, but universally did well there and ended up at firms/in residencies that DO get a lot of Harvard kids.</p>
<p>I didn’t see a lot of people having self-esteem crises when they got their first Cs, but I never lived in a freshman dorm there, so maybe I would have seen it if I had.</p>
<p>I went to UCSD back in the 70s. I recently found some records that showed the average SAT score at the time was around 1000 (M+V). Mine were over 400 points higher than that.</p>
<p>I still struggled.</p>
<p>Some of my buddies with scores closer to the average did far better than I did.</p>
<p>SAT scores don’t tell everything.</p>
<p>There are very bright kids who really like challenging work and living/studying among exceptional peer classmates makes them work harder. They love the stimulation and learn a lot, yet they somehow dust off the times when their efforts may misfire and they struggle. If a student has this sturdy of an ego and does not depend heavily on the judgment of others, she/he can thrive in a heavily competitive school. </p>
<p>There are kids who feel much more comfortable when their hard work more consistently pays off and they get the rewards, honors, opportunities from being among the top of the heap. </p>
<p>For kids with slightly lower stats to the average (lowest 25%), are they prepared to work harder than high school? Are there reasons to explain their grades in HS that may already be addressed or are they likely to sink a bit when on their own?</p>
<p>We know a student who was a surprise ivy admit and she did exceptionally well. She was bored in HS, a little immature about authority figures, and very creative. In college, she soared. And we know another student who attends Yale and is not fitting in well, feels outside the very laid back (or so they appear) brilliant students around him. Each situation, I would suggest, may be slightly different.</p>
<p>I’ll never forget the advice my dad gave me many, many years ago when I was applying for college. I was a good student, but wasn’t an honors/AP kid. I took a tour of Penn, which I loved, but my dad told me to reconsider applying because even if I could handle the work, I would spend all my time working and studying, and I was better off being at a college that was more appropriate for me and would allow me to do other things. So I ended up at UMich and loved it.</p>
<p>How would you know if your kid was in the “bottom 25%”? </p>
<p>I’m thinking that you are looking at the lest significant data point - standardized test scores – and drawing unwarranted conclusions from that. With the exception of a small number of recruited athletes and children of wealthy donors, selective colleges do not admit unqualified students. </p>
<p>My daughter’s test scores were in the “bottom” 25% for her school. She graduate phi beta kappa and summa cum laude. She was worried before she got to campus, but she knew very quickly after she arrived that she was one of the better students. It doesn’t help much in college to be brilliant if you haven’t done the reading, and outside of a few very difficult or esoteric subjects, you don’t need to be a genius to do well in a class - reasonably intelligent will suffice. </p>
<p>I can see a student who has a learning disability running into problems, if the disability impacts the ability to keep up with assignments. </p>
<p>In some cases, I think that the high-stat students may face problems because of changing academic expectations in college – they may have been able to breeze through high school with top grades and little effort, without developing the study and analytic skills that are valued in college. So college is often the place where the metaphorical tortoises catch up with the hares – some of those “bottom 25%” students may then find they have a much better foundation than many of their high-scoring peers.</p>
<p>One of my kids graduated with honors from a university that he transferred into., which had rejected him as a freshman applicant. His test scores in high school were lower than the bottom 25% of admitted freshman applicants at this university.</p>
<p>Overall, he felt that the work was actually easier in the university (perhaps because of grade inflation). When working as a TA for three classes, he said that the essays and work products he saw from many of the admitted undergrads were pretty bad. </p>
<p>Clearly, his perspective and work ethic changed signficantly between high school and graduation. I’d agree with Calmom that he was a metaphorical tortoise who more than caught up with the hares.</p>
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<p>My father and older relatives gave me similar advice regarding Oberlin based on my HS GPA. However, I ignored them and told a few of the more vociferous ones off. Ended up doing very well with a college academic record the near polar opposite of my HS one. Not too surprising considering undergrad turned out to be easier than HS…even with taking course overloads and working part-time. Still had more free time for ECs and leisurely activities…and far less stress. 
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<p>This was further confirmed by several other bottom 25%-50% HS classmates who allowed their parents/relatives to “talk them down” to attending the local state schools. All of them ended up transferring up to schools like Reed, CMU, Cornell, etc after 1-2 years because they weren’t being academically challenged enough. All of them graduated with stellar GPAs that astounded everyone…but fellow HS classmates.</p>
<p>How about the situation that a kid has excellent stat, but he/she worked extremely harder for it? S graduted as top student of his class, and made into a top school. D, now in high school, has determined to live up to that standard, and set her eyes on top schools too. She has great grades on paper, just like her brother, but I know, for the same “A”, she worked twice as harder as her bro. It didn’t come easy for her. I would rather her lower her bar a bit, and set her goal on a 2nd tier school, than seeing her struggle.</p>
<p>@smilieMe, my sister was that kind of student. She worked very hard for her grades, spending nearly every minute studying even on weekends. She ended up 8th in her class (of 200) with an ACT score of 32, and was accepted ED to Cornell. She has much better time management skills than many of her current classmates, and has thrived so far. She still studies very hard, but has gotten more efficient at it as she has been used to working that hard for many years. Right now, she’s balancing her coursework with a research assistant job, and has maintained a 4.0 GPA for her first three semesters. Just one story, but I think it is possible for your daughter to succeed in a first tier school.</p>
<p>So, if only the most stellar students attended #1 University, all of them with high school 4.0 gpa and 2400 SATs, would all of them be in the top half of the graduating class? :)</p>
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<p>I think this will be true for every school, not just ivy league schools ;-)</p>
<p>That being said, I never got why people would want to struggle at schools that were too difficult for them. I am thinking of the people who cheat on their SAT’s and what they will have to deal with when they get into their dream schools that are too hard for them.</p>
<p>A little off topic I know, but I just saw on “What would you do” a segment on kids paying for someone to take the SAT for them.</p>