75th% and High GPA = Free Admission?

Hi all,

The title might be a little misleading, so I’ll try to explain it better: I’m wondering how great schools (not top-top) like USC, Northeastern, Northwestern, and Babson treat an applicant in the 75th percentile for test scores and a high GPA. For example, if you have a near perfect GPA, a really tough academic schedule, and scored a 33 on the ACT (75th percentile), would my chances at getting into USC (which has a 33 ACT 75th percentile) be really high (80%+ chance of admission)?

The reason I ask is because of an article that said: “a 75th percentile score and a high GPA, you have a very good chance at admissions.” Obviously, this won’t apply to top schools that get thousands of applicants that have these applicants, but I would like to know more about t20-t50 schools treat these applicants.

Thanks!

No. You need to look at the overall acceptance rate. Northwestern for example has a sub 10% acceptance rate. Even in the 75th percentile, chances for an unhooked applicant are just slightly above that.

You can look at your school Naviance charts to get an idea.

Looking at several years of several schools’ charts, I came to the conclusion. That a kid with 34 ACT and close to 4.0 UW GPA, had excellent chances of admittance ED to Vanderbilt, Rice, JHU, Northwestern , Wesleyan, Cornell, Haverford, Emory. Not so much Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Duke. Also those schools above that lead good chances ED, were tough accepts RD at that level.

Naviance can put your school’s acceptance information in context but is a relative measurement. Our HS has lots of top ACT scores and uw 4.0s but very little success at top schools.

What does free admission mean?
Are you full pay?

@svlab112 , does your high school have a lot of kids applying to the 50 most selective schools? In the NYC suburbs, in my area, I’d say most of the kids are applying to private colleges and universities rather than state schools. I have absolutely no data about West coast public universities because so few kids apply. No one my youngest child’s graduating year applied to any of the California public schools. Only a handful applied to West coast schools at all.

So over the years, I’ve collected a lot of info on a certain group of schools. Ironically, I have very little info on the SUNYs, our state schools. Other than Binghamton and Geneseo, very few and no apps to the other state schools.

A 33 is a great score. Well done! About 27,000 other students got a 33 on their ACT, and are applying to mostly the same schools. You have to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Lots of those with a 34, 35, and even 36 know they don’t have a shot at the top-top schools, so add another 20,000 kids, or so. So, 47,000 kids are trying to steal your spot.

So, I would say you have a shot at those schools, for sure, but it won’t be your ACT score that gets you in. There has to be more, and hopefully you’ve got it.

@cptofthehouse HS has 96% college bound each year. We have much higher acceptances (than overall rates) into top UCs like UCLA and UCB. In general, top 20% apply to top 50 with little success unless recruited athletes (outside CA publics).

Anecdotally, my kids were in application cycles for 2014, 2016, and 2018 and all 3 accepted to both UCB and ULCA but rejected from all top privates. I’ve been collecting/tracking information since 2012.

There’s an expression I found when we were researching colleges with D1: “Where do you think all those tippy top kids go, when they don’t get into the tippy tops?” This refers to the perfect stats, rigorous program, full EC kids, we speak of, all the time, on CC.

Keyword: holistic. The holistic colleges do not admit based on stats alone. Except for recruited athletes, there is NO one with an 80% chance- or even 40%- without the full picture. That includes a full range of ECs and mastering all the written portions of the app/supp. That means, as they want it.

T20-T50 are still top schools. There are so few places at many of these colleges and universities that if all schools admitted purely on stats, which they don’t, it would take the top 70 or so schools to absorb all the kids with ACTs of 33 or higher. So even the top100 schools get thousands of equally strong students. If you want 80% chance of admission, you’d have to look at the schools ranked over 100+.

Thank you all for the information! I figured as such but was pretty confused by some articles that mentioned how top 75% test scores, great GPA, and tough courses are almost ensured for admission. I guess they must have been talking about lower-tier schools(?).

Does this mean that the 25th-75th percentile test scores aren’t too big of a deal? For example, if someone applied to USC with a 30 (25th)ACT compared to a 33 (75th), they wouldn’t be at a big disadvantage?

@momofsenior1
Gotcha. Thanks. I figured that the overall acceptance rate would be misleading as I didn’t really know who applies to specific schools. I am privileged in that I don’t have to worry about the cost of application, so I figured that a lot of people would be applying to schools like Northwestern, even if they weren’t qualified.

@syballer
Yes. I meant free as in the sense of easy/without obstacle rather than no cost. Poor word choice on my part-- sorry!

@cptofthehouse
That sounds like a great resource for me! Thanks for mentioning it. When you say “excellent chances of admissions,” what % are you referring to? The reason I ask is that @lookingforward gave somewhat conflicting information: "there is NO one with an 80% chance- or even 40%- without the full picture. I’m sure you guys can understand my confusion here.

Thank you all! After making a few threads with no responses, I was surprised to wake up to 10 alerts o.o

I have a lot of kids. Spread over a lot of years. And they have a lot of friends. So I’ve had access to info to a lot of Naviance and even more informative admissions records on who gets in where and how. I can see that a kid with a 34 ACT and 4.0 UW applying ED to say Vanderbilt gets accepted 75% of the time from certain schools over the last decade. I can see that the same stats can result in less than 25% RD.

So if my kid wants to go to Vanderbilt; it’s his first choice school, if finances allow it, and stats are as above, I’d feel optimistic about applying ED. It’s still not a certainty. Even a 1 in 4 chance of rejection is a very real possibility. And there is always the possibility, really probability, that some hook was missed, especially with Naviance data. So to be conservative, I’d say half a chance.

For the kids in my son’s Graduating class , more than half got into their ED schools. Apps to Penn, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst and other highly competitive schools brought down the numbers. Few, if any, kids applied ED to schools that were strong matches or safeties for them.

@cptofthehouse

Dang, that was really helpful. Thank you. It’s a shame that USC doesn’t have ED, as that would be my top pick at the moment. I’ll check out schools like Vandy, Northeastern, and Babson for ED. I originally planned to do Brown ED but it seems like it would be a lot more beneficial if my ED was put towards a t50-20 rather than Ivy.

Thanks!!

@FakeName1332 And just make sure all the schools you apply to are affordable for you and your family.

@FakeName1332 Although USC doesn’t have ED, if you get your application in by December 1, you may get an early acceptance by February 1 and will be in the running for major merit awards. Note that December 1 is also a final deadline for some of their programs. https://admission.usc.edu/apply/dates-deadlines/#/first-year-students

OP, we said before that the better info comes from the colleges, themselves. You need to dig there. Yes, some college that auto accept based on stats will be lower tier. Or rack and stack schools that are not holistic.

Your interests seem to focus on holistics- and you will need the full picture they expect, not just stats. You’ll compete against a vast number of Canadian applicants who have the stats plus all the rest.

@FakeName1332
This came up with in one of your previous threads. Your first choice school is the one where you think you have a least some chance. Except for the heavily-hooked applicants, individual chances are essential the admissions rate, or less. So a 10% chance is actually pretty good odds; a 20% chance, very good odds. If you believe your dream school odds are well below these numbers, then it’s best to convince yourself of this and move on. If not, then this is the place to send your ED application. It will most likely be denied, but then you have your ED2 and RD schools to choose from. If you realistically think you have some chance to be admitted to Brown, then apply ED to Brown. If not, then move on.

I want to make it clear that there is no auto accept here. The only schools that may do auto accept are the large state universities and even some of them are going holistic.

There is a thread here where a young man was rejected from UF instate with top stats with the reason cited as not enough ECS. Apparently, his many ECs did not come through in his app. Upon appeal and review, he was accepted. Still, it was troubling that a Large state university with so many applications is trying to do holistic evaluations of them.

Then you remember the California system.

10 or 20% odds are never “good.” It may sound like a simple “maybe I get in, maybe not,” but that’s making it a crapshoot. And colleges like Brown, NU, etc, have expectations. It’s not what you want, but what they need to see. Your understanding of this comes from how you research what the college says and shows.

So, Brown used to have a page showing who applied with what gpa and scores. I’m not finding it for now, but the tippy top stats kids were accepted at something like an 8% rate. Meaning, 92% of those were rejected. That should be sobering. Kids with the 4.0 gpa, rigor, highest scores.

Among those 8%, you can count on the vast majority of them (some athletic exceptions) fully meeting the college’s expectations- rigor, top grades, scores in range, a variety of responsible ECs, not just in your comfort zone, not just easy, the right sorts that are relevant to the college, show college readiness. And overcoming obstacles, not using them to explain why somehing is missing.

You get to choose the targets, but they choose the admits. It’s only half the equation to focus on what “you” want.

Thank you all!

It seems like the conversation is kind of spiraling into Brown, but I want to assure you all that I am talking specifically about schools that have around a 20% acceptance rate-- not Ivies. I understand that even the top test scores, GPA, and courses don’t give you a great (or even good) chance at admission to t10 schools.

Switching the conversation back to schools like USC:

I want to ensure everyone here that I am not going into this process with only test scores, GPA, and tough courses and expecting admissions. I was trying to understand how to use ‘75th’ percentile scores to find the chance at admission for t50-t20 schools.

I received a lot of great responses on that matter, but I am still slightly confused by the conflicting information here. @lookingforward, you first said that there is NO one with a 40% chance at a school with a holistic process, then @cptofthehouse offered conflicting information by saying how it’s around 75% acceptance for Vanderbilt ED with top scores/GPA/courses.

Once I described the conflicting information, you said: “Yes, some college that auto accept based on stats will be lower tier.” Does this mean that you are calling Vanderbilt/USC/etc lower-tier schools and that they will nearly auto accept based on stats? I wouldn’t imagine this is the case, but you were commenting on a thread where I directly compared Vanderbilt to top schools like Brown, so I’m a little confused.

As a reminder, this thread has nothing to do with any school better than USC/Vandy/etc.

Assuming a kid applies ED, has a 4.0, and a really solid academic schedule, do they have a good chance (>60%) to get into a school with an acceptance rate of ~20%? Given that they don’t have anything that would really hurt their application.