<p>What school is a good fit for a hypothetical bright student, (1500 SAT on scale of 1600) and grades, SAT IIs, and APs to match), with reasonable ECs some leadership but no national level accomplishments, not a legacy, urm, or recruited athlete. One key constraint is the student would like to attend a school where the average student is similar academically.</p>
<p>Can you provide more info? What part of the country (if any) you prefer? A certain state? What major? The more info you can provide, the more help all the folks here can give...</p>
<p>I hate to be so blunt -- but if this student is going to determine whether he/she "fits" with other kids based on their SAT scores and gpa's, I think he/she is setting him/herself up for disappointment. </p>
<p>I would really urge him/her to better define what it is he/she is looking for from a college as well as from future classmates.</p>
<p>bizymom,</p>
<p>The post indicated the student is hypothetical, so any part of the country will do. Is wanting to have the average student be of the same intellectual level and interest so much worse a criteria than wanting to have Div I athletics, nice weather, fraternties, or an urban, suburban, or rural environment or any of the other things that people mention when talking of fit. It is, at least in part, an educational experience.</p>
<p>To start: Tufts, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Rice, Emory, U of Chicago</p>
<p>Well, you're describing my son. NMF from CA (2310), 35 ACT, solid ECs (four-year committment), but only regional awards, not national, no leadership to speak of except camp counselor gig, top 2 percent of his class in a large CA public (but not one of the students who was #1-10). He was looking for a college with excellent academics, a real campus feel (not too urban and not too rural), a relaxed and fun social atmosphere, and it couldn't be too small (nothing with an enrollment less than his h.s. which is 3,000). He's at WashU.</p>
<p>I am not sure what grades a student with 1500 on scale of 1600 would have, some students test way above their GPA, some under.
IT would be easier since this is a hypothetical student, if she was indentified as having 1550, SAT, 3.90 GPA unweighted- with 3 AP courses for the past 3 years and AP test scores of 4s.</p>
<p>Then I would mention that Haverford,Harvey Mudd,Williams, Swarthmore, Pomona, Amherst,Middlebury, Claremont Mckenna, Barnard,Bowdoin, Wellesley & Davidson all have 77% or more students ranking in the top 10% of their high schools& the 25% of SAT score goes from 1290 @ Davidson to the 75th % of 1560% at harvey Mudd</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd, UChicago, Reed, Macalaster, Grinnell, Oberlin, Wellesley (are you a girl?), Carleton, Deep Springs (are you a guy?) and lots of others including HYPSM, of course.</p>
<p>Almost meaningless quesiton really. There is so much more than academics that would determine fit. Areas of interest could be all over the place; kind of social life preferred. What one is accustomed to in the way of urban amenities or ethnic mix. And even the 1500 says very little since in some settings that is almost run of the mill for "smart" kids at some high schools in some aeas while in others it might be quite special. In addition, large state schools with honors progams or financial incentives would provide plenty of people with comparable or higher numbers even ifthe overall avereage did not sugget that, while at the top three or four LACs such as Williams, the 1500 would not be very exciting for a "plain vanilla" candidate--that is, one well qualified but not outstanding in a specific area.</p>
<p>so my suggestion is to rethink the question and nrefine the parameters in order to get some sort of meaningful anwer, if that is what you really want to get. Becasuer at the monem,t here are at last a hundred schools that would fit the bill and all you really need to do to find them is read Princeton Review or Fiske or some other chatty college guide that occasionally touches on reality in the mdst of stereotypes.</p>
<p>Not sure about a fit, but speaking of this spring admission results, I know a bunch of similar kids from several schools in NYC Tri-State area that have been</p>
<p>Frequently (at least 50% chance) admitted to the NYU, Carnegie Mellon, Northwesthern, UChicago, WashU , Cornell, Tufts, UMich, Berkeley, UCLA/SD, UVirginia, John Hopkins, McGill</p>
<p>Sometimes (25-50%) admitted to Brown, Dartmouth, Barnard</p>
<p>Never (less then 5%) admitted to HYP, MIT, Columbia, Penn </p>
<p>Of course my percentage estimates are very approximate. When I use Naviance site, its very easy to see a correlation between academic scores and admission rates for colleges in the first two categories, but never for the last one. Very sad spread considering that all of these kids, in addition to excellent academic performance are nice, motivated, social, involved and working very hard. Moreover, at least three of these kids did have a national level accomplishment including a gymnastics champion, a dance competition champion and Intel semi-finalist.</p>
<p>Your description applies to my daughter and most of her friends. They are in an IB diploma program, the demands of which tend to preclude extraordinary extracurricular achievements (there are only so many hours in a day) but do not prevent them from taking leadership roles in school or out-of-school activities.</p>
<p>The most common destination for these people is our the honors program at our state university (the University of Maryland at College Park), primarily because practically all in-state applicants who fit your description are offered huge merit scholarships, an offer that few can afford to refuse. Other schools that have accepted some of these students include Northwestern, Duke, Brown, Cornell, Penn, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, William and Mary, NYU, BU, and a slew of liberal arts colleges. A few rare and lucky people who fit your description were admitted to Princeton, Yale, or Columbia, but far more were rejected.</p>
<p>Sorry for the double post, but I can't edit my previous one.</p>
<p>Some of the odds mentioned in btm's post do not agree with the experience at my daughter's school. For example, based on her friends' experience, I would say that it is a lot easier to get into Barnard than Johns Hopkins, but btm says exactly the opposite.</p>
<p>I think this is a regional thing. At the level of schools we're talking about (one step below the ultra-elite, truly national universities like Harvard and Stanford), there is some tendency for students to apply to schools within their own region. This trend may enhance the chances of admission for students from other regions, while decreasing the admissions chances of local kids. Thus, btm's New Yorkers may be more attractive to Johns Hopkins than Barnard, while my DC-area kids would have exactly the opposite experience.</p>
<p>Another thing: If money is not an issue for your hypothetical applicant, I think that his/her chances of admission to the one-step-below-the-ultra-elite colleges could be enhanced by applying ED or SCEA, if the college offers this. Too many kids at the academic level we're talking about waste their one and only ED/SCEA chance on places like Stanford or Columbia, which will almost certainly defer or reject them. If they applied ED/SCEA to a more realistic choice, such as Dartmouth or Northwestern, they might have had more favorable results.</p>
<p>Not Dartmouth. and possibly not Northwestern. I can only repeat what I said in my earlier post; this is a meaningless query and describes a kid who, mean as it may sound, is a dime a dozen at top-tier schools and that does not mean just Harvard or Stanford. Frankly, I think this is worse than the usual overspecific "Chances" post--it is a query about a supposedly generic BWRK and reflects no research into what individual schools actually offer in the way of real life educcation or experience.</p>
<p>I agree with mattmom. This seems a totally hypothetical case.
For a non-hypothetical, non-URM, non-legacy, non-athlete (i.e. my S), Stanford. But of course he had some attributes beyond those listed in the OP.</p>
<p>It's amusing to me that some of you are so arrogant in rejecting my hypothetical students definition of a good fit school in favor of your own definitions. What better definition of fit than a students own preference. In answer to EKity the reason for not specifying a GPA is that, out of context, it's meaningless since a 4.0 at one school could be a lot less indicative of ability and effort than a 3.7 at another. But we've all seen the correlation graphs between tests and GPA's for an individual school. What I mean is that this hypothetical student has the GPA that would be predicted for them at their school for a student with a 1500 SAT. Is that precise enough? Lets say they have 4 AP's at the time of application with scores averaging 4.5 and are enrolled in 4 more for senior year.</p>
<p>A lot of the suggestions are great schools but most of them have the character that this hypothetical student would be above average, which is exactly my point. We have a system that worships the notion of fit, but in which a very bright hard working student who just wants to go to school with other equally bright serious students is incapable of being admitted to such a school or at most very unlikely to be admitted.</p>
<p>
[quote]
A lot of the suggestions are great schools but most of them have the character that this hypothetical student would be above average, which is exactly my point. We have a system that worships the notion of fit, but in which a very bright hard working student who just wants to go to school with other equally bright serious students is incapable of being admitted to such a school or at most very unlikely to be admitted.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Your hypothetical student has to be above average academically since he does not have a special "hook" to offer to the schools to which he is applying.</p>
<p>Or, to put it another way, your hypothetical applicant may be above average in terms of pure academic stats, but his overall application package is not above average.</p>
<p>Marian,</p>
<p>Yes that is the hypothetical applicant: not a recruited athlete, not a URM, not a legacy, not a celebrity, not a national standout in some activity just a very bright student with serious interests in some non-academic stuff. A bit smarter and harder working than what is generally meant by BWRK. My point is I find it sad that our system does not have within it the option for this student to find a school that "fits" in the sense that he would be academically average at it and be admitted.</p>
<p>the point is that at the very few schools where someone with those stats would be statistically "average" the student probably wouldn't even be admitted unless he/she had something other than those stats to impress the adcom that he/she warranted admission. </p>
<p>which is why your hypothetical is so meaningless in my mind -- hi stats and hi gpa tell you nothing about the type of person you are dealing with. jock? book worm? urban sophisticate? woodland creature? science geek? poetry nerd? each of those types will probably find their fit at different schools, regardless of how nicely their sat's and gpa's mesh.</p>
<p>And I also have a problem with the notion that if this hypothetical student has to mingle with those with lower sat's he/she has somehow been relegated to mingling with his/her intellectual inferiors. I've known such students who've had the rug pulled out from under them when they assumed their great intellect would land them at the top of their college class, only to learn they had to work their butts off to keep up with those they assumed would be their intellectual inferiors.</p>
<p>Bizy mom,</p>
<p>"at the very few schools where someone with those stats would be statistically "average" the student probably wouldn't even be admitted"</p>
<p>Exactly, and I, for one, find that sad.</p>
<p>and i for one find it sad that you think that sat's and gpa's alone are enough to define which students intellectually "fit" together. i also think it defines one of the errors that many students make in looking at colleges -- they don't look beyond sat's and gpa's and then wonder why they were rejected from schools where they really weren't a good fit.</p>
<p>your hypothetical student could well be one of those students who yearns to get into any ivy league without bothering to realize that Dartmouth and Columbia could not be more dissimilar on all criteria other than sat's and gpa's - and that a non-ivy could well better suit their actual intellectual goals. </p>
<p>i doubt either of us will convince the other.</p>