Does anyone know of a way to get a sense of the admission statistics for a student with no hooks? Not URM, recruited athlete, first gen, legacy…just an all-American good student from a state with a ton of all American good students? I am want to paint a more realistic picture of admission chances for my daughter (and myself), but it seems like it is hard to come up with that data.
Someone here posted the report of Harvard Westlake school, by all applicants versus unhooked. The results were staggering. Maybe it will come up on a search.
URM and first gen kids can also be “all American” students. Lots and lots of black, hispanic, Native American kids whose families have been here for generations… just under represented in certain colleges. Lots of white, middle class first generation kids… especially how some schools count them (based on parent’s college experience, not grandparents or earlier.) I do know what you were getting at but you have to be careful tossing around that “all-American” phrase.
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Yes, Native American kids can count more generations than anyone else…
The only stat I remember was HW applicants to Princeton. 93 applicants over 3 years, 16 admitted. 14 of the 16 admitted had at least one of the special distinctions you noted, OP.
The hooked vs. unhooked data is hard to get. Most often you have to back into/SWAG it as best you can. Simplest SWAG is to assume that your unhooked kid needs to be at the 75th percentile of stats in order to be reasonably competitive. Figure close to half the class will have hooks of some sort – 15% athletes, 15% legacies, 15% URMs. So being 50th percentile and unhooked is going to be below average for the pool your kid is swimming in.
For an unhooked regular “average excellent” kid, what you also need to focus on (at least for the top tier schools) is RD versus ED/SCEA/REA.
We can get the early round data – these days half the class will come in through the early door. Depending on the school, the early round will include a lot of athletes and legacies. But still, the actual admit odds of the unhooked/RD pool might be only 25% of the overall pool. Without a hook, you really are going to be swimming upstream in RD. Basically, unhooked/RD is playing Powerball.
@sable999 Depending on schools the difference in stats between hooked and unhooked can be vast or minimal. For top ten type of schools the stats for unhooked is meaningless anyway in its prediction of chance because virtually all unhooked applicants have stats in the top 1% range and the tippy top schools don’t distinguish 1% vs 0.1%. The admission success lies almost entirely in the unobservables like LoRs, essays, ECs etc.
For unhooked at top ten schools, I think the admission rate is roughly half of the published rate, if that helps.
Not all schools consider race/ethnicity or legacy in admission.
Larger schools will have a smaller percentage of students who are recruited athletes than smaller schools.
“All American” kids have many choices when it comes to colleges so you should be fine. I told my wife our unhooked ORM “All American” kid had less than 2.5% chance to get into Stanford. But he had an “All American” Univ of South Carolina Honors College in good old South as an option too. His chance to get into USC Honors was 99%+ because he was an All American ORM good student. So my answer is: 1% to 99% depending on college.
I agree with @websensation.
I think the RD rate and half the acceptance rate are probably the best way to start, they may actually end up being the same or very close to each other. You’ll need to factor other things too - you mentioned state with a lot of good applicants, that will lower the acceptance even more, in addition to race/ethnicity, where Asians will have even lower RD rate. In the bay area e.g. Asians applying RD to the five ivies with ED face 1-2% rates, so they apply ED and many get in that way. If your school has Naviance and a fairly homogeneous population, you can get a good view of the selective colleges, and you can maybe find out how many got in RD vs ED from the guidance counselors.
My kids applied EA everywhere they could, but avoided SCEA and ED. One legacy kid got into the legacy school the other didn’t. Actually the higher scoring, higher grades kid did slightly less well in admissions that I had hoped while the younger one did better. They both had extremely reach-heavy lists with a couple of safeties - so they were both prepared for rejections. My older kid had some pretty impressive ECs, but not the standard Intel finalist stuff - so it was hard to know if colleges would appreciate him. His essays were of the “good for an engineer” ilk. Don’t know what his letters were like. Younger son had an unsual activity and was a much better writer. He played up his sense of humor and his intellectual curiosity in a couple of his essays. At the time he applied he got into any school with an acceptence rate of 20% or better which included Tufts, Vassar and Chicago EA (which was much tougher in the RD round). Naviance did a good job of predicting how my kids would do. Younger son’s set a couple of new low bars, but he was right on the edge of a good number of green dots. Both kids are middle class white boys with over-educated parents. Older was a STEM kid, younger was not.
This thread is incredibly informative. If I’m following the logic correctly, a student who is “unhooked,” then, really needs scores that are above the reported median range on a school’s common data set to have a decent chance at admission for a school. So the scores that look like a match would actually be a reach, and the scores that look like a safety would actually be a match. Is that an reasonable generalization to make? It would be so helpful to have a guiding principle to follow.
I wholehearted apologize for the “all american kid” comment. It was a very poor choice of words. I am thrilled to see the increased representation from populations that have been under represented (I was a first gen, myself). I was simply trying to describe the situation. There is a ton of special things about my daughter, but nothing that stands out as a hook or notable in the application process. I am sorry for my choice of words.
@northwesty @mathmom @websensation and others…Thanks for your responses. A lot of good points brought up in this thread. Helpful as we create a list of colleges to have a more realistic sense of what are truly stretch, reach, fit and safety schools. Feel like everything just needs to be ratcheted down a notch. Maybe just create a “lottery” category and move all the rest down one tier and that would be more accurate. Probably best to err on the side of caution. I feel like looking at the published stats can be misleading for these students. I know it was for a number the applicants in this years graduating class. Thank you all!
In general, the more your applicant matches a large number of applicants in the same pool, the lower your chances. But a student can stand out by not being a lemming. Pick schools based on fit, not ranking. Bring geographic diversity. Pursue ECs that are atypical. Study for good test scores, and plan enough time for a retake as needed.
“So the scores that look like a match would actually be a reach, and the scores that look like a safety would actually be a match. Is that an reasonable generalization to make?”
That sounds reasonable, for unhooked you should be at the 75% of the scores published and the top of the GPA range.
“Bring geographic diversity.”
The OP is in a high performing state, so if it’s CA, MA, NY, CT, IL, PA, TX, NJ etc., that’s not going to help, unless it’s in a low-income neighborhood or perceived low-income neighborhood.
My younger son’s stats were in the top 25% for the CR part of the SAT and the bottom 25% for math SAT for most of the colleges he applied to. I had no idea how to evaluate that! Luckily he loved his safety and I figured verbal boys are a little less thick on the ground than STEM boys.
You can apply to colleges that want people from your state. East coast? Apply to Carleton, Grinnell, Reed, Gonzaga, Occi, Redlands, Colorado College, Rhodes. The Northeast doesn’t have a monopoly on good schools.