@Lindagaf Of course. As I have told my kids many times, they reap the benefits of being ORM every day. They are lucky. Very lucky. I am not questioning whether the situation is fair or unfair, good or bad. I was simply trying to ascertain a more realistic view of admission chances for this type of student given that the more I dig in, the more the published stats seems to be not really representative of what my student can expect, and we should plan accordingly. I don’t think telling my kids, don’t worry, ORM unhooked kids are doing “just fine” will be particularly helpful to any of us, but agree that ORM ARE doing “just fine”.
As for my comment in post #57, when I said I am sad for “these students”, I was referring to the students who don’t have some exceptional accomplishment or an extremely deep dive passion at this age. That applies to ANY student who would fit that bill. I guess maybe I long for the days when “well rounded” was not such a bad thing.
"I do think that Bucknell, Lehigh, F&M are different though then the tip top schools, as the ED admit rate is near 60%. That does mean you are getting a pretty good boost at ED and that they value kids who want to be there. That’s a bit different than at a Williams or a Bowdoin etc. "
Those schools are actually all doing the same thing. They fill half their seats early, and the early admit rate is almost 3X the overall rate. They just are at different levels of selectivity.
Lehigh is 26% overall vs. 60% early. Williams is probably something like 15% and 35%.
And yes I know that you have to adjust the raw admit rates for the hooked applicants that very often come in through the early door. And also for the stronger early pool strength. But applying early is clearly a hook all on its own. Although strength varies – stronger at Duke and Penn than at Brown for example.
If you are otherwise unhooked and it makes sense, it can be very impactful to elect to use the hook that is available – applying ED/SCEA/REA.
@northwesty This has been my primary takeaway from this discussion. I appreciate your spelling out the value of ED/SCEA/REA for unhooked students in a clear way. Definitely something we will need to ponder this summer.
“I feel bad for the kids who have yet to find their “passion”. Heck, I think I am still looking. Both my kids are really solid human beings, play three sports but won’t be college athletes (probably because they wanted to play three sports and not specialize), taken hard classes (lot of AP) and done very well (3.8-3.9 UW GPA) have good but not great test scores (1460-1520), have had jobs and leadership in ECs but nothing exceptional. They have great character and have made the most of HS (expect very good recs), but they have not honed in on one thing. They are well rounded.”
@sable999 – ED was made for your well rounded kids. Especially if you are full pay or will qualify for enough need based aid to make the money work. ED is not so good if you need to shop for merit money.
Assuming the money works, do your homework to identify a high fit school that is not too out of reach for admissibility. You only get one silver bullet, so it is important to aim carefully. But applying to a correctly targeted school early is very often outcome determinative.
P.S. There’s a lot of BS and packaging that goes into the “passion” thing. I don’t think the adcoms would really like to read college essays from 17 year old males talking about their truest passions at that age…
I felt same when I started reading these boards and watching kids with outstanding grades and accomplishments rejected for top schools. but I have since changed my view. First, it isn’t at all clear that “passion” is exactly what the schools are looking for. It may vary by year and it may vary by school. I hear a lot of talk now from admissions counselors seeking service oriented and community oriented kids so the goal posts may be moving once again, if we were ever interpreting it right in the first place. But, regardless of what we think it takes to get in, it doesn’t matter. All of this only comes into play at the very top schools with admission rates in the low teens and single digits. The truth is, no one can count on those schools regardless of their passion or past experience. The excellent, well rounded kids that you are talking about are highly sought after at hundreds of fine schools with admissions rates at 25+%. Not very long ago, the Ivies and all the top schools had rates in this range and higher. The only sad thing is when a kid or his family gets stuck on a particular school or group of schools that is generally out of reach for everyone.
“I did attend an admission session at Princeton and someone asked if their student with a 34 ACT should retake the test to try to get a 36 and the admission officer said no, spend the time doing something you have a passion for”
That’s interesting, most adcoms will not give advice on retaking tests since they claim it’s a personal decision between the student and family. There are also many other colleges where a 36 would make a difference and if you’re applying for scholarships as well.
Since a 34 and a 36 on the ACT are both 99th percentile, I think most colleges would treat them as indistinguishable—the difference is essentially just “noise.”
@sable999 In terms of your post 57 and others…just to give you some hope…my D1 was well rounded without one singular “passion.” She had several passions (btw, like yours, also a three varsity sport kid, but other passions too). She got into some highly selective schools like Brown, Penn and Tufts, and was WL at Princeton. No hooks. She’s white, by the way.
The advice from Princeton makes perfect sense – for Princeton.
P’s ACT range is 31-35. If Princeton (or HYS) wanted to have their range be 35-36 they could easily accept and enroll a class with those stats. But the data comports with the advice – once you get above average on P’s test score range, they start looking for and optimizing for other things. But you wouldn’t necessarily get the same advice at other schools.
For example, the range at Vandy and ND is 32-35. That would seem to suggest that those schools like the high scores more. If asked, they’d likely tell you a 35 or 36 would have more admissions juice at their school than a 34.
@sable999 My ORM, non-STEM kid had 3,9, 2150 SAT (sophomore), 33 ACT (junior) but somehow made NMF in CA and had mostly 5s, 4s and few 3s in APs. He’s neither great at math nor Humanities. Still got into all colleges he applied to, including Honors Colleges, UCB, UCLA and Stanford. In fact, everyone else got denied from Stanford and other HYPSM. Even his school counselor said “Holy s***” when she found out he got into Stanford early. By the way, we never groomed our kid for a top ranked school. We would have been ecstatic if he got into either UCLA/Berkeley, and was willing to consider OOS Honors. LACs were out because our kid did not like the small campus feel.
@websensation Thats great to hear. Its so easy to fixate on all the horror stories. I guess the bottom line is to encourage your kids to present the best version of themselves that they can, apply smartly, choose how to use the ED silver bullet carefully, and see what happens. When it all shakes out “grow where you’re planted”!
@sable999 Give your best on applications, consider Honors Colleges and be happy with your choices. I actually would have been happy if my kid went to an OOS Honors but my wife and kid felt since we could afford the costs, why not go to Stanford. My focus was not on saving money per se but I really thought I could turn the 4 years cost at Stanford into half millions dollars by the time he graduated from college. My kid chose going to Stanford over receiving $300k+ in his bank account. It’s his choice. He says he’s investing in himself. I told him he’s turning out to be a quite expensive investment. Lol
The point is that we have no way of knowing, because the data presented is incomplete and is not presented in a way tha would allow for controlling for that factor. That’s why no conclusions admission chances can be drawn from the Brown report, except perhaps on an exclusionary basis – that is, to determine the level at wich the test scores or class rank is too low to merit consideration. From the website data we can see that the number has to be somewhat below a 550 CR score, given that 21 students were admitted with scores in that range. (We know from another source - the common data set for that class year - that Brown actually enrolled 6 or 7 students with CR scores in 400-499 range; See https://www.brown.edu/about/administration/institutional-research/sites/brown.edu.about.administration.institutional-research/files/uploads/Brown%20CDS_2016-2017_Final_1.pdf)
We know that Brown considers admission factors in addition to the ones reported - some objective, like high school GPA, and many subjective ones – such as rigor of secondary school record, academic GPA, application essay, recommendations, talent/ability, and character/personal qualities-- all of which Brown considers “most important” in weighing admission.
Brown also has ED, and accepted 22% of its class ED that year – and no way to tease out ED vs RD data from the score reports.
You can’t just draw conclusions from isolated data points. For an example of a somewhat more informative way of presenting data see the Harvard Crimson report at http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/admissions.html – the scatterplot showing GPA vs. SAT score shows a large cluster at of overlapping high end GPA’s and test scores, but also shows a clear indication of the interplay between the two factors. For example, that a 2300 SAT/ 3.4 GPA combination essentially equated to a an 1820 SAT/ 3.9 GPA. (That data has its own separate issues… but it is just an example of a chart that controls for two separate variables known to be relevant and important).
If my kid followed what his school Naviance data showed, no way he would have applied to Stanford. It’s good to look at it for selecting safer school though.
He “thinks” he wants to be an ambassador to China. However, he may end up marketing for a multinational company using his language skills. He cannot be a doctor because he can’t stand sight of blood, and he cannot become an engineer because he is not good in math. Ideally, he would be a good person involved in negotiations involving US, China and two Koreas. He has a good demeanor and likes to work as a team. I rather he go into an influential diplomatic role than focus on making money.
I didn’t view schools as safeties based on Naviance data. I only considered certain OOS Honors Colleges as safeties only because the reps told me my NMF kid would get in with merit scholarship. I guess they could have lied but I just believed them in good faith. Even freshman profiles supplied by schools were not helpful at all.
"Since a 34 and a 36 on the ACT are both 99th percentile, I think most colleges would treat them as indistinguishable—the difference is essentially just “noise.”
It’s not noise, approx 2500 kids get a 36, 32,000 get a 34 or 35, that’s a big difference. At Princeton and HYSM, it’s not worth it, I agree. But for everybody else including the five ivies that have ED and Cal Tech, Chicago, NW, Duke, the top LACs, etc. it’s a difference.