“There’s a lot of BS and packaging that goes into the “passion” thing.”
Agree, passion is an overused word that colleges use to say why they picked one applicant over another. And most of the applicants that are rejected do show passion, whether it’s art, music, theater, programming, sports, service, science, etc… One issue you get is if you travel around the country or world to pursue a passion, colleges think it could be more privilege than talent. The other is if you’re inconsistent, your ECs don’t align with your major or what you wrote about in the app.
@mathmom Agreed. That is why AOs say over and over that tests are not an adequate predictor of college success—this was an axiom even when my wife was an AO years ago. That is why grades and rigor of curriculum are listed first in almost every school’s admission criteria. Tests are useful, however, in distinguishing (to a certain degree) among a bucket of kids all with 4.0 GPAs and similar rigor. In my personal experience, most kids with high test scores and low grades proceeded to earn low grades in college, whereas the hardworking kids with mediocre test scores did just fine.
Yeap. I had very high test scores and low GPAs throughout my academic career mainly because I wasn’t interested in getting good grades and wanted to learn at my own pace and style. For example, I read many books on my own that had nothing to do with class curriculum. But being lazy academically did not mean I was lazy in my career once I was sufficiently motivated. But I never thought I was less smart because some kids had 4.0 gpa and I had 3.0 gpa. In fact, more structure there was in class learning, more I got bored.
Some of those high test taker - low grade kids did fine in college once the majority of courses they took were things they wanted to study. And many college courses don’t require as much busy work or handing in of homework. Others turned out to have executive function issues and floundered. It’s hard to predict.
Yes. I got around 2.2 gpa in STEM courses for two years even with 790 in SAT nath because I had to study in STEM to get good grades, but in English Lit I found I read most of the books and skipped many classes and still got near 4.0. I made some money by helping STEM kids edit their papers. For me, I did not want to study for tests too much and simply decided not to study too much. I didn’t blow my parents’ money too much because colleges were mostly free for me.
45 Although I agree the numbers give hope to those below tippy top scores, there are basic flaws in any of the conclusions we can draw from the profiles because the colleges don't tell you how many (%s need context) per bracket applied. In the Brown #s, for example, there may have been 4 kids applying with 800 scores and 1 (roughly) acceptance while their could have been 100 applying with 720 and 10 acceptances. So 10 times as many. Or it could be completely reversed. They don't provide the numbers so it's hard to tell. The Common Data Set may provide actual raw numbers so you can see both volume and percentage.
@sable999 I completely agree what you said about your kids. I am an alumni interviewer for my Ivy League alma mater. I interviewed two kids this year who I adored…best I’ve met in years of doing this. One was a kid who I thought to myself “this is me a generation ago”. He was a solid middle class kid who, in my opinion, would have a big new world opened up to him by going to my alma mater and he would do great things. But I sat there knowing there was no way he was going to get accepted in spite of my glowing review. And it made me really really sad.
@bclintonk:
"I have no idea why, as between the two schools, nearly twice as many Illinoisans end up at Grinnell while nearly twice as many New Yorkers and Massachusetts residents end up at Carleton.
Grinnell is closer to IL than Carleton is, being in a neighboring state.
Carleton is closer to a major airport than Grinnell is, being within driving distance of the Twin Cities.
“Or why Minnesotans seem willing to attend in-state Carleton but Iowans don’t seem so keen on in-state Grinnell.”
I would not draw that conclusion. Note that Iowa has roughly half the population of MN. There are slightly over twice as many Minnesotans at Carleton as at Grinnell. There are twice as many or more Iowans at Grinnell as at Carleton.
@PurpleTitan Carleton used to attract a lot of students from California and New York because back in the day the way they calculated need based aid was more generous for people with expensive homes, but modest incomes. I don’t know if that is still the case, but it made it better known there, so it is likely on more Californians’ radar. There are also a fair number of alumni in California and New York compared to other states, so word of mouth probably plays a part.
Take all this advice to heart so that you develop a good range of schools to apply to. But throw in a well researched reach or two. My son’s only regret was not reaching higher, and seeing if he would have gotten into HYPS. We were extremely limited in funds for applications (and he was admitted to all he applied), and pretty convinced that the odds were against him. Turns out, that was certainly true, but now the chance has passed to try.
At my kids HS kids in the top 1% with perfect ACT scores and nice but not spectacular Ec’s ( say captain of field hockey amd Model U.N. President) get into HYPS maybe 1% of the time ( they do have more success at schools ranked just a tad lower). The same stats kid URM pretty much has had a 100 percent success rate at HYPS.
According to google maps the driving distance from Chicago to Grinnell is 4 hr 30 min, and from Chicago to Northfield is 6 hr 9 minutes. Longer, sure, but not by much. But maybe there’s a psychological barrier to being two states away. On the other hand, lots of Chicago-area kids go to Michigan, and you need to cross Indiana to get there. (I suppose technically Michigan and Illinois are contiguous, but the common boundary is somewhere out in the middle of Lake Michigan). And in 2014 Oberlin had roughly twice as many new freshmen from Illinois as Carleton did, even though they’re about equally distant from Chicago—google maps says 5 hr 58 minutes to Oberlin, and that’s two states away. From the North Shore and northwest suburbs, Carleton is actually closer.
I don’t mean to make a big deal about it. Just a curiosity.