@Chellylax222222222222
“If she is a 29 cum ACT looking at a school that has a 29-33 mid 50% range is she setting herself off in the wrong foot.”
I don’t think so. One test score doesn’t define a person nor does it predict a student athlete’s outcome. You know your daughter’s qualities. Is she tenacious, organized, and a good critical thinker? I think these are the qualities that are indicative of being successful at a reach school as an athlete, not a standardized test score. I’m assuming she’s considering a NESCAC school based on your question.
My son is an athlete at an Ivy, and entered with an ACT score in the 25th percentile. But his class rank was in the top 5% and he took the most APs he could (7) and scored mostly 5s. He did go through a tough learning curve especially with adapting to being surrounded by very bright students that pushed the curve way more than he would’ve liked.
Once my son got the hang of professor expectations, workload and sport commitments it got better.
Fit can’t be stressed enough. Weigh the major offered, team chemistry and coaching philosophy as those factors should be given high consideration since they will take up the bulk of her time.
I do agree with the “so what if they drop out of STEM” at least to some extent. My SIL put down “pre-med” as a probably major (not that it’s a major). I don’t know what she was thinking - she has never had any real interest in science or math. She ended up majoring in English. She’s had many jobs and interests since. Journalist, children’s librarian, nursery school teacher, applied to be an Episcopalian priest, and finally found her calling as a zoning/planning expert for small towns. I do think some women drop out of STEM because they still are treated like second class citizens. Or for whatever reasons feel less confident even though they are doing as well or as badly as guys who stick with it.
mathmom, I think many kids learn some of the stem programs, notably engineering, are not what they thought they’d be. They see the folks who make great cutting edge inventions or products that help others and miss that the work is incremental, you’re just one part of a team, the development cycle is long, there isn’t always the great or easy glory they envisioned, etc. Lots of kids wannt BME and talk about inventing prosthetic limbs, not realizing alll youmay do is work on one hinge or its materials.
It’s not unlike premeds who start to learn being a doctor day in and day out is not what they thought.
Dropping out of stem matters a lot if that is where the student’s interest and aptitude rests. That can change the course of a person’s life. Since we are exchanging anecdotes, I will relate one cousin who went to an ivy to be an engineer. She was well suited to that field, but found the competition too difficult there, and transfered to a social science major. She did well academically then, and landed a job in that field, but her skills and temperament never really matched the field, which she found frustrating.
As an aside, I can assure you from personal experience that in looking for employment, it was far better to be at the very top of the class at a good, but just top 14 law school, then in the middle of the class at a top 3 school. Know where the student will flourish, regardless of ranking. It really is all about fit.
What you are saying is so true, @roycroftmom. My children came out of a commerce program here in the Great White North that had a 6.5% admission rate, no standardized score requirements, no attempt to inflate the application numbers, and the only thing that resembles a hook is an attempt to maintain a 50-50 split of M and F. It was not a very good fit. While they could hold their own in soft subjects such as organizational behaviour, they had a hard time in the heavy quant subjects such as finance, where the best students were.
Because they graduated at the middle and lower half of the class respectively, they did not receive any offer while in school and had to compete in the greater market place. It took them 5-7 years to work up to positions commensurate with their ability. I believe they would have been better served in a strong but less elite program with a co-op option.
D1 returned to school for a post graduation certificate in a different area of business. This time she graduated top of the class. (There was no comparison between the two cohorts). She was able to get the best co-op placement, and a job offer immediately at graduation.
If the student’s interest and aptitude are truly there, the chances of succeeding in stem improve. Aptitude, not just dreams. Supported by the right prep, awareness of challenges, willingness and determination to overcome them. This isn’t about just wishing for something. The higher the bar, the more need to be on your game. If there’s uncertainty, choose a different college.
Really, finding your “fit” colleges is much more than dreams. If you’re thinking of a reach, be savvy.
Not all jobs are based on college gpa or rank. On this thread, the point wasn’t coming out top of the pack. Rather, “succeeding,” which is much broader than that.
Looking forward, the college matters a whole lot more. To be a math major at Princeton, one had better have a top AIME score and be ready to compete with IMO winners from around the world, because that is who attends Princeton to major in math. In comparison, a student with ordinary excellent math skills should be able to major in math at UVA, for example, or Tufts, or many other fine schools, and graduate. The cohort is different.
To @roycroftmom’s point I’ve always felt that especially at the top level the range of ability in math is more obvious than in any other subject, since hard work really can’t compensate for lesser ability as much as it can do in say a lab or essay-based course. In my math cohort it was obvious within the first eight weeks where people stood and there was very little they could do about it in subsequent years. But that doesn’t really have a lot to do with their SAT/ACT score at somewhere like Princeton, since there is an enormous range of math ability even amongst people with perfect scores.
Many, many people have aptitude if they are in the right cohort. Students can shine as engineers at Rutgers who may not survive MIT. Such can be the complications of a reach school.
Majors at Princeton and other highly selective privates generally want students to be successful, rather than trying to weed out all but the top students. They generally offer numerous options to help dedicated students succeed including office hours, tutors, counselors/advisors, multiple underclassmen math seuquences and starting points with placement tests and/or placement advisors, special assistance programs underrepresented groups, option to retake and replace lower grades, etc.
Most math courses at highly selective privates are not curved. It’s usually only the intro freshman type courses that are sometimes curved, and those curves usually reflect the portion of students doing A quality work. With Princeton’s grade deflation history, they probably have the harshest grading among Ivy League colleges. Nevertheless, ~60% of grades are A’s and ~40% of grades are B’s. Grades below B’s are rare — much more A grades and fewer C grades than less selective colleges like UVA and Tufts. Princeton often intentionally gives a more generous curve that the standard in the more accelerated/rigorous math sequences. For example, Princeton’s math 203 syllabus states, “MAT203 is graded with a more generous curve than MAT201 in order to remove considerations of grades as a deciding factor between the two courses.” In short I wouldn’t assume it’s harder to get an A at Princeton than at UVA and/or be successful in math.
I also wouldn’t assume the UVA is lacking in high scoring students. UVA has ~1200 students with a 760+ math SAT. Princeton has only ~700. I’d expect UVA has more 800 math students students than Princeton as well as 760+, but have not seen stats on this. Of course math SAT is only loosely correlated with academic success, even among majors. I’ve seen multiple threads on this forum about ~800 math SAT students struggling with their first proof based math class, while plenty of lower scoring students do fine. I’d expect there is a higher correlation with having a previous exposure to proof based math courses, rather than how consistently one answers short and simple multiple choice HS algebra questions.
You missed the point. Yes, anyone admitted can fulfill the minimum math requirement at Princeton, but I promise only very few people can major in it, and those people are generally well known before college admission. If you don’t like UVA, fine, choose any other large state school. Ohio state must graduate scores of math majors who are happy and go onto graduate school or careers relevant to their major. Not clear any of them could have survived being a math major at princeton.
The Princeton math major requires taking 8 math classes – 4 self selected and one course in real analysis, one course in complex analysis, one course in algebra, and one course in geometry/topology. Based on grading of other courses at Princeton, I’d expect hardly anyone who takes these 4 classes gets below a B. You really think hardly any math majors at UVA or similar could pass a Princeton math class that rarely gives any grades below B? Princeton doesn’t seem to think so, as they admit math majors to their graduate programs from a wide variety of colleges, including math majors who did all their classes at less selective colleges large state schools, many less selective than UVA. Skimming through Princeton exams, the classes don’t seem really out of the ordinary to me, and it’s been many years since I’ve been well prepared for these types of classes.
First of all, not every stem major (or math) at P has top AIME or done IMO.
And I don’t see why the response is directed to me- I’m calling for “fit.” See post 25. I don’t say it’s just the magic of wanting a major. Not the least (I’m anti-“dreaming.”) I repeatedly tell kids they need to be prepared for the level of competition and the reality of peer prep, after an admit.
And OP was not speaking of Princeton or that level. He/she specificaly noted DIII.
Only on CC does a kid who isn’t assured of a 3.8 GPA worry ahead of time that they can’t compete at a particular college.
In the real world, a kid who enters as a physics major and finds physics boring or too hard or not what he or she thought it was, discovers economics or urban planning or political science and ends up a happy and successful XYZ major. A kid who enters as pre-med but discovers ethnomusicology as his true passion while taking a distribution course…goes ahead and majors in ethnomusicology (and music majors of all types can and do apply to medical school successfully).
I’m old- and yet every year I read about or see or learn or attend a conference and realize that I could have majored in something else and been a happy and fulfilled adult. Geology seemed boring to me when I was 18, but the last few articles I’ve read about flooding in Florida or strip- mining in Nevada makes me realize I’d have loved Geology. I took one Anthropology course and thought it was a snooze but then I read about forensic anthropology and realize it’s fascinating- I just gave up too soon!
A kid who is prepared to work hard in college doesn’t need to worry about “success” IMHO. Most of the “failures” come from excess partying, substance abuse, medical issues, or running out of money. And yes- B students graduate from college and get jobs. Just like A students and C students.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=princeton&s=all&id=186131#programs does indicate that only about 32 students graduate from Princeton as math majors per year, so perhaps there is the allure of Wall Street or computing pulling away the “ordinary good in math” students (e.g. 129 economics/finance and 129 computer engineering graduates per year), leaving only those most committed to math as math majors. Still, 32 is a lot if they are all math-superstar-level (and note that math superstars are not all concentrated at Princeton; those who get into other super-selective colleges may choose the other ones, while some may be too one-dimensional to get into any super-selective college so they go to state flagships or some such).
thank you all so much for your input! We truly appreciate it. We still aren’t sure if DD will apply ED. She feels if she’s meant to be there it will happen.
Having 800 in sat math means nothing when you are majoring in math or areas which require great math skills at top schools. One math wizard I know didn’t get 800 in sat math because sat math is more reading skill than math skills. They laugh at the idea of sat math measuring real math skills. I got 790 in math but was not good in math.
