<p>Advicemom, your d sounds wonderful. I’m not surprised by the rejections because those schools are so incredibly selective but I would expect your daughter to get accepted at somewhere wonderful. I searched and it looks like she is in at Cornell and West Point, is that right? You must be proud. Congratulations! It’s Harvard/Yale/Dartmouth and Brown’s loss. It’s a very different scenario from mary and mental.</p>
<p>Advicemom2016, all those schools you mention are extremely competitive& admission officers have mentioned that the ones they admit don’t look very different from the ones they reject.
In other words-a crapshoot.</p>
<p>Anyway-wasn’t your daughter admitted to Cornell?</p>
<p>Advicemom2016, your daughter sounds amazing. </p>
<p>Problem is, everyone who applies to harvard/yale/dartmouth/brown is amazing in his/her own way. Those schools (and indeed they are need blind) are like a lottery. A total crapshoot, really. There are only so many winners. Hug her, tell her how proud she makes you and help her get past her disappointment. She WILL get into a great school and do very well there. Real winners are like that :)</p>
<p>thanks to Katliamom-emeraldkity4-2collegewego my dd have been accepted to cornell and westpoint and along with gw(presidential scholarship,honor program) full ride to LAC (safety) thank god this admission process is over…</p>
<p>advicemom, sounds like your daughter has some great choices! I’m sure she’ll do well in life.</p>
<p>Here is a thread that may be helpful to next year’s applicants so that they can avoid being shut out:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1314309-how-find-assured-admissions-safety.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1314309-how-find-assured-admissions-safety.html</a></p>
<p>Mary 1963,</p>
<p>Sign him up for the 4 wait lists, with letters from him expressing interest in each school, a more detailed letter from the GC, and perhaps an essay or paper he was written recently. Also, sign him up for the May 5 SAT. It takes three weeks to get scores, and so he should have them by the end of May in time to send the scores to some or all of the WL schools. </p>
<p>Some schools resolve their wait lists quickly, while others wait until June or even mid-July before they finalize the class. If he can bump up his SAT score by 50 to 100 points, this might be enough for at least one of the WL schools (plus it shows how much he wants to go there). 2020 is a good score for most schools, just not for the the top 30-40 colleges. Just my view, but some of these colleges appear to view 2100 as a line of demarcation and if he can get to that level this might make the difference on getting off a WL.</p>
<p>The WL’s this year will be very interesting. With lots of students with great stats applying to 10 or more great schools and getting into 5 or 6 of them, some schools in the 20-40 range of USNWR may be left holding the bag and taking more students than usual. </p>
<p>Also, as others have suggested, get a list of the schools still accepting applications and apply to two or three of them just to make sure he has some where to go next year. As a general matter, it is easier to transfer to a top 40 school then get into one initially (assuming he does well at the school he attends). Plus who knows, he might end up liking that school.</p>
<p>Best wishes to mary1963 and mentalgardener.</p>
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<p>The holistic system seems work well, but lies in it a problem, i.e., they miss out some good students, leaving them to other schools and the rest of us wonder if where one goes to college matters. mini’s D2 is a unique case and mentalgardener’s S might be one too.</p>
<p>If we need a better test than SAT/ACT/GPA/EC, we need one that reliably predicts a student’s potential. We might get one in 10 years when a student’s life can be traced back, via facebook or lifebook or whatever, minute by minute to day 1, plus our entire DNA.</p>
<p>muckdogs07:
“it is easier to transfer to a top 40 school then get into one initially (assuming he does well at the school he attends).”</p>
<p>Why? I thought that the higher ranking the schools and the harder to transfer to, because more likely the students will stay and finish. That’s why we are thinking about Gap year and reapply next year again as 1st yr. freshmen, if my kid ends up nothing this year. Do i miss something here? thanks.</p>
<p>“mini’s D2 is a unique case and mentalgardener’s S might be one too.”</p>
<p>Well, while I think all people are unique, in terms of college admissions and rejections, I think both are very far from being unique. In terms of my d., someone has to occupy the bottom 15% of the admissions pie as far as SATs/ACTs go - to be precise, 15% of those admitted, and attending, almost 1/6th of every admitted class. Not unique at all. I’m sure many, many folks in that category have interesting stories to tell. In terms of MGs’ son, far, far more students with 3.1 GPAs got rejected at all of those schools than were accepted. He’d be in the majority pile by a long way. </p>
<p>These things are NOT lotteries. Far from it. Admissions officers work very hard to craft the best possible class (which involves not only sending out admissions and rejection letters, but getting those who are admitted to attend), and to call it a lottery insults their intelligence, experience, and hard work. </p>
<p>(At American U., their office of institutional admissions posts the actual “chances” - the real thing -based on every SAT/ACT score and every GPA level, for every applicant in the previous year. It shows, quite naturally, that the higher the SAT, or GPA, the higher the chances. It also shows that, at every level, there are students with lower SATs and GPAs that get in. I could go in and plot the stats of Mary, MG, and my own kids and know what the “chances” are, and hence also know how much ground would have to be made up in other ways in indications of creativity, intelligence, commitment, etc.)</p>
<p>Mental…if your son takes a gap year, please consider your application list very carefully. Yes, you might want to have him apply to one or two of those top schools again…but only IF he has done something the first half of his gap year to strengthen his application. </p>
<p>There is an old thread here about a student…andison… Do a search for andison and you should find the thread. Her son applied to a group of good schools…and it sure LOOKED like he had the stats to get accepted. He didn’t. He took a gap year during which he did things that really strengthened his applications for the next round. AND he crafted a different list of schools…mostly. He was much more successful,that second time around…got accepted at MIT where he earned his degree.</p>
<p>It’s a classic CC thread…excellent advice on it.</p>
<p>It seems we are missing what maybe obvious, perhaps these students are not ready for the 4year plan and that is ok.A community college is a great way to test the waters and save a ton of money.When people think of the Presidents’ alma mater Harvard comes to mind.He started undergrad at Occidental.</p>
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</p>
<p>This is true because many of the highly selective schools have very high retention rates. This means some on would have to leave in order for slots to open up for transfer admissions. Your best bet would be to look at the common data set to see how many students apply for transfers and the number of students are accepted. Most schools will hold an application on file for 2 years, so your son may be better served to apply to a different set of schools as a transfer student.</p>
<p>You need to carefully read the school’s website regarding transfer students. Some schools may not give credits for courses taken in community college.</p>
<p>If your son is looking to transfer for sophomore year, it probably won’t help his cause because he really hasn’t put enough distance between him and high school (he will only have one term of college grades).</p>
<p>Where ever he decides to transfer to, he will still have to send his high school transcript. The best thing that your son ca do is to make sure that he finishes this last semester strong. It would be in his best interest to apply as a junior transfer instead of a sophomore transfer because this way he will have a record of having a strong senior year along with with a year and a half of strong college grades.</p>
<p>In the world of CC, there is nothing new under the sun (the thread about andison being shut out and then regrouping, taking a gap year and applying the next year;</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/47867-were-picking-up-pieces-but-what-went-wrong.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/47867-were-picking-up-pieces-but-what-went-wrong.html</a></p>
<p>one year later</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/192395-no-acceptances-one-kids-story-year-later.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/192395-no-acceptances-one-kids-story-year-later.html</a></p>
<p>lake42ks,
Thanks for post#89. My S has put a lots time and energy in his inventions ever since middle school. If one day he gets big money from his invention, he wants to found the development of the “new tests” and programs for highly gifted and talented kids with high test score/low GPA in top schools.</p>
<p>Mary1963 - your son was rejected by UMass Amherst with those scores? I can’t help but think there’s something else going on here. Did you see his essay? Did he write about something disturbing? Did he proofread it? Also gotta wonder about his recommendations - did his teachers call him arrogant and unimaginative? (not implying that he is either, just trying to figure this out).</p>
<p>As for the rest of folks who are arguing about GPA vs test scores - no one’s opinion on this forum matters. All that matters is what the admissions committees think. And in most cases, the admissions committees want both a good GPA (a history of past performance) and good test scores (an objective way to compare kids from school A with kids from school B). Like it, hate it, think it’s wrong - it really doesn’t matter. That’s the way the system is, and that’s what we have to work with.</p>
<p>edit: just re-read the first post. “He took a gap year for personal and health reasons.” What are the personal and health reasons? Have they been resolved? Is there reason to believe they will recur? Was he able to explain to the colleges why he took a year off and why his problems/issues will not follow him to college? Perhaps this is where the really stumbling blocks came for the admissions committees.</p>
<p>Did he apply to only reach schools? Looks like it.</p>
<p>crizzelo - I completely agree. It is too, too competitive.</p>
<p>Thanks for putting those links, Sybbie! Hopefully those two threads will help someone along the way.</p>
<p>Andison did get his degree from MIT. I’m not sure that is on either thread!</p>
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<p>How far back in the day are you talking about? For several years admitted students have averaged over 4.0 weighted at UMCP. This past year the weighted GPA averaged 4.11.</p>
<p>2003…not all that long ago! 3.3 was his unweighted GPA…weighted was higher. I’m quite sure that at the time…the admission standards for Boston university were at least as high as UMDCP. The kid graduated from BU.</p>