Angst over schools, great scores, ehh grades

<p>hmom5 - put a forward slash / in front of last quote, like

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then your quote should work. If you want to do bold, then **, and do the same as for the second ** with a slash.</p>

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<p>Epi, how can I be mischaracterizing her remarks in the form of writing a statement of my own? </p>

<p>In addition, how could I be mischaracterizing the following remarks: </p>

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<p>Who do you think are the “posters who post the real odds” and the “parents [who]have no idea what it takes to get into Stanford and CMC today?” … according to Hmom5?</p>

<p>People DO overcome the poor odds. But the fact is, a lot of people THINK they’re going to. There are a lot of people in OP’s situation, who just KNOW their kid is smarter than their grades reflect, and most of them do not in fact get into top schools. Just because it occasionally happens doesn’t mean it’s a realistic goal…</p>

<p>Your son can apply to any of the schools they want, but no one should complain in April if they feel like they wasted all of their time and money on those applications.</p>

<p>Post 42:</p>

<p>Well, I can’t answer question #2, because that would be for hmom to answer.</p>

<p>As to question #1, I thought I explained myself. (I gathered from context that she was referring to odds, not “predictions.” Which is what many other posters have also done.) By contrast, it seemed that you interpreted her statements as flat predictions.</p>

<p>Epiphany, there was no interpretation nor mischaracterization on my part. I was very clear about which part of Hmom’s post I was addressing. If you missed it, here is it is again:</p>

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<p>Fwiw, does she possess any kind of special qualifications to be able to not only weigh the odds of an applicants correctly but also to be able to know “who can speak about what it takes to get into Stanford and CMC today.” </p>

<p>Of course, everything is possible on an anonymous forum that allows anyone to make up fantastic stories and create as many characters as one’s vivid imagination requires.</p>

<p>Xiggi, all of our opinions/thoughts/statements are based on something.</p>

<p>For example, does the value of your CMC degree go up as the school becomes more selective and rejects more students? Could something in your subconscious be driving you to encourage less than qualified candidates? As you say, on anonymous message boards you never know where the stories are coming from.</p>

<p>I’ll tell you they are wrong. I have a 3.2, 1430 SAT score (out of 1600), and I got into UMiami (which had an 8% acceptance rate), students with slightly higher GPA’s and significantly lower SAT scores have gotten into UPenn. The middle 50% SAT score for UCLA (one of the best, if not the best non-Ivy League) school is 1170-1410. Now, I wouldn’t be able to get into UCLA because they have a major out of state bias, but that also means they have an in-state bias. If he is a California Resident he should be able to get into UCLA.</p>

<p>Now, with that said, class rank is very important. I took a lot of AP’s so I ended being in the top 5%, but if he’s top 10% he should be fine</p>

<p>Post 46:</p>

<p>Again, xiggi, it’s always best to ask someone directly what his or her assumptions & motivations are, rather than trying to determine that from a 3rd party. The answers to your particular questions on this thread about a poster other than myself would be wild guesses on my part.</p>

<p>primetimekin:</p>

<p>(Who are “they”?)</p>

<p>That’s fine, but those tidbits of news you provide are out of context. We don’t know what else UPenn students brought to the table, nor you, for Miami.</p>

<p>Yes, the student in question will be in a good position if he’s top 10%. But we know precious little about the student; generalities have been posted, but specifics make all the difference. That’s why we can’t make determinations, only suggestions. But assuming that there would be stasis, and that the student continues to find HW “an issue,” he may have difficulty sustaining motivation to improve his gpa. Proceeding strictly from posted data, it would be wise to weight his list conservatively, while not excluding many ideas posted on CC.</p>

<p>Everything in college admissions is relative to environment (context): what’s available to the student, and what’s available to the colleges from among the students applying. The CA publics (the OP’s family currently lives in CA) are particularly popular and attract mostly students with a good to excellent grade performance. Student population pressure on CA publics is significant, particularly for those CA students interested in the sciences. The pressure results in a practical selectivity that significantly exceeds the raw Eligibility Index for the UC’s. (The OP’s son is almost surely UC- “eligible.”)</p>

<p>I’ll repeat what I said earlier: we do not know what this candidate’s UC gpa is. That can make all the difference, in terms of putting him in a competitive position for UC’s such as SB and SC. Several of us have said on other threads that the increasing lack of predictability regarding UC admissions makes it prudent for any student with borderline stats to widen the college list to include OOS publics, and in-state and out-of-state privates.</p>

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<p>Interesting comment, Hmom5! </p>

<p>I think we can pretty much leave actions triggered by " subconscious" forces out of the equation! It is so much easier to refer to one’s record on College Confidential. To make it simple I do not encourage anyone to apply to any particular school, I rarely if ever partcipate in the WAMC (mostly because I consider those threads to be the pinnacle of futility) and I surely do not spend my time waving the CMC pompoms or try to increase the number of applications at CMC. </p>

<p>On very rare occasions, I reply to a direct request to offer an opinion or additional information … which I assume to have to be based on personal experience. This is exactly what happened in this case. </p>

<p>The part I further find interesting is your not so veiled comment that people who would not tell the OP that his son better forget about selective schools are somehow misguiding the OP by not focusing on the existing statistics. I believe your comment about “people who offer realistic odds” spoke volumes about this precise point. </p>

<p>At the end of the day, with the admissions rates well below 20% at both CMC and Stanford, it is much easier to tell a far from perfect applicant that his chances are close to nil than to offer an opinion that the admissions are not as formulaic as one pretends them to be. </p>

<p>Perhaps this difference in opinions comes from one side relying on generic statistical information and an approximate or not so recent understanding of the admissions at particular schools and the other relying on direct, recent, and personal experience at the same schools.</p>

<p>Xiggi, again, I never said to forget any of these schools. My suggestion was to focus on less competitive schools while throwing in apps anywhere he likes. </p>

<p>Take it for what it’s worth to you, but one thing I’ve seen on CC is too many outliers putting lots of energy into unlikely schools while not spending the time to show schools that really care about demonstrated interest the love and blow their chances at them. Want to write 3 Stanford supplements with a 1% choice that’s fine, but it might be helpful if someone points out the time may be better spent visiting Vandy.</p>

<p>Primetime, UMiami has an 8% acceptance rate. Too lazy to check, but really??</p>

<p>Also, UCLA is trying to double their number of our of state students in one year. I’d say the bias this year in in favor of those from OOS. As for low SATs, they’ve been drawing primarily from one of the worst K-12 systems in the Country. If they truly open themselves up to kids from all over, those numbers with rise significantly overnight.</p>

<p>As for Penn, I’ve interviewed them for 3 years. Yes, lots of kids with under a 1430 get in. They’re called the nearly half of the class that’s hooked. Do a few unhooked sneak in with that score, sure, but I can only remember 2 in my region in the last several years and they were truly outstanding in other respects.</p>

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<p>If that were ALL you said, I do not think you’d have had to read my last 4-5 of posts. </p>

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<p>Again, who are we to CORRECTLY decide who is an outlier and who is not? And who is to say that an incredible compelling story cannot be told in those three Stanford supplemental essays. </p>

<p>You never know how Little Suze or Little Jan could sway the tough readers in Palo Alto with a simple story of cake and pancakes baking in Europe and overcoming the formidable odds of growing up in family where no one baked. Sometimes all it takes is a sweet story of being able to use cumin and coriander to win friends and influence people. </p>

<p>Stranger things have been known to happen in the vicinity of Atherton!</p>

<p>Anything’s possible, xig. But very few people in the universe, if there are any of these, are aware of recent non-hooked admits to Stanford & Penn with UW “B” gpas, applying RD. I do know of one extremely recent one, to one of those 2 schools, who was hooked, major. Not just tipped (although she was also that). Her weighted was 3.7+ Most of her coursework was AP level. (Her UW was less than 3.7 because of her huge e.c. commitments.)</p>

<p>Hooked categories, as you know, are extremely defined.</p>

<p>The OP asked for a reality-check. Several of us gave him that, plus some considerable level of hope. He and his son are free to discard all of the advice and apply only to super reaches if they choose. But I take people at their word when they ask for something.
:)</p>

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<p>Hmom5, I think that you are speaking out of both sides of your mouth. You obviously DO think that it’s a complete waste of time to apply to reaches because the time spent on those applications steals time that could be better spent on applications to matches and safeties causing some to “blow it”. You seem to think that the numbers don’t lie. This is where I strongly disagree with you. Nobody has suggested not applying to matches and safeties. However, I think it’s worthwhile to apply to reaches also. Many of these schools look at the individual, and as I’ve said, outlier individuals can get outlier results. That is the complete source of my disagreement with you. You discourage the longshot altogether as complete folly, and statistically you are correct. I encourage the longshot. You see a probability of 1/10 and say small chance. I see a probability of 1/10 and say that somebody has to win, it might as well be me. Nobody has ever hit a longshot without placing the bet.</p>

<p>Wasn’t there a thread, where the poster put out his stats and asked for input regarding HYP and the like, where he got feedback saying he was wasting his time, then he revealed that he was actually attending Harvard?</p>

<p>Similarly, a poster shared that a top college consultant had been pretty disparaging of her daughter’s chances at Barnard only to have the daughter accepted?</p>

<p>I have the impression that particularly at liberal arts colleges that are looking at a specific kind of student, if the application is treated like an “audition”, highlighting why a student is a genuine match and there are other really solid aspects to the app. (test scores, stand out ecs, essays etc.) some of the numbers things can be transcended.</p>

<p>I’ve met people who got that kind of advice. Some well-meaning people told them “Yes, you’re a smart kid, I’m sure you can show that even though you have poor grades”, and what they heard was “I can get into Stanford just as easily as those 4.0 kids if I make my essays good”. When you’ve been ardently hoping for months to get into an Ivy League, it’s hard to accept ending up at a middle-tier state university instead… and the fact is, that’s what will happen to most of them.</p>

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<p>If time and effort was not an element, I would agree. But these kids have a few months to focus on a school list, essays, visits and keeping up senior year grades.</p>

<p>Xiggi, sure, I guess you never know. As an adcom I’m not sure I’d have been touched by the incredible handicap of growing up in a home where no one baked, but I guess you can luck out with a brownie addict adcom! Though didn’t a brownie backfire in Gatekeepers?</p>

<p>All of you saying you never know do have a point, but not a strong one in my opinion. As we steadily watch the numbers applying go out at top schools and the number of admits at many approaching a single digit, I would just want to make my kids very aware of the odds and help them spend the limited time wisely.</p>

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<p>True, Becca Jannol’s brownie did not impress the adcoms at Wesleyan as much as Blair’s baking story did with Maria Laskaris’ colleagues in Hanover. Indeed, you never know what others think or know!</p>

<p>dadwantshelp, one more thing occurred to me. </p>

<p>If your son has 5’s in at bunch of APs. He has a shot at Oxford or Cambridge universities in the UK, where they will not look or care about his grades just his test scores. It is very different education than a liberal arts college and he has to choose his major in advance and can’t change. The admissions process involves looking at AP scores and going through a personal interview where he will be challenged with on the spot thinking. Oddly enough, he may have a better shot at Oxford/Cambridge than a competitive US university. The application deadline is very early though, I think October 1.</p>

<p>“I have a 3.2, 1430 SAT score (out of 1600), and I got into UMiami (which had an 8% acceptance rate)”</p>

<p>No surprise that you were admitted. According to College Navigator, U Miami has a 38-39% admission rate, 25th-75th percentile SAT CR: 580, 680; SAT math: 610, 700.</p>

<p>The OP can use College Navigator to compare his son’s stats with colleges his son may apply to, and then can use that info to estimate his S’s odds of admission:
[College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/]College”>College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics)</p>