^nope, that’s not what Brown is saying. The students are NOT admitted to Brown, or any other competitive school, because they’re valedictorians, they’re admitted for other qualities and just happen to be valedictorians… AND most applicants aren’t ranked anyway!
There is NO causality there. None whatsoever.
The case where a flagship awards significant scholarships to val/sal is a different matter, because there’s actually something at stake.
Same thing for being top 7% or top 10% in Texas or top 9% in California for flagship admission purpose. Note that if you’re ranked 23 or 6 or 34 out of 550, it doesn’t matter for UT admission, let alone being valedictorian. Admission to major is then holistic and not rank-based.
However, by focusing on class rank, including valedictorian status, on that page, Brown leads readers to believe that it is important to rank-grub, whether or not it is the case. Indeed, colleges in general have successfully (mis)led people to believe that admission rate is the most important factor in determining chances, so it would not be surprising if people read this page and saw it as an incentive to rank-grub.
This is so commonly misunderstood.
The UC Eligibility in Local Context only assures that a qualifying student will be admitted to a UC campus that has space available (in practice, UC Merced) if s/he is shut out of all UCs that s/he applies to. In addition, it does not use the high school’s class rank, so there is no incentive to rank-grub. It uses a top 9% benchmark UC-weighted GPA for the high school calculated from previous classes’ UC-weighted GPAs; if the applicant’s UC-weighted GPA exceeds the benchmark, then s/he is Eligible in Local Context.
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/california-residents/local-path/
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/freshman/california-residents/local-path.html
I.e. in California, this top 9% is not a reason to rank-grub or engage in cutthroat competition in high school. A student is only trying to earn grades high enough to exceed the previously set benchmark GPA for his/her high school.
I’d like to know how it’s possible to know everyone else’s GPA to begin with?
Fwiw, my kid took no AP’s ( and yes his school had them) only honors and one CC class (physics) which every kid took there as the CC is right next to his school, which is private. He graduated 23rd out of 63 or there abouts. And while he wasn’t aiming for HYPMS types and didn’t apply to those he ended up at a top 20 LAC.
I feel very sad for the kids who think they have to do all this nonsense. It’s just crazy, IMO.
@mathyone I wouldn’t argue that SAT aren’t important at Brown but that their importance varies depending on the applicant’s circumstances. Brown doesn’t hide the fact that if you come from a high performing high school (public or private), they will expect you to have higher scores. It’a also important to reflect on the significant number of students who are admitted without high scores.
However, holistic admission to competitive majors at UT Austin still includes class rank (in lieu of GPA) as the factor where high school academic performance is considered. Being #1 versus being #38 out of 550 is likely to be significant in terms of getting into a competitive major at UT Austin, even though both are within the top 7%.
^ no. Even at UT, course choices matter more than rank for selective majors. If you’re a valedictorian with only algebra2asking for engineering you’ll be passed over for kids who took calculus.
And, to reiterate, there is special treatment for admissions if you’re valedictorian as long as you’re 7%.
I agree the CA system with system-wide is better but the issue here is 'should you drop a class you enjoy in order to become valedictorian ’ . Since that kid is top 10apparently, even in Texas he could continue orchestra. And pretty much everywhere else it’d actually help keeping orchestra rather than focus on being ranked #1.
The problem is for kids who are not top 10%.
If the kid wants to stick with fine arts, he should do so. The reality is…being class Val isn’t going to matter one bit one year after getting out of HS. Not one bit.
But being able to play in a music ensemble is something this kid can do as a hobby for the rest of his life.
Re #85
So are you saying that, for two UT applicants for engineering, with the same courses in their record, same test scores, etc., the valedictorian has no better chance of getting into the major than the one barely in the top 7%?
Looking back over the original post, I think the question the parents should really be asking is whether it’s in the best educational interest of this student to skip taking AP calculus. I don’t quite understand how that’s an extra elective which could be switched off with orchestra. Is he planning to skip taking math for a year to take orchestra? Orchestra is great but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to drop a core course for it.
I don’t understand the scheduling either.
But choices should be made regardless of rank.
OP has disappeared so we can’t really ask what the two schedules would look like.
87: two absolutely identical candidates ? One #1 and one #5? Both are in. The kid who made it by the skin of his teeth is bumped out. In Texas, kids make it into ut because they deliberately took whatever would bump their rank. When rank is unweighted , it means kids who took lots of lightweight classes. These have zero priority over students with curriculum rigor when it comes to major choice, within reason (IE., in context).
Adding…my DD managed to graduate from HS wothout taking calculus AT ALL. Her highest math course was precalc. And she got accepted to every college of her choice…and graduated with an engineering degree. Imagine that.
Oh…and she was in the honors instrumental ensembles in her HS for all four years, and there was never a question about giving that up for any course. In fact, she had to forego AP USH because it met the same period as instrument ensemble. She wasn’t the only one.
Small HS, one section of each thing. Oh well.
ETA…she also took culinary arts her full senior year instead of a foreign language.
I asked her who her Val was…and she didn’t remember. It’s their 10th HS reunion this year.
Wouldn’t it depend on the schools they’re coming from?
This year for UT, a woman valedictorian from a large Houston school with a 2300 SAT and many ECs was denied admission to bioeng but a male hispanic classmate with lower rank and scores got in. Same school but they considered other factors besides stats.
Brown isn’t saying a whit about being Val making anything easier. 80+% are getting rejected. Not because they are wealthier or in top prep schools.
Because their stats don’t yield any conclusions about their savvy or their apps or accomplishments or thinking or maturity. I’ll have to pick up my thoughts later.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Meaning- Brown’s differential admission rates for Vals vs. everyone else DOES NOT MEAN that Brown prefers Vals, looks for Vals, only admits Vals, or cares about being Val. It likely means that among the pool of kids who apply to Brown (one filter) AND are strong candidates across multiple dimensions (another filter), it is more likely that they are at the top of their class/Val/Sal, etc. than hovering near the median, at the bottom, etc.
There are thousands upon thousands of HS’s in America which means thousands upon thousands of Vals who don’t get into Brown (AND/or don’t apply).
I am not an expert- but during my years of interviewing for Brown I cannot recall anyone on the admissions staff or in my regional rep group caring at all about someone who is/going to be Val. After the fact- once the rest of the story has been told- it is highly likely at any “low rate admissions college” that a high number of Val/Sals will be enrolled. Because kids who are in the middle of the pack academically don’t have the rest of the story.
Strong students apply to low odds admission rate colleges. It is fallacious to conclude that colleges look at the number 1 kid from a HS and ding everyone else… and fallacious to conclude that colleges would prefer to admit the Val over number 6 or 8 or 12.
I went to a HS which ranked. There were kids in the top 10 who went to U Mass Boston, and kids in the high 30’s and 40’s who went to Ivy League colleges. The Val went to a non- BS nursing program where she graduated with an RN and started working in an ER while the rest of us were still hanging out in front of the library throwing frisbees.
Most regular posters here probably already know this.
But what do you think most people, not regular posters here or otherwise in the know about the intricacies of college admissions, will think if they look at that Brown web page and see how admission rates are presented for various class ranks?
In my son’s 6A Texas high school, his friend and fellow drum line member, Wind Symphony member and percussionist is valedictorian and was accepted into 6 Ivies as well as Stanford and Berkeley. It IS possible to do fine arts and excel. I can post the link to the newspaper article if need be or anyone is interested.
UCB- Brown posts those numbers (if I recall correctly) as a check on its reputation as the " no curriculum/pass fail/study whatever you want with no distribution requirements" college which therefore means that everybody should apply and expect to be admitted. Even guidance counselors are guilty of that- this past admissions season I was asked by a neighbor to write a letter of recommendation for their kid- the GC told the kid flat out that she had zero chance of being admitted to a bunch of schools on her list “But Brown is a possibility”. Huh? she’s going to Wisconsin btw (out of state). Lovely kid. Not a single part of application would have gotten her a second look at Brown (or JHU, or Swarthmore, so this is not an “Ivy League is so terrific” story). Don’t know what the GC was thinking- and this is NOT from a clueless HS.
So a small statistic to fend off the Hail Mary pass applications? A small statistic for the mathematically challenged who don’t realize that a 10% or whatever the current number is admit rate means that 90% get rejected???
Here’s a guess for one reason why Vals seem to be admitted at higher rates at Brown. Take a poor or average-ish high school; for example, one that only sends a kid to a top 20 school every 5 to 10 years, or maybe one kid every year. Most of the students there may not even go on to 4 year colleges.
At high schools like these, the kid who’s going to be accepted to Brown is often going to be head and shoulders above their high school peers. They’ll be one of the few students taking all the AP classes, and it’ll be much easier for them to be ranked #1 without needing to play any ranking games. I’ll bet these situations account for a lot of the increased admit rate for Vals and Sals. It’s not the kid from a competitive high school filled with very qualified students who beat out his/her peers by a .001 GPA
Yep. Looks like 70% of Brown admits come from schools that don’t rank. And that doesn’t even account for the fact that at the few remaining competitive high schools who do rank there’s a few who have 5 or 10 co-Vals. I bet that’s a factor too.
If I had to bet, I’d say that once the initial cuts in the pool are made, the admissions reviewers at elite schools spend some time trying to sniff out the kids who mostly just look good on paper because of doing things like rank grubbing. If an applicant looks like they’re this type of kid, I bet that ends up being a strike against them rather than a help to them.
I can’t speak to MD admissions, but I can speak to graduate school admissions. I can also speak to corporate hiring for a company that hires tons of kids from elite colleges every year. For these cases -
NO ONE GIVES A DAMN ABOUT HIGH SCHOOL.
Even for new college graduates, few resumes even mention high school stuff on them. If they do, it might be a line or two and it’s often because of related work experience or because they don’t have enough accomplishments from college to list. Honestly, if during an interview a kid starting talking to me about how they were Valedictorian at Buttwad High then I’d probably look at them the same as if they told me that they’d won the most gold stars in Miss Maple’s kindergarten class.
Rhodes scholar, even from 20 years ago? Hell yes, I’m impressed. Valedictorian at Buttwad High? Who cares. You’ve trivialized yourself by even mentioning it.
Just how easy do you think of is to spot a grubber, versus a nicely intense kid? This is a fine point CC seems stuck on. Also the notion top stats surely makes for a kid who has a great whole app.
The rest of what comes through in the app matters very much. And that’s a challenge for many, many kids who are firmly in the box of hs thinking. I understand they’ve been inculcated to that for 12 years. But limited thinking is a risk.
And assuming about hs accolades being all a TT needs to see is really not the level of thinking, action, and character, in the first place.