There are definitely certain schools (boarding, other elite privates, test-in publics, etc.) that do well in placing kids into selective schools. Note that those results for Lexington are acceptances, not matriculations----it is competitive between Lex students for admittance to a given school. So, as some posters have noted, a Lex student whose first choice was X, might have been waitlisted or denied, while a peer was admitted and chose to attend a different school. You can never know how things would have played out differently had the admitted, non-matriculating student not applied to X (seemingly not their first choice), but it seems reasonable to say these factors probably play some role.
There is only one other kid in our high school who is applying to highly selective schools. My DS had a conversation with her and they jokingly split up the Ivies. Kiddo is applying to Yale and Brown, other kid is applying to all the rest. But that was their plan before they started filling out applications - Yale and Brown are too artsy for Other Kid, the other Ivies are not artsy enough for my kid.
No kid from our high school has been accepted to a top 20 in the last 10 years so the whole thing is highly unlikely in the first place. But it’s sad and sweet that they thought that they needed to limit themselves for friendship.
Discussing applications with other students in your class is a recipe for disaster for so many reasons.
@hebegebe those are 2 complete outliers for sure and not the norm in the rest of the region. Lexington is an affluent town with a good high school so there will be lots of well prepared kids there, with parents that can pay full freight. They do send a decent amount of their kids to very good schools according to the data. Our school definitely does not get the same results, and we are only miles away. They obviously have a strong feeder system into schools like BU. 80 kids got accepted there in 2017? We seem to get about 15 of 60 accepted each year, so obviously they have some strong students and strong guidance counselor relationships there.
So it pays to know what your school’s success rate with certain schools is. Our school’s Naviance data is helpful in this regard. The data seems pretty consistent from our school.
Whether or not the college limits same-high-school admits or otherwise localizes admission competition, it is not surprising that the student for whom the college was a safety got in, while the student for whom the college was a reach did not.
While viewing college admissions as a competition (particularly if it is highly localized) may cause some to be jealous and resentful (see the stories about the sometimes-vicious class rank competition in Texas high schools), there is no way around the fact that, at many colleges (other than non-selective ones, or those which admit all who meet published baseline criteria that do not include competitive aspects like class rank), admissions is a competition.
I agree it’s a competition of sorts, but it’s not a footrace where only one at a time can be a winner. You improve your own shot by running your own best. That takes some work to understand what it means to each college.
Someone who was rejected or WL in favor of another student may not have done his own best. Sorry. But this is more than stats and the obvious factors that make a kid a great high school student.
And no, there’s no good reason to compare targets with friends. It comes out sometimes. But kids who compare based on stats, number of AP, or titles, are missing the bigger part of what it takes. At least, for a competitive college.
The issue about taking too many from one hs is that there are other hs in your immediate area. Sometimes, the pool at one or another vastly improves, they stand out, do the right job on their apps. Or the college ignored that scool for other reasons for a few years and wants to spread the wealth, so to say. It helps to try to look at this from the college perspective.
Getting accepted to certain schools is a competition for sure. Let’s just face it the super selective schools are a crapshoot. You can definitely improve your child’s odds by doing certain things. The one thing you can’t control is what other people do. You can’t influence them not to apply to your child’s reach school even if they are in your HS. In the end you and your child control things about them and the work or effort should be utilized to improve your child’s app more than worrying about others.
I was afraid competitiveness will spoil my son’s friendships as most of his friends are applying to the same schools this year. Didn’t happen, they even gave advice on each other’s essays. One case when he was somewhat bitter is when he learned that another student from his school, a nationally ranked athlete, academically very good but not really his peer, is being recruited for Caltech. Caltech is so small it’s highly unlikely they’ll take two students from the same school, and it kind of had the reputation of valuing intellectual achievements more than athletic. Oh well…
I think college admittance is a competition. There are clearly those who are accepted (win) and some who are not (lose). However, I’m not sure why competition is viewed as a bad thing unless people are sabotaging one another or behaving in an unsportsmanlike way. Take my DD’s two friends who compete in the same track events. They are directly competing with each other for first place in the event. Her friends are not trying to sabotage one another, they train together and encourage one another to be the best that they can each be. They don’t hold it against the other person if they come in first. This was, for the most part, our experience with college admission for DS & his group of friends. Some of the kids got into their top choice and some did not. But they encouraged one another, proofed essays for each other, celebrated with those that got into their top choice and commiserated with those who were disappointed in their results. Only one of his group was an outlier who was really bitter about her results and unpleasant about other’s successes. But there will always be poor sports. The goal is to be your best and to find your spot in the process.
Wow, parent of two who are either current or graduated college students – we only looked for right fit for each, never saw it as a competition. Both kids were following their own path, one looking at Big 10 publics and the other at athletic recruiting with merit at LACs. Only competition we felt was at recruiting camps, but even then, all you could do was you own best, and see where it took you.
Though my kids definitely saw the downside of classmates who treated it as competition, including the Val whose speech received little applause from classmates because that student had made themselves so unlikeable during senior year.
If it’s not a competition than why ask for class ranking or take standardized tests (ACT, SAT, AP/IB exams, subject tests, etc.) that are scored and compared with other college applicants? Of course it’s a competition within your HS, state, nationally and internationally. IMO, the applicant should take this fact and use it to their advantage, if possible. For example, carefully researching and applying to colleges that accept ED or applying to a less competitive major, that will still get you to your end goal (premed students). Remember, there are a finite number of slots available for the frosh class at each and every college.
Applying to a College is a competition. Competition is defined as two or more parties acting independently to secure something. I think where the OP is getting confused is that this is a competition with many winners and many losers, it’s not a direct competition like a boxing match where 1 fighter wins and another fighter loses.
For very competitive schools, however, it is a mistake to think that you are not competing most directly with the students that are in your school. Dartmouth, a school used in previous posts, received 22,000 applications and admitted 1,925 applications. There are more than 35,000 high schools in the United States. Further, Dartmouth on its own Website highlights that “The accepted students come from all 50 U.S. states, and from Washington, D.C., American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Mariana Islands” and “In all, 65 countries are represented. In all, 65 countries are represented”.
Does the OP think that this geographic diversity occurred naturally amongst the 1,925 admitted students? OP might not realize that it is a competition but there is prima facia evidence that it is.
My D1’s senior class of 50 had 2 students accepted to Dartmouth. It definitely can happen if both are well qualified. If you don’t get in, don’t blame someone else at your school.
Localizing the competition probably makes it more cutthroat or vicious.
If 20 high school students are competing for what they believe is 1 admission from their high school, then they may want to climb over each other for that 1 admission. But if they believe that there is no such per high school limit, then they may not be as cutthroat with each other, because they may believe that they could all be in the top 5% of the college’s applicants and therefore could all be admitted.
Schools like Dartmouth are holistic in their admissions process. So why are so many here focusing on the test scores/GPA that may perhaps simply be a baseline to get them a seat at the admissions consideration table? Here is an interesting video from Amherst from a few years back with an inside peak at the process. https://youtu.be/Y-OLlJUXwKU. If a student is applying to a reach school that they feel is “perfect” for them, its still a reach school. It doesn’t mean that just because a more qualified student gets in that it caused the other student from the same high school to be declined.
“My D1’s senior class of 50 had 2 students accepted to Dartmouth. It definitely can happen if both are well qualified. If you don’t get in, don’t blame someone else at your school.”
We had 1 Dartmouth admission in the past 9 years in a class size of ~300-400. I think we had about 50 applications total. There is a really smart native american in the pipeline. I told his dad about their preference for NAs and to make sure he applies.
The only ivy we see occasional multiple acceptances is Cornell. (NY high school). My best guess from knowing a bunch of these kids backgrounds or the past 12 years is they were going to CALS. FWIW, in the past 6 years the acceptances were 100% female, 0% male. Weird?
Neither of the 2 applicants was hooked.
Our 2 ivy acceptances this year were URM females. One was very qualified and played the admissions game well, the other OK but was significantly below the top group academically.
@FlaParent “I think where the OP is getting confused is that this is a competition with many winners and many losers, it’s not a direct competition like a boxing match where 1 fighter wins and another fighter loses.”
Who exactly are the losers? And how does one “win” at college admissions? By getting into the most “selective” college on their list? I see a lot of people talking about how certain schools only admit so many students from School X or School Y. Do you realize that even if your 1600/4.5 precious child doesn’t get in because that other kid with a 1500/4.2 did, there is still no guarantee that your child would have gotten in if the other kid didn’t apply? Therefore, it’s not a competition. Heck, I’ve yet to even know the rules other than schools are looking for all kinds of kids for all kinds of reasons. Are your kids only applying to one school? Is the point of this all to get into a good fit school that prepares your child for a fulfilling career, or is the point of this to put that prestigious bumper sticker on your car? If it’s about the bumper sticker, then yes, it’s a competition FOR YOU. For the rest of us, it just isn’t.