We live in a small (120 students per grade), wealthy, suburban/rural, public school district in the North East. Every year we have a few Ivy admits. Recent results over the past few years (not just this year!!!) include: Harvard & Princeton (committed) & Yale (2) - sports, Brown - Hispanic STEM girl, Yale - Hispanic boy, several Cornell - legacy, sports and Hispanic boy and a couple of STEM girls. Not Ivy, but a Hispanic boy got into Stanford and a girl from our town (private school) got into Stanford for STEM. All the minority and legacy kids have really high stats, the athletes not so much. Many other students apply to Ivies, some with v high stats (perfect ACT, almost perfect SAT, top of class, etc.) and some interesting ECs (research at local unis, started own business, etc), but NONE of the kids seem to get in unless they are minority, legacy, athletes or girls going into STEM (and sometimes even the legacies don’t get in).
Basically, if you are a white male, or a white girl applying for something other than STEM, in our district you don’t get into an Ivy, even with great stats and interesting EC’s. I’m not complaining - we still send kids to other great schools and they seem to end up very happy and do well wherever they go. And our GC’s are very good about having kids apply to reach, match and safety schools. But, with a white male junior who wants to apply to a couple of Ivies for STEM I want to know: Are these results typical for a small public school?
Seems typical to me. Your school sounds just like my kids’ school, except ours is bigger. We had three white boys and one Hispanic boy get into Ivies ED. One girl got into MIT, RD; a Hispanic girl got into an Ivy, RD. Nearly forgot, one girl recruited in 10th to U Penn.
The school Val, an Asian girl, didn’t get into any Ivies, but did get into some super selective LACs. She is happy. She was realistic about her chances and applied well. All of the kids with great grades and test scores, apart from the ED kids, didn’t get into Ivies RD. Seems like so far, the kids have got good accpetances under their belts. Our school has pretty good counselors, they tell the kids to apply to a range.
I very much get the sense, from the texting grapevine via my kid, that no one seems to be freaking out or in despair about getting denied. The kids have a facebook page, and when someone says “going to Podunk U!!!” all the other kids are full of congrats and thumbs up. Nice kids in our district.
My kids attend a small public school district in a wealthy area (60 kids per grade, so about half the size). The school is predominantly white, but really so is the state. Maybe 15% of the school is non-white.
Yes, we have plenty of white kids of both sexes get into the Ivies. One family has two out of three of their kids (so far- think they have three more to go) at different Ivies studying something other than STEM. Both humanities I think.
So yeah, each year we have between 5-10 kids go to Ivies. Stanford too, if you’d like to count that one.
Maybe it’s a coast thing - we are on the left coast.
These days, it seems like for the Ivies and equivalents, you need to bring something special or be legacy (or have some other hook/bump) or apply ED to have a non-minuscule chance at those types of schools.
Thanks for the replies. It helps me make sense of the results. @PurpleTitan good point about ED vs RD. I know a few of the highest stat non-hooked kids at our HS applied SCEA at Harvard or MIT and didn’t get in, whereas if they had applied ED at a different Ivy, they may have been accepted.
Even ED may be pretty idiosyncratic, depending on the school, however. For instance, looking through the Cornell ED thread in the past, you saw some non-hooked kids with worse stats get admitted over non-hooked kids with better stats. Evidently, profs sit in at Cornell, however, so they may be looking for potential, not scores.
Still, if your goal is “some Ivy/equivalent” or even near-Ivy, ED to one of Dartmouth/Cornell/Northwestern/Williams/Amherst/JHU/Tufts (or EA to ND&BC) makes a lot of sense. Each has a early acceptance rate above 25% and I’m hard-pressed to think of anywhere that you can get to from other Ivies/equivalents that you can’t from those schools.
@PurpleTitan I think there was a mixture this year- not sure about previous ones. I know at least one of the kids got into P in RD this week.
@SeekingPam It is unusual but we should barely be considered public I guess. The district and neighborhood boundaries are one and the same and there is only single family housing within the district. I looked a couple of weeks ago and only two homes in the neighborhood were listed for under a million. No economic diversity here. Hook? No idea. I know one kid was heavily involved with a particular organization and got a great deal of national tv time because of it.
We aren’t really a sports high school- really just college prep.
It seems slightly atypical that someone would know the results of all the students in an entire district. You’re making a pretty big generalization unless there is some sort of public database that gives you this info.
Most districts in our area only have one high school. All the schools have Naviance. Plus everyone who cares about this type of stuff (eg has kids who applied or will be applying or applied last year) gets the information from friends with kids in the neighboring school district. Everyone is always comparing and I will hear, OK West HS got 2 Hs and 3 Dukes, a Dartmouth and 3 Cornells and a Vandy, 5 Skidmores, 12 U Michigan or whatever. Depending on my sources I will usually know if the kid had a hook as well.
Most districts with 99% college attendance will list the college in what is handed out at graduation. Most private and public schools will advertise their acceptances in the local paper (no names or first names only). I think there is an opt out if a kid wants.
@CaliCash I know the results because our high school lists the colleges that the seniors will be attending in the district newsletter every summer. The top 20 students are identified by name (and a photo) with their college. So that’s how I know who got in where. Plus Naviance tells me the stats, and the kids talk (our district is tiny), so I know who is a legacy, etc. The district newsletter will be changing as the district just got rid of ranking, so the newsletter will only list the colleges students will be attending, with no names attached.