<p>Hoggirl, I am not sure if it has been mentioned, but at University of Texas at Austin an applicant is guaranteed a spot with a class rank in top 8% or better. At TX A&M with a class rank of 10%. TX A&M also guarantees admission to those with an SAT (M+V) of 1300 and class rank in the top 25%. I am sure there are also universities that guarantee a spot to National Merit Finalists. By the way, both UT and A&M have top ranked Engineering and Business programs in the country. It would be nice if others would post names of top colleges in their state, that have objective standards of admission.</p>
<p>I think a lot of it is high school-specific. From my D’s high school, a boatload of kids every year apply to HYPSM or some subset thereof. A decent number get into YPSM every year, but it’s very rare that anyone gets into H. Yet the overall admit rates are very close. It’s clear that YPSM value kids from her HS but that H does not.</p>
<p>^I don’t think that’s uncommon at all. We always, always have Harvard admits, usually have Yale admits, sometimes Princeton (but I think fewer apply) and hardly ever have Stanford.</p>
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<p>I think that’s only high-school-specific for SPECIFIC high schools that are notable in some way, such as yours which is a rigorous, unique, notable program. The vast majority of high schools in this country have no “reputation” among HYPSM (etc) and HYPSM (etc) have no real reason to want to “please” or “displease” applicants from those schools.</p>
<p>Cappex has this disclaimer for students “likely or very likely to be admitted:”</p>
<p>You may still not get in!
Even though your chances look good you may still get rejected from this college. Please keep the following in mind:</p>
<ul>
<li>The program for which you’re applying may require a tryout, audition or portfolio review during the admissions decision. If your tryout, audition or portfolio doesn’t impress them you might get rejected.</li>
<li>Your intended area of study may be extremely competitive for this college. Even top students get rejected from colleges when lots of students are applying to a specific major.</li>
<li>Some highly selective colleges take a very holistic approach to admissions and you may not be the type of student they want to attract even if your grades and test scores are top notch.</li>
<li>Your application is incomplete or doesn’t effectively communicate your qualifications. Everything from poorly written essays to sketchy recommendations can hurt your chances.</li>
<li>Some schools impose additional minimum entrance requirements, which are not considered by the calculator. For example: In addition to composite test scores, some schools impose mandatory minimums on sub scores as well. Although the calculator does consider sub scores in its analysis, it does not consider any mandatory minimums that might exist. Check the college’s website for more details.</li>
<li>Economic factors during the 2008/2009 admissions season may have an impact. Many state-funded and other more-affordable schools are reporting a sharp increase in the number of applicants, which may result in rejections for some students who would have been easily admitted in past years. The calculator does not consider these economic factors.
** Bottom line, no calculator can tell you definitively whether you’ll get in - you’ll only know if you actually apply. Always talk to others such as high school counselors, parents and admissions representatives before deciding whether to apply to a certain college.</li>
</ul>
<p>Here in TX, this year our school had 4 admits to Stanford, 2 Harvard, 2 MIT, 2 Princeton, 1 Yale, 1 CalTech. Then a bunch to other Ivies. However, it is possible that at our school more top kids apply to Stanford than to other schools. So, mathmom, is it possible that not as many top students apply to Stanford from your high?</p>
<p>Going back a few pages, our public school PTA pays for Naviance. It runs about $4,000.
It is a very helpful tool.</p>
<p>“It is a very helpful tool.”</p>
<p>I’d say “can be” a very useful tool. Our public HS has taken the position that it won’t scattergram any results where there were three applicants or less “for privacy reasons.” The effect of this is no results for any of the Top 50 universities.</p>
<p>There is no automatic to any school in top 25-30 in USNWR ranking unless you go to a feeder school to one of those schools and your counselor is pleading your case for one of the slots.</p>
<p>Schools tend to accept a certain number from each high school and this is usually available from past records. However, the trend has been changing drastically over the years and it can vary from year to year based on who and how many accept an offer at a top school. So a school that accepted several students in the past may not accept any this year (I know a public school where H accepted 5 2 years ago, 4 went and none were accepted this year, while P accepted 4 2 years ago, none went and no one was accepted in holistic process this year).</p>
<p>perazziman, fewer people definitely apply, but as I’ve said elsewhere, the only people who have been accepted have been athletic recruits, URMs or legacies (usually 2 out of 3) with lower than average stats. The valedictorian, Davidson Scholar, Intel finalist, got in at every college he applied to, except Stanford. Over and over we see results like this. The east coast schools have regional reps who seem to have gotten to know our school, not so Stanford. My cynical view is that they think they get enough East Coasters from Scarsdale and the prep schools.</p>
<p>Naviance isn’t always that accurate. If my son had really taken that to heart, there would be several schools that he wouldn’t have even applied to this year. He ended up getting accepted to 2 schools and waitlisted at 2 schools where he is the far left dot, unhooked, non-athlete. I guess it’s decent as a guide, but it could be very discouraging.</p>
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<p>No, they don’t. There are only a relative handful of schools in the country that consistently have a sizable # of applications to elite schools. Don’t kid yourself - there are tons of applicants to elite schools who are the only applicant either that year or ever. Again, there are 30,000 hs in the country; can you guys stop acting as though affluent suburban high schools are all of them?</p>
<p>Our nephew was shocked to be rejected from USC. He exceeded the scores & GPA they said were what they looked for but his ECs were not particularly strong & he thinks that was why he was not accepted. They also turned away NMFs this year, which was one of their most competitive years for admissions.</p>
<p>Fortunately, nephew has a lot of other good choices to consider in deciding where he will attend, WITH significant merit $$, including U of MI as an OOS student & Creighton with even more merit $$.</p>
<p>Bottom line, not sure there is any clear line of where a student absolutely WILL get in. It is a good idea to have a student have at least one rolling admissions application in early at a U student loves, to have an acceptance in hand so that s/he knows there is at least one place student could attend. This could considerably reduce stress in the lottery that is admissions at more selective Us.</p>
<p>mathmom, my son’s friend who made it to Stanford is an Asian male, interested in studying Engineering. He was also accepted to Berkeley and GIT. I believe two of the other three are Asians too. I do not know the ethnic identity of the fourth. Our high school is about 65% White, 20% Asian, 10% Hispanic and 5% Black. Looking at the student profile of Stanford, it seems Whites form about 1/3 of the class. I think Harvard is the same way.</p>
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<p>An exception may be Texas public high school students in the top N% of their class who can use UT Austin as a safety if they can afford it. N is described here: [Automatic</a> Admission | Be a Longhorn](<a href=“http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/after-you-apply/automatic-admission]Automatic”>http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/freshmen/after-you-apply/automatic-admission)</p>
<p>Other Texas public universities like Texas A&M also have automatic admission thresholds based on rank or rank and test scores.</p>
<p>(However, students seeking impacted majors like engineering majors at UT Austin are not necessarily automatically admitted to the major, even if they are automatically admitted to the campus.)</p>
<p>Another exception is University of Alabama, which has published merit scholarship thresholds (presuming that students with the stats to get the automatic merit scholarships will be admitted as well). It is ranked in the usual ranking lists, though perhaps not in the top 10 or so that people on these forums tend to obsess about.</p>
<p>“No, they don’t. There are only a relative handful of schools in the country that consistently have a sizable # of applications to elite schools. Don’t kid yourself - there are tons of applicants to elite schools who are the only applicant either that year or ever. Again, there are 30,000 hs in the country; can you guys stop acting as though affluent suburban high schools are all of them?”</p>
<p>Depends on what you know and if you know anything. Tons of applicants apply but the whole point is they don’t get admitted. Who is getting admitted always has a pattern.</p>
<p>I pay attention to schools in my city and I dont live in the suburbs. I know approximately how many kids are recruited by a college from the city and which colleges prefer which high schools. Based on what Perazziman mentioned, I have an idea of the school she is referring to. The number can be one or more for a specific college from a single high school but consistent in terms of whether they accept or don’t accept from a specific school. It is not that hard to understand a pattern. All you have to do is be interested in the patterns. If your school has never sent a kid to a specific college, the odds are against you. If they do, you have to see what type of kid does get accepted normally from your school to see if that works for you.</p>
<p>HImom - USC admissions this year is not a reflection on your nephew but how much it has changed due to introduction of Commonapp. the applications jumped by 20% to 46,000 and the rate dropped below 20% for the first time at USC.</p>
<p>“If your school has never sent a kid to a specific college, the odds are against you.”</p>
<p>Yes, that’s right. Because colleges would rather just compose classes from the public high schools of Short Hills and Winnetka and Atherton and New Canaan, and if a kid comes to them from a hs they’ve never heard of, they’re not interested. But they want diversity @@ I don’t believe it for a MINUTE, honestly. All I have to do is look at where a lot of my kids’ classmates come from - it is VERY evident that they come from schools that would be “unfamiliar” to most adcoms.</p>
<p>We looked at the Naviance (hs datapoints of gpa/SATs) to look for patterns. The tippy top schools of course were less consistent, less predictable. Naviance was a great tool - it may require require extra hs investment of labor for data entry on top of the fees. </p>
<p>We did the same sort of thing on mychances websites. It includes volunteered datapoints (not validated, not a statistical cross-section) from other applicants to the college. It was an eye-opener for the tippy top colleges - LOTS of rejected high stats applicants.</p>
<p>“All I have to do is look at where a lot of my kids’ classmates come from - it is VERY evident that they come from schools that would be “unfamiliar” to most adcoms”</p>
<p>The odds are against you means just that. The adcoms do visit most places they recruit from. The fact that you don’t know the names of the schools does not equate to unfamiliarity for the adcoms. They are responsible for their areas.</p>
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<p>OK, I’ll bow to your encyclopedic and first-hand knowledge of how the admissions committees at those schools view the vast majority of high schools in the country, and I’ll charitably ignore the fact that you are implying that I inferred a causality when I did no such thing.</p>