<p>Thank you raiderade, I feel hopeful.</p>
<p>Reread the OP. 4=B average? Am I missing something?</p>
<p>Muf123, some private schools use different grading scales.</p>
<p>Like the IB 1-7 scale, got it. Thanks</p>
<p>One of the reasons MIT is totally pass/no credit the first semester is because all the students matriculating to the institute were used to being top of their class. When you assemble an entire school of those kids, not everyone can be on the top. So having âno gradesâ eliminated that need to be the best and allowed students to relax and acclimate to the process.</p>
<p>Which is why - in admissions - they look for the best students - the ones with a passion for learning and taking risks. Those arenât always the straight A kids.</p>
<p>Teachers at Exeter will often reassure kids that it often takes 2 or 3 terms to figure out the school and really start to do their best work. And colleges like to see kids rise to a challengeâso how he struggled and ultimately became an A student might be the start of a good college essay one day!</p>
<p>And I do have sympathy for the dreamâmy kid still has that Ivy League dream, despite his parents who prefer schools with less fame and more scholarship money. I look at Ivy League schools as the grad school you go to after youâve aced your way through undergrad because of your harder than heck prep school. ;)</p>
<p>That saidâand this is my opinion, so take it or leave it, I think we need to be really careful with these HADES-type kids when they donât do as well as they and we, their parents, expect. My kid, at least, is an overachiever by nature and a B can sometimes seem like a crushing blow. I mostly try to help him move beyond, to let him know itâs not the end of the worldâto not let it become a big drama, or everything starts spiraling downward. At the same time, I want to take him seriously and to encourage him to always do his best. So our approach is two pronged: âDo you know what you did wrong? Can you fix it next time?â and âWell, itâs just one grade of many and itâll all come out in the wash. Just keep trying your hardest. Thatâs what matters.â</p>
<p>OP - you are right to worry that there have to be pretty extenuating circumstances for an IVY/S/M to admit a student with a B average. BUT, even if a student did have a solid A/Aminusish average with great ECâs from a public school and even, gasp, from a BS, its not a guarantee for Ivy admission. And generally these colleges dont treat a B from a boarding school as an Aplus. Look at how many kids do get A plus in boarding. However besides all the great things that your child gets out of a BS (amazing education, life long friendships,traditions, facilities etc), you will have the BS standing behind you in the college process. You wont at a local public.</p>
<p>@classicalmama said:
</p>
<p>LOL! I know. I told my D that after boarding school not to expect any inheritance. Thereâs no more blood in this turnip (or my bank account).</p>
<p>Redbluegoldgreen- love the CHADES word! 
My kids tell me that the Skype tutors are for kids from certain countries who use them for SAT tutoring. In the academic classes, teachers are very available for extra help, and I canât imagine a Skype tutor being more helpful than the actual classroom teacher. (Enjoy the rest of break!)</p>
<p>First, ExieMIT⊠I just joined this site and I love your posts. Very informative and common sense.</p>
<p>Secondly, I have a D at PA now, third year, and weâre going through the drama of the college applications. I think she stresses out much more than my wife and I do. I donât know if sheâll get into an Ivy, but I do believe sheâll go somewhere she can realize her dreams. I can tell you about the amount of stress these kids are under, even the brightest of them. Many of them wouldnât have their lives any other way, but many do indeed question whether âthey belong thereâ from time to time. I think itâs just a function of placing 1200 very smart and self-critical adolescents in one place. No matter how talented they are, they are still adolescents.</p>
<p>I will say that if you look at the scatterplots for college admissions, it can be an eye opener. You realize how many of those, even with 2300 SATs and 5.3 - 5.5 GPAs at a HADES school donât get into an IVY. </p>
<p>If you think about it, there are only about 12000 - 15000 IVY spots each year? For the whole country? They canât all get in⊠not even all the brightest ones. I just think we need to cut everyone including ourselves some slack, and say that theyâll be JUST FINE at a good second tier.</p>
<p>Satellitemom, I reread your post and see that your child has a 4 average, not a 4 in every class (which is how I read it initially, and wondered if there would be a way to get a 5 in the subject of highest interest). I though that the link MaterS posted was quite interesting, because there are plenty of Andover students in the 4-4.4 range. Then, I find the list of colleges Andover students go to quite comforting. There are hardly any I wouldnât be happy to have a child attend. But I do think that itâs good to talk to your child about whether he is satisfied with how things are going academically, and make sure, either yourself or through your child, that the advisor is positive about how things are going. A kid can be getting a 4 average because thatâs what his best effort earns, in which case itâs great; or because his extracurriculars leave enough time to get a 4 but no higher, which may also be OK; or because he is staying up all night playing computer games. Iâd want to understand which. </p>
<p>And I certainly agree with the sentiments above that there are great schools besides the Ivy League, which I thought I said in my post but then was attacked as part of the Tiger Mom brigade, yikes.</p>
<p>Thank you lemonade1, my child doesnât play video games, has curtailed all clubs and did bring a lower grade up from the previous semester. I was advised that this happens. It is just that we were used to more, with less effort. So I we will all chalk it up to first year experience. Ivy is a dream, not necessarily the end goal. But getting into med school was the bigger concern. Thanks to some private input from other parents, I feel comforted to know that it is not out of reach.</p>
<p>There are many great schools just as academically challenging - if not more so - than the handful of Ivys. Some of the LACs have amazing medical school matriculation. Students get to benefit from small classes, undergraduate research opportunities and professors that know them well. Sounds like your son is trying his hardest. Andover is made up of top 5% kids from other schools. Itâs hard to be at the top at Andover or any of the most competitive boarding schools. What does concern me is your son giving up clubs and interests. Heâll do better in college placement with a B average if he is also an interesting person and not a one dimensional grind.</p>
<p>This is an interesting and VERY timely thread. I think this is an issue that is often overlooked as applicants and their parents jump to accept admission offers from very competitive schools - I think it makes a lot of sense to sit back and review what your goals are, and how to best achieve them. And this does not necessarily only apply to those who are looking for that IVY admission 4 years down the road. (But if that is your goal you need to evaluate whether it might make sense to be a âbig fish in a smaller pondâ). But other questions remain that relate to quality of life. How about evaluating your capacity for stress? How competitive are you by nature? Do you require more balance in your life than an ultra-competitive environment might allow? How strong are you mentally, and how might you deal with adversity when you are living independently?</p>
<p>I donât have any answers but I know these are things we have been talking to our child about this week as said child prepares to give us the final list for re-visits.</p>
<p>We did the big fish in a smaller pond and it worked for us.</p>
<p>But to mirror what creative1 said -
</p>
<p>I shout this from the mountain top - parents concentrate too much on âtop gradesâ and as a result the one thing that could have propelled the student into the acceptance pile is overlooked. When all is said and done and the finalists are all hardworking smart kids, the Adcoms go âwhat else do you have?â So the âBâ student who chaired Students Against Drunk Driving, or did School Year Abroad, or Tap Danced, etc. is going to trump the straight A student who focused solely on academics and nothing else.</p>
<p>As with anything - colleges, like boarding schools - are building communities. Even my husband - a med school Adcom - asks a lot of questions about hobbies, interests, etc.</p>
<p>The child with Bâs (or Aâs for that matter) will do better if they:</p>
<ol>
<li>Shadow someone in the field to get a real sense of the process</li>
<li>Show their passion for medicine through a research project or other</li>
<li>have strong reading and math ability</li>
<li>have some hobby outside of academics that shows passion for something.</li>
<li>score high on entrance exams (ACT = 30+)</li>
</ol>
<p>Donât just be smart - be memorable and passionate. UNLESS youâre memorable for the the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>saying youâre inspired by "House, ER, Greys Anatomy, etcâŠ)</li>
<li>saying youâre inspired because you want to make a lot of money</li>
<li>saying youâre inspired because someone died or suffered a serious illness</li>
<li>showing you have a God complex</li>
</ol>
<p>Those four will kill the application (it happens every year)</p>
<p>:-)</p>
<p>I know this is a bit off topic here, but since itâs been raisedâŠdoes anyone here really believe the Ivies offer the best undergraduate education? Itâs absolutely nuts. Obviously they offer the prestige of association, and yes, you do get taught by some of the leading lights, but these institutions (as far as I can tell, having been a humanities grad student there) tolerate undergraduate presence in the classroom, but do NOT teach to undergraduates. I would assume that the small class education one would get at the âlittle iviesâ and several other LACs vastly outmeasures the Ivy BA at least in terms of personal attention and actual teaching. If you look across the board, the majority trend is that Ivies do not hire their own, at least not directly out of their Ph.D. programs. They scoop up mid- to late-career stars from LACs who have proven themselves as teachers, just as their scholarship is about to really âbreakâ in their field. Then once recruited to Ivyland they are encouraged to research, write, mingle across the world to elevate the prestige of the U, train top notch graduate studentsâŠoh, and if a ugrad tracks them down, perhaps give them a few minutes of facetime. So many BS grads who go to â2nd tierâ collegesâundergraduate institutionsâare probably well counseled and on the right track. The Ivies (& other bigs, as well) will be there for imprimatur at the grad school level.</p>
<p>What are the âlittle iviesâ?</p>
<p>[Little</a> Ivies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=âhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies]Littleâ>Little Ivies - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Love these posts. My D is a third year at a HADES school. She is in constant contact with us. To pull a 5.2 she works constantly, but has a wide range of activities as well. These are VERY competitive environments. We have another child going to BS next year, and the question is always whether the next one will be able to thrive in the extremely rigorous academic environment that these schools present. A 4 at Andover is nothing to sneeze at. It is not EASY to achieve. My D says that there are a group of âshut insâ who pull very high grades and that those of her third year friends who want to pull ahead of the pack are giving up their ECs this year to become, effectively âshut insâ. This is sad in a way, but if you look at the scatterplots for college admissions at Naviance, you see that the GPAs do count. True, a 4.5 at Andover will quite possibly get you into Northwestern or Georgetown, but it likely wonât an Ivy. You see that the clusters of Ivy acceptances (those scatterpoint plots) which have a high rate of acceptance always cluster around GPAs of 5.5 - 6 and SATs of 2350 - 2400. </p>
<p>I personally think that while an Ivy admission is nice, and may be helpful in a purely academic career, that it is not always necessary. A very large number of very smart people are competing for a very small number of positions. That means alot of smart, motivated and nice kids are going to be sorely disappointed if the Ivy is the be all and end all. If these kids are going to be mentally healthy, it HAS to be OK for them to</p>