Your child indeed would have “a better chance than most” if she had those stats AND you could afford to build a new building on campus.
Otherwise, for safer bets/“likelies” look at schools just below HYPS, such as U of Rochester, Hopkins, Emory, etc.
I agree with @lookingforward - my son had 2330 SAT, 4.4 gpa, varsity athlete (captain on some), first chair cellist in school and city youth orchestra, DJ, camp counselor, super advanced math level, etc., etc., and was shut out at all reaches and most matches. No kidding. Ultimately got a waitlist acceptance at Hopkins but chose to stay at his big public U (with great engineering program) after visiting. There is nothing logical about the process, and it was a heartbreaker all around. My personal take-away is that, after a certain level of stats, it’s all about the essay. The student must communicate who they are in an authentic and compelling way, and connect with the admissions folks so they understand who this student is – my kid’s essay was good, but too intellectual and dry and didn’t ultimately (obviously) reveal him. I believe it was his application’s biggest shortcoming. Best of luck!
Yes the essay is really important, couldn’t agree more. It should reveal a personal side that stats and ECs can’t, beyond what teachers might say in a rec. Ultimately the way an application flows, activity/awards revealed, wording, etc. are critical to how an applicant comes across to AOs. You have 4+ years to present info that will be read in 15 minutes. It all has to count when applying to the super selective schools. There must be a coherent story to present so that an adcom feels like they get how an applicant will contribute to school community. Tough order, but spend a lot of time figuring out the message and working out the details. It’s the only part an applicant can use to separate him/herself from the other high stat top applicants.
Colleges that admit more than 25% or 30-40% students would be matches, especially LACs but ONLY if your child starts demonstrating interest now by filling out the “request info” form (and clicks on their emails systematically henceforth). Make sure your child has a good handful of “matches” like this, plus two safeties (typically, state honors college, applied as soon as the app is up).
Without knowing your financials, I’d say if money might be an issue, look at where the most merit is for high stats kids…those can be safety schools and many are very respectable state schools and LACs…there are so many of these schools on the rise and look at some of those prestigious awards and who is going to what grad school…you’ll find some of these schools popping repeatedly on your list. Yes I was surprised!
Thanks for the (mostly) thoughtful answers to my original post. (Particularly Nick Flynn–the Hannibal Lector interview and Unabomber essay references were funny! =D> ) To those who immediately jumped in to remind me that none of the super-selective schools can be truly regarded as a “match” based on stats, and that plenty of kids with similar stas get denied–that was exactly the point of my question. And to those who want more info about my kid, I intentionally didn’t give any specifics because what I’m looking for right now are very general answers to help put together a “long” list for him/her, which hopefully may be of use to other forum readers as well.
Let me rephrase it: I have a child who is an excellent candidate on paper for any highly selective school to which s/he decides to apply. Let’s assume Harvard is his/her dream school. And let’s assume, solely for purposes of argument (again, spare me the lectures from “BrownParent”–I’m not at all naive about the process), that his/her odds are 2X as good as the “average” Harvard candidate, Statistically, that would mean there is approximately an 88% chance that my child does not get into Harvard. Setting aside regional and financial considerations (not that those don’t ultimately matter, but let’s pretend they don’t for purposes of this exercise), what I’m trying to do is find out which of the schools that are generally considered as “highly selective” by the CC community might be regarded as true “matches.”
"what I’m trying to do is find out which of the schools that are generally considered as “highly selective” by the CC community might be regarded as true “matches.”
Any school except an Ivy League can probably be considered a match hypothetically in this case.
The problem is that a true match is still 50/50, is that what you mean? Schools rated “highly selective” on CC don’t tend to be 50/50 matches for anyone but I guess you already know that. Honestly without knowing more specifics the best way to gauge what is a true 50/50 match is to go to the results threads for each specific “highly selective” school s/he is interested in and look at the 2019 admissions results to see the variety of acceptances and denials posted. Only you can gauge your son/daughter’s chances because only you know the stats/ECs/awards.
OP - I’m not sure why you felt the need to denigrate BrownParent, who has been on CC a long time and is a helpful and supportive poster - seemed totally unnecessary.
In general, I agree with doschicos - while your child sounds terrific, the vast majority of Ivy acceptances from public high schools have some sort of hook, whether it be legacy, geography, recruited athlete, developmental admit, feeder high school to a specific school (i.e., Ithaca High School to Cornell) etc.
Schools to look at in terms of matches (assuming your child does not have one of those hooks) would be University of Rochester, Brandeis, Emory, Tufts, Boston College, Hopkins, Rice and USC, an LAC such as Vassar, Bates, Hamilton or Carleton, and state schools including Michigan. However, some of these schools might think that you child is not really interested, so you need to show some interest.
Safeties would include McGill, University of Wisconsin and your own state schools.
The correct answer is assume none are.
Even if your son applies to the least selective of the top 25 universities and top 25 colleges, where he is in the top 25% of applicants but not that unique, he runs a very high risk of being looked at as a very low probability to attend and gets rejected. This happens every Spring.
I can understand what you are trying to figure out but it has no utility whatsoever.
Even “match” LACs have room for only about 350 kids without hooks. If your son does not visit and interview, he goes to the bottom of the list.
I remember a parent in CC with perfect ACT, probably female applied to engineering. The end result her kid is going to Santa Clara University. I’m guessing she was rejected from USC where both of her brothers currently attend. In other words, lots of kids have those stats.
And without more information about her/ECs, it’s hard to tell. Saying Harvard is not a safety doesn’t mean you really understand the competition.
I want to say that you cannot easily pose this in the abstract. Clearly you’re looking for great schools as back-ups. But those schools are, in turn, looking for their definition of compelling kids. NO kid has a 2x likelihood for a holistic school, until the substance of the app is seen, by the college. That includes what the kid writes in the essay and short answers, what that individual kid “shows” about how he thinks and how he chose to be engaged, which is also revealing.
How do we name back-up schools without ending up like so many threads where different posters throw out what they think are good alternatives and it goes on and on? Without knowing a kid’s interests and more of the picture, it’s blind.
And different schools have different environments, focuses, opportunities. What Carleton offers (and doesn’t,) what they see in their applicant pool and want in the freshman class, is different from a JHU, which is different from BC.
I think the best advice is buy a Fiske guide or similar. Look at schools in the Highly Competitive tier, see which match your child’s interests and strengths- and then dig into those to see if your child matches what THEY expect. That would be taking a mega approach, not just following up on what posters name. That;s how you assess some vague probabilities.
And then you have to build the right application package.
OP, not quite sure why you found @BrownParent 's advice unhelpful: “. . . he can have a top heavy list if he has decided on rock hard safety.” IMO this is spot on for a high achieving student.
This is because, in my view at least, no individual school that is generally considered “highly selective” by the CC community can be viewed as a “true match” for any individual applicant, no matter how high their scores. There are just too many variables, and they change from year to year. Maybe they have all of the volleyball captaining, flute playing, Indian-elephant-sanctuary-interning applicants that they need this year.
So many suggest applying to a range of schools that can be considered likelies, in addition to HYPS. For your child that might include CMU, CWRU, U of Rochester, U of Michigan, Oberlin, Rice, Emory, etc. But it would be impossible that any one of these institutions individually could be considered a true match.
On the other hand, visit a great school like Earlham, have an interview, write an enthusiastic essay, and it could safely be considered a true match with the probability of excellent merit aid. It’s admission rate is over 50%, but it is one of those schools (including Rhodes, Centre, St. Lawrence, Sewanee, etc) that has a self-selected pool of high quality applicants.
You can treat as a match a college with at least30% admission rate. Everything else should be considered a reach
Other criteria may include geographical diversity- apply to the Midwest, pacific northwest and south if you live in New England, apply to new England, Ohio, and the mid Atlantic if you live in Florida, etc.
If you have a son, apply to LACs, from Vassar to Connecticut college to Sarah Lawrence. If you don’t need financial aid, apply to need-aware schools. Etc… Not enough info to be more precise.
Finally, look at honors colleges. Some are very good and very hard to get into, such as Pitt’s or Schreyer, others are very good but easier to get into, such as UAlabama’s and UMass Amherst.
A 30% admit rate is misleading. The kids selected match the (holistic) goals of the college and for the number of candidates and seats available, that turned out to be 30%. It’s hard to hear, but even high stats kids can fall short in the actual application. Or present themselves as detached, no matter how well they did in their own hs.
I also do not like the snarky comment against Brownparent. I certainly hope your kid do not share that traits because he/she most likely will be rejected, if that shows up in the essays.
I don’t think that there’s anyone who has “matches” that are also reaches. I would say that a student with near perfect stats would be a candidate to get generous scholarships at a lot of schools with around 30% acceptance rates like Northeastern, Tulane, University of Rochester, Case Western, Boston University, Brandeis, etc. Schools of that caliber are still competitive enough that they have rejected students with those stats before, but it would be extremely unlikely and your son would be in a great position to get scholarships from those schools.
I know of high-stats, high-achieving students who have been rejected from WashU, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Rice, et al. Those schools cannot be considered matches for anyone. Many of the schools in that range look for a particular “type” of student that fits their atmosphere and are willing to reject students who have high stats that might not fit their ideal student mold. Some schools care more about stats than others, but at that level every single school is competitive. None of them can be considered by matches by unhooked applicants.
Look into schools that are trying to improve their rank/overall perception. They’ll be likely to admit your son and give him an amazing scholarship to attract someone with his stats. Northeastern, Tulane, URochester and Case Western are very likely to give him good packages if he shows enough interest.
A school can be a reach for two reasons. First you are statistically at the lower end of accepted students and second their pool of applicants are all statistically similar and stats are no longer a meaningful predictor. ECs, Essays, Recommendations, Accomplishments etc. become more important not because they specifically help you to be admitted but because they give the university information about you that can help them decide who to admit. That is why the most highly selective schools cannot be considered matches for anyone.
I like micmatt513’s suggestions for matches. Good schools who have bright students but whose acceptance rates are high enough that someone with high stats is likely to be accepted.
Considering all four of these schools have acceptance rates in the teens, that’s not surprising. Even though these schools have twice or even three times the acceptance rates of some Ivies, Stanford and MIT, entrance into these schools is not even remotely assured for high stat/high achieving students.
See, I think you’re going about this backwards. Figure out what your child wants in a school first, not which schools are “highly selective”. Using your child’s criteria, look for schools with increasing acceptance rates until you reach a safety level (e.g. Earlham with an acceptance approaching 70%). So, start with Harvard. What is it about Harvard you (your child) like? Using those traits, pick schools with 15-20% acceptance, 25-30% acceptance, 35-40% acceptance and then 50%+ acceptance.
The other strategy is Brownparent’s suggestion: go for the lots of reaches with a couple of safeties (they do not have to be the instate flagship). Again, your child needs to identify what s/he wants in a school upfront. Have your child apply early to a couple low-match/safety schools based on what s/he wants in a school. Once accepted to one or two colleges/universities s/he likes and is willing to attend, s/he can apply to as many reaches as s/he wishes (and you can afford).