Backing up a bit…someone said “no public school kid gets into Ivys without a hook”.
True/untrue?
Our public school sends about 15 kids a year to them…they can’t all be hooked. Definitely not athletes!
^^ definitely untrue
Untrue. The comment was likeky made by a public school student/parent who was denied and is looking for an excuse, other than the kid having a1900 SAT score.
The OP has not said what is their state of residence or whether they need FA. I’ve always felt the term “match” is kind of squishy, but if the student is very high stats, does NOT need FA, and is from outside of CA, then I think the UC’s can be “sort of” matches. I’m basing this on our high school’s Naviance. My D just graduated from a public high school that every year sends kids to some Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Tufts etc (usually about one kid each). The school also consistently has 6-8 admitted to UCLA and 4-7 admitted to Berkeley. The kids that get into UCLA and Berkeley are usually our highest stats kids. Usually only 1 enrolls in each because (1) they can’t afford the OOS tuition, and/or (2) they got into someplace else highly selective that was a preferred choice. So it seems to me that UCLA and Berkeley are good choices for high stats OOS applicants with no FA need.
Another school that seems to love high stats applicants is USC. But USC is wary of being considered a safety, so you are well advised to demonstrate real interest by visiting, writing an essay that shows some actual knowledge about USC, get an interview if you can, contact your local rep, etc.
PS: on the “no public school kid gets into Ivys without a hook” issue: our public high school had one get into Harvard and one get into Princeton and they were both unhooked (as far as I know) Asians. We also had another kid get into Cornell,and one into UPenn and they were unhooked white males. (I supposed some of these could’ve been legacies and I didn’t know about it.) These are typical results for our high school.
I’ll just point out that our valedictorian this year – a 2400 in one sitting, a state-ranked track star, an accomplished singer and musician, an exceptional writer, and probably the best-loved kid to go through our school in 10 years – did not make it into a single of the Ivies.
not saying that he didn’t get into exceptional schools (and with exceptional merit aid) but that the ives themselves were a closed door.
Post #43, USC rejected somebody with an ACT 36, both her brothers are at USC.
I know quite a few people at my school for whom HYPMS are matches (due to location and area of focus, M leans more towards safety and S towards reach). Furthermore, all have zero hooks. No legacy, no URM, no first-gen, etc. Personally, I feel like each had about a 50-99% chance at each that they applied to. Thus, I have to disagree with the statement that schools like HYPMS can only be reaches, even without hooks.
One important thing is that it is always better to treat these schools as reaches and to have a safety school (that isn’t MIT) - I know all of them did, though all got in early to preferred school of the five so it didn’t matter.
GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!!???!?!?!?!!??!?!?!? O:-) O:-)
@DrGoogle I’m definitely not calling USC a safety or anything close, just that it’s a very selective school that seems to favor high stats applicants who show it some love.
: :
Post#47, it tends to favor high SAT but may not be the same as high ACT.
I agree with @Corinthian that “match” is kind of “squishy”. :))
“Safety” and “reach” seem straightforward for the most part, as long as you take into consideration, how certain majors or colleges within a university may have very different admittance standards.
To illustrate the point of “squishiness” one only has to look at @RinTohsaka’s post.
You disagree, but at the same time agree with the OP’s subject line. 
Lastly, looking at @IDunnoWhattoDo’s request:
I think you should take @SlackerMomMD’s advice:
OR perhaps try the “Supermatch”. Good luck!
HRSmom -
I did not say that no public high school kid gets into the Ivies without a hook, but I did say that “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.”
I come from an area where the public high school has about 15 or so kids each year who go to Ivies. About 5-7 are usually recruited athletes. Several of the rest are known legacies or URM students, but I suspect that many of the others have hooks that are not publicized. For example, at the University of Pennsylvania, legacies are considered those whose parents OR grandparents went to any of the schools or graduate schools at Penn. That is a huge pool of potential legacies, and I’m not sure that information would be widely shared by the student or his/her family.
So, of those 15 Ivy-bound students, generally 3-5 are truly unhooked. Based on conversations with parents in similar school districts to mine, I believe that is not unusual. There are a few schools where these metrics clearly don’t apply - selective public schools such as Hunter or Stuyvesant in NY or Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia - but in my opinion, they are the exception.
However, I could well be wrong and I certainly don’t want to turn this thread into a long discussion of Ivy acceptances from public high schools - everyone will probably have a different opinion and in the case of any individual school, my opinion could be completely off base.
OP, this was the question I posed for our son (#2), who has high stats. I asked many knowledgeable posters along the way for advice (including BrownParent, thanks!) . The answer I got was, his matches cannot be considered safeties. As you point out, admissions rates are too low. And with high stats you have to worry that a school will think you are using them as a safety, and will bring down their yield.
The post ^ echoes slackermom who hit the nail on the head.
Surely your kid has some “must haves”. What academic programs? Town, city? Geographic location? Financial aid – merit or need-based? “Fit”? Something must come to the fore as your kids reads the Fiske book. For S it was the combination of strong studio art and strong math. The other determining factor was high financial need. Our list included both universities and LACs. We defined geographic area. We had an art honors program on the list (UVa), schools with art schools which are part of their universities (Wash U, Carnegie), and LACs. In total I think it was 15 schools but we had a kind of flow chart idea, like, if he gets accepted EA here, he won’t apply RD there. The big fish/small pond versus small fish/big pond was a question and looking back, I think that as he grew (the college search takes a couple of years, and kids are maturing so fast during high school) he drifted more toward the big pond. Most kids really do seem to do better in one or the other setting.
Ironically he only applied to 2 schools but we visited probably 20. The thing is that – and I learned this only on CC – you actually want to spend a lot of time on so-called safeties. You already know you love a dream school. But what is your order of preference for ALL the schools on the list? Can you interview? Do you have a balanced list? I limited S’s list for the below 10% range, and asked him to look for schools in the 20% and 30 % range. Any school whose net price calc showed figures below our means was vetoed (unless they had specific merit awards). My commitment was to take him everywhere that he intended to apply so he could interview. A couple schools fell off the list, but even more importantly, he was able to articulate what he liked/didn’t like. We only toured one HYSP since the below 10% category was already filled. MIT was too intimidating, Stanford out of geographical range.
Your kid’s list should be extremely subjective; tailored to his/her personal preferences and academic goals; and fully cognizant of your family’s financial situation. Bst of luck and please let us know how it goes.
Safeties are tricky because many of them may not think your child is really interested and thus wait list him. For example, one of my sons did not have quite the stats of yours but still pretty good (2290, top 5 at a large NOVA public HS) and was wait listed at American University. Therefore, the safety of all safeties should be your state public university, which likely will not make that assumption.
Frankly though, in your situation I would encourage your child to focus on a first choice school, plan a visit, and apply ED to maximize the changes at gaining admission to that school.
Some good low-match suggestions by many (besides UMich, Case, Rochester, Emory, USC, & NYU, also UVa, W&M, & UNC if money isn’t a concern). In terms of pretty good schools that are still safeties and money is not a concern, I’d say UW-Madison, NCF (if you want a LAC), Edinburgh, St. Andrews, McGill, and UToronto.
Comparing to American unis, I’d peg Edinburgh as at or between UVa/UNC (but with a student body that doesn’t think much of its administration now), St. Andrews as W&M, and McGill&UToronto as UW-Madison (or maybe UMich).
And if you want privates who are considered as good as Ivies in Asia (and want to learn Japanese), consider Keio and Waseda.
My son’s public high school this year sent one to Harvard, three to Yale, one to Princeton, and a few to Cornell, UPenn. It is a decent public school in New Jersey, and most of these kids are Asian or Jewish. And ivies and their peers have about half their student body from public schools anyway.