I go to a mostly white, upper middle class, public high school with a graduating class of about 320. We have a reputation of only sending 2-3 students to elite/HYPSM level schools every year. If one students gets accepted in the early round, is it safe to say that I won’t be accepted regular decision? Can multiple people from the same school be accepted to a specific school in the regular decision round? Thanks in advance.
" is it safe to say that I won’t be accepted regular decision?"
- No
“Can multiple people from the same school be accepted to a specific school in the regular decision round?”
- Yes
You have the same chance as everyone else - which is 5-10%, typically.
I agree. One of my kids went to a school that generally sent 1-3 kids to Harvard. Each year. One year Harvard accepted 9 of them.
I think you have to assess (as much as possible) the likelihood of “hooks” in recent history. For Harvard to take 9 (above) feels like an exception unless the school is Lawrenceville, Exeter, or similar super elite boarding schools.
It’s not a super elite boarding school but a top local private school. It was an unusual year with remarkable applicants. 5 of the accepted students did have hooks; legacy, URM, athlete. 4 were not.
I think a public, white, upper middle class will be capped as the OP suggests, that’s what I’d assume for application purposes. I would not assume that a school like this will get 10 unhooked kids in. The schools mentioned though are SCEA or EA so I could see them choosing more kids in the RD round. But if it’s an ED school and two from the HS get accepted ED, and that’s how much they typically take, they’re not going to take any in RD, maybe waitlist one but that’s it.
It is absolutely true that some particularly excellent public high schools have multiple students accepted every year to each of the elite/HYPSM level schools. For the vast majority of high schools, this is not the case. To know whether multiple acceptances to a given university are likely at your school, make an appointment to speak with your college counselor.
That said, the question I read between the lines here is, “Should I even bother applying if someone gains ED admission to a particular elite university?” My answer would be YES.
Without any hooks, applicants to the top schools do not have a 5-10% chance of admissions even if they are well in the top 25% category for test scores and grades at these schools. There are simply too many applicants that are in that situation for these schools to accept. In fact, they deny the vast majority of those applicants. I say the chances are more like 1-2%, maybe less.
Looking at 20 years of data from several schools as to who gets accepted to these colleges as unhooked applicants, that’s what My numbers say. And these are schools that are no strangers to the top colleges. The colleges come to visit each year. But they are also not the name boarding schools that were once true feeder schools to these colleges.
If you apply to a very highly ranked university, then you will be competing with tens of thousands of exceptionally smart and exceptionally well qualified students. One or two students from your high school being accepted ED will not make any meaningful difference to your chances of being accepted.
I went to high school at a school that in the history of the high school had only sent one person to MIT. At the time I was not aware of the school ever sending anyone to an Ivy League school. In my class, two students were accepted to MIT (and both went and graduated in four years).
If you are applying to Harvard, then worry about the other 40,000 students who apply. More importantly, don’t worry but think carefully about safeties and matches. However, do not worry at all about one student from your high school who gets accepted in the ED round.
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“However, do not worry at all about one student from your high school who gets accepted in the ED round.”
Disagree with this, colleges have soft quotas - whether it’s race, first-gen, high schools etc, they have a pretty good idea of how many they want from states, international. It’s not illegal because they’re not hard quotas, but if a school like Stanford takes from one a hs the last 20 years say, and someone has already gotten in scea, you should be concerned, maybe not worried, but concerned, unless you have a hook and the OP doesn’t. Remember with it getting tougher to get in, you should expect less from your hs to get in. I have seen ivies with ED that usually take 3 from the hs, take 3 in the ED round and that’s it. It’s anecdotal, so that’s why I’m not generalizing to say don’t apply.
“Should I even bother applying if someone gains ED admission to a particular elite university?”
That’s a more complicated decision than a simple yes/no, again you have to look at the context of the hs, how competitive you are, and figure it out. You shouldn’t automatically dismiss the college, but you should lower expectations.
It does change from year to year though depending on applicant pool. My daughter’s (good) public high school has only had one admit to Columbia over the entire previous 3 or 4 years, this year they had two. Conversely they usually have a few to Penn, and this year they had none. 3 to Stanford, only one of which was hooked. Etc. Apply but keep your expectations low, as they should be anyway at this level.
When a child in my kid’s high school was accepted ED to a nearby LAC on my kid’s short list, we certainly didn’t remove it from the list. However, I immediately thought it was much less likely that my child would be accepted RD to the same school, since the ED admit was similar to my child in many demographic categories. When my child was subsequently rejected, it didn’t hit very hard, as we were already prepared. If the other kid had not applied and been accepted ED, there’s no guarantee my kid would have been accepted or chosen to attend. But it definitely affected the way we thought about it during and after the application process.
I think it has a psychological impact as @Lynnski says. And it’s always possible that it can influence the regional AO. But my stats say it didn’t affect admissions. Of course, it doesn’t mean this stands for every school, every time and that this still stands. Admissions has been a moving target in many ways.
I don’t think it matters if another kid gets accepted in the early round unless your profile is very similar, ie same activities, major, etc. I guess with super selective schools it’s always important to show a distinct personality in your ec’s and essays.
My kids go to regular public school (about 500/class) and S’s 2014 class sent about 30 kids just to 8 Ivy League schools.
Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer (from a well known, but non-selective public high school):
lps.lexingtonma.org/cms/lib/MA01001631/Centricity/Domain/616/LHS%20profile%202017-18%20Final..pdf
@hebegebe , link doesn’t work. How about an in between answer?
That’s a surprise that the link doesn’t work. I copied and pasted into both Chrome and Edge to verify it worked. If you want to see it, google “lexington high school profile 2017”
But in any case, some highlights of acceptances from this public high school:
- Brown: 7
- Carnegie Mellon: 15
- Columbia: 3
- Cornell: 16
- Dartmouth: 7
- Duke: 5
- Harvard: 6
- MIT: 8
- Princeton: 1
- UPenn: 4
- Yale: 4
@hebegebe This actually demonstrates very clearly that it is income, not quality, that determines the percent of a high school who go to Ivies, and other “elite” colleges. Lexington, MA, has a median income of $162,506 per household.
Yes it does.
https://lps.lexingtonma.org/cms/lib/MA01001631/Centricity/Domain/616/LHS%20profile%202017-18%20Final…pdf
It depends. It depends on the college. It depends on the HS. It depends if any of the accepted ED applicants are athletic recruits.
I should also point out that it is also possible that zero students are accepted in the RD round.
At the end of the day though, the plural of anecdote is not data and past performance is not indicative of future results, so nothing may be applicable to the OP.
The other issue with the acceptance list is that you might have 10 or 12 kids out of 555 that delivered all of the HYPM acceptances.