Chance my Questbridge Finalist son

Paying for College Access Programs (Questbridge, Posse)
1

My son is a Questbridge finalist who is participating in the national college match. Here are his stats

GPA- 101/100

Class rank - 2 out of 150

SAT- 1520 superscore (800 Math & 720 EBRW)

Awards- New York State Goal of the Week, Sectional All Star, Ap Scholar, National Merit Commended Scholar, Rural and Small Town Recognition Award.

EC’s-
Model UN club founder
NHS Preside
Mock Trail captain
Soccer team captain
Math team captain (top 100 in the state as a junior)
Newspaper Club
Science Olympiad
Newcomers Uplifted (works to help freshman integrate into high school)
Indoor/Outdoor Track
Part time job during school year and full time in summer

Essays- his topical essay is about existential dread and horror and it’s definitely very strong. His personal statement is also good but not quite as strong.

Supplements- he spent almost 8 hours on each why us essay, and from the ones I’ve read they are very strong

Additional Info-
Low income
Most rigorous course schedule possible at his school

College list -

Columbia (grandmother attended and his cousin works there)
Princeton
Northwestern
U Chicago
Duke
Stanford
Brown
Amherst College
Hamilton
Bowdoin
Colgate
Colby

What do you think his chances of matching are?

2

In terms of the EC list, it’s pretty good, with a lot of leadership being shown, but it’s hard for me to see a cohesive theme throughout it. I’m wondering what his choice of major is?

Nothing seriously special coming from the award section, it’s pretty standard stuff as far as I can tell for a good student. The essay topic he chose sounds very unique, so that’s great.

For Columbia, legacy could possibly work out there, especially due to the two ties to the school, though it is quite selective and may not be the best fit. Does the GPA correlate to percentage - I’m a bit unfamiliar with the format if not. It’s hard to match him with specific schools without knowing a major and more of his interests, as well as the APs/college classes he took and such things.

I guess my conclusion would be that some of the harder schools would be a larger reach based on ECs, but it’s definitely not bad! If you have any of the information listed, I’d probably be able to have a better response and specific answers.

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I could see them matching at Columbia due to the legacy. With no context for the type of school nor access to the essays, the best anyone could tell you is that the schools at the top of the list are most likely, since the small liberal arts colleges for Questbridge match with very few students. Being number 2 at Stuyvesant is very different than an average NY school and, depending on their course work, they may not match at all even with really high stats.

Matching is basically a really hard version of Early Decision with sub 1% acceptance rates.

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He is looking to eventually go into law, but he plans on majoring in linguistics. His GPA is a percentage. He has taken AP Lang, APUSH, AP Chem, AP Gov, AP Physics, AP Calc, and AP Stats. He has also taken English 101/102 and Is taking college Spanish. Thanks so much I hope this helps.

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Thanks so much. I’m not sure exactly how competitive his school is, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s a little above average.

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I’m not super familiar with QuestBridge matching, except that it’s very difficult. But I think your son has an application that would be of interest to the schools on the list, and he has both a low income hook and a rural one, as that’s another segment that tends to be underrepresented. He’s certainly strong enough academically and he seems like a fairly well-rounded kid (sports with leadership, academic items with leadership, plus a job). Not everyone needs to be a specialist in a minor subarea. I certainly think your kid stands a chance.

I’m not sure when the match results come out, but I would certainly make sure you have other applications lined up, if necessary. Would any of the SUNYs be affordable for your family, considering the various grants that are possible for New York residents based on income? If you need to develop a secondary list of schools, let us know whether the Net Price Calculators are giving an Expected Family Contribution that is affordable for you. If they are, then meet-needs schools will work. If not, then the focus will be on merit aid.

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A couple of the local SUNY Schools offer free tuition if you are in top 10% of your class so he plans to get a 2 year degree at one of them if he doesn’t have a better option.

8

About 26% of QuestBridge finalists match.

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9

The AP Gov, Mock Trial, Model UN, English, and some other activities will be great for law in the future. Hopefully with that he has had a good amount of experience with public speaking through those! It seems like a lot of the colleges on his list will be great for his major, and if he does end up going into law, he’ll have a unique perspective.

I feel like it will be helpful for him to be in a college community that allows him to have some leadership roles and support other students, just based on Newcomers Uplifted and Newspaper Club and what I get from his essay topic, though I could always be wrong.

After looking at his stats, I keep leaning to Bowdoin as one of the better colleges for him to go to in my opinion, though I don’t know if they have the exact major he is looking for and it is a reach of course.

In terms of Questbridge, I don’t really know that much about it unfortunately, but I do think that they will make the right choice and I hope that he gets into a college that will allow him to reach is goals in a good setting.

Good luck!

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Note that if the list in the original post appears in the same order designated for QuestBridge, then the OP’s son will not learn of a decision from Bowdoin unless he fails to match at one of his preceding nine choices.

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I meant the individual schools, each has a pretty close match rate to 1%, other than maybe UChicago.

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Thanks so much! He also does the morning announcements so he has plenty of public speaking experience from that.

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My concern is that the laundry list of EC activities appears to give the impression of being a “jack of all trades, master of none”. The elite schools want a well-rounded class, as opposed to a well-rounded individual. I would focus on 1 or 2 and go in depth in terms of demonstrating how you made a substantial impact (if possible)… Just my 2 cents…

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I am going to guess that he will match with that list – it’s just a matter of how far down. He’d be a welcome addition to any LAC community, so in the event that the larger schools pass, it’d surprise me if they did too.

With the schools at the top of the list, it’s harder to say. The QB finalists tend to be a very impressive group overall, so congratulations on being in that mix… His academic record is strong. Many QB students who are interested in several of those schools have a STEM focus, so his interests may set him apart. Otoh, he may look like every other “average excellent student” except for his QB designation, so may not stand out enough to get picked. I think he has a shot at any of them, but it is anyone’s guess as to how that will unfold.

Please let us know how it goes! Good luck!

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Congratulations to him on becoming a QB finalist, that’s a great achievement and if he doesn’t match, it will likely be somewhat of a hook in RD at QB partner schools.

I can’t chance him for matching, but his chances are higher if he is URM and EFC is zero.

If he doesn’t match on Dec 1, make sure he is ready for his next steps. Some QB schools will let him still roll his app into the ED/ED1 pool, even tho the deadline has passed (of course he can only ED to one school). He will also be able to roll his QB app to EA and ED2 at some partner schools, and of course to RD. Typically, another 2,000 or so finalists are accepted to QB partner schools in these other rounds.

I hope that it works out, and also that he has at least one affordable safety. Good luck to him.

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Do you have a source for this statement?

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Thanks for the clarification! Though I meant it as a general statement outside from Questbridge.

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QB also only tells you your highest ranked choice that accepts you. So if all 15 on your list had said they would take you, you just know that you matched with #1 and nothing more. It’s very difficult to interpret acceptance percentages.

But I think this finalist’s list includes schools that would like to have him.

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Most of the LACs on questbridge have very few matches period (the range is about 3-20 kids with Barnard having as few as 3 matched scholars and Pomona having 20). USC only takes 5 match scholars each year and newer schools tend to take less than 10. Dartmouth took 25 out of 1364 Questbridge applicants 2 years ago (Dartmouth Notifies Early Decision Students of Their Admission | Dartmouth) and Boston College with 50 out of almost 1000 (https://www.reddit.com/r/QuestBridge/comments/k98rcv/is_this_a_likely_letter_from_boston_college_or_is/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf). It is not common to match, but there’s enough schools and enough spaces for a decent dent of the Finalists to match.

The highest match acceptance rates come from (Maybe) UChicago, which matches 140 scholars out of 2000+ applicants.

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Schools don’t “take” a certain number of students to match. For instance, USC doesn’t “take” 5 each year. For that to be true, all 5 that they selected would have not had any other schools ranked ahead of them that wanted them. There is no way to know how many QB finalists each school takes during the match process. It all comes down to the algorithm.

Years ago, my daughter was matched to her #1 choice,but we know that at least one other school wanted her as well. So those other school (s) chose her, just didn’t get her due to her ranking choices.

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