<p>@intparent where did you get the assumption that top colleges (whatever this means) have a cutoff point of a 3.7 unweighted GPA? I’ve never heard of it until now, even on CC.</p>
<p>One source is Cal Newport’s “How to be a High School Superstar” book. But I also think he is right – my kid with a 3.7 got into U of Chicago, Swarthmore, and Harvey Mudd with an UW 3.7 2 years ago and no hook. She did have amazing test scores and some interesting (but not knock it out of the park) ECs. We certainly don’t see kids with below a 3.7 having much luck on the accepted student threads out here, too. </p>
<p>"When a college shows that applicants with a 750 + scores have 18% acceptance rates, compared to 11% of students with 700 scores, that is a 60% increase not a 7% increase as has been "</p>
<p>Math 101. It’s a 60% increase off the small base of 11%. It’s a 7 percentage point increase. No one is mixing up these two things. </p>
<p>In my opinion, marysidney has made a really important observation with her remark in #106, “you are left with handfuls of sand in establishing what is a school that is likely to accept your kid.” I think that expresses the frustration and uncertainty for many of the CC parents, who have offspring who might or might not get into a “top” school.</p>
<p>lookingforward has posted a number of comments, which (to boil them down to parody level, please excuse me for that) come down to “It’s all about <em>more</em>!” Actually, I agree with that. But I think that the two of us would be looking for different types of “more,” when we were considering any given applicant.</p>
<p>calmom posted a set of comments that are very believable to me, to the effect that some of the applicants to “top” schools have essentially 0% chance of admission, some have 80%, and some have 50/50 odds. I think that a lot of us know very, very smart students who are in the 50/50 group, or 25/75 (less likely to get in than not), or even worse, but just not 0/100. </p>
<p>People in the “uncertain” group have to deal with a high level of uncertainty about the outcomes (rather tautologously). I think the uncertainty is not as easy to deal with, as the more fortunate sometimes think. If your son or daughter is admitted EA or ED to his/her top choice, you may underestimate the grace needed to deal with the opposite outcome, and the uncertainty that continues for months thereafter (a time that is short to me now, but pretty long in the life of a 17-year-old). </p>
<p>Continuing with a comment on calmom’s post: Even the student with 80% odds of admission is lucky to be admitted to all 8 Ivies. If the Ivies are making independent decisions (as I assume they are), and if the student’s odds of admission are truly 80% at each one, then the odds of being admitted to all 8 are less than 17%. A student would have to have 91.7% odds of admission at each one, just to make the odds of being admitted to all 8 Ivies equal to 50%. The student would need about 97.25% odds of admission at each one, in order to have 80% odds of being accepted to them all–so there’s probably still a little luck involved.</p>
<p>I am not advocating a strategy of applying to all 8 Ivies! In fact, that seems rather strange to me, because the Ivies are different from each other (and some of them quite different from others). Yet I don’t mean to make fun of the students from disadvantaged backgrounds who do apply to all 8 Ivies. I think they are making the best decisions they can, given the level of information that they and the adults in their communities have.</p>
<p>“People in the “uncertain” group have to deal with a high level of uncertainty about the outcomes (rather tautologously). I think the uncertainty is not as easy to deal with, as the more fortunate sometimes think. If your son or daughter is admitted EA or ED to his/her top choice, you may underestimate the grace needed to deal with the opposite outcome, and the uncertainty that continues for months thereafter (a time that is short to me now, but pretty long in the life of a 17-year-old).”</p>
<p>I agree it takes a lot of grace needed to deal with a high level of uncertainty. But unfortunately, that is life. You are not guaranteed the job you want, you are not guaranteed to not have health problems or accidents befall you or your loved ones, you’re not guaranteed to have healthy children, you’re not guaranteed that you won’t get in a car accident tomorrow. We all like certainty in our lives, but you’re going to have a hard time in your life if you can’t learn to accept the inevitable uncertainty of many, many things in life. Anyway, it seems to me that increasing your odds from 4% to 8% or 11% to 18% or whatever really doesn’t change the fundamental issue of underlying uncertainty in this process.</p>
<p>It seems to me that this issue is primarily relevant to the question of whether a kid who is shooting for highly selective colleges should retake the ACT or SAT. It seems to me that the data, unclear as they are, suggest that a kid with a reasonable prospect of increasing the score significantly (say, 50 or more points on more than one section, maybe) should do so. It might help. It won’t hurt, especially if it’s only one retake. You may be that Montana rancher with a 2210, but there may be another Montana rancher with 2300. Do selective colleges use SAT scores as tiebreakers? It certainly seems feasible that they might. Also:</p>
<p>
Personally, I’ve always suspected this of being a myth as well. In this age of packaged applicants, why would an admissions officer ever be impressed by a dynamite essay?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But being admitted to all 8 is not practically useful, a better question is what is your chance of being admitted to at least one? At 80% admission chance for each of 8, assuming independence, your chance of not getting into any is about 1 in 400,000.</p>
<p>But you can’t assume independence. They are looking for very similar things in students. And if you are in a group in which 80 of 100 get in, that doesn’t mean that YOU have an 80% chance of getting in, since it isn’t random.</p>
<p>Let me put it this way: I do think it’s possible that increasing your SAT or ACT score could make the difference in whether a particular student gets into a particular school or not. I think this is most likely to be true if you are part of a group in which many students present as quite similar. But raising your score by 100 points–or even to a perfect score–is not going to help if you have a weak GPA and lackluster recommendations, or if you have disciplinary problems on your record.</p>
<p>I will also note that there are some hard thresholds out there. For example, your precise GPA could make a huge difference if you live in Texas. Your specific SAT can matter for some awards (like Presidential Scholar).</p>
<p>Clearly, kids apply to multiple top schools because the odds are so low at each one and the admission criteria are not obvious. What student has an actual 80% chance of admission to all Ivy schools? And how do they know this ahead of time? The kid with a good story and excellent stats tyically has little knowledge of or info about applying to the tip top schools. </p>
<p>And agree about the essays. There is no way of knowing if the essay really was the deciding factor or only one among many. More often a bad essay may be an impediment but a good essay may be considered to be heavily outsourced, especially for kids that come from high SEC areas. </p>
<p>“One source is Cal Newport’s “How to be a High School Superstar” book. But I also think he is right – my kid with a 3.7 got into U of Chicago, Swarthmore, and Harvey Mudd with an UW 3.7 2 years ago and no hook. She did have amazing test scores and some interesting (but not knock it out of the park) ECs. We certainly don’t see kids with below a 3.7 having much luck on the accepted student threads out here, too.”</p>
<p>At my kids’ school a 3.66 unweighted is an A- average. We have 2 students I personally know who got into Penn and Nortwestern with 3.67 and 3.68. Their weighted average was 4.9 which puts them in the top 5 percent of the class and both had 35’s on the ACT (plus solid extra-cirrculars).</p>
<p>These schools both know our school very well and know that an A- nets a kid a 3.66 unweighted grade in a class. </p>
<p>@Hunt “Personally, I’ve always suspected this of being a myth as well. In this age of packaged applicants, why would an admissions officer ever be impressed by a dynamite essay?”</p>
<p>I have always wondered about this. Why do some colleges seem to put so much value on the essays? I would think that made sense if the students all wrote unaided essays. However, that rarely happens today. In addition, there is no fact checking so the student can make the whole thing up if they want to. I can understand putting a little weight on the essays, but I would think that a great essay may be the product of a student getting more help than others received.</p>
<p>Ooops. 4.49, not 4.9 LOL! </p>
<p>@woogzmama:</p>
<p>As I mentioned before, each university is different, and they weigh differently test scores, GPAs, and other stuff (sometimes even between different colleges of the same university, of those schools that admit by college/major).</p>
<p>Assuming that Vandy has the exact same admissions criteria and look for the exact same things as Brown, for instance, is unwarranted, even if all elite privates say they admit holistically.</p>
<p>I suspect there are really only three categories of applicants at any selective college, with a slight penumbra around each: Kids who are almost certain to be accepted (as long as there isn’t some fatal flaw), kids who are almost certain not to be accepted (unless some really great element they have meets an institutional need), and kids who have something like a 25-50% chance, depending on how many get put into each of the other categories. The kids in that middle group would all be perfectly admissible, but only some of them are going to be admitted. </p>
<p>The problem is, we have no way of telling, especially from the partial, objective data, which category a kid is in. But I think we know that GPA and test scores alone can’t put a kid into the top category, but probably can put a kid into the bottom category, and probably can make a difference between the top two categories. But within in that middle category, where candidates are being compared to one another, not just some Platonic standard, I doubt test scores have much of an influence at all. If the grades and test scores are strong, the issue will be some problem (or lack of distinction) elsewhere, and if they are weak, there is some other powerful strength in the application.</p>
<p>All this stuff about going from 8% to 12% or 11% to 18% is bull, though. No one has an 8% chance of admission, or 12%, or whatever – those are just averages based on isolating one datum.</p>
<p>Hunt, may surprise you but I don’t believe a whoopdeedoo professional can automatically churn out the dynamite essay for a kid.<br>
And, in the basics they may be looking for the same things in kids- but that’s just the basics. </p>
<p>No way Vandy is looking for the exact same things Brown is. Nor Dart vs Brown or Columbia vs Cornell. Smart money goes on the kids who figure out the differences. Unfortunately, I agree with mom2and that, “The kid with a good story and excellent stats typically has little knowledge of or info about applying to the tip top schools.” </p>
<p>PT, what some miss is that even if a school had the exact same stated criteria, they are not the same context. And as MITChris wrote, some try to put a quantitative value on qualitative/non-quantifiable aspects.</p>
<p>@Hunt,</p>
<p>“Personally, I’ve always suspected this of being a myth as well. In this age of packaged applicants, why would an admissions officer ever be impressed by a dynamite essay?”</p>
<p>To clarify, what do you mean by “packaged applicant”? To me, that suggests a wide range of possibilities.</p>
<p>@Hunt:</p>
<p>I have to join in. While it’s certainly conceivable that someone could hire someone else to write terrific essays for them, it’s highly unlikely that someone has the money to hire a great writer to spend 40-80 hours rewriting/thinking/researching to put together a set of essays that blows aways adcoms.</p>
<p>BTW, I think that reading the results threads is instructive. There are certainly kids who sink an otherwise strong application with lackluster essays, which is not surprising. Somewhat more surprising is that there are kids who get in with lackluster stats who credit their essays.</p>
<p>QM noted my use of “more.” When CC talks of packaged applicants, they sometimes mean professionally packaged; other times they mean the kid who accrues experiences calculated to impress. In the end, if Fred experienced those extras, does it matter where or whom the idea came from? Or is the net-net that he went out and did it- didn’t just say, well I’m pres of stu govt, founded the pie club and went on that 4 hour walkathon last spring? My stats will get me in, fer sure.</p>
<p>When judging whether to retake ‘for a higher score’ it is important for students to remember the College Board’s own statistics show that higher initial scores are likelier to remain the same or go down on retake. An increase in scores is more probable only if the student’s first set of scores is not in the higher ranges. (I found these stats on the College Board website when counseling my own child on this decision. If you dig, they are there.) Going from OK to good is far more probable than going from very good to super-great. After the student has passed a certain threshold, the potential for gain in retaking a test must be weighed against the lost opportunity of spending that time on more pleasurable life-enhancing activities that promote mental health in an absurdly pressured time. The costs (in terms of time spent prepping and testing rather than going to the theater, playing music, walking in the woods, shooting baskets, talking about poetry, dancing, etc) must be strongly considered. The student who spends his time focused on competition for top scores will be of far less interest to Yale or Harvard or Oberlin or U Chicago or any school that values creativity, curiosity, and breadth of experience. </p>
<p>Not to mention that some colleges may actually hold against a kid who originally got a 1520 but retook the SAT 5 times that act.</p>
<p>Obviously, some colleges are more score-hungry than others, but at some schools, retaking may actually hurt you. </p>