College -- starting already -- perspectives welcomed

Hi. No idea if this is the right place to post this, or if prep school - parents would be better.

Our child is a sophomore at Choate. They have a college weekend for the parents coming up, which I will be attending. This is our first child going through all this, and it is a little bewildering.

I am mostly writing to seek perspective on the college process and prospects, coming out of a boarding school. Choate doesn’t rank, so we don’t have any sort of big picture idea of where our expectations should be. And what is confusing is that we (the parents) think our daughter is doing great, but our she feels like she is just kind of hanging on.

Our daughter gets excellent grades – over the last four terms (freshman and sophomore year) she has a 3.95 unweighted GPA with a few honors courses mixed in. She does a ton of EC stuff and leadership stuff and is in a specialized academic program. All this sounds really good to us, as parents. We would like her to go to college, but we aren’t wedded to any particular place or any kind of elite target schools. So we are happy.

But her perception is that she is middle of the pack, at best. There seems to be a mismatch from our point of view and hers – we see a kid well on her way to a decent to very good college somewhere, and she feels like she is just kind of unspecial and treading water.

I understand that places like Choate have a lot of accomplished kids, and a lot of pressure. But I am just trying to figure out if our perception is closer to the truth, or hers. Thanks for any thoughts.

No one here can validate your daughter’s perspective or set your expectations appropriately, but her advisor has an idea and her soon-to-be-identified college counselor will be able to and will bluntly answer any specific questions you have. Definitely attend the upcoming College Weekend (you don’t have to wait for junior year to attend) where you can get all your general questions answered now. Or, you can just contact the CC office via phone or e-mail. They will be happy to talk with you, but there is no rush at this point. I posted a bit about our experience with Choate’s college counseling here:

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21925568#Comment_21925568

and am happy to answer any questions I can either on the board or via PM.

At most BS, middle of the pack and excellent student are not at odds with each other, and going to a good school is a reasonable expectation. What your D may see – that you do not - is that there are quite a few exceptional kids as well. And that is not a bad thing in terms of setting expectations. It can be eye-opening to have several classmates who are 3 to 4 years ahead of you in the math sequence when you have always been a good math student, for example.

But mostly, follow Choate’s lead on timing. They successfully place their students every year.

Totally agree that her college counselor, when assigned, will be an excellent resource.

I’m about to start the process at another school for the third time and I think that having a look at the school profile will be enlightening on this subject. Using the class of 2019s stats, a 3.9 would put your child in the top 20% of the class. What is interesting to me, and this goes for my kid’s school as well, is the concentration of students who have a 3.5 GPA and higher. At Choate this is about 72%. Since very few of those kids have a straight A average, the majority have a B+ to A- average so it is quite possible to feel like you are in the middle of the pack and still have a very high GPA. The data is available on Choate’s College Counseling page on the website.

Wow, thank you for all these responses. They are all very helpful. @Temperantia, I hadn’t thought about how most of the grades at Choate seem to be clustered like that. Of course she feels like she is in the middle of a big middle cluster, particularly because even among her friends, they don’t really discuss grades in a lot of detail. So she doesn’t really get complete info even from her friends on where she stands. @gardenstategal – our D definitely had that experience as well, going from being an all star at her old school, to attending a school with a lot more all stars. @ChoatieMom I am going to be at the college weekend this weekend. Thank you! And I love your attitude in the post you link to.

I have heard from other parents and other schools that there is heavy clustering of grades. This can be confusing and even worrisome to students. There was an article about this with a link a year or two ago on CC but I can’t find it. Maybe someone else could help find the link? On another note, I think our kids do worry about how they may be compared down the road to other applicants who have those higher weighted GPA’s.

There might be a heavy clustering of grades but there is also a wide spread of colleges (at least, at our BS)… Some want Ivy League, some want flagship state uni, some want strong but small liberal arts, some want service academy, etc… She will not be directly competing with all of her classmates, she can only just put her best self out there. Agree with the others, our CC was a tremendous resource for us. He set our expectations appropriately (and early in the process!), but at the same time let DS stretch a bit for a handful of apps. The CCs know - REALLY KNOW - the kind of kid a particular school wants, and after you and your child come to some consensus on the general characteristics she’s looking for in a school, the CC can help you target that list down. Good luck - she sounds like a great kid.

Reminds me of the joke: “What do you call the person who graduates last in their medical school class?..Doctor.”

Once they’ve made it to the college application process, BS kids are likely to do very well, due to the quality of their educational and life experience. With nearly half of all HS students graduating with A averages, there is tremendous clustering around the country in the B+ to A- range. But I suspect it is better to post those numbers at a BS, have a rich EC experience at a BS community of incredible achievers, and then leverage some of the best college counselors in the business.

I think you’re right and should just keep reassuring her of that fact over and over.

I think that the CC recs are also really helpful – they know the kids and can write about each excellent kid as an individual, not as compared to classmates. “Susie did incredible research on xyz pysch-related and is clearly interested in how people do xyz. This spills over into her interpersonal relationships as she is the girl all the younger students go to for advice. She clearly embraces this and has lead workshops on campus around xyz.” “Ellie showed up at the first meeting of the business club freshman year and has been involved since. She has made innovative use of her classmate’s parents and created a very successful career and internship speaker series. On campus, she did a coop in the business office. Notably, she updated all the checklists for team managers for athletic teams and has visibly made that role appealing to students seeking management experience rather than a default for non-athletes needing an activity during sports block.”

It’s not hard to write a great rec for a great kid. And there’s no need to prioritize one over another when the students are all capable. Prep school counselors have this down! And the colleges get great kids this way.

To the OP - One thing to note is that the school profile and GPA distribution on Choate’s college counselling page is for junior (fifth form) year grades only. Choate explains why it reports information that way. Also, know that Choate will provide a Naviance account for parents and students at the end of junior year. Naviance has a bunch of disclaimers, but it will provide you with a sense of where your child’s test scores and GPA (again for junior year) stand relative to peers. FWIW my non-professional opinion is that your evaluation of your daughter’s performance to date seems more accurate than her own evaluation ( I base this off of spending to much time on Naviance). We are happy with our daughter’s college counselor at Choate and I agree it is worth setting up a meeting. Once you get your own Naviance account it is a little sobering to see that there are students with near perfect GPA’s and near perfect test scores who get rejected from the most “competitive” schools. I think that is just a fact of life at this point. The good news is there are great colleges that will want a kid with the grades your daughter has earned to attend. Good luck to your daughter!

I assume you have seen this? If not, it will give you at least a rough idea of where your daughter stands. With a 3.95 unweighted gpa she would be in the top decile or two.

https://www.choate.edu/uploaded/Documents/Academics/College_Profile.pdf

Years ago I was an alumni interviewer for Princeton and got all the applicant data. Around 25% of kids with perfect board scores were accepted and it went down from there. And that was years ago. The present day gross acceptance rate is 5-7%.

We have a relative who is a college admissions officer. He is NOT a fan of Naviance, which he believes channels kids based on historical data about acceptances.

In cooperation with the Tabor CC we required our oldest daughter to apply to schools in three geographic regions, just to get her mind past “The usual suspects.” I’ll let you know how that worked April 2nd…

Your kid is doing great. A 3.95 at Choate shows that she can handle a rigorous courseload. If you can afford it, consider getting a private college counselor. College admissions committees generally compare students from the same boarding school against each other. So the competition can become quite intense. A private counselor can help give you advice on how to best stand out from the pack.

Definitely listen to the Choate counselor, but having a second opinion from the outside can be useful.