<p>SomeOldGuy, I clicked on your profile and we are the same age. Were you at Miami 85-89? Also, we are not old!!!</p>
<p>I graduated in '88. </p>
<p>It sounds like your son is already running pretty close to legit D-III times, but his coaches will know more. One way to gauge that is to get on the McMillan distance running calculator and find his predicted 8K time based off his HS PR and then compare that to the conference meet results for the NCAC, OAC, etc. My guess is that he’s in the ballpark. </p>
<p>One thing to remember – and go in eyes-open about – is that college sports, even at the D-III level, are much more intense than HS. College distance runners routinely cover 70-100 miles per week while maintaining a full courseload, and lots of them get injured freshman year because they’re not used to the mileage. My kids’ program sends a solid number of runners on to D-III schools, but many of them drop it after the first year or two because the time commitment is too great for the personal rewards they’re getting out of it.</p>
<p>My son’s coach ran at Miami so he has been helpful. Knock on wood my son has never had an injury. He has maxed out at around 45 miles a week but the coach plans to up that this summer. We took a visit to an NAIA school and had a good talk with a distance coach. He filled him in on expectations.</p>
<p>midwestdadof2-look at schools in the MIAC in MN (St. Thomas, St. John’s, St. Olaf, Gustavus), Central college in Pella, IA, North Central in IL. They all have very strong track/cross country programs, substantial automatic merit aid, small and are just flat out good schools that are well respected regionally if not Nationally. As a former college track runner marred to a former XC/track runner, all of these programs are focused on school first then sports. In our experience, very few kids need to drop because of the time commitment because of the individual nature of the sport. If you have a lab or whatnot, you just run later in the day or in the morning. Personally knowing most of the coaches at the programs I just listed (not North Central though), they ALL feel the same and you will have NO issues. DH’s senior year, the XC team had an average GPA of 3.8 and 4 of the top 10 kids in the graduating class were XC guys—which is pretty typical year in and year out. Not an issue.</p>
<p>“he doesn’t have any interest in challenging himself academically”</p>
<p>Well, that is a good reason for him not to explore Amherst or UChicago. But that’s a different issue from why <em>they</em> would be interested in him.</p>
<p>I agree that if his current interests and stats don’t change, he’s likely to get a debt-free offer from Miami and other in-state publics, as well as a bunch of Midwestern LACs, where he can have the kind of social and academic experience he wants. That’s a pretty great outcome if you are OK with his moderate ambitions.</p>
<p>I don’t like giving kids false hopes that lead them to “dream big” (as Minnymom puts it) when the facts are not on their side.</p>
<p>I meant my statement in a positive way. I think often times students only expect what their peers and community expect. If your stats are at least at the low end of the admitted range of students and/or if you have that “hook”, you should try for some reaches. Of course, not all the schools applied to should be reach schools, and it may not be a desire to attend one. But I like the idea of encouraging students to be open to possibilities. These mailings make them aware of lots of possibilities.</p>
<p>At our public HS only a handful of graduates each year go on to an ‘elite’ college. My DS1 was one of them 2 years ago. His stats were at the low end of admitted students, but he applied and attends his dream school.</p>
<p>Read this admissions dean’s take on the over marketing by top schools</p>
<p>[Reed</a> College “Messages vs. Realities”](<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/apply/news_and_articles/admission_messages.html]Reed”>http://www.reed.edu/apply/news_and_articles/admission_messages.html)</p>
<p>Our kids have big baskets by the fireplace where those letters go into, usually unopened. They are never viewed here as hope raising, just simple marketing tools. U Chicago has been sending us doubles, for whatever the reason. And they are always the most interesting/clever ones. U Chicago and Caltech too 
For sure most entertaining - and I read them because they are open postcards. It turns out we are harboring letters with options to fly in, in that pile on the fireplace ;)</p>
<p>T26E4 - I almost stopped reading that article with the well-trodden ground at the beginning, but the second half was extremely interesting. Now I am wondering: 1) which institutional needs my daughter met during last year’s unexpectedly successful application cycle; and 2) more generally, how one discerns (if at all) the institutional needs of some of these selective colleges and thereby concentrate energies where they might be more fruitful.</p>
<p>Looking at naviance, for example, I can see that MIT likes students from our HS. The admit rate seems surprisingly high. Yet Cornell has not admitted one of our students in forever despite dozens of applications each year. So I wonder, what might be the differences in their institutional needs?</p>
<p>Interesting article, T26E4. It should be a must read for prospective college students.</p>
<p>Snowdog, who knows. We send jillions to Cornell and hardly any to MIT!</p>
<p>“I wonder, what might be the differences in their institutional needs?”</p>
<p>Are the same students applying to MIT and Cornell? Do you have MIT alumni on the faculty or among the parents? It might be related to Cornell’s yield in your geographic area, which colleges within Cornell the students are applying to – any number of issues.</p>
<p>I know in our case a lot more students apply to Cornell and from more disciplines than the MIT crowd, so I don’t think it’s surprising at all.</p>
<p>^ Right, well, that’s what I mean. Why? The closest I can come to teasing out, not these institutional metrics but their result, is to view those scattergrams. It only works (if it does) because we have one high school in our town, and the population is heterogeneous. Similar economic circumstances, few URM, and so forth. So, of similar students with similar GPA and scores (I am not sure how many students overlap), ~15% are accepted MIT, ~0% to Cornell. I’ll have to go back and look but I think there were also more applied to Cornell last year than MIT.</p>
<p>Fascinating. I’m just using these two schools as examples while wondering about the statement in that article - that institutional need trumps most all.</p>
<p>^ Though both Cornell and MIT claim on the CDS that geographical residence is “considered,” if one looks at the website “Where Does Your Freshman Class Come From,” it appears that MIT achieves much greater geographical diversity. Certainly some of that can be explained by a greater awareness of and desire for MIT in a greater number of locations, but it seems possible that MIT does “consider” geographic diversity quite a bit more than Cornell does.</p>
<p>Back to the point midwestdadof2’s original post, there’s an article in today’s New York Times stating that elite colleges are failing to attract applications from low-income students with top grades and test scores. The NYT is paywalled, I haven’t read the actual text.</p>
<p>^Snowdog, you can read ten (I think that’s the number) articles a month without paying. We are subscribers, but I hardly ever actually sign in and it keeps track, but I hardly ever run out of free reads.</p>
<p>There was an article in the Chgo. Trib 3 or 4 months ago about how few kids from the Chicago area go to the elites… one speculated that the Guidance Counselors aren’t connected to the Admissions Offices. I dont know…
My kids are currently getting all the mailings but we have been told unless there’s a hook,
it’s a role of the dice. They have all the stats. I think the mailings are definitely a marketing and rejection game.( higher rankings)</p>
<p>found it: Chicago Trib article 12/2012
<a href=“Ivy League proves elusive for Illinois students”>Ivy League proves elusive for Illinois students;
<p>mathmom - I know, it says I’ve already read my 10 this month. It used to be you could access via an outside link (like a google search) without being counted but they fixed that apparently. At some point I’ll probably just pay…</p>
<p>Idavis: interesting article. A Penn admissions officer admits: “‘I would love to see more students from the Chicago area.’ At the same time, he acknowledged, when it comes to admissions, the university ‘is going to have a strong commitment to its backyard.’”</p>
<p>I haven’t looked at the Penn CDS, but I would bet money it says that state residence is not considered.</p>
<p>Actually it does say that both geographical residence and state of residence are considered. The fact of the matter is that all most selective schools will play more to their home base whether they say so or not. They consider the needs of their home area as part of their mission and to help preserve town/gown relations.</p>