<p>I had my first college meeting with my guidance counselor and she basically told me that I'm at an excellent spot academically in terms of colleges - I showed her the list of colleges I was applying to, and she told me that the only one she thought would be an issue in terms of admission was Harvard (which I already knew, I'm just applying to Harvard for the sake of applying - I have a 0.000000003% chance of getting in). She told me that she was going to explain to colleges what she described as a "remarkable academic record" and so on...</p>
<p>Kind of contradicts the whole CC mentality here. I have a 3.7 UW and barely a 2000 for the SAT - I really don't consider myself a shoo-in (shoe-in?) at schools like BU and Northeastern... She also implied a lot of merit aid from lesser tiered schools like Simmons, which she said would give me almost, if not a completely, full scholarship. </p>
<p>Is my GC really laying on the sugar here or is she being realistic? I don't want high hopes only to have them dashed by a bunch of thin envelopes.</p>
<p>Mine is exactly the same way!! She told our class before we took the ACT that we could get a full ride almost anywhere with a 30!!! I wish!
Also, she told me that I would be a shoo-in (3.9, 33act)at a few on my list (Vandy, ND, NU, and WashU)! She’s insane. But really she is pretty crazy too.</p>
<p>A 3.9 with a 33 is incredibly impressive - I don’t see why you aren’t a shoo-in at those schools? </p>
<p>The avg GPA for Simmons is around a 3.1 and the SAT is around a 1500-1600, so I was anticipating some merit aid if I were accepted, however, I think when she told me “full ride” it seemed a little bit exaggerated.</p>
<p>Hard to say… my kid’s GC was actually too pessimistic for D2. D2 got in everyplace she applied. D2 said after the fact, “I guess I should have applied to Yale!” – since no one from her school ever gets into Yale. :)</p>
<p>50% SAT at Northeastern looks to be around 2040, and BU is around 1910. So those look like matches for you. Does your school have Naviance? If so, that could give you an idea of how other students with your stats have done.</p>
<p>The 75%tile at Simmons looks like it is around 1880, so you are definitely in the top 25% of applicants there. They don’t seem to post their common data set in an obvious place (can’t even find via Google), but the financial aid page shows quite a few merit scholarship options. But it is hard to know how many of each they give out and what criteria they use. But I would say you are well positioned for a decent merit scholarship there. So your GC isn’t completely off base.</p>
<p>@intparent - GC mentioned Naviance very, very briefly a few weeks ago during a presentation - basically told us to ignore it because it is for next year’s class, not ours.</p>
<p>:( Too bad. One of the functions available in Naviance shows a graph of grades against test scores with little dots showing the results of students from your school in admissions at a given college. You click on a college name and the little graph pops up for that school. But it is only as good as the data collected from student by the GC office and entered into the system… and it takes a few years to build up enough data to be useful. But future generations at your HS will benefit from your results!</p>
<p>Well, that’s good haha, that would’ve been very helpful indeed. Most of the people at our school are only really aware of the scores of students who do remarkably well in terms of college admission, like that our Val. and Sal. both had 4.0’s and 2300’s+ and ended up at Harvard, but that isn’t much use to me or my own situation, lol. </p>
<p>There are scattergrams (I believe that is what they are called, it could be scatterplots? Haha, I’m in AP Calc not Stats unfortunately) similar to what you described available on Cappex - but its a much broader demographic from students across the country, but it shows GPA/SAT correlation and whether certain combinations had been accepted, deferred, or rejected from certain schools.</p>
<p>@preamble the problem is that I have weak ec’s. I’m near each school’s 50th percentile (washu’s 75th since they superscore) but i don’t think that’s high enough to be admitted mainly on academics.</p>
<p>Highest score at my school is 2250, which I currently am defending, followed by a 2190. Nobody gets into ivies really from my school. My guidance counselor called RPI a safety? But other than that, he’s been pretty realistic. He says I am the type of person that would get into MIT, but that admissions is very competitive and to be aware of that with lots of my schools. He did say I didn’t have enough reaches, while I thought I was reach-heavy.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure counselors at highly competitive schools are seasoned veterans with admissions to top colleges and are probably more realistic/pessimistic. Of course, a guidance counselor at a lower-performing school who sees a kid with 32 on his ACT and is like “Whoa, never seen a kid score above a 30 on the ACT, he can probably get in anywhere!”. </p>
<p>At least that’s how it is here. We get a kid who scores above a 30 on the ACT (about a 2000+ on the SAT) maaaybe once or twice every two years at my school, and it’s not terribly different with the schools around me. This is coming from a kid who attends school in a middle-of-nowhere, lower-middle class city in the south. So naturally, “pretty good” by CC standards is going to pretty much amaze anyone in my area.</p>
<p>My school is a large public one in an urban area - its pretty high performing - a good handful of kids (25+) get higher than a 2000 on their SAT, and about 5 end up at ivy schools every year - however, my GC is pretty new (she’s only 24) so I worry she might be a little too optimistic first starting out.</p>
<p>Same here. I feel like guidance counselors at lower achieving schools (mine) are kind of ignorant when it comes to what we are really up against in terms of other applicants. The again everyone here goes to state schools or in state privates.</p>
haha, that would’ve been very helpful indeed. Most of the people at our school are only really aware of the scores of students who do remarkably well in terms of college admission, like that our Val. and Sal. both had 4.0’s and 2300’s+ and ended up at Harvard, but that isn’t much use to me or my own situation, lol. </p>