<p>Oklahoma recruits heavy at Ds HS. Look at their website. NMSF get $82,000 laptop etc. She was offered OK Institutional Award of Excellence 4 year tuition waiver + $20K for out of state grads in top 10% of class plus 31 ACT or 1360 SAT (Math & CR) and they have other scholarships to make up the difference. Purdue 's scholarship package covers most of tuition and then the have engineering schools scholarships as well. </p>
<p>Women with reasonably high stats who wrote on their collegeboard profile that they are interested in Engineering are often being bombarded with mail (snail and e) by all universities that have top E. programs, some who typically would not recruit. For example, the e-mail from Yale was a reminder that they had such a program (Yale is Yale, but it is not on the top 10-20 engineering schools list ). MIT & Princeton sent unsolicited applications with congrats on academic achievement letters. D is not applying to HYPM. Columbia was the only Ivy that came to Ds public HS College Fair. She has been on the top college, College Fair list and did attend several open houses in Jr year. </p>
<p>In many universities women only make up between 17-25% of engineering students and the attrition rate has been high. Sometimes the schools try to kill three-four stones with one bird (not in Ds case). All of the top engineering programs have been running special summer programs for women (and in particular, women of African American, Hispanic or Native American descent). The top engineering schools in any engineering field tend to include MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, Univ Ill Urbana, Cornell, U Mich, Purdue, UT-Austin. Wash U is in the top 20 in BioMedical, whose list includes #1 Johns Hopkins #4 Georgia Tech Duke and others.</p>
<p>If a student is focused on a certain career path, they look at the schools that have the best programs in their field, IVY or not.</p>
<p>Agree. That is why I am looking at other schools besides Ivies too, although I am not interested in Engineering. Tufts has a good engineering school.</p>
<p>I had an extremely intelligent friend last year that breezed through high school, finishing second in his class at one of the top schools in our state, and got a 35 on the ACT. He was a member of the academic challenge team and a few other clubs, but did no community service work. His parents’ bank account ensured him that he could go to whichever college he wanted, and hence he applied to many Ivy League schools - only to get rejected by each and every single one, probably due to lack of extracurricular evolvment, as if that’s a valid excuse. </p>
<p>Imagine if Isaac Newton or Einstein tried to get into an Ivy League school of today! We might not know what calculus or the theory of relativity is, because all of their free time would have been spent at soup kitchens across America! That is, when they weren’t at Spanish Club, French Club, Pizza Making Club, Hopscotch Club, etc. </p>
<p>Getting into a top school seems more like it’s more about subjecting oneself to torture than it is about smarts. After all, what percentage of kids would really do all of those activities if not for the college admissions process breathing down their back.</p>
<p>If the top colleges really want to harbor the best minds in the worlds, then an IQ test would probably be a better indicator of intelligence than one's involvement in clubs.</p>
<p>I think the top schools make the key to getting in, invisible only to those who do get in.</p>
<p>That is, people who get in, get in, because they have found the invisible key (which is totally unrelated to SATs). </p>
<p>Those who don't get in, dont have the invisible key, because they are overconfident, or dont see the point of going to college as... contribution, or as a question of "what do i have to offer".</p>
<p>You probably missed the key in your mind, and that totally wrecked your essays and how youre portrayed in the light of these colleges.</p>
<p>Hmmm . . . my D filled in the oval for "Don't Send Mail" on her sophomore year PSAT and thus received no mailings. I wondered what was going on, asked her and she shrugged and said that mailings were obnoxious. She knew what schools she was interested in and how to apply. She didn't need a forest of trees getting mowed down to fill her mailbox with big glossy brochures. I persuaded her not to rule out mailings on her junior year PSAT and that early summer she received personalized letters from all the heavy hitters - HYPSMC - and just all the rest of the "top 25." Also all the deluge for NMSF. We are not in the Northeastern hub of the intellectual elite. She does attend a very good school that sends a fair number of its students to Ivy schools each year. All I can say to UnivMom is that getting the mail has really not made any difference. The mailings have not figured into D's application list. Only some scholarship notices have mattered and prompted her to apply a few extra places.</p>
<p>Also, I am growing tired of the SAT bashing. It's preposterous to pretend that peak SAT/ACT scores won't help beyond a certain point. It's also preposterous to pretend that they count for all in the admissions process. Obviously many factors are weighed but I think it's reasonable to take these schools at their word and assume that transcripts, letters, scores, and ECs (in roughly that order) are the most important factors. Perhaps I'm wrong.</p>
<p>Cornell is, I think, still full of "normal" but very bright and interesting kids, some with great depth in a particular area and others just well-rounded (at a high level.) In the undergrad classes I took at Harvard I found that also to be the case. On the other hand, my best friend at Harvard Law and I swore we would cross the street for the rest of our lives not to have to say hello to 95% of our classmates.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I had an extremely intelligent friend last year that breezed through high school. . . . His parents’ bank account ensured him that he could go to whichever college he wanted
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Did the friend end up in a university that people would call a top 20 university?</p>
<p>noojoo--great point about admissions being more than SATs...</p>
<p>it's of interest to any, I got wait-listed at Princeton last year with 2400 SATs, 2 varsity sports, and president of 2 several clubs...I took 5 APs my senior year, and had a very good GPA...so I think the "invisible key" must have eluded me!</p>
<p>for a lot of the top 25s, it has to do with locale, too--I'm from NY and my hs usually sends quite a few to Cornell, but has trouble getting kids into more distant schools like Gtown and HYP.</p>
<p>and I'm very happy at a school (SU) that is not quite top 20...there's more to the college experience than a name--it's the whole big fish in a small pond versus large pond conundrum...</p>
<p>Who knows. It must all be in the essay. All the recruiters that come to the schools have been emphasizing the essays.</p>
<p>I think that GPA and SAT scores at HYPMS are used to weed out applicants. If the scores meet the colleges threshhold, the application is put into the yes read application pool. With adminstration offices receiving 7,000 for ED and having one month to make the decision: yes, no, defer... That is what is meant by making the first cut. </p>
<p>Interviews, from what I hear, put a face on the paper, help the school substantiate ECs. They don't count for much unless the applicant is interviewing for scholarships, but have certainly hurt a couple of applicants :( Going to your interview from the GYM hot and sweaty, etc. Forgetting to show up at all. I know people who interview for some prestigious colleges and they compare notes.</p>
<p>Also, I read somewhere, that the schools can obtain copies of ACT and SAT essays and are comparing them to the ones on applications from time to time.</p>
<p>I think the title of this thread should be changed to "Do AVERAGE kids get into Ivy League or Top 20 unis?" The word "NORMAL" doesn't fit in this case very well. Not NORMAL = Abnormal? So you mean a kid who scores 2400 on the SAT is ABnormal? No, he may be normal, but he's definitely way above AVERAGE. If one is mentally and physically healthy, he's NORMAL:D</p>
<p>Now that I'm "super moderator" (hey, I didn't make up that title ;) ), I actually could change the thread title, but I'll let it stand. I'll note that I concur with the sentiment that kids who get into top 20 universities are not so much not "normal" as not ordinary. They can be very "normal" indeed in all the favorable connotations of that word, but they are generally more curious about intellectual matters and harder-working than many of the fine young people who go to colleges like my alma mater. There are a lot of great colleges in the United States. The students who go to the twenty most selective colleges in the United States (whichever those are) are choosing an unusual college experience, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that they are, on average, extraordinary students.</p>
Does that mean you can change my screenname? I've been thinking lately about "<thud>:The Poster Previously Known As Curmudgeon". Whattya think?</thud></p>
<p>OOPs! Almost forgot. Congratulations TA. ;) What's the view like from on high?</p>
<p>The funny thing is that we all know exactly what the OP meant but can't put it into the right words. It's like one of those words in a foreign language that you need to describe because there is no English word for it. </p>
<p>2 Merit Badges to whomever can come up with a better sentence (they will count toward superior moderator status). Then tokenadult can change it (congratulations ta).</p>
<p>OK...I haven't responded on this thread because the title of it truly offends me. We have a number of very "normal" family members who are Ivy League graduates. There is nothing abnormal about them. They are bright and highly motivated, and happened to have what the schools were looking for when they applied and were excepted. ALL applied to great public universities as well, and would have been just as happy there. I'm not sure what the wording should be either...but having the "normal kids" in there kept me from posting...until now. Maybe "What kinds of students get into the Ivy League or Top 20 Universitys?" would be a better title.</p>
<p>Most Honourable Super Moderator:
Normal is not necessarily a negative term to my D who believes that she has finally attained this most humble status after years of being considered a geek or a super nerd. </p>
<p>Class council and for that matter NHS officer positions are the province of the popular at her HS. D was one of the GT kids that was leadership tracked in 6th grade because of her incredible organization skills. All GT kids have an area of strength. Hers is logic. Her strength is time management. She has a knack for eyeballing situations and understanding the big picture and laying out all possible solutions to a problem and sometimes throwing out some pretty funny ideas to get others to think through a solution. </p>
<p>She is a Project Manager. The teachers and administrators all know this so they always save a seat for her in leadership when she applies for the position, because she will not win the popularity contest, and they need one person who can get things done.</p>
<p>Thumper: The title was a response to a lot of 'what are my chances' threads with postings from what appears to be very stressed out (and often Asian) kids or parents of kids who had perfect or near perfect SATs, ACTs, APs, were winning a gazillion academic prizes, were the captain of every team and president of every club and still didn't think they could go to an Ivy league school. It was not meant to offend, but was tongue-in-cheek. </p>
<p>The Columbia alum recruiters that came to my Ds school (the only Ivy to show up and were ironically ignored by most students and parents at her HS, go figure), basically said they first admit all the perfect people who have done something extraordinary. Eg. published a book at 15, started a business that went public, won the Intel or Westinghouse awards ... after that, they are trying to find oboe players, that is they have a niche they are trying to fill on campus.</p>
<p>Except that's manifestly not true if you look at whom Columbia accepts. There are plenty of kids in there who are not perfect, just smart and accomplished, and who haven't done anything really out of the ordinary for a smart, accomplished kid, and who don't have any oboe-like function.</p>
<p>There really aren't that many perfect AND extraordinary kids out there. The Harvard admissions dean sometimes pegs that number at 200 (he calls them "Walk on Water" or "WOW" applicants). I doubt anyone sees more of them than Harvard, and no one comes close to filling a class with them.</p>
<p>There are maybe 6,000 kids with 2300+ SATs or 35+ ACTs (of whom maybe 1,300 have 2400/36). They're pretty dispersed, and their applications may have lots of other flaws, so they are not taking up all the spots, either (although many will find homes as top-20 universities or LACs).</p>