Do you think my son has the qualifications for ivy league?

advantagious · April 4, 2007, 4:59pm

Well, I don't think that this is what you mean, JHS, but your last statement implies that the only top graduates are graduates from top colleges. As has been well-documented on this thread and all over the boards, there are many times as qualified, highly capable applicants than the number of spots at the top colleges. I'm not quite sure what you mean by colleges "on the fringes", but there are certainly schools that are excellent--certainly near to, even if not quite at the overall excellence of Ivies/Ivy types--and whose names are not part of a snappy acronym.

As far as Carleton and schools of its ilk, I would agree with the idea that one need not be amazing in every way to be admitted--at least, that's how I would interpret the fact that I was shut out of the Ivies but got into both Carleton and Wellesley--but that certainly does not mean that these type of schools are open door schools--not by a long shot. I just think that people are recommending these schools as good ones to look at, being that the large majority of applicants with the OP's son's stats will not find a spot at an Ivy.

Mombot · April 4, 2007, 5:11pm

JHS--the point of this discussion though is that this kid is going to be applying next year. His stats and profile look about the same as a million other kids who will apply to the same 25 schools. He's got nothing that they don't have, and enough of them will have distinguished themselves in such a way that they stand out from all of the other 4.0/2200/National Merit Scholars.

In my opinion it is unkind and unrealistic to keep telling these kids they are ivy material when the top schools have now dipped below 10% acceptance. I think it's fine if kids want to buy themselves a lottery ticket and apply to one or two ivies, but I've seen too many with a handful of rejections and really no good solid plan to attend a school they are really excited about. Students with the same stats who were willing to look at the level below ivy got excellent results. Edit: Each application costs somewhere between $50 and $100, and if you add the cost of sending a full set of scores to each school it adds up fast. No wonder these places have all this money to print colorful brochures. I think we shelled out about $550 to apply to six schools once we paid for all of the app fees, SATs, SAT IIs, etc.

I know Carleton is very selective, but we are talking about a very strong student. I don't have their data, but everybody we know who applied there got in, vs. a lot of rejections from Amherst and Williams. It's tough at Carleton and Kenyon but it's not as crazy as the east coast LACs.

ildad--I think University of Rochester has an undergrad/med program. You should look at it. Also look at state honors programs--D. got into the one at University of Washington and if you are worried about the big classes and impersonal atmosphere at a state school, the honors programs often have the personal attention you'd get at a smaller place.

mathmom · April 4, 2007, 5:34pm

Mombot, I agree that kids need to be realistic, but sometimes kids actually are more interesting than the mere listing of ECs, GPAs and SAT scores suggests. So I hesitate to tell someone to forget about those 25 favorite places. Another direction for getting easy admits is the next tier down of tech schools. I haven't looked at them so much from the eyes of a propective pre-med, but just to take an example I'm familiar with: RPI (listed as one of the new Ivies) has a 75% admit rate despite middle SAT range of 1220-1420. Chem, Bio, Biomedical engineering all provide good majors.

tokenadult · April 4, 2007, 5:37pm

On May 7th and May 8th there will be public information meetings in Illinois by the Exploring College Options consortium of colleges

<a href="http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/utilities/travel_schedule/index.cgi?state=Illinois%5B/url%5D">http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/utilities/travel_schedule/index.cgi?state=Illinois</a>

which will include Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Penn and Stanford. An information session like this might be a good opportunity for your junior son to gain some information that will help him line up a good set of colleges to apply to next year.

advantagious · April 4, 2007, 5:43pm

The thing about the term Ivy material is not that the OP's son or even the majority of the applicants to the Ivies are not Ivy material--it's just that there are simply not spots for these kids.

I would strongly suggest looking to the LAC list, because one needn't look very far down the list at all to find very very good schools like Carleton that are just a little bit more open than the Ivies. I think that 30 or 40 years ago, kids like the OP's son, like me, like many on CC, very likely could have found a spot an an Ivy. It just isn't like that anymore, and it isn't even like that at many of the other top 25 universities, but it is much closer to like that at the top LAC's, I believe--and the education is near to every bit as excellent.

JHS · April 4, 2007, 5:52pm

I did not mean to suggest that "top graduates" can only come from 5 or 10 or 20 institutions. I agree with all of you that, looking down the road, the fact that so many great students are going to schools outside those 5 or 10 or 20 means that there will be a bunch of great students applying to professional schools in the future who do not come from the 5 or 10 or 20. But I think that the population of professional school applicants from Harvard or Penn will continue to be very impressive.

I also agree that it is unkind and unrealistic to suggest that these kids are "ivy material" without any backup, and I don't think I did suggest that. However, the experience of my family and our friends suggests that strong students don't have to go all that far afield to find good options, and don't necessarily need to search out the undiscovered gem (although it's fine if someone does that).

Carleton: I definitely know of good students who were not admitted there. My impression is that it's a quantum more selective than Kenyon.

mathmom · April 4, 2007, 9:50pm

Actually the Ivy admissions officers say that a good 70% of the kids who apply are Ivy material. But since they don't have enough space for them all, they do look for distinctions among them.

siserune · April 5, 2007, 12:52am

[quote]
Actually the Ivy admissions officers say that a good 70% of the kids who apply are Ivy material.

[/quote]

They can say it, but it's empty PR. It would be more accurate, if not very polite, to say that 50 to 70 percent of the kids enrolled at most Ivies are not Ivy material. The admissions officer definition of Ivy material is "capable of graduation", which is not a very high standard.

siserune · April 5, 2007, 3:39am

<a href="%5Bb%5DAdOfficer%5B/b%5D%20wrote:">quote</a> Remember that your child will be compared directly to his peers who are applying to the same schools he is from his high school,

[/quote]

Is that literally true or do you mean that students from a strong, "feeder" high school will be compared to each other at regional level (not within their high school specifically)?

oldolddad · April 5, 2007, 9:03am

Sisrune: I also said that. Yes at the same school. As an extreme case, my old high school had about 30 kids apply to one top private every year. An admssion officer told me recently that even the 30th was as qaulified to get in as many of the national candidates but that they were not going to take 30 from one school.
Where I live if there are 5 candidates applying to say school X, they will all have a counselor letter, and often recommends from the same teachers. If one stands out, doing way more with the opportunities available to her/him and looking above not only the candidates in one year or even past years from the high school it could make a difference. A "best you have ever seen" versus "outstanding" especially from people who have been around a while can make a difference--- In my expereince.

oldolddad · April 5, 2007, 9:08am

siseruen: As a followup a kid with the OPs stats from a school in rural Montana may have a better chance to get into Princeton than a stronger kid from a school in Fairfax Va, too. Naperville is full of top performing stuudents. Standing out might be tougher there.

JHS · April 5, 2007, 10:15am

I don't know how you can say that 50% of the kids enrolled at Ivies are not "Ivy material". From my vantage point, I see a few outliers, but the vast majority of the kids are extremely impressive. I see lots of in- or barely- distinguishable kids going elsewhere, too, and I see a handful of kids who stand out beyond the level of merely very strong, engaged student/leaders. Those latter kids do not face much of a crapshoot in the admissions process, by the way. But there aren't enough of them to fill up a class at Harvard, much less all of HYPS, MIT, etc.

As for comparing kids to their same-school classmates: Who ever thought anything different? Obviously, for any college-high school pair, there is a somewhat-flexible number of kids that the college expects to take, and same-school comparisons are going to be crucial.

sly_vt · April 5, 2007, 11:01am

"As for comparing kids to their same-school classmates: Who ever thought anything different?"

We're moving off topic here, but this is a "myth" that I've seen elsewhere on CC. I know I once mentioned on the Brown forum that kids are compared to applicants from their own HS, and was immediately challenged on that by a poster who insisted (quite vigorously) that every candidate is evaluated independently irrespective of other applicants from the same school. Well, now we have the word from AdOfficer!

cellardweller · April 5, 2007, 11:35am

[quote]
His stats and profile look about the same as a million other kids who will apply to the same 25 schools.

[/quote]

That is simply false.

<ol>
<li>There are only about 20,000 NMFs every year. Less than 25,000 kids score above 750 on the SAT Verbal alone and less than 32,000 score over 750 on the Reasoning portion. On testing alone, based on the combination of scores the OP's son is most likely in the top 10,000 students in the country. It would also place him above or near the 75% percentile at every Ivy. </li>
<li>The GPA, based on a very rigorous curriculum, (6 APs by junior year) is also near the top of prospective candidates. The student is essentially a straight A student with maybe an A- per year. For any adcom using anything resembling an academic index, he would score near the top. The rank is unknown but he certainly can't be any worse than top 5%, probably more like top 2% in a very competitive high school. </li>
</ol>

For all practical puposes, the candidate would be among the top 5,000-8,000 candidates on any academic index.

I really don't see the lack of major ECs or national awards as a major problem. Most Ivy candidates have not cured cancer or won a math Olympiad. The candidate obviously has hundreds of hours of community service, will certainly be NHS and has shown interest in the medical field, which could be further enhanced by some additional work this summer. He has shown commitment to at least one sport and can probably show progress in that activity over the past years.

Let us look now at the admission numbers:

In the regular round alone, the Ivies will enroll around 10,000 candidates in 2008. (Around 15,000 will be offered admission). This is after they have admitted legacies, athletes and URMs in the early round, generally with stats less stellar then the RD candidates. Adding Stanford and MIT (both great for premeds) the number goes to about 12,000.

Granted there will be a number of 'hooked' candidates in the RD round (legacies and athletes at Harvard and Princeton are now accepted in the RD round). Simply to maintain their median SAT scores and GPA, the Ivies will need to enroll at least half of their students from the top academic pool, or about 5,000. We already know the candidate is at worst among the top 8,000 academic candidates. If he were to apply to all 8 Ivies +S,M he would have anywhere from a 50 to 75% chance to be admitted to at least one school. He is already a clear match for Cornell and Penn based on stats. He is probably only a slight reach for Brown, Dartmouth or Columbia. HYPSM are a major reach for anybody.

If one were to add the next ten private universities with enrollments greater than 1,000 annually to the list (those on CC for instance), the total enrolled number of students from RD nearly doubles to over 23,000 students. Again, a substantial portion will need to be picked from the top academically qualified candidates. The candidate is more than a match for all of these schools.

In conclusion, one could make the following argument:
For a highly academically qualified student<a href="stats%20at%20or%20near%2075%%20percentile%20for%20top%20Ivies">/b</a> seeking admission to a selective college for eventual admission to a top med school, **playing the numbers game offers the best chance of success. That is precisely the strategy used when students apply to med school. You apply to 20 to get admission to 2 or 3 at best. Some get admitted to HMS and nowhere else.

The incremental cost of applying to 20 colleges as opposed to 8 or 10 is well worth the 2 to 3 times greater chance of being admitted to at least one of the most desirable schools. Despite claims to the contrary, a disproportionate number of students admitted to top med schools come from a small number of colleges and universities.

In our personal experience, we also found that expanding the list by applying to prestigious, smaller LACs was not really worth it. First, despite their claims of success, most LACs only field a handful of med school candidates each year. In addition, the number of applicants to top LACs has also ballooned dropping acceptance rates to Ivy levels. Even with stats well above the 75% percentile our D ended up waitlisted at most. At that point, if you are going to spend the money on additional applications, it is more productive to focus on a school that admits 1,000 students than one that admits 300.

Finally, a last approach for a very strong candidate is to apply OOS to one of the top public universities such as Cal, UCLA, Michigan, UNC or Virginia. All take vast amounts of premed students and because of their size largely apply a stats only approach to admission. The OP's son is virtually guaranteed admission to any of these schools.

I am actually willing to bet that if the candidate applied to all top 20 private universities (enrolling over 1,000 student annually) based on the above stats:
-He would get into 2 top ten schools
-At least an additional 4 top 20 schools
That would be 6/20 or a 30% batting average, leaving quite a few options.

bluebayou · April 5, 2007, 11:38am

cellardwellar:

I like the concept, but you forgot to include the ACT #'s.....

JHS · April 5, 2007, 11:40am

I'm sure that, to some extent, both happen (referring to sly_vt's post # 73). If there are two great applicants from one school, neither one will be accepted if he or she doesn't make the grade with respect to the rest of the pool, and both may be accepted if they both look superior compared to the rest of the pool, even if the college has never accepted more than one kid from that school. But one of them is going to have a much better chance of acceptance than the other -- i.e., the one that looks like the #1 candidate from the school. And my understanding of how the world works is that the schools with a successful, significant, ongoing relationship with College X's admissions department understand that they have to be fairly clear about their rankings in order to hold up their end of the relationship.

cellardweller · April 5, 2007, 11:52am

[quote]
His stats and profile look about the same as a million other kids who will apply to the same 25 schools.

[/quote]

That is simply false.

<ol>
<li>There are only about 20,000 NMFs every year. Less than 25,000 kids score above 750 on the SAT Verbal alone and less than 32,000 score over 750 on the Reasoning portion. On testing alone, based on the combination of scores the OP's son is most likely in the top 10,000 students in the country. It would also place him above or near the 75% percentile at every Ivy. </li>
<li>The GPA, based on a very rigorous curriculum, (6 APs by junior year) is also near the top of prospective candidates. The student is essentially a straight A student with maybe an A- per year. For any adcom using anything resembling an academic index, he would score near the top. The rank is unknown but he certainly can't be any worse than top 5%, probably more like top 2% in a very competitive high school. </li>
</ol>

For all practical puposes, the candidate would be among the top 5,000-8,000 candidates on any academic index.

I really don't see the lack of major ECs or national awards as a major problem. Most Ivy candidates have not cured cancer or won a math Olympiad. The candidate obviously has hundreds of hours of community service, will certainly be NHS and has shown interest in the medical field, which could be further enhanced by some additional work this summer. He has shown commitment to at least one sport and can probably show progress in that activity over the past years.

Let us look now at the admission numbers:

In the regular round alone, the Ivies will enroll around 10,000 candidates in 2008. (Around 15,000 will be offered admission). This is after they have admitted legacies, athletes and URMs in the early round, generally with stats less stellar then the RD candidates. Adding Stanford and MIT (both great for premeds) the number goes to about 12,000.

Granted there will be a number of 'hooked' candidates in the RD round (legacies and athletes at Harvard and Princeton are now accepted in the RD round). Simply to maintain their median SAT scores and GPA, the Ivies will need to enroll at least half of their students from the top academic pool, or about 5,000. We already know the candidate is at worst among the top 8,000 academic candidates. If he were to apply to all 8 Ivies +S,M he would have anywhere from a 50 to 75% chance to be admitted to at least one school. He is already a clear match for Cornell and Penn based on stats. He is probably only a slight reach for Brown, Dartmouth or Columbia. HYPSM are a major reach for anybody.

If one were to add the next ten private universities with enrollments greater than 1,000 annually to the list (based on USNWR for instance), the total enrolled number of students from RD nearly doubles to over 23,000 students. Again, a substantial portion will need to be picked from the top academically qualified candidates. The candidate is more than a match for all of these schools.

In conclusion, one could make the following argument:
For a highly academically qualified student<a href="stats%20at%20or%20near%2075%%20percentile%20for%20top%20Ivies">/b</a> seeking admission to a selective college for eventual admission to a top med school, **playing the numbers game offers the best chance of success. That is precisely the strategy used when students apply to med school. You apply to 20 to get admission to 2 or 3 at best. Some get admitted to HMS and nowhere else.

The incremental cost of applying to 20 colleges as opposed to 8 or 10 is well worth the 2 to 3 times greater chance of being admitted to at least one of the most desirable schools. Despite claims to the contrary, a disproportionate number of students admitted to top med schools come from a small number of colleges and universities.

In our personal experience, we also found that expanding the list by applying to prestigious, smaller LACs was not really worth it. First, despite their claims of success, most LACs only field a handful of med school candidates each year. In addition, the number of applicants to top LACs has also ballooned dropping acceptance rates to Ivy levels. Even with stats well above the 75% percentile our D ended up waitlisted at most. At that point, if you are going to spend the money on additional applications, it is more productive to focus on a school that admits 1,000 students than one that admits 300.

Finally, a last approach for a very strong candidate is to apply OOS to one of the top public universities such as Cal, UCLA, Michigan, UNC or Virginia. All take vast amounts of premed students and because of their size largely apply a stats only approach to admission. The OP's son is virtually guaranteed admission to any of these schools.

JHS · April 5, 2007, 1:15pm

I think cellardweller's analysis is basically correct, and a more precise way of saying what I was saying earlier in this thread -- that the vast majority of very academically strong candidates get admitted to top-rank schools (if not HYPS). I also agree completely with his/her observation that applying to well-regarded state universities is a good strategy for such a candidate, because (a) they have a lot of slots to fill, in terms of absolute numbers, and (b) notwithstanding any rhetoric about holistic review, their acceptances seem to correlate with SATs/GPAs much more than those of the Ivies and similar private universities.

However, I want to put a different cast on some of the analysis. Total acceptances for the Ivies are probably somewhat over the 16,000 range, but we have no idea how many unique applicants that represents. There have to be at least 11,000, because that's the number they enroll, and there's certainly more than that, but there's an awful lot of overlap at the RD stage. I'll guess that it's maybe 13,000 unique kids. The ones who don't enroll at one of the Ivies are, in all likelihood, among the strongest applicants, because statistically they are probably going to Stanford, MIT, Amherst, etc., or receiving an offer-you-can't-refuse scholarship elsewhere. This means that collectively they admit about 4,000 kids from the top 25% of their collective stats pool.

How many kids would qualify for that top 25%? Not millions, certainly, but considerably more than 8,000, taking into account the following: (a) kids taking the ACT, including kids whose ACT score is higher than an SAT they took, (b) most colleges mix SAT or ACT scores from various testing dates, so that the number of, for instance, >2300 applicants is much greater than the number CB reports as scoring >2300 on any single test in a year, and (c) there is no guarantee that the same kid will be in the top 25% on both SAT I tests and on GPA. Lots of eligible kids won't apply to any Ivies, of course, but I would still guess that far more than 4,000 kids who would satisfy one or more of the top 25% apply to at least one of them.

This is consistent with cellardweller's analysis that a kid with top stats has a 50-75% chance of admission to at least one Ivy League school. But that also means that the kid has a 25-50% chance of not getting into any of them. That's worse odds than Russian Roulette, even if it's better odds than the <10% overall chance of admission for all applicants. I know from recent (and still a little raw) experience that it's perfectly possible not to gain admission to any particular "lesser Ivy" with stats (and ECs, for that matter) a couple of ticks better than the OP's.

Finally, although some of the Ivies may be looking for slightly idiosyncratic things, I suspect overall they are pretty much looking for the same things, and that decisions at the various colleges are not independent of one another. I.e., acceptance at one Ivy means that acceptance at others is more likely, and rejection at one means that rejection at others is more likely. So it's not just a question of saying "Overall, I have a 70% chance of getting into Cornell, Penn, or Dartmouth, so if I apply to all three I will have a 97% chance of getting into one."

cubsfan · April 5, 2007, 1:24pm

Xxxxxxxxxx

cellardweller · April 5, 2007, 2:06pm

I agree with JHS that admission to Ivies are not completely independent from one another and that it may impossible to guarantee with 100% certainty that a top academic candidate will be accepted at even one Ivy. On the other hand they still have to pick large numbers of applicants from the highly qualified academic pool which is inherently limited, just to maintain their average stats. So unless an application is fundamentally flawed or extreme bad luck, a top student's number will eventually be picked from a top school's hat after enough tries.

My personal experience is based on analyzing stats at a large public high school in an overrepresented region (Connecticut) with large numbers of unhooked kids from generally economically advantaged backgrounds and no spectacular ECs or national awards. The top kids acdemically do end up at top schools, although often not at their top pick. The valedictorian may end up rejected at Yale but accepted to Stanford. The top 2% generally go to Ivies or equivalent, the top 5% to top 20 schools etc.. We found often little overlap as to where the top applicants were accepted. One unhooked kid may be accepted to Harvard or Princeton and rejected at every other Ivy. Few ever got more than one HYPSM acceptance.

To me this looks more and more like med school applications and acceptance patterns: a limited pool of qualified applicants (over 50% of all med school applicants are accepted somewhere), low acceptance rates for each school (lower than or approaching 10%), lots of applications for each candidate. Interestingly, few medical school applicants hoard all the acceptances. It is rare to have more than 2 or 3.

Based on the strong similarities between the candidate's high school and those from the area I live in, as well as the stats presented, I am personally willing to bet that if the OP's son, applied to all 20 top private universities with annual enrollments over 1,000 students:
-He would get into 2 of the top ten schools
-Another 4 of the top 20.
This would give him a 6/20 or 30% batting average with enough options to make a good choice. The problem is that betting on acceptance at any one school in particular would be very risky.

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Do you think my son has the qualifications for ivy league?

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