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

Parent Cafe
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<p>cellardweller, if only I could believe your analysis. It just doesn't work for me, however. I had VERY SIMILAR stats to the OP's son. Very similar. My average SAT score was 770, I had 4 AP 5's, I was ranked in the top 2% of my class, I was a NMSF and now Finalist. For my test scores, I was at or near the 75% at each of my colleges--perhaps my writing was a bit weak (710), but it was still within the middle 50% range. I live in the same city as the OP, thought I go to a different HS. Admittedly, my extras were a somewhat worse than his, but I was pretty involved, too (i.e., my extras were not bad enough to doom me right away). I am a very strong writer, and though I will not claim that my essays were the most inspiring of the year, there is no doubt in my mind that they were as well written as all but the most talented writers in any given pool. Right now, I'm sitting on the waitlist at Brown and Columbia and was outright rejected by Yale (not too surprising) and Princeton (double legacy--quite surprising). True, perhaps had I blitzed the top 10 national universities (I applied only to schools that I would be happy at, so that never entered my mind, but anyway) I would have ended up with a couple of acceptances, but I certainly wouldn't put money down on it. I mean, I get what you are saying--highly qualified students are still competitive--but as a person who listened too much to advice like this, I have to interject. </p>

<p>No one has a good chance. No one can assume that they will be accepted, even to a relatively large pool of these schools. I don't know if the OP is ever coming back (we seem to be talking to ourselves at this point), but being that my app was very similar to his son's, I feel obligated to say: Never assume. Have your son do his best on his apps, but do not allow him or yourself to start planning for a life at an Ivy, because chances are more likely than not that it won't happen. I hated that sort of advice last year, but I wish now that I had listened more. Everyone wants to believe that they can buck the trend and make it happen, which is great when it works out--it just doesn't usually work out.</p>

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<p>advantagious:</p>

<p>My argument is that it is a numbers game. I believe that had you blitzed all the top schools, you would have increased your chances. That would not have guaranteed admission, but certainly made it more likely. I don't know how many you applied to but clearly if you only applied to HYPSM, chances remained low. </p>

<p>I can only speak of my experience this past fall with my D and the results over the past 3-4 years from her high school, which seemed very similar to the OP's school. Actually my D's stats were slightly worse than the OP's son. (2260 SAT, NM Commended, 4 APs junior year). She was deferred EA and eventually rejected at Yale. Rejected outright at H, P and S. She was convinced she had a good shot at Columbia but was rejected. She applied to PMLE at Brown and expected at least a general admission if she was not accepted to PMLE. Rejected. Then she was completely surprised by admission to Dartmouth, the smallest of the Ivies where she did not initially think was a good match and was the only applicant from her school accepted RD with a terrific FA package to boot. MIT was even a greater surprise as she felt her stats were borderline. Less surprising, she was also accepted to Cornell. Never applied to Penn. My point is that had she narrowed the list only to the schools where she initially felt she had a shot she would have had nothing to show. </p>

<p>Again, I am not suggesting that a blitzing strategy guarantees admission. It simply increase your odds of admission and I am still willing to bet it would work for the OP.</p>

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<p>Cellardwellar, we had the same experience in a large suburban school too. The kids all got into one or two of the Ivies, Ivy equivalents, or top LACs, but no one got into all. Not this year anyway.</p>

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<p>Cellardwellar, with all due respect, what you paint as an "example" of the advantage of a scattershot approach to admissions, I see as an example of weak targeting. Here are what the figures show in terms of selectivity & acceptance rates (taken from College Board web site):</p>

<p>Cornell: 25%
Dartmouth: 16%
Brown: 14%
MIT: 13%
Stanford: 11%
Princeton: 10%
Columbia: 10%
Harvard: 9%
Yale: 9%</p>

<p>It seems to me that your daughter was accepted to the two least selective colleges on the list. If she had narrowed her search to only the 4 least selective, she would have been admitted to 3 out of 4 colleges. </p>

<p>Moreover, if you had delved a little deeper, you would have found that MIT has almost 3 times as many male as female applicants --so the true acceptance rates, by gender, for MIT are -- male, 10%, female 26%. (!) Source: Common Data Set, <a href="http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2006/c.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.mit.edu/ir/cds/2006/c.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>That's quite an edge for a female applicant, which didn't exist at the other colleges on the list. </p>

<p>So now if your daughter had simply used a cutoff of only applying to colleges where her raw chances of admission (based on published statistics) were above 15% - she would have had a 100% admit rate.</p>

<p>My own daughter was rejected at Brown, which I fully expected. It was the only college that outright rejected her -- because she had the good sense NOT to apply to HYPS or Columbia. </p>

<p>I don't want to diminish your daughter's accomplishments in any way -- admission to Dartmouth, MIT and Cornell is something that should make any parent rightfully proud. But one doesn't improve "chances" by placing more bets in areas where there the odds are less -- that is, I don't win more money at blackjack by becoming more aggressive in the way I play when the card combination shows that I've got the weakest odds. </p>

<p>The big problem with your approach is that those who follow it may fail to see the degree to which they could maximize their chances by a more strategic, targeted approach to admissions, by developing and emphasizing personal qualities that might give them a particular edge at a given college. For example, my daughter was particularly strong in Russian (4 years of high school Russian, 2 trips to Russia to live & study there), and I found an article in a Yale publication about a girl who was their only Russian major -- the article made it very clear that Yale wanted more Russian majors. In the end, we decided that Yale was still too much of a reach for my daughter -- but if my d. had wanted to add one more long shot college to her list, then she might have had a slight edge at Yale that would not have existed for the other colleges. </p>

<p>I think for the colleges where admission rates are less than 15%, then no matter how strong the "stats" the student really has to ask herself, "what have I got that sets me apart from other applicants?" - and then ask, "is this something that college X wants?" If the answer to the 2nd question is no... or "don't know" -- then odds of admission are far weaker than the stats would indicated, because the vast majority of the slots are going to students where the answer to that question is a strong yes.</p>

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<p>calmom:</p>

<p>while I haven't seen all of your posts, this last one was most impressive. If cedar D would have applied to Cornell only, she'd be one for one.</p>

<p>cedar: by ignoring Penn ED, it was a guaranteed non-acceptance. Stetson makes clear that Penn shows love to kids who show them the love. As a legacy, the RD app to Pennn made clear to Stetson that Penn was at best second choice, so they KNEW that your D would go somewhere else IFF accepted somewhere else. Yoiu wasted your money. Moreover, I hope your D took AP stats bcos your logic is....</p>

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<p>calmom, speaking of admissions math, can you explain what you claim was the mixup of correlation and causation in the statement "admissions rate increases linearly with SAT score"?</p>

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<p>Why does your son want to go to an ivy league school?</p>

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<p>Oh feh on all of this. It's all crap. Academics and scores are a dime a dozen; the kids who transcended the predictable in our community were two: the nationally ranked crew rower who got his coach to write his rcc to MIT and who wrote his essay about being gay and persecuted and who also had top grades and test scores and the blonde nationally ranked hip hop dancer with test scores and grades that fell in the ivy band. </p>

<p>Grades and test scores are not enough...you have to have something else to bring to the table. Being from an underperforming urban or rural environment will do, but if you are the typical hothoused suburbanite or preppie you must transcend normal high school levels of achievement in some way.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
if you are the typical hothoused suburbanite or preppie you must transcend normal high school levels of achievement in some way

[/quote]
</p>

<p>A school like, say, Harvard, would play havoc with its admissions results by requiring unusual non-cognitive achievement from too many applicants. After taking the academic superstars and favored admissions categories into account, half or more of admits have normal or normal-plus non-academic achievement, with impeccable standard credentials (tests, grades, AP, rec).</p>

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<p>Siserune:
<a href="http://www.plantpath.wisc.edu/fac/joh/Exp5KochStudentGuide.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.plantpath.wisc.edu/fac/joh/Exp5KochStudentGuide.htm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.genuinevc.com/archives/2005/05/my_pet_peeve_co.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.genuinevc.com/archives/2005/05/my_pet_peeve_co.htm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://alpie.net/blog/bin/post.cgi?id=272%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://alpie.net/blog/bin/post.cgi?id=272&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.stat.tamu.edu/stat30x/notes/node42.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stat.tamu.edu/stat30x/notes/node42.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I'll say it again, if you want a top school, apply to ALL you would be happy to attend. It can't hurt. FA does vary widely. Your odds WILL improve. No is pulling their app to make room for you. You are NOT taking someone else's slot. I'm talking about the best schools in the country. If you are happy with a safety school, save your application dollars and take a vacation. If you're not and you want into the top 20 most selective schools, look at all of them and apply to every one that you would be pleased to attend. If you need FA, spread your net a little wider.</p>

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<p>


I doubt that. The examples Mombot gave are not impossible to achieve -- the point is simply that they are distinctive. Nationally-ranked gay rower; nationally "ranked" hip hop dancer. </p>

<p>(I put "ranked" in quotes because dance does not have a highly structured system of competition -- each competition operates independently; they generally have only 2 levels, regional & national, and usually everyone who scores above a certain level at the regionals will be invited to the national competition. So it would not particularly difficult for a good competitive dancer to pick up that sort of award) </p>

<p>It doesn't necessarily mean the kid is world famous. It does mean that there is something to distinguish the kid from all the other applications that are being reviewed. The top kids at highly respected feeder schools may not need that -- but the bottom line is that the limited slots are going to be filled by applicants who catch the attention of an ad com by standing out from the crowd. Occasionally that might be for a reason "invisible" to outsiders, such as an exceptionally strong essay or unusually strong recs. </p>

<p>This isn't rocket science. I don't think you could read any of the books written about competitive admissions and not figure this out. </p>

<p>It's a sorting game. The exact mechanism varies from school to school, but basically as the apps get read they get quickly sorted into the "reject", "maybe", and "sure-thing admit" piles. Once the sure-thing admit pile is taken care of, the maybe's are generally reviewed in greater depth, usually by more than one reader -- and they need a <em>reason</em> that someone will latch onto to advocate for them.


If the app is going straight to the "reject" pile, the odds of acceptance won't improve no matter how many apps are sent off to colleges where the applicant has no chance. The applicant needs to at least get to that "maybe" pile. For the Ivies, that generally means an extremely strong academic profile to start with -- or else a strong hook. Then they need something above and beyond that to get pulled into the "admit" pile. </p>

<p>I mean, my odds of winning the state lottery will improve if I buy 10 tickets rather than 1, but either way they are infinitesimally small.</p>

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<p>You can never say an app from a good student is going straight to the reject pile, now can you? Go look at the admitted students stats from HYP and you'll see any number of 'just good kids' that got admitted. We'll never know why, will we? And it's certainly not up to you or me to say what dreams a student should or shouldn't pursue. As they say, the only sure rejection is the app you don't submit. Look at the number of kids accepted to one of HYP but rejected from the others. Its far higher than the number accepted to all three. Now how would they decide which one to apply to and which to not bother? If you want the top, you really do have to broaden your net. My D and Curmedgeon's D are living proof.</p>

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<p>calmom, the question was not what it means to mistake correlation for causation but rather how the statement "admissions rate increases linearly with SAT score" is (according to you) an example of that mistake.</p>

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<p>Calmom as always makes lots of good points. One thing I have found is that for certain non-legacy, non -athletes, there are kids I look at in our district that I can say are almost certain to get in HYPS. You know them you see them. Example. Great student. Skipped a grade. Perfect SAT,ACT,PSAT. 12 AP 5's. Played two instuments. Swimmer. Summer well known research program. I warned idividual ththat/he/she might not get into HYPS. Why? Because she looked like a lot of others nationally. Second kid. Took AP's in 10th. Good in all. Not perfect scores but very high. Nationally recognized in music, composed since age 7, did some interesting volunteer stuff. I thought certain and did get in. Third case. Female, did AP foreign language early, took AP math and science in 9th, classical musician, great writer, also did some diferent things such as being a cracker jack shot and hunter. Very quiet. Top scores. Just looked different from standard kid. Seemed a for sure and was. There are just kids that stand out from the many great students. Their odds of getting in are high. The difficult ones are the thousands of other great ones that while great might be interchangeable. I would hate to be an Adcom member. I assume that trying several places might increase their chances but I am not sure how to quantify that. I guess if your GC has good records he/she might help understand the odds but I know that recently some of our best counsleors are kind of throwing up their hands and saying apply to several more places.</p>

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<p>"Go look at the admitted students stats from HYP and you'll see any number of 'just good kids' that got admitted. "</p>

<p>My belief is that such students may seem that way on CC, but in reality, they had a lot more going for them than one can tell by what they posted on a message board or a stats profile.</p>

<p>I interview for Harvard, and have never seen any person who was just a "good kid" get in. Everyone whom I have interviewed who got in stood out a great deal from the pile. Some years, I was the interviewer for virtually every student from my region, so I am speaking from experience.</p>

<p>Incidentally, "just good kids" who are URMs or legacies also don't get in, at least not to Harvard from my experience. I've seen plenty of them rejected, too. Each year, admissions is getting more difficult to all colleges in this country, and that will be the case until at least 2011 when the number of US college-bound students starts dropping. Keep that in mind, too, as one assesses chances.</p>

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<p>Northstarmom: Thanks for your insight. Good perspective.</p>

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<p>QUOTE: "(I put "ranked" in quotes because dance does not have a highly structured system of competition -- each competition operates independently; they generally have only 2 levels, regional & national, and usually everyone who scores above a certain level at the regionals will be invited to the national competition. So it would not particularly difficult for a good competitive dancer to pick up that sort of award)" </p>

<p>....Depends on the style of dance. Some are definitely more structured than other styles, with much more intense degrees of competition & not at all easy to pick up an impressive award. </p>

<p>QUOTE: "in reality, they had a lot more going for them than one can tell by what they posted on a message board or a stats profile."</p>

<p>Totally agree. What's more, it's the way they describe themselves that can be misleading, though not intentionally so. I got an eye-opener about this last year, when I followed many of the CC student postings carefully on the Harvard forum. There is a casualness about the non-statistical aspects of the postings, pre-acceptance, that is transformed when the results threads get posted. Those same students then flesh out their various accomplishments, and it all becomes quite clear as to the reasons for their acceptances. Even then, the applicant does not have the perspective of the adult reviewing the application, so that is another area where the <em>apparent</em> profile can be misleading. (Similarly for one student commenting about a classmate's profile, or a parent commenting on a competitor's profile.)</p>

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<p>Students and parents are not admissions officers. We do not know who the admission officers will view as "just good kids" and who they will view as desirable candidates. I don't think it is wrong for students with an excellent record to apply to as many top schools as they would be interested in attending. If I had been a CC reader at the time my son applied to college in 2002, I might have told him not to bother applying to the top schools, but I would have been wrong about his chances. I will post the details below:</p>

<p>My son was the valedictorian of a large class at an average suburban high school where few aspire to elite schools. He spent a lot of time preparing for his standardized tests and earned almost perfect scores (1590 SATs, 800 on all of his SAT 2s, and 5 on all four of his APs taken before senior year). There were three National Merit Finalists in his class of over 800. His highest math class was Calculus AB. He also took AP Computer Science A (the lower one), and at the time he had an intended major of CS. He was fortunate to have AP Physics on his record as a senior, as his class was only the second year it was offered at his school. </p>

<p>He had many achievements, activities, etc. but I would not say he had any extraordinary talents or achievements on his record. He attended the Johns Hopkins CTY Program for two years and our state's Governor's School for the Sciences. He did a summer internship at a state government agency. He was a year-round athlete, but not a star. He took part in the academic clubs and competitions that our h.s. school offered, but neither he nor any of his teams won any high level competitions. His college essay was about quitting soccer because he was burned out and doing track/xc instead. He presented himself very well in every aspect of his application.</p>

<p>We are a white upper middle class family and both of us are professionals who graduated from excellent colleges, so there is no deprivation in our son's background. We do not qualify for financial aid, but are not rich. We did not start "grooming" our kid for college when he was little, and this is not done in our community. For example, although the SAT is offered to those qualified in seventh grade and many do take it, I have only heard of one other student (three years younger than my son) who ever attended CTY.</p>

<p>He, as well as my husband and I, felt that he had a chance for the top colleges but that his admission to any of them was by no means guaranteed. Our guidance department was of no help at all in the admissions process as far as advice. We thus encouraged him to apply to the four schools in the "HYPMS" group that he was interested in, as well as several other schools. He applied to nine colleges including Harvard EA, Princeton, MIT EA, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Cornell, Washington University, Cornell, and Penn State Honors, which was many more than his classmates. </p>

<p>EDIT: He got excellent recommendations from his teachers, and also two additional ones which were outstanding. One was from the Governor's School, which provides recommendations based on information collected from all of the teachers who taught the student during the program, and the other one was from his supervisor at his internship. (These two extra recommendations may have been the part of his application which made it stand out from the crowd.) </p>

<p>His admissions results were as follows: Admitted to Harvard EA, deferred from MIT EA and admitted RD, admitted RD to Princeton, Stanford, JHU, Duke, Washington University (half tuition scholarship), and Penn State Honors, and waitlisted at Cornell. Did he apply to too many colleges? Who knows. We were totally surprised by his admssions results. Andi's son sounded much more impressive to me than my own son, and apparently he applied to too few colleges in his first round (although thankfully all worked out for the best for him :) ).</p>

<p>Finally, I don't follow the logic of some posters who say that students applying to a large number of colleges take spots away from others. A student can only attend ONE college and will decline all of the admissions offers except one, leaving the same number of spots open for others as there would be if they had only applied to ONE college.</p>

<p>I hope that this is not too much detail, but I thought that this information (although it is five years old at this time) might prove useful to some other parents and applicants.</p>

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<p>"My son was the valedictorian of a large class at an average suburban high school where few aspire to elite schools."</p>

<p>motheroftwo: Well done. But I think perhaps you underestimate how your s looked relative to others in his school/distrct. Also, the essays, counselor recommends, geographic considerations etc may have made him a better candidate then you want to make him appear. Super results. Bet you liked seeing all those big envelopes!</p>