@TooOld4School , good point. Don’t MAKE your child be YOUR idea of the best he can be.
- I have to laugh a bit at the line about Caltech being a "pure merit college." I am pretty sure Harvard considers itself a pure merit college, too, except perhaps with respect to a truly tiny number of "developmental" admits, far less than 1% of the student body. Harvard's definition of "merit" corresponds much more closely to what the general society considers merit than Caltech's. Is someone going to suggest that Ryan Fitzpatrick, Yo-Yo Ma, or Natalie Portman hasn't been selected on merit? Athletes, especially, are subject to a pitiless merit selection process in which both their academic and their athletic abilities are severely judged. All of those high school leaders? That's a much more comprehensible version of "merit" than SAT scores.
- If you, or your child, sets out to get the child accepted to an Ivy League college, both of you are running a serious risk of complete failure. And if you happen to succeed, not fail, it won't justify the risk you took of potential waste and disappointment.
If, on the other hand, you and your child set out to have the child become as educated, curious, happy, and engaged with what he does as he possibly could be, then he will be a winner regardless of what happens with college admissions. That will be true now, and it will remain true for a long time after he and his rivals all graduate from college. What’s more – bonus! – there is no better strategy for maximizing your college admissions results than being as educated, curious, happy, and engaged with what you do as you possibly could be.
Make the smart choice.
"A handful of schools report specific breakdowns of scores, GPAs, etc (I’ve seen this from Brown and Georgetown “specifically). It’s pretty easy to see what is important to the school. But even if you’re perfect with your stats, you only have about 30% chance of admission.”
Brown reports their data in a way that really drives home the point that getting in can’t be predicted by just the data.
Valedictorian gets you a 19% chance of admission. A 36 ACT (which is the 99.92 percentile!!) gets you a 28% chance of admission.
Fact is that the top 15 or so universities have maybe 15,000 seats a year to fill. And the top 1% of HS grads is about 50,000 kids. Being top 1% is necessary to play the game, but it isn’t sufficient.
For schools like Dartmouth who are fighting to stay in the top 20 or get into the top 10, it is more about identifying which students are likely cross-admits to HYPSM and avoiding them.
“For schools like Dartmouth who are fighting to stay in the top 20 or get into the top 10, it is more about identifying which students are likely cross-admits to HYPSM and avoiding them.”
For the majority of students, it is quite simple to do that. The Dartmouth/Penn/Duke/Vandy, etc. band of schools go big time with binding ED. They fill half their seats that way. By definition, the ED accept pool is free of those pesky applicants that might opt out for HYPSM.
This obsession with data reminds me of the various studies going on which invariably conclude that people who exercise lose more weight than people who diet without exercise.
Great Question… I am fully sympathetic, supportive and encouraging. Unfortunately I have no datapoint to share. I am surprised so many want to gently mock/preach/ridicule you for wanting to try your best and help your child get into an Ivy.
I dont see half the ridicule or censure when parents proudly declare “I am going to kick my kid out to the street at 18”
Everyone assumes that in trying to attempt for an Ivy admission you are torturing and placing unreasonable demands on your child
I am unable to understand why decent caring INVESTED parents cant attempt to understand this puzzle
Why does it always have to be “Oh you want your child to go to an Ivy? that means the kid is being put through the wringer”
Actually, Dartmouth does not fill half of its eats ED. However, they do say that 60% of the ED pool is hooked
I think trying to get your kid a fantastic education- commensurate with his or her ability- is a noble and wonderful goal.
Trying to “unlock” the secret with an algorithm is both a waste of time AND likely to backfire.
But have at it. Go crunch the data and figure it out.
I haven’t read the entire thread, but if you want collect data you could use survey monkey (or some other online survey tool) and post the the link here or e-mail it to those who pm you their email addresses. I assume this would be just for fun with no intention trying to generalize the results.
If you want to conduct real research, consider some of the data sets from the national center for education statistics.
Caltech may weigh grades and scores more heavily than Harvard, but take a look at their Common Data set to see what they actually consider. Character and personality are “very important”. Extra curricular activities are “important”. First generation , racial and ethnic status and legacy are “considered” as are work and volunteer experience. About the only things they don’t care about are geographic location (sorry North Dakotans!), religion and level of interest.
It is useful for students, parents & guidance counselors to know at elite schools even perfect grades & test scores might count for 50% or less of the admission decision. Outstanding ECs, hooks & tags may be more important.
Well, not exactly. At super selective schools, whichever aspect of your application is not top-end is the one that counts the most in moving your application to the reject list.
- Top-end grades and test scores, not-top-end extracurriculars, etc. -> reject
- Top-end grades and extracurriculars, etc., not-top-end test scores -> reject
- Top-end test scores and extracurriculars, etc., not-top-end grades -> reject
- Top-end grades, test scores, and extracurriculars, etc. -> chance of admit
UCB can you please clarify, based on your theory, “everything has to be top end” in order to be admitted. Then why do Ivies have a bottom quartile thats NOT a 36 ACT/4.0 GPA?
Or Are such kids athletes then? But I have read on CC that “Athletes are held to an EQUALLY high standard” so the bottom quartile kids cant be athletes based on that logic.
Then who are those bottom quartile kids? Kids with hooks other than athletic excellence? (family circumstances, homeless,Carnegie Hall cellist etc?)
Then why even mention “holistic” when every thing has to be Top 1%? Why do they have the grid on CDS that classifies things between Very Imp, and Not Considered?
I looked at a small set of data from one school one year. The group is so unique that it’s hard to treat them as a sample of any larger group. If it were a sample, the results could still only be viewed as indications without much confidence. I view them as hypotheses. Extrapolate at your risk.
For these highly motivated students with an average SAT 2250 or ACT 34, 10 APs and top class ranks, the most influential factor is teacher recommendations (by their own estimation). Most who claim high recommendations also think they wrote great essays. Nothing else matters much except that higher reading scores on SAT or ACT help.
So, don’t work too hard for an extra AP or EC but to be the person evaluated highly by teachers/adults. I think that makes sense. (What most educators value? Ask them who they prefer this year 2016.)
10 AP’s? At my kid’s HS which sends a big contingent to elite colleges every year, the maximum number of AP’s you can take senior year is 4. And some (but not all) juniors take 1. So a big chunk of the class is getting in to HYP, MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, etc. with 4 or 5 AP’s.
That’s the danger of extrapolating and of course- by assuming that there is a secret algorithm. For some HS’s, the “magic number” is 4. At others it’s zero- because the school doesn’t offer AP’s.
There was an op-ed last year in the Los Angeles Times by a former associate dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania. The article was titled the “The truth about holistic admissions”. Here’s an excerpt:
“As an admissions professional, I gave students, families and guidance counselors a list of what it took to be admitted — the objective expectations of a competitive applicant. I didn’t mention that racial stereotyping, money, connections and athletics sometimes overshadow these high benchmarks we all promoted. The veil of holistic admissions allows for these other factors to become key elements in a student’s admissions decision.”
@BoiDel those kidsin the bottom quartile can be a huge variety of students: URMs, low SES, development cases, athletes, legacies, kid from rural state, and so on. It’s probably unlikely that kids in the bottom quartile come from over represented suburban high schools and have a mundane range of ECs though.
@Lindagaf My kids are too young to know what they want. I believe it is parents’ responsibility to guide them.
“Top-end” in this context does not mean the maximum possible GPA or test score, but it means “close enough” (by the standards of the school being applied to) to the maximum possible.