<p>students with connections to the school: ~5 students
Athletes: ~160 students
Legacies: ~300 students
URMs (exclusive): ~140 students</p>
<p>that’s probably for a class of 2000 students</p>
<p>^ so 70% of a typical ivy class is not hooked?</p>
<p>i mean there are only ~40 more students max with some major award</p>
<p>but i wouldn’t be surprised if 60% of ivy school students were not hooked</p>
<p>Hmm… so could we assume that a non-hooked applicant to an Ivy would need at least 50th percentile stats to be able to compete?</p>
<p>there’s no minimum</p>
<p>you may be able to compete with a 600 SAT, 1.0 GPA [albeit it is tougher]</p>
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<p>Absolutely. That was a serious problem I had when working in admissions years ago. Your job is to get applications in the door. So you go to high schools and college fairs and say everyone has a shot. There are kids with sub par stats and no hooks who do get in with a compelling story, but very, very few. Certainly nothing like what the kids on this site seem to think. My eyes roll with every “just write a great essay post.”</p>
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<p>Few ivies have that many in a class. There is certainly some overlap in the hooked groups, but any way you slice it the hooked take up way more of every class than most understand. The actual rate of acceptance for the unhooked in much, much lower than it looks on paper. Probably about 3% at Harvard.</p>
<p>hmom5 - Your 3% estimate is very discouraging. Do you have any evidence to support this claim? What about at YPS?</p>
<p>Aren’t there other hooks, too? Like international (10% or so) or dual citizen spots, and underrepresented majors, and, though I doubt anyone will admit it, full-pay/development students?</p>
<p>@Paper: “So are we promoting a false sense of hope by telling people with low GPA who don’t fall into any of the preferential catagories to apply to these schools and tell them “GPA isn’t everything; if you have a compelling story, you have a shot”? After all a lot of time and money are spent on the application process. Sure there is a chance, just like everyone has a chance at winning the lottery. But I’ll bet that if instead of a dollar or two for a lottery ticket, it costs $60 for a lottery ticket, we probably wouldn’t have a sustainable lottery.”</p>
<p>Your analogy makes no sense. Everyone has a chance. So what, you spent those $60 you would have otherwise wasted on going to the movies and the mall ONCE when applying to your dream school. Good for you! Why not put your money to good use? If you don’t apply, you won’t get in, so what’s wrong with giving yourself that chance? I remember that my sister ha the worst grades in the world, and her reach school was way way out of her league. Guess what? She got into her two top schools and all the other ones rejected her. The ones she thought were her safeties rejected her, and she ended up getting a full ride to her top school. I know a lot of other people who have gone though the saem thing she did…</p>
<p>What i’m saying is that applying to college has really become a crapshoot, so why not try your luck the one time it really matters?</p>
<p>There are such kids. Celebrity,development, severe disadvantage, debate, special skills, are some ways it occurs. At my sons’ schools there are such kids with very high test scores, taking very difficult courses, but eccentric and not getting the top grades. I know that Brown, Cornell and some other schools have taken a number of kids with less than a 3.5 from one of my sons’ schools. Saw the numbers myself. However, the school does not weight, and in all honestly, those kids were better students than some 4.0+ in a lot of other schools. Those things are taken into account. Any of the very top prep schools and specialty schools get kids into top colleges without them necessarily being in the top 20% even grade wise.</p>
<p>I like the lottery analogy. Yes there’s a million-dollar winner every week … and three million one-dollar losers. By all means play … just don’t wager the grocery money because “the more I wager, the better my chances of winning!”</p>
<p>just apply, cross ur fingers and pray that u get the fat letter = / my advice and I’m sticking to it. = /</p>
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<p>Simply not true.</p>
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<p>The best book I know that addresses these issues and gives statistics is The Price Of Admission by Golden.</p>
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<p>Other than at the few schools with a sub 15% admissions rate, where most kids with amazing resumes get rejected for lack of space, college admissions are not difficult to predict. If you don’t have the stats, no amount of prayer is getting you in.</p>
<p>The big mistake I think many kids make is putting their hearts, time and energy into schools they have no chance at while not showing the love to the ones where they do. The back up schools to the ivies are concerned about yield. They can spot the kids not excited about them (student with sub par GPA or SAT with ivies on their list) and are less sure of yielding them which is why we always see kids not getting into the good schools below the ivies (plus of course not getting into the ivies) where they could have with proper effort.</p>
<p>Oh please Hmom, that was incredibly petty of you to use my quote. You know that no matter how small the odds, it never hurts to apply, and you also know exactly what i meant to say. I didn’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence and have to further explain myself. Why discourage someone who has the drive and is willing to put in the effort? I’m not saying that kids should live for that one application and then die if they don’t get in, i’m saying that if they want to spend the time applying and have the money to do so, go right ahead. </p>
<p>If you’re really sur eof yourself and you work your hardest, no one can stop you form applying. Don’t expect to get in, but at least know you tried. If you do end up gettign in, then congrats, your effort wasn’t for nothing.</p>
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<p>No, I don’t know that. In fact, as someone who once worked in admissions, I could not disagree more with that statement.</p>
<p>The reason ivies and their peers have such low admissions rates is because there are so many kids without a chance who apply. We used to refer to them as “donors” in the admissions office I worked in because they donated the admission fee while having no chance.</p>
<p>I’m not here to discourage anyone from applying anywhere they choose to. I’m stating my opinion, which is that if you clearly don’t have the stats and have no hook, your time is best spent on applications to schools where you have a chance. And trust me, when adcom at Bowdoin see Harvard on the college list of a kid with a 2050 and no hook, it impacts how they see the candidate.</p>
<p>I guess I’m missing something here. Exactly how is
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<p>I’ve heard it said that some colleges on their applications will ask the other places the student is applying to. In the case of my S, except for the UCs (which use their own unified application), no other school will know the other places he’s applying. They aren’t asking and I see no advantage to him to provide that detail. It’s for him, us, his LOR writers and GC to know.</p>
<p>Who are these schools that ask this question that I think they should be banned from asking? Let them do their market research in another way. These anxious applicants will provide any piece of info they think will help them get in and, in this case, potentially fall into a great big trap.</p>
<p>In my opinion, if you ever considered applying to a school but didn’t, later on in your life, no matter how successful you become, it will always come back and bite you in your butt making you wonder “what if I just applied…”</p>
<p>So that’s why I think it’s better to apply even if you have a 99.9999% of being rejected.</p>
<p>@username: I agree. If you’re “donating” the money for the application, then at least you’ve also donated some peace of mind to yourself.</p>
<p>hmom5 - How does Bowdoin know the applicant is also applying to Harvard? For that matter, how in general does any college know what other schools its applicants are applying to? How about among the Ivies?</p>
<p>hmom5 said:“If you don’t have the stats, no amount of prayer is getting you in.”</p>
<p>That is YOUR anecdote about a population; however, the people applying here are individuals, and there are ALWAYS individual who have a non-zero chance. </p>
<p>It’s true that chances are VERY slim; it is like a lottery, even with good stats; it’s important to be realistic and not depend on a long shot; but the stats indicate a reality at odds with what hmom5 says.</p>
<p>7.5 % of the Brown incoming class had ACT score of 25 or less
2.1% of that class had SAT Math <500
But only 2% of that class were below 90th percentile in class rank</p>
<p>Kei</p>