<p>Marite, we laughed because it was so silly. In fact, if it hadn't seemed so braggy, D might have used it as an example in economics if the pitfalls of marketing - I think they were assuming based on our zip code that we were poor or a URM family or both, we're not rich, but we aren't broke, and I don't think we could make it for a minority, either - unless odd is an underrepresented minority. With what I think might be your zip, your son would be recruited by the Univ of Alabama :), given the parameters they were using - ie how unlikely can you get that persons in this zip code would have considered us.</p>
<p>But do schools look at diversity at the individual school level? Or do they look at states, urban vs. suburban vs. rural, public vs. private vs. homeschool, etc.? Other people and I have heard college representatives say that the number of applicants from a particular school is irrelevant. In other words, if you have two different applicants and both look good, it doesn't matter if they are at the same school or at different schools in the same area. </p>
<p>For instance, I'm thinking of the four public high schools close to where I live. All have similar demographics, courses, and reputations. Will a college pay any attention to which individual school an applicant is from and try to accept applicants from each, rather than the best applicants it can find no matter where they go? To the extent I've heard what adcomms say, it is the latter -- but the perception of outsiders seems to be the former.</p>
<p>Of course an Ivy isn't going to admit all 40+ students applying from the same school. But if you randomly selected a student apiece from 40+ schools applying to that Ivy, you aren't going to see all of them admitted either.</p>
<p>I'm not staking out a definite position. I really don't know for sure how things work. It isn't like I've surveyed college admissions departments or know of such a survey. It just seems that sometimes people believe things that are not really true, or at least have no known factual basis. I don't know how many arguments I've gotten into over the years about certain schools "wanting" or "preferring" the SAT over the ACT, for instance. People locally told me how "risky" it was for my daughter simply to take the ACT and then how "lucky" it was that it didn't "hurt" her. Any time I questioned the basis for their positions, it was always, "Well, everyone says that." The colleges don't, which was good enough for us.</p>
<p>Oh, well, I'm getting off-topic onto one of my favorite subjects :) Anyway, has anyone heard someone from a college actually SAY they try to diversify on a school by school basis or try to limit the number of acceptances from any particular school?</p>
<p>I do not think colleges actively limit. But the more students from a particular school apply, the more likely they fit a particular profile--, not just in terms of GPA and SAT scores, but also ECs and, of course, geographical location and probably ethnicity and SES. This does not affect the students at the very top (by definition a very distinctive set of students). But it does affect the admissibility of the students a bit lower down who will be less distinguishable one from the other. If a school has 40 vals (as was the case of a student who was the subject of an earlier thread), how many sals is it likely to have?<br>
In the Boston area, several suburban school systems have student populations that are basically interchangeable--and most of their top students apply to the same types of colleges. As we visited colleges in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, we kept tripping up against graduates of some of these suburban schools.</p>
<p>I think it depends a bit on the way the admissions committees operate. From the reading I've done some committees work geographically so one person is likely to do at least the first read on all the applications for one school. When that's the case I'm quite sure they are much more aware that they don't want to accept every kid and there may be more comparisons. In * The Gatekeepers* Cornell was given as example where the committee works quite differently. (It was the only school willing to take a chance on a girl who confessed to trying a hash brownie.) </p>
<p>It may also depend on the teacher and counselor recommendations. When I was a student reader at the architecture grad. school admissions at Columbia there was one professor from a certain university who compared all the students who were applying. I actually found it quite annoying and found myself trying to get past his rankings! I don't know if the rest of the committee reacted the same way. The way we did applications was that every application was read by two professors and one student. We gave them a number and someone else added up the numbers at the end of the process. I don't know if this is still the way things are done btw.</p>
<p>I don't know for a fact how admissions works, but my gut sense based on the volunteer work I've done and looking at the history of my daughter's HS, I think that in many cases, highly selective schools only take one kid/school. Obviously this is not the case for magnet HS and prep schools -- but for small publics, I think it is. It's partly a numbers game -- if a school only accepts 15% of applicants, and three kids apply from one HS, then chances are only one of three (if even that) will get in. I think colleges will argue this doesn't happen, but frankly, I'm skeptical.</p>
<p>Last year's graduating class at my daughter's school was a close-knit group who kept very much aware of where everyone was applying, especially ED and EA. The top kids spread out their applications, and did very well. We heard from one parent that the kids did this on purpose. This year's bunch isn't quite so close, but I've heard that some kids are trying to do the same thing. I was quite relieved to hear of one strong kid who decided against applying to my daughter's first choice, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the val decides to apply elsewhere.</p>
<p>And to the OP -- I understand why your kid won't be applying to Ivies, but I agree that he is Ivy material. And I hope that kids like him will always be.</p>
<p>Hmm. My kids' school (currently about 1700 down from a high of 2000) sends several students to Harvard (11 was the record, a couple of years ago), MIT, Yale, Brown every year. Students are admitted to other top schools as well, more than 1-2 at a time. It's bimodal. The top students are stellar, the students at the bottom have a hard time passing the 10th grade exit test.</p>