once you get out of high school and past freshman year of college, youll start to think and eventually realize how silly college admissions are.
i truly believe that many (most, truly) are chasing prestige for many personal reasons and those are the ones who are end up devastated in march. i was that way myself: i get it. i was so upset when barnard waitlisted me, but honestly looking back at my essays and sat score (>1300 rip) i wasnt up to par. i could only see that with maturity and my high school ego behind that i only wanted to get in to finally have a sense of accomplishment in the world through an adjacent ivy.
im at agnes scott and im gearing up to apply to the dual degree nursing program with emory. if my dream of prestige had happened, itd be stuck pursuing a degree that i truly would not want after my awakening towards what i truly want to do: nursing!
rejection can be a blessing in disguise, sometimes to reveal why your self worth is wrapped up in acceptance into an ivy league school. for me, it was escaping a turbulent childhood.
Yes, my daughter was unable to apply to Ivies or the most selective schools because we are too âwell-offâ but not super-wealthy. It was a disappointment to her (as an artist, she would have loved to apply to Princeton). But with another disabled child who will need care for all her life, we could not justify $75K/yr for an undergrad degree. She knows she is fortunate and Iâm sure she will be happy where she is going, but nonetheless she feels some pangs when her friends with lower stats/fewer accomplishments are off to more âprestigiousâ places.
You are absolutely correct - having safeties that you are excited about is SUPER important in this process. I made sure to have a safety that I would have been absolutely content attending (for me, that was Sarah Lawrence). So many high-achieving students forgo this process and end up getting unlucky with the 12 reaches out of 13 schools they applied to, so now they are stuck with their state school where they never really imagined themselves.
I actually recommend having more reaches if your D is high-achieving (while maintaining a good amount of targets), if she values having a high name-brand school. The more reaches she applies to, the better her chances of admission to one (or more) of them! As a âdata point,â I ultimately got into around half of my reach schools this year (which, by my definition, are schools that have a 20% or lower acceptance rate).
Best of luck to both of you, through you seem to already have a very good grip on this process! Let me know if I can help in any way with your college search process (especially if your D is willing to consider liberal arts colleges)!
This is exactly the problem. Iâm an MIT graduate (back in the '80s). If you look at the number of applications to MIT, there is an inflection point where the Common Application was introduced and they have continued to steeply increase year after year.
I also interview applicants to MIT and there is another problem: abandoning the use of the SAT/ACT. At least those somewhat served as screening tools to weed out âdrive-by applicantsâ. Last year, many MIT interviewers complained of a big increase in obviously unqualified applicants. Clearly, applicants now see the process as a big lottery with the prize of admission to a plum school, as opposed to applying only to schools which best fit their interests and aspirations. That attitude is doubly inappropriate at places like MIT and Caltech, where once you get in, the real work begins. The classes are hard and you have to study a lot.
I feel thatâs naive. College admissions isnât an algorithm. Itâs more like a negotiation. The admissions officer for your region thinks you are a perfect fit, and as a nationally ranked squash player, the coach is rabid to have you. But there are five graduating seniors on the soccer team that need to be replaced, so the squash coach doesnât get his entire wish list this year. Or the equally qualified child/grandchild of a U.S. senator or mega-donor or celebrity needs to be accommodated. Or there is an overabundance of qualified applicants from your particular community. The reasons why qualified applicants donât make the cut are many and varied and not always fair. Admissions committees are made up of individuals pushing for the applicants in their pool that they think will benefit the school, but they ultimately are subject to the give and take of negotiation.
I agree with everything that you said with occasional exceptions to the above. Some schools, none of the âelitesâ we are discussing, are purely algorithm based. Cal Poly is one such example, but there are many others, mostly publics, and unlike Cal Poly, not usually super selective.
This entire thread is fascinating. My Dâ23 is very strong in math, and loves it, but didnât discover that until well into middle school. Sheâs caught up and accelerated in math classes now (just finished Calc BC as a 10th grader) but the math competitions are HARD, especially to a kid who didnât know they existed until high school. And she doesnât quite fit the âclubâ of who excels. The kid in front of her in the line to take the AMC loudly announced âeveryone here is Asianâ, and she replied âIâm notâ (sheâs very tall, very blonde and fair, not like she blends in). That was greeted by much arm punching and chortling amongst the boys all around her. Sheâs sure they all would laugh at her scores, which are solid, but certainly not stellar. No wonder that so many girls get discouraged. She sticks with it because she enjoys the challenge of learning new ways to problem solve, a skill she has been able to apply to other areas academically, and years of ballet have made her well acquainted with struggle to improve something. As a parent with an eye on college, I really have no idea if sheâd be better off just moving on to something she can really stand out at, or to just let her enjoy math for the sake of it. Obviously, the latter, but this thread has definitely reinforced for me how valuable (and rare) those top competition results are, and how much they likely help. Where that leaves her is unclear. In the heap with the rest aiming for the 3%, although Iâll do my best to point her at schools besides the big tech schools, that might value her more. Thanks to all those contributing here⊠really interesting.
Maybe you have a different definition of well off than he and I do. I played around a bit with the cost of attendance calculators at some big name schools, and by my definition of well off, there is no need based aid.
A poster above suggested that, at its best, CC provides accurate and useful information on which readers can rely. In this regard, it maybe worth emphasizing that your conclusion is merely a guess based on guesses, based on even more guesses. But it is being presented as a sound conclusion about the admissions process. It isnât.
In other words, there is little or no sound empirical evidence backing up your the assumptions or conclusions in your hypothetical. For example:
There is little or no empirical basis to assume that 200 of 20000 applicants have an 80% chance of admission.
There is little or no empirical basis to assume that the next 1000 of 20000 applicants have an 40% chance of admission.
Likewise, there is little or no empirical basis to assume that another 2000 of the 20000 applicants have a 10% chance of admission.
So, there is little or no empirical basis to assume that 60% of a class will be filled by 16% of the applicant pool, or that 84% of applicants are applying for only 40% of the seats.
Moreover, there is evidence suggesting that you are overestimating both the size of the group and the magnitude of the bump for at least your first few categories. For example:
The Harvard lawsuit information indicates that there are many fewer students receiving the magnitudes of the bumps you suggest, and outside of athletic-type recruits, these categories are much less defined than you suggest.
Also, comments by @agapetos contradict your assumptions. See the summary post above.
Also, according to @agapetos, even @mitchris has indicated that âMIT has turned away as many or more IMO gold medalists as they accepted,â suggesting that these things arenât the âsilver bulletâ you suggest they are.
To clarify, I donât think anyone has ever suggested that truly outstanding national and international EC achievements play no role in admissions. But your guesses as to the magnitude of the bump and the makeup of these groups donât seem to have sound bases.
It seems that, after adjusting for hooks, most admitted and many rejected applicants fall into that gray area where admission is, at best, unpredictable, and subject to a whole host of factors which are difficult to quantify. After-the-fact it is easy to see why those admitted were. But if we look at those rejected, it is just as easy to make a case why many of them could (or should) have been admitted. There are many more qualified applicants than there are spots.
Calculus BC in 10th grade is three grade levels ahead. What was she âcaught upâ from?
Seems like from your description the culture of the math club at her school is rather toxic / racist / sexist. Perhaps try to find other ways she can enjoy math outside of that math club.
Local context would be many, many strong math students, most of whom have received outside training for years via a local university serious math circle (both days for hours on the weekends) and parent networks. At merely honors level, she was indeed âbehindâ until she took a class over the summer and doubled up math her freshman year. Crazy, but the world we live in. The math classes are her easiest, so not a source of stress at all.
The suggestion to find outside math is good. Sheâs in summer programs, but during the year is a bit more of a struggle for me to find suggestions for her. She does online stuff during the year like AoPS or AlphaStar. But per this thread, it seems the colleges appreciate competitions because they are hard proof of skill. Besides AP scores and grades, and I guess summer programs, the competitions (toxic icky boys included) seem to be something almost needed. At other schools, without exposure to the comp math, I could see that it isnât. But colleges will definitely know she would have access to taking them. Iâd certainly love ideas for expressing love of math in cool ways.
Well hereâs our thinking. We are high enough income that none of my kids will get any Financial Aid other than potentially merit only scholarships. The most elite schools do not offer merit aid. Now that weâve been though this with D21 (attending Smith in the fall with merit aid) we are thinking for S23 and D23 we will skip any private schools that dont offer merit. That still leaves some excellent private schools and public flagships even OOS are substantially less expensive than full freight private.
So thereâs more than just the competitiveness to drive families away. Unless you are very low income youâll pay way too much.
Iâm not saying you are, but you can take it too far. Kids need time to be kids. Unless sheâs asking for more math stuff, she has plenty already.
One of the most important things we did to help our son develop as a human was to send him to an outdoor leadership camp in the mountains for a full month. He was able to attend for 5 consecutive summers. He flew to Colorado alone from the time he was in 7th grade.
This. Maybe it is the blinders that come with being a proud parent, but the advocates for these contests (and for math generally) donât seem to get just how toxic math culture can be for some girls.
Odds at top schools are long for most applicants, but I would take that 3% calculation with a large grain of salt. Also, unless your child is at at the very top, Iâm not sure these competitions are all that valuable, from an admissions perspective anyway. Taking BC calc in 10th grade and the subsequent math courses in 11th and 12th may do more to highlight her interest and skill in math than would the competitions. Of course if she enjoys them and gets something out of them, then that is a different calculation.
Science fair project in math category. She will need a strong mentor though. IMO, postdocs are better than professors, but a friendly professor is great option too.
Iâm afraid weâll just have to agree to disagree. Bragging that you have too much money to qualify as âmiddle-classâ is a fairly recent cultural phenomenon. And, mores the pity, if you ask me.
And what âqualifiesâ people as the âtop 1%â in life? Even if âtop 1%â is in terms of net income, no one can objectively judge whose life is âbetterâ than that of others. It is way more nuanced than that.
That absolutely is NOT bragging. No one, I mean NO ONE, with the exception of you, would interpret âwell offâ as middle class. It was a means of clarifying.
This is all a response to your misinformation that âwell offâ families hunt need-based merit at highly selective schools. YOU opened that can, no one else.