<p>I would like to share DD success at this year college acceptances. Even though she was not in the top 10% or any where close GPA wise at her high school she did much better than many of her classmates with much higher GPA. She had a cumulative GPA of weighted A- while there were lots of students with GPA greater than weighted A and a GPA between weighted A and A-. We will not know the exact rank but it seems it was pretty low GPA wise. The only consolation we had that her course load is one of the toughest and all 3 students with similar course load and cumulative GPA of weighted A or more got into H.</p>
<p>This was her college list of 14 acceptances (A)/ 1 waitlist (W)/ 1 rejection(R)
Reaches:
Harvard - R
MIT - A (EA)
Princeton - A
Stanford - W (RD)
Caltech - A (EA)
Cornell - A (Likely)
Dartmouth - A (RD)
Olin - A for Interview (Declined the interview)
Matches:
Rice - A (Likely) - Trustee and Century Scholarship
Duke - A (RD)
JHU - A (RD)
UC B - A (Regents/Likely)
Safeties:
UC LA - A (Regents/Likely)
UC SD - A (Regents/Likely)
CMU - A
USC - A (likely) - Presidential Scholarship</p>
<p>thumper1 : True she had good awards and a very good SAT scores. The point was I’ve seen so many student obssessed with GPA that they don’t take subject of their interest even to avoid getting a B+ or even A-.</p>
<p>Columbia_Student : She had 14 APs in total including the senior year and 3 post AP classes.</p>
<p>This seems a unique case. Your school looks particularly competitive and with Top ECs, Awards and Test Scores exceptions are obviously made. But this is not the usual case…</p>
<p>PugmadKate, I’ve got to agree with you on this one. This post is so clearly NOT about how a less-than-stellar kid can get into a top school. This kid is obviously extra-ordinary, and POIH has got to know this. No kid who thought she was ‘average’ (or whatever) would have applied to SO MANY top-tier schools…while considering CMU a SAFETY, for the love of God!!</p>
<p>CMU a safety?? </p>
<p>You’re also right about the 25?? AP classes/tests. </p>
<p>POIH, it’s OK to brag on your kid. Just don’t give us the song and dance ‘Hope for parent of children outside of the top 10% GPA-wise’. </p>
<p>What pucks on my nerve is the idea that the parents of kids who aren’t in the top decile, or even the top three deciles, need hope, as though these kids are failures. Give me a friggin’ break.</p>
<p>I’ll reply that I have seen MANY such posts on CC’s College Admissions Forum, so examples like those in this thread are useful to students who worry about pursuing favorite subjects in depth or pursuing time-consuming activities. Whether the worry is about overall G.P.A. or about class rank, sometimes the worry is misplaced.</p>
<p>Maybe this post should be countered by our experience two years ago. Son top 1% of class, 2270 SAT, 800s on three SAT2s, top 1% of class, 5’s on all his APs (but there were only 9 of them plus one post AP class.) Waitlisted by Mudd, rejected by Stanford, Caltech and MIT. (Don’t worry he got into great colleges as well.) I can’t even imagine taking 14 APs, certainly there are no kids in our high school that do, much less ones in the less than 10% range.</p>
<p>And since our kids HS (which sends many kids to top schools) limits AP’s to seniors only; and since it is a religious private school has a heavy curriculum of required classes, the top kids take 3 AP’s. You need a GC’s approval and the teacher’s sign-off to register for a 4th. Maybe one kid every couple of years manages 5. Nobody has ever taken more than 5 in their entire HS career. Ever.</p>
<p>School does not rank. AP’s are not weighted. I’m pretty sure the top kid GPA wise would not be considered one of the academic stars, high GPA notwithstanding. The school tries to encourage each kid to take “their most challenging curriculum” for that kid- regardless of the admissions consequences, and when I see posts like this I am thankful for that policy.</p>
<p>OP’s kid sounds amazing, but one must ask why a kid needs 13 or 14 acceptances. Do you really need 4 safeties once you’ve heard from MIT and Caltech? How does the kid whose first choice is CMU feel sitting next to this kid during homeroom???</p>
<p>And a word to high school juniors and their parents looking at that list – JHU, Rice and Duke should not be considered “matches.” For anyone. For example, Duke’s acceptance rate this year was 17%. No one should consider Duke a match – it’s a reach. (OK, kids of celebrities, Olympic athletes, Bill Gates’ kids, etc., may be exceptions)</p>
<p>ETA: Just looked at the safeties, too. I don’t know much about California schools, but my general sense is that most people should never consider those schools as safeties, either.</p>
<p>SO well said, owlice! I think many parents could use a good shaking and be made to take a step back and look at their awesome kids from outside the insanity of the college applications bubble. Touche!!</p>
<p>Some people apply to more colleges than others to compare offers of financial aid. (I applied to exactly one college in my day. I hope my oldest son is able to get by with applying to no more than about ten colleges, but we are trying to develop a possibilities list with more colleges than that on it, so that the list can be adjusted dynamically the year he applies.)</p>
<p>^^^That’s right. More choices in Merit/FA would be the only reason to apply to so many schools. A student of that caliber knows that they are holding a very good hand.</p>
<p>As we know from other posts, money is not an issue in this family.</p>
<p>What I don’t get about those raft of applications is that they were submitted after the student was accepted EA to MIT and Caltech. I can see sending out a few more, but not to the safeties and matches. </p>
<p>For other students, who need to compare financial aid packages and need a financial safety, applying to a dozen schools can be a smart decision.</p>
<p>Well, it makes sense. I don’t think any schools claim to only admit people in the top 10%. (Are there?)</p>
<p>According to collegeboard, 97% of MIT’s first-year students were in the top 10% of their graduating class. I’m assuming that that’s about 1000 students because I am not a math person, so that’s 30 students that weren’t. Total. I’m assuming that those 30 students were absolutely exceptional in something else, but they are the minority.</p>
<p>At Harvard, it’s 95% in the top 10%. Yale says 97%. So this story tells us that it’s possible to be admitted without being in the top 10% but it’s not really something to bank your hopes on. I don’t think it’s the statistically likely possibility at all.</p>
<p>I would like to answer to many questions or comments posted.</p>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li>I posted the thread because in the last 4 years DW and many others have been consistently commenting DD policy of taking so many APs as she was not the star kid at this highly competitive prep school. It was ok for the top 2 - 3 children to do this because these kids were considered exceptional. But why my DD has to take these? Everyone used to say she is just an average kid, so why she has to do this. DD and I always maintained that DD picked the subjects because she wanted to even though she was moving down year by year in the cumulative GPA scale.
So the thread is posted to convey that rigor of courses seems much more important than the GPA even if it puts you outside of 10%.</li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
<ol>
<li><p>DD didn’t apply to any college after the EA results. DD was of the opinion that if she didn’t get into EA colleges then the quality of her application will go down as she will be more nervous and she will be attempting to do many more applications. So she kept the rest of Ivies for after EA to which she would have applied if she didn’t get into EA colleges.
My thinking is that she took a very important decision many of her classmates with much higher GPA after getting a negative from EA were devastated and didn’t get RD into many of the colleges DD got in regular too just because the quality of the application went down.</p></li>
<li><p>DD choice of colleges were not random, she wanted to pursue Computer Engineering but with a final goal of getting a medicine degree when she first begin her high school. Over the years that changed but since she was not sure hence she applied to top engineering schools first but also to top pre-med schools too.
Top Engineering:
MIT
Stanford
Princeton
Caltech
Olin
Cornell
CMU
Rice
UC B
USC</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Top Pre-med:
Harvard
Princeton
Stanford
Cornell
Dartmouth
JHU
Duke
UC LA
UC SD
USC</p>