How does she stack up?

Parents Forum
1

<p>Here is how my daughter fits in terms of the current list of colleges. I'm trying to get a sense of whether these are matchy or not. I'm intentionally not putting the names of the schools so I can keep it more general (and to protect her privacy -- as some of you know, she's got a stalker issue.) I'm basing the GPA and rank percentiles on the numbers reported on College Board for the colleges' students (so rank in top half means in the top half of the college's students, not the high school's, and the same with GPA, so if the college reports as 50% of their students are in the top 10% of their graduating class, I put her in the top 50% of the college's pool. If the school reports that 30% of the students have a GPA above 3.75, I put her in the 70th percentile)</p>

<p>College 1: admits 68%, GPA at 80th%, Rank at 70th %, CR above 75th, M at 75th, W above 75th, ACT at 75th</p>

<p>College 2: admits 28%, GPA at 85th%, Rank above 75th, M at 75th, W above 75th, ACT above 75th</p>

<p>College 3: admits 48%, GPA in top third, Rank in top half, CR above 75th, M 50th, W above 75th, ACT 70th</p>

<p>College 4: admits 40%; GPA 80th, Rank in top half, CR 80th, M 50th, W above 75th, ACT 80th</p>

<p>College 5: admits 40%, GPA 80th, Rank in top half, CR 75th, M 25th, ACT 70th</p>

<p>How would you assess these?</p>

2

<p>1 is a match, possible safety (high acceptance rate)
2 is a match
3 is a match
4 is a match
5 is a match</p>

<p>She looks likely at 2->5 but their acceptance rates are low enough to make it questionable even with that.</p>

3

<p>Thanks DMD! So you wouldn’t say this is too high of a list? 1 and 3 are the top choices.</p>

4

<p>The first one looks like a safety to me, unless it is extremely self-selective. The rest are pretty safe matches, I think.</p>

5

<p>Zoosermom- all of this is interesting but nowhere near as relevant as your own HS’s statistics.</p>

<p>We found that for local schools (I seem to recall that you’re in NYC) such as Fordham, NYU, Sarah Lawrence, Barnard) our own HS’s statistics were a far better predictor than the general stats- particularly for matchy/reachy schools. Our GC’s had a very good handle on which schools would care about the EC’s, which would give a cursory read to the essay assuming everything else was in order, which schools would auto-admit above a certain stats level, etc.</p>

<p>So our perspective is nowhere near as valuable as your own HS’s track record. I’ve got a sibling in another part of the country and we’ve chuckled at how the “top kids” at her HS can’t get into a school which my kids Vals and Sals considered a safety. (assuming similar stats which of course we couldn’t do without knowing the kids).</p>

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<p>

We have no idea. We don’t have Naviance and the school doesn’t provide the information. The GC stuffs envelopes and that’s about it. Big sigh.</p>

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<p>OT, but zmom, I am sorry to hear that your D has a stalker problem. Ugh.</p>

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<p>1 is a safety, 2 a reachy-match, 3 and 4 are matches with better than average chances, and 5 is a match (only because of the math score.) From your other posts I think your daughter will be an attractive candidate that will push these schools beyond the numbers anyway.</p>

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<p>Zooser, if you PM me I’d be happy to run your daughter’s stats through our Naviance.</p>

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<p>My crystal ball agrees with mathmom’s…weird that the math scores for school 2 are so much lower than schools 3-5, yet the admission rate is so much lower. Are 3-5 engineering type schools? If so, a low math score may hurt more.</p>

11

<p>Our HS is a very well regarded suburban NJ school. If you think our Naviance results will help, I will run them, but I agree with the other optimisitc assessments of her chances.</p>

12

<p>Thanks all for the good advice. School number 2 is actually a CUNY and she is a little above the 75th in math, give or take, but more than 150 points above the reading and writing scores. The same with school number 1. I am going to take up the kind offer to run through Naviance later today. So thanks again!! School number 1 is the second choice with number 4 being the clear first choice. That’s a small LAC that might be very interested in her “other things.”</p>

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<p>My crystal ball says that someone will have some nice choices next March/April…</p>