<p>I’m a senior this year from an ever expanding public HS. I was accepted (2 slots per district, I was the only one who made the cut on the first round of testing, despite being last on the lottery list of 15) to an elite IB school, though I opted out, much to my parents’ dismay, in order to pursue a more normal and well-rounded HS experience back home, and my class would be the second to be offered the IB Diploma Programme as my current HS. We offer a lot of progressive, newer programs including STEM programs (biomedical sciences, extensive engineering coursework), early college, lots of dual enrollment opportunities, and extensive arts courses and programs. We’ve had some D1 athletic recruits, but lots of kids commute to the local university and community colleges, and most kids go to the bigger, though lower-tier state universities. Being the second IB group, 18 of us spend each and every day with one another, and have continued to become even closer than when we happened to be in the same honors and AP classes. At this point, we all are very open about everything with one another, and know everyone’s ACT and SAT scores as well as which schools we are applying to. We have read one another’s essays and given genuine critiques and I think that while there is certainly this sense of support and community, we are all in constant competition. We’ve banded together to do things like create new extracurriculars (model UN team, etc), and we often go to support one another in performance art showcases, sports events, etc. We all like to hear about each other’s plans and offer support and help with applications and such, but I feel that within our group it’s a complicated situation. There is certainly competition for the more selective state university, though we are all applying to many different elite or tougher schools out of state. For my school, the heat is probably at about a 3, though in my group, it’s about a 7 because of the intense desire for all of us to do well.</p>
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<p>But that’s not the point, Catria. Everyone’s decision about whether to apply to college–and which ones–is his or hers alone. There are no “ramifications” for anyone else if your son wants to go to Oregon State or my daughter wants to go to Duke.</p>
<p>And please, “career plans” at age 17 are meant to be broken. Most kids change majors several times during college. The hot jobs now might be not-so-hot in four years. And there are precious few jobs that “require” a degree from an elite school.</p>
<p>But, there may be ramifications if another student wants to apply to the same selective school. Selective schools may have two, three, four or more applicants they’d be happy taking from a given small HS, but the quest for geographic diversity may require trimming a couple of them. My kids have been strong applicants and there is an almost audible sigh of relief when parents hear that they weren’t applying to the school their kid is interested in.</p>
<p>You are assuming colleges review applications in batches based on geography and, within each region, by high school. </p>
<p>Whether or not that’s the case, there are dozens (or more) schools that should be able to meet the needs of even the most academically gifted kids. If someone is worried that “everyone” is applying to his or her favorite schools, it would seem that the logical and strategic thing to do is to look for a few that are off the radar of peers in the same competitive set. </p>
<p>Many of the most selective universities are interested in geographic diversity and it does enter the admission decisions.</p>
<p>But that’s the point. If you believe that to be true, why not respond accordingly when building the college list with your child? Bright, motivated students can succeed in many different environments. The obsession with the same small set of schools only contributes to the “pressure cooker” hysteria. </p>
<p>That’s a good question to ask of parents. My kids chose the schools they thought would be most appropriate for them.</p>
<p>There certainly doesn’t seem to be a quota by HS. My HS is a public magnet that sends a double-digit number of kids to Ivies and equivalents each year. I don’t have access to acceptances, but over the past few years, matriculations to each of the Ivies/Ivy-equivalents have ranged from (occasionally) zero to low single-digit to (occassionally) high single-digit with no discernable pattern.</p>
<p>Isn’t most of the “admissions pressure cooker” really just in people’s heads? The pressure is just what students put on themselves. </p>
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<p>And this is what gets kids into trouble come decision time. A lot of high-achieving kids are name- and status-driven. Most have have little to no experience researching and evaluating big purchases/investments of any kind. They are incredibly naive about admissions statistics, let alone the financial considerations that affect many people’s choice of college. I know several parents who have left the school list entirely to their kids and then had to console them when none of their (overly ambitious or expensive) choices worked out. In my opinion, there is no reason to let this happen.</p>
<p>Also, kids are also primarily influenced by their peers, as this thread has demonstrated. They want to apply to schools that others have “heard of” and that sound impressive. I see this every year at my kids’ school. There always seem to be a few “hot” colleges outside the region that become trendy to apply to. This year it seems to be Vanderbilt and MIT. But I bet there aren’t any kids at our school applying to Rice or Caltech, where perhaps they’d have better odds and receive an equally good education. The same goes for a few selective LACs. Out of literally dozens that can meet the same needs, there are a handful that have become the known or sanctioned choices. For such a huge decision it always surprises me how un-strategic people can be about the process.</p>
<p>I agree, sally, but in our experience most parents and kids do not want to go far from home. Thus geographic proximity is the reason for the overlap of schools on the lists of students and their high school classmates. There may be some close-mindedness or status-seeking mixed in too, but I think you are being a little harsh. I received rather negative reactions when people learned the schools my children were going to attend: “Oh, but that’s so far! Aren’t you afraid she will stay out there? What if there’s an emergency?” and so on. I was surprised at how fearful the moms were. </p>
<p>“Quota” is not how I described it. We might have one student in an entire county, or even TWO counties admitted to the most selective universities every few years. If your HS alone sends double digit quantities of students every year, can you tell me what a corresponding number would be to having 4 of our students qualify at a single HS in a single year?</p>
<p>“I’m having a hard time understanding how identifying a school you want to go to and working through a competitive admissions process to get accepted there does not qualify as an achievement.”</p>
<p>Because when all is said and done, you cannot control the outcome. If your child and mine apply to the same school, and your is offered admission but mine isn’t, and yours was objectively academically “worse” (lower test scores, lower GPA, easier classes), that’s not achievement. That’s getting the right reaction from the right admissions Dean, which might mean nothing more than your child happened to draw a Dean more closely aligned with his essay topic.</p>
<p>Winning a race, that’s an achievement. All you need to do is run faster than anyone else. You know exactly what you need to do to win, and you know whether you’ve done it. As soon as you’ve done your part and cross the finish line (and often even before), you know the result.</p>
<p>You finish 3 years of HS, explore your EC interests, write and re-write your application essays, and apply to the same colleges as tens of thousands of other kids from all across the country and world… you have no idea what the result of those hectic years will be. </p>
<p>Why didn’t you get in to your dream school? Because too many kids with similar backgrounds were already accepted this year? That doesn’t mean they achieved anything more than you did.</p>
<p>In a way, it’s like playing the stock market. You buy the stocks you believe are the best companies… and they return a reliable solid 5%, and someone else takes a chance on a startup and gets 200% returns in 3 years. Great for them, but more luck than achievement.</p>
<p>I can see what a blow this can be to some kids who have always gotten the prize, the honors the acceptances, and have great grades and test scores, have done everything they could. They may be in the top group of students at their school. Then, wham—ED rejection or deferral when really there isn’t anything more the kid could have done. President of clubs at school, busy with ECs, most difficult courses, and it’s not good enough. That can really put the scare in someone. A lot of kids feel they were going to be accepted, though they will give lip service to how hard it is to get accepted. When reality hits, very painful for them, very stressful. That’s why it’s important to have those RD apps ready just to go. </p>
<p>TheGFG, I an not trying to be harsh. I just think parents shouldn’t be surprised if their kid from Long Island or NJ doesn’t get into the highly competitive schools they (along with many of their peers) are applying to. Wanting to stay in one’s home region is a fine goal, but then they need to be more realistic about the tradeoffs between the kinds of nearby colleges they might have to “settle for” versus potentially better schools that might require more travel.</p>
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Why do people think they have the right to a guaranteed outcome at competitive colleges? If you don’t think you’ll be able to handle the seeming unfairness of holistic admissions when they don’t go your kid’s way, maybe you’d be better off having him or her apply to schools that do guarantee an outcome–those that admit solely on the basis of GPA and test scores.</p>
<p>Since there is very little in life that you can control in a guaranteed manner, we measure achievement in results.
Getting admission is an achievement.
A 200% investment return is an achievement.
One can make excuses all day long about nearly everything…
They got “lucky” on the SAT.
You got a bad start slot in a race.
The wrong person read your essay.</p>
<p>When you get to the top 10-20 or so schools in the nation, admissions are pretty much 1) eliminating those who were not really competitive and qualified, and then 2) a crapshoot for everyone else.</p>
<p>Haha, I didn’t have the stats or money to get into the “top” schools, so I didn’t waste time applying. I’ll be going to one of two state schools that I can get full ride (or essentially full ride) scholarships if I make NMF. (At one I can get a pretty good scholarship even if I don’t make the cut, but I’m pretty sure I will advance to NMF unless the qualifying score jumps over 90 points from previous years, which I doubt will happen.) </p>
<p>Fun fact about top college admission rates - it is more likely for someone to get into the Air Force Academy than MIT. </p>
<p>@JustOneDad: the odds of 4 kids from your HS getting in to a selective college may be extremely low, but that doesn’t mean that any one kid from there getting in has an impact on some other kid from there getting in. For example, if you roll 4 12-sided die, your odds of rolling 12 on all 4 of them are incredibly low, but whether the first die rolls 12 has zero impact on whether the second die rolls 12. Admissions are not dice rolls, but I think that people who think that they are in competition with fellow students in their HS for places just don’t understand how admissions to highly selective colleges work.</p>
<p>BTW, @sally305, I get your point, though I don’t believe that Rice and Caltech are easier to get in to than Vandy and MIT, overall (they may be easier for some kids and are harder to get in to for others because each of those schools look for slightly different things and, outside of Caltech, have different slots they want to fill).</p>
<p>But PurpleTitan, don’t you think that it’s logical that for variety and diversity reasons elite schools are not going to take more than a handful of students from the same high school? The college doesn’t want to become Philips-Andover or Harvard Westlake Phase 2. Also, aren’t applications assessed first within the region and evaluated by the regional adcom? So aren’t the kids actually competing within regions for the recommendation of their adcom to the admissions committee, and therefore to an extent against their own classmates? Also, direct comparisons are a lot easier to make when the students are from the same high school, so it makes sense the adcom will do just that, consciously or not. </p>