<p>Too many of the requests to parents for advice about finding colleges on this forum are vague, ambiguous or incomplete. You can help people help you with just 4 steps:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>State your GPA (weighted and unweighted); board scores; and any major factors which might help your chances, such as being an underrepresented minority or Intel Science Award winner. Listing all your extracurriculars just wastes time.</p></li>
<li><p>Talk with your parents about what your financial and any other constraints are. If they are unable to pay for a private college or unwilling for you to go 1000 miles away, saying so will yield you more useful suggestions.</p></li>
<li><p>Provide as much information as you can about what you are looking for in a college: which regions of the country? What size? Urban, suburban or rural? What major? Big time spectator sports? Religiously affiliated? Lots of Greek life?</p></li>
<li><p>Talk to your school guidance counselor, who should know more than strangers do about your chances at schools many kids from your HS have applied to previously and consult Naviance, if you have it. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Taking these steps will allow you to receive specific answers you can use, rather than requests for more information or suggestions which are way off base.</p>
<p>You don’t have to give up too much private information, but it does help to know your home state (for public school suggestions) or at least your region.</p>
<p>I am new to CC. I have read several posts but just started posting myself. D is a rising Sr and has colleges in mind. Here are her stats:<br>
GPA (4.0) W GPA 4.6
AP 9
SAT 2260
ACT 32</p>
<p>She is thinking about applying to Williams, perhaps Princeton and William and Mary. We live on the West Coast…Oregon. She has great EC’s. Does she stand a chance or should she stick to her State Flagship U’s?</p>
<p>Tessa - welcome. I can’t speak to the other schools, but I would think she has an excellent shot at William & Mary - assuming great ECs and essays. She also has geographic diversity on her side. W & M likes things that are a bit off beat and quirky. Your D should look carefully at their website - read the admissions blogs - watch the admissions office video if it is still on there - and you will see what I mean. I’m not saying try to be odd - but if she has an unusual interest or hobby - that has potential to be a good supplemental essay. They are not looking for vanilla - so don’t be afraid to let some quirks show. Good luck to your D.</p>
<p>Tessa, I believe your daughter has a very good chance at W&M and reasonable chances at the others, which are horrendously difficult to get into. I believe that anyone–even 4.0/2400 kids–who really wants to go to top 20 schools increases their chances by applying to at least 6. At schools which select fewer than 15% of immensely talented kids, it is almost like buying a lottery ticket and the more tickets you have may increase your chances.</p>
<p>For example, why Williams and not Amherst and Wesleyan or Haverford and Swarthmore (or Colgate, Bucknell and Middlebury, all similar and somewhat easier to get into)? Why only Princeton among the Ivies (or Stanford)?</p>
<p>I have nothing against your flagship, but if you are attracted to the idea of a smaller school with a national reputation for excellence, you have dozens to choose from and there are none where I would say your D has no shot.</p>
<p>Note, too, that at schools below the top 20, her chances of getting both a fine education and significant merit aid should increase.</p>
<p>Ok, I’m not picking on you or being mean or snarky, but this right here is what’s called “thread hijacking”. It’s when you post a question or start talking about something in a thread that has a completely different topic. The problem with doing this is that your question won’t get the visibility you want - it limits how many people will see and answer your question.</p>
<p>The best thing would be to start a new thread, maybe titled “Need some advice on east coast schools for high achieving Oregon kid” or something like that. Then people with expertise in this area are more likely to see and respond to it.</p>
<p>I’m all for the concept but cannot stand “chances” threads. Yuck. Hopefully we can keep this away from that sort of discourse in the parent forum. “Chances” are quite different than asking for opinions on specific schools or asking what other schools might be beneficial to add to the list or if a list is too top heavy or could be stretched abit.</p>
<p>Tessa, if you are going to start your own thread, add some details about why you picked those 3 Eastern schools, such as “my daughter wants a pretty, non-city campus and a strong Economics department.” That will help narrow the suggestions.</p>
<p>My standard answer to most chances threads are your odds are 1 in 10 (or whatever the acceptance rate is at that particular very hard to get into college.) No one can predict chances, though one can certainly say that someone has the statistics to be in the running. Asking whether a list makes sense or asking for suggestions for more schools that are like a particular school a kid likes, that’s a lot easier to do and more productive. Chances is probably the least useful part of CC. I’m sure if I’d asked I’d have been told my older son had excellent chances of getting into the places he applied. (He only got into half of them.) While my younger son would probably have been told he had no chance, while he surprised us by getting into half of them.</p>
<p>Mathmom, I agree that chances threads are seldom worth looking at–primarily they are kids wasting time with each other or people who have not bothered to do any reasearch of their own. </p>
<p>I will comment in the case of parents like Tessa who seem like nice people or deserving kids who need a starting point, such as those looking across the country.</p>
<p>And I would say you have zero chance unless you apply. The most important message I learned on CC five years ago with S1 is to put together a good list based on the particular son’s desires, financial fit and academic fit. I few stretchy reachy applications are fine if you have a kiddo that can take rejection (I had one who can and had a rejection from one which he framed and one who can’t and got accepted everywhere he applied and one I don’t quite know which way he’ll swing).</p>
<p>Reach, match, safety didn’t work for either of my kids, but each ended up having good choices when April rolled around. While I think the rejections were probably secretly a shock to the older son (who was a tippy-top student aiming high), it was a good lesson for him.</p>
<p>As pointed out by others, a lot of the questions asked could have been found had the poster done some reserach on their own. If you have Yale on your sights, you need to have done some reserach on your own before throw out Yale. Doing your own reserach helps us help you. If you want to know if you should apply EA, you should be aware of what EA is in the Yale context is.</p>
<p>Second, the answers will depend on the way the question is framed. Be thoughtful about your question. If you ask “Do ivy leagues accept students with a 3.5 GPA?” you will get a variety of answers. If you ask “With a 3.5 GPA and these grades/ecs/etc, should I consider the lower Ivy’s leagues a super stretch?”, the question will elicit a different type of response?</p>
<p>Third, if you ask a question on CC, be prepared for a different view point and some honest assessment, especially on the parents forum. If you are not prepared for that, better don’t ask the question. I have seen enough posters respond harshly when the answers were not what they were hoping for. Again, this is not true in most cases, but there have been instances of that.</p>