I hear all the comments that 6-7 AP’s are good enough and having one passion as oppose to multiple EC’s is what the schools are looking for, but when I look at my D19 school, the kids that are getting into Ivys are the kids with 14 AP’s and are Intel Science Competition National winners and president of their class, and captain of a sport and started a charity, yadda yadda yadda. Oh and yes NMF and 4.0 UW GPA. The kids that are less than that are not getting in unless they are athletes or have a very specific hook like first gen or move to another state with a small population (gotta say we have a student from every state!). So it sounds good on paper to talk about what being holistic means, but in reality that is not what I see. I will say that those kids that are getting in are pretty amazing kids and don’t seem crazy or stressed out, they just very engaged, competitive, just like the olympic athlete is obsessed with a sport, they are obsessed with being great students. But that is my D19’s school. It is a very large public school in Southern California. For her school taking all AP’s is normal. My D will have 10 AP’s. That is what probably 60 of the 660 students in her class will have. The students with 14 are simultaneously self studying 2 or so extra AP’s every year. Is my daughter stressed out. She doesn’t seem so and she chose her own schedule, decided to work 20 hour in a job, volunteer at a hospital one day a week, compete on a sport and volunteer 100+ hours a week. Oh, and I don’t think she has a shot at an Ivy because she only has a 1500 SAT score. She might try, not sure she is interested in any but Stanford, and she knows she has a better chance at winning the lottery then getting in there. That is just the norm at her school. She also has an annual pass at Disneyland and goes to school dances and the beach when she can so she is not locked in her room studying. I think my point of this is just to say that I think the bar is pretty darn high but those top kids are getting into the schools they want. Holistic only seems to apply to those kids who are a notch below those exceptional outliers
“The students with 14 are simultaneously self studying 2 or so extra AP’s every year”
Time and time again colleges have said they DON’T look favorably on kids who self study AP subjects, in order to be able to take more AP tests. The top colleges want students who do well IN THE CLASSES THEY TAKE, as evidenced by their grades and by the remarks of their teachers.
@19parent
how many kids actually did get into “Ivys”? and do you know if their parents also went to those Ivys?
were any of them recruited athletes?
" Intel Science Competition National winners and president of their class, and captain of a sport and started a charity"
sounds like 4-6 kids to me.
4-6 out of 660 kids at a HS that is college prep is good, but not wow!
Bottom line- ALL students are evaluated in the context of their school FIRST, so if the norm for any one school is 10 AP classes, colleges will take that into account. That means that ALL of the slots WILL NOT go to the kids who have the most # of AP’s, because it is NOT a race between ALL students .
The kids who go to schools where fewer AP classes are offered should NOT worry about NOT having taken 10-14 APs Classes.
Your D’s school is one of 15000 HS’s across the country.
It is one data point.
@BrianBoiler Excellent OP. I think many have on this thread missed the point of it. It is in fact, pretty rare, for a young person to be able to tell the story of their life to this point and make it interesting. Passion drives interesting people. There are many who take the classes but few who can create something in that subject. Yes, schools will pick up on the doers in life. They are very desirable I think you hit a nerve with some folks who want to argue rather than pick up on your main points. They would prefer to argue ad infinitum about what colleges want esp. as it relates to APs and GPA’s. They cannot accept that this is not the magic formula. Yet many on CC spend a lot of time wondering why they did everything they were supposed to do (Stats) and are holding a thin envelope.
I think you’d make a great coach. And for what it’s worth I had to laugh at the usual CC folks who when pinned in a corner rely on their number of likes and years on the board. So sad. Why should I read dead threads and poor ideas when I can read yours which are informative and appear to be spot on. Kudos.
@menloparkmom I actually think we are agreeing in some sense. Yes it seems like about 5 every year get into an ivy . It does seem like it isn’t just luck, they are naturally exceptional among the exceptional and they do get into a very top school. It isn’t just their gpa, sat, ec’s, it is everything individually is exceptional. So for that group, it does matter and it isn’t unnecessary that they have 12+ AP’s. I think if you happen to be a step under that in any way, then it is just a crap shoot and the student shouldn’t be taking extra AP’s or starting a club just to increase their stats.
“The kids who go to schools where fewer AP classes are offered should NOT worry about NOT having taken 10-14 APs Classes.”
But the ugly truth is that the prep schools that offer more AP’s (30+) where most kids take 10+ AP’s are the ones who send more kids to Ivies+Stanford+UChicago+MIT.
@carino True, but there are many reasons for that. A large number of those kids are legacies, wealthy so full pay, and the schools have relationships with those elite colleges.
Yep! I totally agree with that. Especially the last statement, but not only that. The other keyword is “resources.”
Those schools start sending kids to state and national competitions in elementary and middle school, they have amazing athletic facilities, orchestras, bands, recording studios for news channels, hundreds of clubs, art studios, first-class college counselors, and so on. Those kids have the opportunity to explore, work, and excel in so many areas that at the end of their high school their curriculums are really impressive and hard to beat. They get everything under one roof.
@Carino now I want to go!
^ 
Here is my 2 cents - my DD is a senior at UPenn. She was also accepted to Williams, Middlebury, Northwestern, Bowdoin, Oberlin, and Tufts, The best descriptive of what the top tier is looking for came at the Brown info session (where she was denied admission, lol,) “if you are not into volunteering, don’t do it! We want your authentic self.” My DD had basically no service hours. What she did have was her own tutoring business, 2 gold medals in debate from Academic Decathlon, sole choreographer for both the drama club and cheer. She was head cheerleader, president of the Honor Society, and her school’s rep at Girl’s State. Yes, she had a (weighted) 4.7 GPA, 1450 SAT, and 2 SAT subject scores over 700. But we could tell by going to so many info sessions that the top schools really wanted a student body that is involved and passionate. So basically very well rounded and all over the map - “jack of all trades.” Over the past 4 years at Penn she has continued to have her hand in many pies, and is super involved.
Having observed the college application and admission of my kid, if I were a kid again, I would just take it easy in HS and do my own stuff (one or two activities or play a sport that I truly enjoy or not do them at all) and make sure I get high enough PSAT score to become a NMF and go to some Honors College at OOS state college for free. I would do this because I already know I am smart enough to go to an Ivy if I wanted to but why waste your youth on trying to get into top colleges? Anyway, that would be my line of thinking. If HYPSM wants to accept me to their school for having done the above, I have no problem with that either.
For my career, I would get into construction industry and learn everything from ground up and then make a lot of money in development projects.
Actually a lot of the tippy top boarding and private day schools are moving away from offering APs as they see these classes as being inferior to the school’s own courses and they don’t want to teach to the test. However, it is pretty common for kids to take the AP test after their own school’s class in that subject and score well. The Ivies are aware that some schools do not value APs that much and do not hold this against these schools as the schools have well established reputations and colleges know the students arrive prepared to do college level work.
Good for them! They are right about the AP classes.
At our rather typical suburban public high school, my kids took all the APs they could since that’s where the “smart kids” were. They were in no way “college level” in relation to where they ended up (Yale and Swarthmore). They got 5s on the exams which makes me think that APs courses, wherever you take them, are not equivalent to top college and university courses.
D1 took all the APs offered in the humanities and social sciences and none of the STEM. She breezed through English lang and lit as well as psychology and APUSH. However, AP World was the hardest class she ever took, including every college history class she has had so far. Watching her study for it, I thought it was a nightmare of a class that was completely focused on rote memorization of uncontextualized arcane facts. It was punishing, but had absolutely no relationship to the kind of scholarship that is required in college.
My D2 who is much more of a STEM kid, skipped that class, but is taking all the other APs offered in both humanities and science.
What about the chances for not well off ORM STEM kids who have achieved big recognition in STEM field, but love other activities in politics, debate, research etc besides maintaining very high GPA at elite prep school, and other scores. However kids need lots of need based or merit based aid to attend any college. They have no legacy, not much athelete, and no hooks whatsoever besides just their accomplishments, grades, character and ECs involvement.
In our elite prep school hooked URM, leagcy, and athletic kids have done very well. But we do not know anyone who is unhooked ORM kid and who attend prep school on nealy full need based aid. This we have no idea and it seems in general ORM kids did not do well to begin with.
Wow, far, far too much emphasis on passion. As a Stanford former dean of adissions is on record saying, who really expects a 16 year old to identify passions and have a record of related activities, much less achievements?
And no, it’s not just any “passion” or fantasy about the future. Imagine if your kid honestly claims a passion for, oh, say, gardening or collecting Hummel figurines (real) or you-name-it. How is that relevant, when being reviewed for a very top college? (Meanwhile, in this ditz about “passion,” too many kids miss more solid opportunities.)
And so, writing that dreamy little essay about your Hummels won’t get you far. No matter how “choerent” the picture. It’s not coherent, it’s about relevant.
Been there. Seen the reactions.
Blossom’s words about Boho point this out. It’s not just about being “you.” They aren’t choosing kids for being, at the moment, entertained and fulfilled. They’re looking for kids who fit their ideal, who stretch and contribute in ways adult adcoms, working year in and out for a highly competitive college, knowing its types, want to see.
And yes, no matter what anyone says about not doing something you don’t feel for (the example here was comm service,) you’d better go ahead and do it. And again, something meaningful.
If you know your college targets well enough (from their persepctive, what they say and show,) you get an idea of what’s meaningful to them. After all, they do the choosing.
Life is like this. You do what a potential employer wants to see, you think along the lines they do, you build the record. You don’t get a dream job based on passion.
Holistic admission policies seem like a bit of a scam…
@lastone03 I don’t think its necessarily a scam, but it can’t change the numbers. There are far far two few spots for all the qualified applicants. There is no system of admission that can alter that fact. I would certainly not want to go to a system where students are simply admitted in order of some kind of numeric rank. I really do want colleges to be able to look at a student’s back story, writing ability, accomplishments and personality. “Holistic” may be imperfect, but its better than the alternative.