HS Class of 24: Don't let this be you!

College Search & Selection
21

I’ve not gotten that impression here. I’ve felt something closer to opposition to an assumption that every kid would prefer to go to elite schools if they had the option. There’s a lot of space between “not gunning for a top school” and “prefer community college or no college”. Many kids (including mine) happen to sit within that space. So for those kids, a reach-heavy list isn’t as good a fit compared to a list with few (or no) reaches.

But yes, I agree that it should go without saying that the kid should ideally like all the schools on their list: safeties and reaches alike.

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22

It’s also okay to have all safeties (better to call them likelies) Or all likelies and a couple of targets. The goal is to find a good fit. For DS23, the schools that were really great for his major ended up being likelies for him. This made our process much less stressful.

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23

People find many ways to meet their academic potential. It’s not where you land, but what you do once you are there. Transferring and supplementing with mentoriships and internships are always possibilities.

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24

The correct mix includes a safety (assured admission + assured affordability + suitable in terms of academics and other factors), plus any realistic number of colleges that the student prefers over the safety.

One of the mistakes that some students make is assuming that a college is a safety when it is not a safety, resulting in a rejection or waitlist as proof that it is not a safety. Another mistake is failing to consider affordability as part of the definition of safety – it does no good to be admitted to a college that is too expensive.

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It is best to distinguish between:

  • Safety = assured admission (including to major if applicable) and assured affordability
  • Likely = highly likely admission and highly likely affordability

Typically, safety means a pre-announced automatic admission (and scholarship if necessary) threshold that the student meets. Likely may be inferred by previous admission (or scholarship) history, but with no pre-announced automatic admission thresholds, there is a risk that the current year could be significantly more competitive for admission (or scholarships) than the past years.

26

I agree with most , but some of the above may be little bit pessimistic: there ARE unhooked kids who get in RD at top10 schools, some lucky kids get into multiple. ED is definitely a great strategy but for those who cannot or those who really do not have a favorite among the schools that offer ED, the RD game can work for very top kids IF they avoid the common pitfalls:

The main pitfalls of top-20 seekers who have the smarts but get “shut out” that I have seen on this site for the past few yrs:

Course rigor/transcript issues:
-not taking the highest rigor courses offered by your high school, or not covering all core areas. It does not matter if you have heard the teacher is hard or you think DE is better. Take the hardest courses your school offers, and take all 5 core courses all 4 yrs PLUS if your school allows it, take a 6th core as an”elective “. Ask and learn what is done at your HS among the top kids who get into top places.
-thinking if you are STEM you can slack off in humanities or vice versa: you cant if you want top20 (unless you are at a very selective boarding school where around half the class gets into T20).

Test issues:
-thinking as an unhooked candidate with no significant financial limitations/resources, Test Optional will be as good as submitting: in most cases it won’t, based on data top colleges have released.
-thinking a 1530+/35 makes up for a less than top gpa or rigor. It does not.

Class rank /where your HS sends kids pitfalls:
-not understanding your relative class rank and assuming you are top10% with your 3.8 or 3.9 uw . You may be much lower, even bottom half. Find out your approximate relative class rank and ask the details of what tier gets in where from your school.
-thinking your “4.0” /top of the class gpa that was achieved by avoiding some of your HS’s hardest classes will not be seen for what it is (avoiding intellectual challenge)
-if your HS has sent only 1-2 unhooked kids each year to top20s and you are not in the very top few in the class based on all measures, it is not likely to work out. Ask for the data and stay realistic.

Fit issues:
-not spending enough time becoming knowledgeable on every school you apply to, and putting that time into developing great essays, proofreading like crazy, and writing from the heart to let your voice shine through.
-read the websites early and often and don’t miss out on the ones that have extra/surprise essays, early interview -or other priority deadlines, separate processes to get on the interview list, and which ones care about “demonstrating” interest.

Personality/EC issues:
-not actually caring about your classes and not being a curious learner; being callous with peers or teachers, or worse being outright rude. Kindness counts. LOR matter.
-not finding one or two things at your school or in your community that you truly care about and can have an impact on, and can articulate why you care about it.
-thinking your EC (s) will make up for a low gpa or low test score

And the most important: not understanding what your family can afford. Have the talks early to save the disappointment later.

Just my two cents.

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27

Difficulty meeting one’s academic potential may be more likely due to financial or other parental limitations than anything else. For example, consider a student constrained to commute to a nearby college, and the nearby colleges do not offer much in the subjects that the student is strongest and most interested in.

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This is very interesting. I have a high-stats STEM kid who is also equally strong in art & music. I would love to hear more about your experience with this/ how you came to this conclusion.

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29

We see it every year in our school. The kids who go to HYPSM are usually absolute tops in STEM and the Humanities. They have stellar grades. They can equally well apply in STEM and the Humanities. They in fact do. They discuss multiple interests at length. For a few years, we’ve had kids indicating Physics and Comparative Literature – just as an example. And you need a humanities (in your case Arts) teacher wax eloquent about you, while your STEM teacher talks about your help in their class. It is good to have external validation in all these things. In music for instance, are you first chair in the school orchestra? Preferably are you in youth orchestra at the state or the national level? In STEM, have you won research awards outside the school? Discuss all your passions. Don’t say you want to combine them – you don’t need to say all of that. Say that you are interested in all these things and more. Indicate an interest, but tell them you reserve the right to change your mind as you explore more in college. If you are interested in history in addition to music and STEM, also write about the history – or better still have your history teacher write you a stellar recommendation, and have your GC abstract that recc into his/her recc because you are allowed only two direct reccs plus a GC recc. The GC recc is the place where you can push through 3-5 other reccs (apart from your main two reccs) where the GC is summarizing these reccs on your behalf. These 3-5 other reccs should speak to your other talents and interests. Someone from your school should talk about how nice a person you are, that you are helpful etc to other kids, that you care about the school community etc. In glowing terms.

We had 5-6 reccs altogether for one of our kids (history, greek mythology, math, cs, EC club mentor, and one from an external summer camp), and maybe 3 for another kid. It is your GCs job to pull all these together after you ask everyone who is writing references. You need to write a brag sheet to your GC (they ask) so that they don’t miss anything.

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30

Completely agree. My high stats stem-focused kid also had lots of performance art experience and some impressive humanities accolades too. She was very successful in admissions(multiple T10s). But anecdotally from real-life exames the reverse is true too: unhooked humanities focused kids should not skip the harder stem classes their HS offers if they want to maximize their chances. In either case, the kid should want to do all these hard courses—they should almost “need” the intellectual challenge and truly enjoy it. Parents should never push it on the kid.

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31

This seems to be the type of thing you are paying for at elite private high schools where counselors writing recommendations can devote the amount of attention to optimize each student’s counselor recommendation (as opposed to writing a checkbox recommendation for one of hundreds of students). The counselor may also be more familiar with what certain colleges like to see based on connections to the colleges.

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32

At the level of schools that we were targeting, the connections are a myth.
And the counsellor is writing one recommendation. The GC recc is not customized by university.

I won’t disagree that a smaller student body allows more attention. For example the history teacher keeps running notes on each kid through the year so that he can write good, well substantiated reccs for each kid the following year.

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33

as one of the original threads that was included in OPs post, I wanted to offer my opinion as someone who just got through this process (and like I said, I’m one of the people that got rejected and only accepted to 2/19 schools as the name of the thread indicated).

firstly, I never thought I’d be the “bad example” but I suppose if it’ll help future cycles, so be it, it just felt a little hurtful for someone to make a post and for me to be that example parents point to and say “don’t be like her and make mistakes like her” to their children. but, like I said, if it helps people so be it.

I applied to 19 schools. If you don’t want to go and read my original thread, here is the list: all ivies (I EDed UPenn), uchicago, Duke, stanford, vanderbilt, UNC, Umich, NYU, UMD, George Washington, barnard, and BU.

now, many of my schools were reaches. i poured my heart out into my extracurriculars, one of them being a tiktok platform helping students with 1.3 million followers. my stats were decent, the SAT could’ve been better, but they were decent.

i wish some people understood the randomness of admissions, which even I’m still trying to comprehend. there was a girl at my school who got into NYU stern (dare I say over me because I was rejected to stern so essentially yes, she got in over me). we both applied to the business school and she had pretty much the same exact stats as me, I think her sat was a bit lower but she went test optional (I don’t recall if I did or not, I had a 1440 for reference). she had 3 extracurriculars: softball player, member of class SGA, and member of NHS. i believe she may of interned for her mothers data company one summer but other than that, no business extracurriculars in comparison to my national business recognition, internships, tiktok partnerships, etc. the same goes to Umich ross where I saw students getting in with test optional status and the same EC caliber as me if not worse.

I’m not trying to discredit my peers by any means. my point is that sometimes, no matter how you try to reason with it, it won’t make sense.

i asked people on here and myself a lot, “what is wrong with me” and “what could I have done better”, etc. Some people answered (some of you guys are mean lol) and I came to the realization that a lot of people here always try to pick apart every application to find some flaw, no one is ever good enough. sometimes, things happen, and you could’ve done everything right.

of course I didn’t do everything right though like I said, but a lot of kids didn’t and they got better results.

this post is becoming long but I’ll name a couple regrets to sort of give a lesson to any juniors reading this. I shouldn’t have applied to Stanford, vanderbilt, and duke. all prestigious, yes, but all 3 didn’t offer the business program I wanted or let alone a business program at all. obviously a lot of you won’t be as dumb as me and apply to places just for the name and surface level research, but I urge you to just keep that in mind. another thing I regret is not going for schools I was on the fence about. USC, UC Berkeley, northwestern, and Georgetown were all schools I extensively regret not applying to. all prestigious again but all schools with business opportunities I would’ve thoroughly enjoyed. yes, that would’ve made my list over 20… but If you can afford it and if you have the sanity for it, shoot your shot.

my last thing to parents here is to please be supportive. i need a hug, I cry all the time because of this and if you’re the parents of incoming seniors, please be there for them and love them no matter where they go. i left the process with panic attacks and I have stayed questioning my worth since then. it takes a long time to heal but having a support system sure does make it better.

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34

Thank you for this in-depth reply. Great info to take into senior year and application season.

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Sending you a virtual mom hug. You are clearly very mature to be responding this way and allowing your experience to help others. I think the topic of this thread could have been worded differently; you are not the “bad example”; you are AN example of one college admissions experience of an excellent student; I wish that you had a more optimal outcome, but I am sure that you will go on to do very well no matter which college you go to.

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I am so sorry that you came here for support and others used your situation as an example. Yes, adults can be mean too. Please take care of yourself. You sound like a very bright young adult and all your hard work will pay off in life.

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The thread is referring directly to a poster who is also still a high schools student. Closing.

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