THanks @skieurope !
@Publisher - this scenario happened to a student at PEA a couple of years ago. I think the ordeal was posted by the mom - who is no longer on here!
@Altras âKeep in mind that those GPAs are junior year only. So, the kids are very well trained by that point and their courses align well with their abilities.â - This is the critical piece, and reason why 11th grade GPAs are that high, they are nowhere neat this high in 9th grade and probably not in 10th either. However, aside from English and electives all courses at Choate are tracked and there are usually 3 versions with decreasing difficulty. If you are in the top level class and pulling a B (or even B+) it is recommended you move down next year. So by and large, by junior year you are in classes where you can succeed.
But colleges look at class rigor in addition to GPA (and I believe Choate uses weighted GPA in addition to unweighted, we have received both on reports), so they will look at the transcript and immediately see which kids are academic superstars and in order to get into top colleges on academic merits you need the class rigor too.
Now the âinflationâ does help the kids that have other hooks to make them very attractive to colleges and just need GPA that will not take them out of the running, and there are a fair number of those. But as far as academics go, the number of kids who are superstars is not huge and everyone knows who they are based on which classes they take.
Intert.
I havenât read The Gatekeepers, though I know I should. I read Selingoâs Who Got in and Why a while back, which I suspect is similar. He divides schools into âbuyersâ (those who have to entice students to come with merit or whatever) and âsellersâ (elites who have more desirable students applying than they can accept).
I think what you are describing is that the line between buyers and sellers is different for elite prep schools than the general public. Schools slightly below the super elite are protecting yield and donât want to be extending offers to students who wonât attend. Since they can actually call a bs CC and get advance warning, they do. It serves both sides.
But the sellers (HYPSM) donât need that feedback loop to protect yield, even from bs students. So when they get 50+ apps from an elite bs, some who were âsupportedâ by the CC some not, and 10 are in serious contention for very different reasons and not easily ranked, do CCs get calls asking for help choosing between them? I would think they must (thatâs the only scenario where a CCâs âyou have my full supportâ means anything), but in the other hand, what a terrible position to put the CC in. The response would have to be very carefully worded and then very tight security around what is said.
I highly doubt those top âsellersâ require anyoneâs help to make their final choices. If they want or need more info as I posted above, theyâll ask and get answers. No need for anything but honest and open communication. The CC is not in any precarious position.
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I really donât think the college counselors have the power to pick which kids get into an elite college. Think about it for a minute. How would the parents of the kid who was a reasonable applicant for Harvard (say) react when they found out the school threw him/her under the bus??? Outrage wouldnât begin to describe it! The prep schools have to be very aware of their constituencies, and parents, particularly with regards to college counseling, definitely are an important one.
When I have time Iâll come back and post a heartening story about CC influence.
Also, can I say, most of the worry and speculation (or maybe, all of the worry) is coming from parents whose kids havenât been through the process. Listen to those of us who have been there and done that! In my case 3 times with 2 boarding schools.
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Probably, but then what is the meaning of a CCâs âfull supportâ? What difference does their support make if they arenât, on some level, helping distinguish the admissibility between applicants? When they say that to a student is just code for âthere is nothing I can do, donât applyâ? If calls are happening between CCs and AOs after applications are in, it implies they have some influence on the process.
My kidsâ schools fully support ALL the kids applying to all the schools. There arenât different levels of support! Of course, recommendations will vary depending on the kid, as at every school. Some kids will get âbest Iâve ever taughtâ some will get âbest student this yearâ others a âvery strong studentâ because thatâs what they are.
Full support means that this candidate has a reasonable chance of admission to that college and is encouraged to apply with no misgivings on the GCâs part or those who will be writing LORs. Look, we need to clear this thread of any intimation of horse-trading or playing favorites or somehow stacking the deck for or against applicants or hurting anyoneâs chances at any school they are a good match for. That isnât whatâs happening.
What DOES happen is that the BS has a long history with many colleges, and they talk all year long. When app season comes around, the BS has a very good idea of how many offers are likely to come from that college, and they will know what that college needs or is looking for that year and which of their students are potential fits.
Letâs say college A historically admits 5-10 students from this BS and has indicated to that BS what theyâre looking for that year. The BS may know that 50 students want that college, but they arenât going to encourage all 50 students to apply because not all 50 students are equally good matches, so most of those applications would be a waste both on the applicantâs end and the collegeâs end. The BS does NOT know which students college A will admit, but they DO know which have the best shot, so they will encourage however many in that pool of 50 really do align with what college A is looking for â and that may be 20 viable applicants for those 5-10 seats, so they will encourage those 20 students and steer the remaining to other colleges so as not to waste anyoneâs time. The BS is NOT âgetting anyone inâ to college A. They are simply gating their best fits to that college to preserve their relationship with that college and avoid wasted apps.
We talked about this a bit in an older thread.
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There must be very few kids meeting these criteria if they all apply to the same set of colleges. A college would be confused, to say the least, if more than one kid gets one of those accolades. That confusion wonât arise, however, if they apply to different colleges. This obviously isnât specific to BSs. All schools are incentivized to showcase their matriculations to elite colleges, but the degree of effort they exert in any particular area may be different.
Given the change in thread title, Iâll offer some other info that was interesting to us about this process. Choate, and especially our sonâs GC, was brutally transparent about this process. The general sessions held at College Info Weekend clearly laid out how the the school handled the application process, and small break-out sessions held by GCs with the parents of their charges spelled out the GCâs expectations of the student and of the parents as well as what we could expect from the GC. People asked blatant questions, like how âadvocacyâ works, and got straight answers, no beating around the bush. Also, the school emphasized how important it was for students to attend the college fair as the reps at most of those booths were the readers for Choate applications, and itâs the readers primarily who have the back-and-forth with the BS.
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I donât think parents get the level of transparency from a normal private school college placement office that would allow them to ever really know what happened. They just see the end result - accepted, waitlist or rejected.
In my oldest sonâs case, he received his Oxford offer in early January and told his counselor that he would likely go there. I would be very surprised if his counselor didnât tell the admissions officer at the three Ivys where he had RD apps pending not to waste a slot on him because he was all set at Oxford. He ended up getting rejected from two and a courtesy legacy waitlist at the third. Plus the school was thrilled to list Oxford on their annual matriculation report.
To enhance/protect their placement track record, its all about how many kids can they get into top tier colleges each year. Why would they waste a slot on my son who likely wouldnât take it when they might be able to fit someone else in there who would? They didnât pick who got to go where, but my gut tells me that they had a lot of influence on the end results.
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Just to be clear - I have never been involved with the college counseling process and I have never heard a CC say that a kid has âtheir full support â. If they did, though, that would imply others donât. I think saying something like that is pretty treacherous territory with lots of room for misinterpretation.
What I do expect will happen (my uneducated predictions- worth absolutely nothing) is that the student has aspirational yet realistic expectations because they know their competition. If they (or more likely their parents) are off the mark, they will be redirected by the CC. Kids get somewhat divided up among target colleges to maximize success. Some kids will insist on applying beyond the CCâs targets, and a small minority of those will have success. But overall the bsâs applications are curated and there is an understanding built over time with the schools that the applicants are previewed and appropriate. Some colleges-/AOs have closer relationships with some bs/CCs than others forged over time, and some will have more forthright, specific conversations than others. Some may even be friends if they have been doing it long enough.
I expect there are conversations between the AOs and CCs all along the process, though they change over time. In the beginning, they probably are more about setting up interviews and college presentations. When the applications are in, they might be about clarifying one application or another - instigated by the college. After results, there will be some calls instigated by the bs if there is a kid who got waitlisted that they want to give an extra plug to. The prep schools probably get a lot of pressure from prominent families if their kids donât get the expected results, in which case the schools may put extra effort to working miracles after the fact. Sometimes they are successful.
There are so few processes in this world that are not influenced by the personal relationships of the people involved. College admissions are no different. The UCs try really hard to make their process as unbiased as possible. I would have expect CCs to have zero impact on UC admissions. But my guess is the bs-elite college pipeline is on the other end of the spectrum. Personal relationships are part of it. That is not to say people arenât trying to make the process fair. But people, not robots, are doing the work. Conversations are had, information is shared.
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Weâve seen some pretty detailed BS college admissions data, and a lot of kids at the BSs we know will apply to the âtop 5â most select colleges Regular Decision, with only a 10-15% RD acceptance rate for these BS students (versus 3-4% for these collegesâ published RD data). 85-90% of these BS kids are getting rejected RD, and the BS CCs are not steering them away from applying.
Based on my experience of applying to college from prep school (not boarding one), as well as from what we have seen from friends applying from boarding as well as selective public schools, some people on here give guidance counselors way too much power. It is the college that chooses the kids, not the guidance counselor. And while GC can make suggestions, they canât prevent you from applying anywhere. IME, they donât even try. What they do demand is that you have a balanced list that includes some targets as well as safeties not just a bunch of very competitive schools. Their biggest role is at the beginning and at the end, when choosing your ED/REA school and then when working the waitlist (if you choose to do that).
The REA/ED selection is where they try the hardest to guide your choice, because it is in everyoneâs best interest for a lot of kids to get their early school and not flood the RD pool, and also the odds are quite a bit better at a lot of schools in the early round. So you may get told you are probably wasting your REA application on Harvard as there are quite a few applicants with better credentials so getting in is unlikely, and you should consider Dartmouth instead to increase your odds. Or if you really like three schools they way tell you five kids are already applying early to Amherst and 6 to Swarthmore so Williams may give you better chance. But again, ultimately the choice is yours and there are always kids who apply against advice, and someone always ends up getting in anyway (while some of the kids going with GC advice will not). And they will not suggest you ED a school that is not in your top three if not the top choice.
As for the regular round, our GC tried to limit the numbers to some degree but if you had your heart set on applying to Yale they supported it, as long as there were likely schools on the list. Ideally you applied someplace with rolling or EA admissions so you are in somewhere before RD deadline but did not always work out.
Once RD results are out, you either just revisit your top choices and tell CC where you are going, or you try to work the WL. At our school, GC would only make calls for you at a school if you said you would go if offered a spot, they do not want you playing the waitlist unless it is your top choice.
And yes, we too were told that every student had full support wherever they applied. Which does not mean they can get you in but they would certainly advocate based on your strengths if asked. And our (highly known and successful) CC specifically said when asked in a parent session that they are called and asked questions about specific student, but they are never asked to compare kids and never would do it in any event. I happen to believe that.
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Could be because all of those ultimately rejected kids were viable fits and were encouraged to apply knowing the odds are still low. Also, the boarding schools canât prohibit those who donât have a chance from applying, so the rejected pool includes them as well. And, not all BS gate to the same degree as @cinnamon1212 posted upthread.
Another point to add: not only are the CCs and AOs in regular communication, they are, in many cases, friends IRL. Many come from similar backgrounds (academic if not also social), some have even directly worked together in the past, and certainly in many cases pre-covid theyâd attend conferences together, spoken on panels together, etc etc etc.
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Gee, thatâs funny. When my kid at public school got into Harvard REA, and within a week of getting notified decided to go there, his public school college admissions counselor told him to withdraw all his other applications, which he did.
He would have gotten in everywhere else heâd applied, plus he might very well have gotten in at the other two Ivies that he had been planning to apply to, but was holding off on submitting until he got the decision from Harvard (because we didnât want to pay unnecessary application fees). But he went by the guidance counselorâs guidance, which was âIf youâre telling Harvard youâre coming, you need to withdraw all your other applications.â
He wasnât looking for a trophy list, so that he could brag of all the schools heâd gotten into. He knew he was going to Harvard, so he withdrew everything else, because it was the right thing to do. After all, he wasnât going to change his mind based upon the other acceptances.
Iâm surprised that the boarding school/private school counselor didnât advise your son of the same, especially since his withdrawing his other applications might have increased the odds of the other kids from his school.
It would be virtual malpractice for a CC to quietly (secretly?) tell schools not to waste an offer on someone who got into Oxford even if kid informally advised he/she was likely to go there. What if there was a change in plans, especially early in the process? I mean, weâre talking kids. It really should be up to the kid to withdraw apps from other schools, and in consultation with the family.
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