I’m a curator as well. And so are parents of recruited athletes, whether they think of themselves that way or not.
However, many parents are not curators. Their kids are more likely to be adrift in terms of their interests and have a lower level of achievements when it comes time for college applications.
I see many kids gain admissions to the top schools, HPYSMC et al, with very high test scores and grades. I knew many of them personally Many are Asian, white, privileged in that they are going to excellent highschool and have parents supportive of all they do, but they are not defined by any hook. It’s just that there are so many great kids with those high stats, competitive courses that there are not enough seats on those schools deemed elite to take all who apply. But, yes, some do get in there through sheer academic excellence.
I’ve been off touring grad schools with oldest and then returned to hostile colleagues who couldn’t handle me getting a couple of days off (it’s all good…I do the same thing when they leave!), so it’s taken me awhile to finally see this discussion.
First of all, way upstream someone mentioned that going to private schools is one way to get into a top 20 school and i’m sure that private schools don’t hurt the process but I really think their value is overrated. Yes, of course, X number of kids from, say, Exeter will get into HYP and it will probably be more than from a public school in, say, Chicago but that’s only because private schools self-select their students and a higher % of them are likely to be driven. But an individual kid is an individual kid. At our “tough” (as its called) urban high school (60% of the kids on reduced lunch programs), there are consistent numbers, year after year, of students getting into the Ivys with the Stanfords and uChicagos tossed in as well.
So who does get in? Two groups, based only within my own filter. There are 3 in my neighborhood over past 10 years. One danced a specific part in a ballet written for her specifically by twyla tharp when she was 12 (I’m not kidding). The other was the first American to win a particular ski event in the World Cup (also not kidding) and the 3rd was on the Today Show talking about her book. All 3 were under 18 when these events happened.
But turning to my kids’ inner city public school, there have been a number of students who get into the Ivys without any obvious hooks other than what I call The Glow. Yes, their scores are perfect but they also are luminous…they’re in the school plays and no one can look away from them. They might not come in 1st in a national debate tournament but they consistently place in the top 10, tournament after tournament. They are the kid that their teachers think about at night when they despair about the future of education (“but at least there are still Franklins in the world”) and the recommendations by those teachers really stand out.
That said, though, it’s still a crapshoot.
@nocreativity1 Great comments, I think we are sympatico on this issue.
Since OP posted this thread to help future applicants, I’d like to bring up the whole issue of ED vs. RD. It seems to me that the ED acceptance rates have become way out of sync with the RD rates, probably because AO’s have been as surprised as we are at the explosion of extremely well qualified applicants to the top schools the last few years. I wonder if ED rates will drop significantly next year, because A) AO’s realize how strong their RD pools will be, and B) even more unhooked students will apply ED because it is really their only chance at a hook.
Buyer beware for ED the next few years.
@southernhope consistently coming in top 10 in national debates is a hook. I’ve also been surprised when someone says their kid didn’t have a hook (who was a national merit finalist). So more often than not the kids do have some hook be it URM, national recognition, first generation, etc. they may not even realize it, but more often they do. Someone else’s advice upstream to use ED for a T20-30 school for an academic excellent but unhooked applicant is probably the best advice. The most common recipe for admissions to Ivies in my public school district is URM with at least one parent with a graduate degree (if not both) typically one an MD. For asian/white kids >80% of those who got into HYPS+ were from private schools that started typically in middle school.
I found a few colleges and universities being a tiny bit more transparent about ED chances for unhooked applicants this admissions season as opposed to when my middle kid applied. A few LACs in particular have stated (after I asked) that most of the ED applicants are sports recruits, legacies, or have another hook and that applying ED isn’t much of an advantage for anyone else. I really wish they would all do this. Be careful; sometimes it’s an advantage and sometimes it just isn’t.
@pittsburghscribe This is spot on:
“Finally, I get annoyed every time I read that colleges are overwhelmed with students who are unable to function independently of their parents and parents who are badgering them over grades, housing, etc. If universities only accept students who have started successful businesses, who are olympic athletes, who speak 10 languages, or who have published multiple scientific papers, how do they think those students managed to achieve those successes? There has to be a parent who drove that kid to practice and paid for equipment and lessons, a parent or mentor who suggested that the child seek out internships or research opportunities at an early age, etc. These kids don’t come out of high school this successful without a lot of parental involvement. If colleges want kids that are untethered from parents, then they should stop demanding that applications be filled with achievements that almost always require a tremendous amount of parental support.”
And I’d add that all of these crazy EC’s leave no time for doing dishes, laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. which kids really need to experience to be independent. The AO’s seem to be choosing kids with great stories for press releases, but the result is Colleges full of kids who need remedial help in Life 101.
@PurpleTitan - and if your kid doesn’t want to go to school in Florida? Then what? Happy to go through this with you and re-think the whole college application process and we’ll see if there is school that fits what my kid is looking for that doesn’t have some “prestige” attached to it.
@RockySoil I keep hoping I’m reading this NY Times piece wrong but it appears 15-20% of the populations of elite schools come from parents that make >630,000$ annually. The more I go through college admissions the more I become a believer in funding more seats at state colleges and Public Universities. Yale for example has 19% of its students from households making >$630,000 a year, which is fairly typical. this is not average but individual family incomes. (the highest is Vanderbilt with 23% of kids coming from the $630K income bracket.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/yale-university
@anon145 I think you are reading the article right, there is a lot of $ washing around. I don’t begrudge anyone their success, but using some of that $630k per year to buy college counselors, SAT coaching, etc. gives their kids a significant leg up in the process. Not all rich people do this, but enough do that it makes the non-hooked slots much more competitive and tilted against those kids whose parents can’t or won’t pay thousands to “package” their kids.
@RockySoil FWIW it’s only a sample of one, but most of the issues you have listed weren’t part of our experience so there is hope for unhooked applicants. DS didn’t go to private school, he only did the free Khan online SAT review and bought a single review book (no tutoring), we didn’t have a paid college counselor (heck his HS barely has a helpful GC - he got two separate one hour sessions with the GC starting in September of his senior year and that was it), we’re about the polar opposite of helicopter parents, he had to do normal chores at home including cooking and laundry and in fact from age 15 on always had a part time job. His school didn’t offer the extensive ECs he wanted, so most of them he created and did on his own using his own spending money. We did buy him a computer and he had use of a family vehicle, so those are luxuries not every student would have.
He did pay a trusted former English teacher to review his application essays and give feedback. He was going to pay for this out of his own earned money, but we paid for that - 2.5 hours’ worth. Although I wasn’t part of their work sessions, son described it as the teacher asking questions about the writing and what he was trying to communicate - no editing or suggesting of content. And we were fortunate enough to be able to visit and tour six of the colleges he was most interested in (no interviews, just the standard group info session and tours), which I think is a huge advantage for applicants since they gain so much insight on whether they may be a fit and also material for “why ___ College” essays and interactions with AOs.
Just wanted to point out that there although it’s not common, it’s still possible for unhooked applicants to have the achievements, ECs and apps necessary to be admitted to top selective colleges without huge amounts of money or parental grooming.
@Riversider 18.1% of the entering class of Harvard was Asian. 14% of these report being legacies, and no more than one or two percent are athletes, since the majority of recruited athletes are White. Asians are 6% or fewer than the population. That means that unhooked Asians are being accepted at Harvard at almost 3X their proportion of the population. This is true for all HYPSM, so I’m sorry, but proportionally, far more unhooked Asians are attending all T-20 schools than any other ethnic group in the USA.
The difficulty of Asians in gaining acceptance is specifically because they are attending T-20 schools at 3X, 4X, their percentage of the population. Asians are also proportionally applying to T-20 at far higher rates than any other ethnic group. An Asian teen, graduating HS, is about four or five times as likely to be applying to a T-20 as a Hispanic teen.
@RockySoil The main reason that kids of parents making $630,000 and higher have a higher acceptance rate is not college counselors, SAT coaching, etc, because those are available for anybody at lower income ranges. Not the lowest, but most families with an income of $180,000+ can access these. The big advantage of the very wealthy, besides their legacy statuses, are the super expensive private high schools which run a direct pipeline to the Ivies. their acceptance rates to Ivies have little or nothing to do with the quality of students, since there a a very large number of public magnets whose students perform just as well, but which have acceptance rates to Ivies that are but a fraction of those of the exclusive private schools.
It is what it is, and these $630,000 a year family students finance the schools. I think that I’ve already written, but it’s not the super wealthy donating $5 million, as much as its it’s the one or two thousand very wealthy graduates who donate $5,000-$50,000 at every alumni dinner, and leave a half a million in their wills. Harvard college graduates at least 1,500 a year, and most of those who graduates over the past 50 years are still alive, which is 75,000 alumni. The percent of these who are wealthy is higher than the percent of undergraduates from wealthy families, so we’re talking at least 17% from the top 1%, or roughly 12,000-13,000 alumni who are in the top 1% by income. At 3% from the top 0.1% by income, that’s over 2,000 alumni who make over $1,000,000 a year. These are actually making a lot more on their investments, etc.
That’s why Harvard has a $50 billion endowment, and why it can afford to allow 17% or so to attend without paying tuition, provide FA to over 1/2 of their students, and have fancy and expensive facilities, dorms, and activities that are available to all students.
Private colleges that are attempting at providing the same facilities without that donor base are closing right and left.
The problem is not that Ivies have that income distribution, it’s that states are not willing to fund public universities in a manner which allows them to compete with top private colleges. Don’t blame Harvard, blame anybody whose primary reason for voting for a state representative is that they say that they will fight against tax increases.
Anybody who votes for politicians who support cutting funding for higher education should shut up about anything related to tuition or why only rich kids can get into private schools. I’m really tired of the people who whine that tuition is so high, and that it’s impossible to be accepted to T-20 colleges, and then screams and yells when their state legislature says that it will raise state taxes by 3% to fund the state higher education system, or voted for politicians who want to priv
@MWolf I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but the OP is asking specifically about T20 schools. Most likely they would be unsatisfied by state universities regardless of their funding levels. (“Groucho Marx syndrome”, etc.)
The demographic breakdown of the overall population isn’t terribly relevant, mwolf. At the very least, the breakdown needs to be high school graduates, or better yet, completed applications by demographic.
@MWolf:
“That means that unhooked Asians are being accepted at Harvard at almost 3X their proportion of the population. This is true for all HYPSM, so I’m sorry, but proportionally, far more unhooked Asians are attending all T-20 schools than any other ethnic group in the USA.”
So do you think that there was nothing wrong with the Jewish quota when the Ivies had them? After all, even after the Ivies instituted the Jewish quotas, unhooked Jews were well over-represented (among the unhooked population) at the Ivies.
I slightly disagree with the comments about high incomes and prep schools. I think there are two factors that are being missed here. Many of those high earners are also legacies at the schools their kids attend and some may also be significant donors. In addition many prep schools really steer their classes to apply where they are legacies. If you are Jo Schmo attending one of these schools on scholarship you may discover that the kids who actually get into the HYP type of schools are not just legacies, but kids whose families have gone there going back generations. I know my unconnected nephew at a well known prep school felt that way. (Or more accurately his Mom did - he landed on his feet attending a fine school outside of the usual East Coast + Standford mindset.)
All that said SAT scores really do correlate with income levels long past the level where you’d think it wouldn’t make a difference. (ie in 2014 students from families with incomes between $150-200,000 did less well than ones over $200,000.
The Harvard lawsuit document provides some specific numbers at http://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-421-112-May-1-2013-Memorandum.pdf . SAT scores of applicants did increase as income level increased, but there was little change beyond ~$130k income. Specifically
$70-$80k income – ~30% of applicants have a 1500+
$100-$110k income – ~36% of applicants have a 1500+
$130-$140k Income – ~42% of applicants have a 1500+,
$160-$170k Income – ~44% of applicants have a 1500+,
$250k+ Income – ~44% of applicants have a 1500+
The analysis found that the highest analyzed income group of $200k+ income had a 12% admit rate compared to 11% admit rate for lower income applicants and ~10% for middle income applicants. Their simple model, which considered reader ratings of applicants and some basic hooks (legacy was considered, not special interest list) predicted the higher income group would have a 13% admit rate, so the actual high income admit rate of 12% was lower than expected by the analysis that did not consider income.
Considering the apparent similar acceptance rate among different income levels, the biggest reason why high income students are overrepresnted and low income students are underrepresented is different rates of applications among different income groups. It’s well documented that high achieving lower income kids generally do not apply to HYPSM… type private colleges. For example, the abstract of the paper at https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2013a_hoxby.pdf begins by stating the following. Similarly comparing the portion of high income students to the admit rate for income applicants suggests that high income applicants are tremendously overrepresnted in the applicant pool.
In addition to a higher rate of applications among legacies, another key factor for the referenced $630k income group is the legacy hook. In the Harvard freshman survey at https://features.thecrimson.com/2018/freshman-survey/makeup/ , roughly half of legacies reported a $500k+ income, making a good portion of the $630k income group legacies. The previously linked lawsuit summary found that legacy was the strongest analyzed hook besides being a recruited athlete – stronger than being a URM. Given how large a fraction of ~$630k income students are legacies, that legacy boost has a significant impact on the acceptance rate of very wealthy applicants as a whole.
I don’t think going to “super expensive private high schools” is generally a big hook in the absence of other listed hooks (not a legacy, not on special interest list, …). However, I expect that such schools contribute to the overrepresntation of applicants. Parents who send their kids to prestigious private high schools are likely to encourage their kids to attend prestigious private colleges. The HS counselors, teachers, and student body at the prestigious private high school are likely to further encourage students to apply to prestigious private colleges and create an atmosphere where HYPSM… is highly valued. All of this contributes to a much higher rate of application than typical. Many of these private high schools are selective, which can contribute to a more highly qualified applicant pool from the school, beyond the SAT score and other correlations noted. A higher rate of applicants among a pool that is more likely to be highly qualified and more likely to have legacy/special interest list hooks leads to a large number of accepted students.
Thank you, @Data10 . Your posts are so informative and clear. You must be great at your job (which I assume is in data/stats)!
@PurpleTitan I’m saying nothing about the fairness of these practices, I’m just pointing out that there are places for unhooked Asians, even if it is more difficult for them to enter these places than it would be for a White kid.
@roycroftmom The demographic breakdown of graduating HS seniors has Asians at about 5%-6% of the graduating seniors.
Do you think the legacy boost is independent of high wealth? I think the high legacy boost at these schools exists precisely because legacies are so very wealthy. It is not a legacy boost but a wealth + legacy boost.