“since the tippy-top schools don’t seem to want the high academic achievers…”
High academic achievements are merely a baseline at the tippy tops. It doesn’t mean they don’t want it. On the contrary, it means that if that’s all you’ve got, you’re not getting in. You can debate whether or not it SHOULD be that way, but it is unfair to say tippy tops don’t value academic performance.
Frankly it is a good thing that high performing students are going elsewhere. Such a trend helps the ivy mystique and boosts the reputation of a whole number of schools, launching them into the “highly selective” category too (whereas in my day they were matches or safeties). There are plenty of excellent schools out there, but it takes a lot of high performing students attending them before anyone will appreciate them.
@RayManta Be careful about assuming your Alma mater is a safety. At some of these schools, you only get the legacy advantage if you apply ED. They assume that as a legacy, you should know them well enough to know whether or not they are your first choice and if they are not your first choice, why should you get the advantage?
As for kids without legacy, they do what we did. Find some great safeties and apply EA. Get a few acceptances in hand and then the rest is gravy. The extra nice thing about those EA safeties is that they usually come with merit money. If your kid has a specific field of study they are particularly interested in, it makes the process easier because there are some low ranked schools with excellent programs in specific fields. Real hidden gems out there. (Of course some programs have different admit rates to different programs).
My D1 is at one of those hidden gems right now. Great financial package, excellent professors and has just landed an ultra-competitive internship that kids at tippy top schools would kill for. (Hundreds of kids applied, they took 2). One thing we can all do is to stop being hung up on rankings and focus more on actual opportunities.
“We say this all the time and no one seems to believe the posters. Once you are deemed qualified they laser in on the rest of the application. And adcoms regularly reveal at the 34 and above level and high gpa and most rigorous level- they move on. Recs essays ecs. You then layer on non controllables. Income level, legacy, athletics, location and ethnicity. And then institutional needs.”
I didn’t believe this when I first stumbled upon CC, but you (and others) have convinced me, so thanks for that. Part of the problem is that all we see are the objective stats: i.e., “I have a 3.95 UW GPA and a 1520 SAT and I got into Amherst.” We are all working completely blind on how to differentiate students on the other stuff, and as you point out, that’s all there is to differentiate these kids. And every student thinks that their essays are great–maybe they are well written, but do they fill in the blanks that the admissions folks want filled in?
Naviance was way off for a number of schools for my dd’s class of '18. I expect as acceptance rates continue to drop it will continue to be a problem. The other issue with Naviance is that it doesn’t break down acceptances by major. At many schools, some majors are much, much more competitive than others. Not all schools are transparent with those numbers either.
We used Naviance as a guide as well. Not so helpful for some schools on S19’s list where not many kids apply from our school but helpful for schools like Vanderbilt. Decisions not out yet. I cannot wait to see how this goes. S19 and three of his friends applied. According to our Naviance, there is zero chance for them to be rejected. Two thirds chance of acceptance and one third waitlist. All four kids are NMF. Three of them do the same three season sport. Their SAT and GPAs and rigor are really, really similar. We have 60 or so kids apply each year and S19 and his friends are all in the spot on the graph where it’s mostly green checks with a few purple circle waitlists. Vandy usually accepted 7-8 kids each year. They’ve already taken two legacies in ED. So, when we made the list, we thought S19 had a decent chance.
The thing is, this could be the year that they decide to just flat out take fewer kids and S19 and his friends could be denied. One never knows which year a school changes its plan.
Or whether those admitted did have a hook. 9 out of the 10 admitted from our school were hooked, but in only 1 case was the hook obvious. I am sure parents who didnt know the other families well had no idea of the hooks.
@roycroftmom They didn’t have a hook. And only two each year went ED so 5-6 accepted RD. Our school hasn’t sent any athletes to Vandy. The legacies all went ED. No URMs at our school. I don’t even think we have any first gens (at least ones that applied to Vandy). We know all of the kids who have been accepted to Vandy RD in the last two years and they are unhooked.
@RayManta I learned the hard way too. I had no idea and only learned here and after some other research. This was all after we were done. I didn’t even know about CC as a resource.
And it would have helped during the process for sure.
Plus a lot of talking with friends in the admissions aftermath.
We came late to this lesson too. Biggest mistake for us was framing it in our own college admissions experience years ago and thinking of selectivity of schools based on personal belief systems.
We were totally in the 4.0uw val with the 1500+ and good athlete could nearly pick or choose outside of hypms. Wrong.
But it also doesn’t mean these kids don’t get great options. Just more rejections and sleepiness nights than was necessary.
The problem with the data is that it’s telling us the stats of the kids who got in. It’s not telling us the stats of the kids who didn’t get in. The rejected piles for the T-20 schools are littered with the applications of kids who were above the top 75% stats wise, but the data doesn’t tell us that.
“The problem with the data is that it’s telling us the stats of the kids who got in. It’s not telling us the stats of the kids who didn’t get in. The rejected piles for the T-20 schools are littered with the applications of kids who were above the top 75% stats wise, but the data doesn’t tell us that.”
I bet you could take the reject pile from a place like Harvard and, judging solely by academic (test scores, GPA, rigor) and EC criteria, assemble a theoretical admitted class that is arguably more impressive than the actual admitted class since the theoretical class wouldn’t have to give any slots to kids with hooks.
@TheBigChef – I agree completely. We see the published stats and think they are guides but when there’s a large if not equal stack non admitted students with the same hard stats it turns out they aren’t great guideposts. (Not to mention the role of hooks…)
Holistic review means numbers are only part of the story, and there’s no way to discern the results that will emerge from a subjective process.
Not true at all. Every year there is a very active thread for students with 3.0-3.5 GPA and they nearly all have great success in getting into fine colleges. The myth that only students with stellar stats can get into good schools does great harm to student’s mental health.
The problem is generally not stats, but finances. Those schools are expensive and not every family has the ability to afford the good, supportive private schools. There is absolutely nothing wrong with state universities, by the way. I would be more then happy to send a kid to one of the many great state schools in our area.
I grew up in a blue collar, mill town. If you were a really good student you were lucky to go to state u on a pell grant. That fantastic education led me to a wonderful career and I know can write a check for 70k for d to go to college.
There’s a story in there somewhere.
How does that happen in one generation and I am no Einstein.
And if my daughter didn’t have a specific plan thst her school met for her goals. UF was first on our list.
Back in 1979 in suburbs of Detroit you applied to Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State. Or Community College. My wife applied to one school… Michigan, like so many others. If you had the grades and ambition it really wasn’t a question of where you went to school. Didn’t seem people actually got rejected since you just didn’t apply to schools that you didn’t meet their admissions criteria.
Now it seems like a free for all.
Going to Harvard etc like some friends did. Well, your family had to have money first of all. There also didn’t seem to be this huge need to go out of state. Again, people that did seemed to all have wealthy families.
Personally, I honestly don’t remember ever taking the Sat or Act. I am sure I did though… Lol… Test prep? Think most just woke up and took it like any other tests. Not sure if there was so much emphasis on it as there is today.
@RockySoil California’s HS class of 2018 is about 25% non-Hispanic White. So having an incoming class which is 28% White does not really demonstrate any disadvantage for White kids. Of the other top states which make up the incoming class, Texas is plurality White, as is New York.
@Intellectualpine What exactly is wrong with that? Most state schools provide excellent educations with excellent job opportunities. Places like UIUC, UMich, OSU, UI, UMN, UT Austin, TTU, etc. all have excellent reputations and a degree from any one of them will be enough to get 99% of all open positions out there. The personality of my D is such that we figured out that a LAC is a better place for her, and all public LACs would have been OOS, and none matched her needs. She also applied to two state schools and would have applied to more, and if no LAC had provided a financial packet similar to that of her in-state public, she would have happily gone to her in state public, or to one of chosen OOS public which would offer her the best financial deal.
@privatebanker Do you use “when I was your age” on your D? ?