We’re kind of new on this forum and was wondering how exactly do you know if your child is Ivy League material ? There’s a lot of students who get very good grades and SAT scores, but only 5%-10% of those kids get into the Ivy League schools. I know Ivy League isn’t the “end all and be all” of schools but what separates the kids who get accepted and those who don’t. And for those kids who got accepted was it a surprise or (as parents in this case) did you assume your child would be accepted or even vice-versa ? Was it a long shot but you encouraged your kid to apply and they got in ? Thanks in advance.
Very good grades and SAT scores are such a small part of how top selective colleges make admissions decisions that top grades and test scores alone tell very little about a student’s chances of being admitted.
My oldest started this year at one of the USNWR top 3 colleges. It was a long shot but a perfect fit for him/them. I encouraged him to apply but to also to apply to other colleges.
Welcome. Read the forums high and wide and you will definitely learn what IVY league material is. (Hint - it is not the perfect SAT score)
First, look into what your student offers the school, and which school offers what your student is looking for. They ivys are quite different: A student interested in Cornell might not like Penn or Columbia. Grades and test scores are in many cases just a baseline bar to clear. Think more about why an ivy would want your student, not why your student wants the ivy. What unique experiences, skills, talents, etc does your student have that will enhance the ivy school’s community. Good luck.
Yes they are Ivy material. Anyone with an excellent profile is potentially qualified. Getting a seat is much more problematic. Each year they could enroll the same quality of class four times over from the application pool.
Depending on who you are (is a your mom a senator or your dad a pro golfer of note say Phil michelson who d goes to Brown) or any of the many other special attributes the ivy League schools like to enroll. The student becomes more desirable. Good grades and scores are the minimum.
And most of the students described above are also really stong too. But this little extra was the push that perhaps gets them over the finish line.
Perfect scores and perfect grades are a great start. But not as good as the solid scores and grades of a candidate with other strong factors.
David Hogg was a good student and had a 1270 SAT. He’s going to Harvard in the fall. And I think they saw him as a leadership strength.
Athletes, legacies, international, celebrities, Snerior political officials and judges, certain ethnicities and economic background - big donors and families coming from the most modest income levels make up huge percentages of the income of class.
Like vast majority level of the class.
It also can matter where you are from geographically. Say you are equal to the 2000 students in NY but the same kid is from North Dakota. NY is probably out and ND kid is probably in.
So there is room for the superstar student without these characteristics. But only 200 to 300 hundred of each gender at Harvard each year.
And 1.9mm students take the sats each year.
So it’s doable but statistically astonishing.
There are more ivies than Harvard so this number grows of course.
And many people who weren’t Ivy material undergrad are very much so for law med and grad schools there too.
I think it starts with stats - 3.8 UW GPA + with rigorous coursework, 1500/34+ SAT/ACT, and 750+ SATII subject tests. If you meet that threshold, then the child is probably academically qualified to apply but that doesn’t mean anything in terms of acceptances. Most students applying to T20s are academically qualified.
I agree with the above that students need to really understand the differences between schools, and be able to articulate why a particular school is the right fit.
Any school with a low acceptance rate should also be seen as a reach for all applicants.
IMO, time is better served looking for match and safety schools.
One of the best indicators is the track record of the high school your child is attending.
I would think of it from the perspective of the admissions officer.
You have 20 files in front of you. Each student is impressive. With that said 10 of the 20 have test scores in the 98-99th percentiles, 4+ GPA, top 10% class rank, rigorous academic background etc. This group remains under consideration.
Of these 10 who are now viewed as capable of thriving academically ECs, essays, and letter of recommendations are considered. Let’s for example say 3 standout as unique, display leadership, innovation, etc.
From among these three remaining candidates the question becomes who fits the school’s institutional need or character. That top 1-2 is accepted. That is in very rough terms how a 5-7% acceptance rate school works.
As @privatebanker points out athletes, legacies, celebrity kids etc all get consideration against the institutional need or fit. They don’t however get a free pass.
They are vetted for their ability to thrive academically just like everyone else. It is a popular misconception that somehow standards are abandoned for these groups.
Disclaimer my kid was completely unhooked as an applicant so I don’t come at this with any inherent bias towards those “advantaged” as the system currently stands. Everyone of his Ivy college classmates I have met share some common traits. They all have proven track records of academic success, are impressive personally and have a readily identifiable “all that plus” characteristic. Whether the class valedictorian who happens to be an award winning photographer, the non recruited 3 sport captain who started an incredibly impactful non profit, the recruited football player from Iowa who was class salutatorian while working at his dad’s restaurant or the really smart student who’s mom and dad are famous Hollywood royalty.
So my suggestion is that there are some things your child can control and some they can’t. Focus on those within ones control…rigor, grades, scores, ECs etc., but show the school you weren’t just checking a box. Find things that make you stand out based on your humanity, passion, commitment to excellence or uniqueness.
FYI this is not unique to Ivies but all uber competitive school’s.
Individual results may vary
@hzhao2004 I agree. Ivies like certain high schools. Our kids go to a very competitive large public high school in the suburbs of a big city. Maybe 75 kids out of our 750 per class have a 35+ ACT or 1540+ SAT with high grades and rigor and strong (let’s say statewide) ECs. Who gets into the Ivies? Athletes with high scores and grades and legacies and a few Questbridge kids. That’s pretty much it. Maybe half of these 75 get into other elite universities (Chicago, Duke, etc) and the rest get denied from those as well. Ivies know our school is rigorous with no grade inflation. Our school is ranked high in the state and the kids are prepared for college but not many parents here have connections to the ivies and our GCs certainly do not.
I have a friend whose daughter is at a private high school out east. She got into an Ivy ED with no hooks at all. But that Ivy took something like 15 kids from her high school each year. That Ivy likes that high school.
@RonaldP66 Read this essay by a former Harvard “Faculty Standing Committee on Admissions” member.
https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/apply/what-we-look/valuing-creative-reflective
It’s mostly aspirational to have an open admission policy for future historical figures, regardless of stats, but the thinking of Ivy League adcoms is probably not far off from this.
@homerdog I am not disputing your figures. However it simply is not reflective of the experience of anyone other than that one school. No other school in the country would come close to those statistics.
Last year 1.7mm test takers 15k earned that level of scores for SAT. which is .008 percent of all. And this 8 tenths of 1 percent was distributed among all the worlds schools.
And if only looking at US. With an average of 300 achieving this number per state. Your school would be 25 of the entire state’s component. Obviously there is a California and Texas and Ny and North Dakota and Alaska in the mix. But there is also a large international cohort not being counted. Or PR DC or territories. So it’s still a statistically astonishing result. ACT is perhaps even more so.
In the end. I just don’t think that the Ivy opportunities presented from your school are in any way like those for the staggering amount of other schools
@privatebanker I know the numbers look crazy. Our school profile shows 121 kids between 33-36 on the ACT and our son, for better or worse, knows the scores of a lot of kids in his grade. We had something like 30 NMF and they all talk and I know they all had super high ACT/SATs. He knows maybe 10-12 who have a 36. I know it’s crazy. We live in a town with many, many kids using tutors. Of course, a number of these kids got these scores studying on their own.
So, what happens is, as much as colleges don’t like to say it’s true, these kids compete with each other. It’s not all about scores of course. Maybe one college needs an art student or likes the leadership of one of the kids better. If I look on our Naviance, it’s not usually the kids with the highest GPA/test scores that get into Ivies.
And I do believe there are some other schools in the Chicago suburbs with a large contingent of very high achievers.
Does your school have a good college counselor? I would ask the question there. They would know best what kinds of students from your school are competitive at the Ivies.
“However it simply is not reflective of the experience of anyone other than that one school. No other school in the country would come close to those statistics.”
That’s not true, there are quite a few bay area schools that have the stats and profile Homerdog’s school has and there are few in southern CA as well. The average for some of these schools on ACT say is 32 or 33, so 10% above 35 is common, along with 3.9 or higher and in some cases national or even international level ECs. They do have more success than homerdog’s school it appears, but many that get in to ivies do apply ED to ivies. Most are Asians and not surprisingly do better at Stanford, MIT and Cal Tech, and places like Chicago, Northwestern JHU.
@RonaldP66: I think that your question might be better stated by referring to “elite colleges & universities” rather than to “Ivy League schools” because, until you have an indication of what your son or daughter wants to study, it is hard to identify the best schools. For example, MIT, Caltech, Purdue and Johns Hopkins are not members of the Ivy League, yet in certain subject areas they are all superior to all Ivy League schools. So, in answer to your question, matching interests & fit are important ways to determine which schools to target.
@theloniusmonk Agreed. Going ED helps. I don’t think to the Ivies with SCEA works quite as well though. ED to Dartmouth or Brown better than RD and ED to any other elite (NU, Chicago, Vandy, Duke, etc.) is very useful for the top ten percent at our school. Not all kids in a position to go ED though.
Ok there’s 100+ public high schools just in Bay Area. Loads of private.
If the two or three you mention are Harker or College Prep or Castilleja
which are all 50k per year and have 7 to 1 teacher ratios. OK. Still not anything like the normal experience for the population reading this thread.
These 4 to ten schools - ok not just one. That was directional btw. So despite being .0004 percent of the total test population last year your sample of 4 or 5 schools would have earned 2.5 percent of the scores globally.
As I said, an astonishing statistical anomaly. Congrats on those 10 schools out of 36000 In USA. It’s not the experience of the vast majority of non 50k schools
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
And with that, let’s move off this tangent, please.There’s no indication that the OP’s school is one of this “X” number.
“For those kids who got accepted was it a surprise or (as parents in this case) did you assume your child would be accepted or even vice-versa?”
We were cautiously optimistic but took nothing for granted. Ultimately, my son got into several Ivies and 5 top 20s so we were very pleasantly surprised. He was a strong student but extremely well rounded with a heavy focus on sports (non recruited) and community service. He assumed a national leadership role for a very large charity, created and led several mission trips through his HS and founded a charity that he grew to over a dozen schools. His HS is an extremely competitive prep school which I am sure rounded out his application.
“Was it a long shot but you encouraged your kid to apply and they got in?”
Based on all of the aforementioned we followed the advice of his GC. Specifically we were told he was a great candidate for a group of schools that fit profile. That suggestion came with all the caveats that come with sub 7% acceptance rate school’s and the need to identify safety and match schools. We then visited each school and deliberately took notice of what each school offered, how they portrayed themselves and generally took in the unique culture of each school. Once he selected which schools he wanted to apply to, he tailored his essays to reinforce why he had selected each school.
So yes each school was a long shot but I think he heightened his odds by diligently seeking out and showing fit in his applications. We did not use an independent GC for essays as my son was determined for it to be his voice.
I know not all students are blessed with the resources we had but trying to give an accurate response. Good luck!
Assuming yours is a non-hooked kid, you know he/she is an ivy material if he/she has all of the following:
(1) 4.0 UW GPA with rigorous course load (APs or IB full diploma)
(2) 1580 SAT or 35 ACT
(3) Exceptional talents in sports, music, and art
(4) Demonstrated leadership
You can rest assured that your kid can get into any ivy league schools.
With (1) and (2), plus either (3) or (4), he/she will get into one of the top 20 schools.
With only (1) and (2), he/she may get into one of the top 20 to top 30 schools, but most likely he/she will end up at the state flagship.