@TimeUpJunior Agree, but 3) should really be “or”, not “and”. (Or “and/or”.)
So much advice is based on speculation. “Anyone with an excellent profile is potentially qualified.” But do you have any idea what “excellent profile” means? Is it worth it to you to try to figure it out? Because if you look at this superficially or in terms of what makes a kid special his one own hs, you can seriously miss it.
This is all about what the targets want. And yes, Columbia wants- and needs- can vary vs Dart or Stanford or other tippy tops.
It starts with stats and rigor, then other choices. The full app pkg is lengthy. This isn’t about being a future Supreme Court justice or CEO. It’s about the four years.
Of that 4 fold number of applicants who “could” be qualified, a much smaller percent become real contenders.
@TimeUpJunior why a 1580 or 35? The conversion chart says a 1530 is a 35.
I agree about the leadership. I get the feeling that’s super important. Our S19 has the grades and the scores and a talent for both sports (3-season) and art (awards won) but it’s been his leadership at school and in the community that has been called out on the two early RD admits he’s received (one top 30 uni and one top eleven - haha not quite top ten- LAC). His essay was also mentioned both times.
Thanks @damon30 and @homerdog for catching that. I might also add the most important trait your kid need to get into the best of the best schools, the HYPSM.
(5) being a nice guy/gal all around
@TimeUpJunior you think the schools can figure that part out? Good kid? Boy I hope so because I’ve got a good guy over here. Sweet friend, team player,etc. I hope his essays and his recs show that.
@Homerdog congratulations on your son’s success so far… more to come I am sure! It is undeniably an imperfect process but the character of the kid does come out in LOR and the application as whole.
Several of the schools my kid got into sent personal letters from the regional AO. In each case we were struck by the nuanced perceptions and level of detail that had been observed. I know it’s hard to keep the faith while waiting but your kid sounds like he has done all the hard work and is more importantly a solid human being…good luck.
“one top eleven - haha not quite top ten- LAC” - This is CC so find another survey that bumps up Grinell or highlight top 10 liberal arts “co ed” schools. He can’t apply to Wellsley so top 10;)
@lookingforward Nobody knows what Columbia, Dart, or Stanford wants. By not telling you what they specifically look for, the elite schools have a huge upper hand (pun intended) in picking whoever they want without getting into any legal trouble.
We can only glean what they want by looking through the profiles of the admitted students. That is how I came up the five items.
With the new 2019 USNWR ranking ducking 0.375 point off test scores and 0.875 from class ranking, the academic kids will have a harder time yet getting the top schools.
@homerdog Real diamond will shine through. Please update us here on your kid’s journey, good luck!
Thanks for the responses… all over the board… kind of what I thought.
We live in Southern California and the Ivy League schools and other elite schools in the east and midwest aren’t really talked about a lot. The kids here focus on Stanford, Cal, UCLA, and USC… probably in that order. My daughter did a program at Yale last summer and fell in love with the school and the whole east coast vibe with the older architecture. Obviously New Haven in July is a lot different than in the winter but she spent her first 8 years of her life in Portland, Oregon so the weather seems about the same.
We are also in So Cal and my kid went thru the same process last year. For So Cal kids its always going to be a tough choice. Besides the weather, Cal, UCLA and USC are great schools with their low out of pocket expense (for Ivy material kids full/half ride USC is typically in the offering too). If lucky the Ivy stats unhooked kids would face a tough choice between paying $72k for ivies vs $36k for Cal/UCLA/USC.
What does “unhooked” mean ?
Unhooked means not being a recruited athlete, legacy, or URM. Advantaged applicants have hooks.
“By not telling you what they specifically look for…” When you think you’re tippy top quality, the cream, doesn’t it stand to reason that they don’t need to spell it out for you? Yes, you should be smart enough to do this, take on the challenge.
“We can only glean what they want by looking through the profiles of the admitted students.” Nope. Where have you read their apps? CC doesn’t show more than bullets.
No college is going to release a full application, the student profiles are actually pretty good for getting an idea of the diversity, interests, background of the people that were admitted, noting of course that these profiles are packaged in the brochure or website. This in addition to the basic stuff on CDS wrt scores, rigor, gpa, gender, race demographics are good starting points for sure.
“@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.”
Not too many Dartmouth or Brown EDs out here in the bay area, the EDs were mainly to Cornell, Penn and Columbia.
So, and I know this is just our school, but NO one gets into Penn or Columbia. Not one in five years. And many apply ED and RD. For whatever reason, the kids from our school do not match what they want. Cornell takes 4-5 each year though. My point is that a shift school’s history is usually predictive of what a student’s chances are.
Fit often does not generally give a student a top 3 list of all Ivy. Neither one of our unhooked students would have made a second choice of either another Ivy or a top 10 school. The ‘why here’ essay seems to be just as important as the common app essay. It’s much easier to write about your first choice. I can’t imagine the stress on a student writing many.
I watched our GC run through a list of schools with D1 asking her to defend her ED choice making sure she left no stone unturned. Very impressed by a veteran public school GC.
I’ve also seen students accepted to top schools without any viewable Naviance data - within 7 years. It does seem that applicants are compared to classmates applying from their HS.
D1 returned to HS after one Ivy visit to tell a fellow student ‘I hated it, but you would love it’. The classmate was accepted to their top 10 school SECA and then added the Ivy at the last minute. He visited after an RD acceptance and decided to attend. I guess she saw him as a perfect fit after many years of being in classes together.