There is so much delusion out there I do not even know where to start answering your post. I see what you are describing every day and it leaves me speechless. I agree that there is no way of influencing your friend. My kids go to an average public high school in a very diverse poorish city and yes it is true that a few top colleges (including an ivy) are giving extra consideration to our students. One of those colleges has the dean of admissions personally reading our kids apps. What that means? That if you rank very high (top 10 and NO 10%) and you get an SAT above 2000 AND you have meaningful ECs (yes they do heavily looking for those as well) you have very good chances for those particular schools. At least you are guaranteed an extra look and when in doubt the scale will tip to your favor. Now, this is interpreted by most in our city as if you are JUST a good student you will be immediately snapped by those schools AND given a full ride (even if the family is not that poor). And every year there is the heartbreak and the puzzlement when the results come out. Really, I do not know what to say especially when our school has naviance and it is crystal clear for most students what will happen. As someone said in another post they are also looking at the students case by case. There is never a blanket statement. Usually the val of our school makes it to an ivy but last year that did not happen. It was a girl from a stable home with some means (did not have to work or raise siblings etc) yet she did not have meaningful ECs. It is a town after all with public transportation and opportunities aplenty for involvement. To show everything is counted! This year the val actually comes from a middle class family and she did get in to the ivy of her choice but she had A+ and 2300 AND finalist in a major national competition.
I don’t think I’d come down hard on your friend. If you are a grad of the school in question, Idk if smiling and nodding would work, but it does buy you some time to think what to say if your friend is really adamant about her position.
If she is really a friend and you are worried about the kid, I think it is fair to say something like “it is so much harder to get into X now than it used to be. They are looking to build a class of interesting people, so some great candidates get rejected. Every kid should have a list of safeties, matches, etc etc…”
I hope the kid does in fact have some safeties.
Well, admissions decisions are complex. If this kid is brilliant, has top scores and impressive achievements outside of school–but has a C in art and a D in PE, then maybe he really will get into a super-selective school. I think your options here are either to be non-committal, or to offer to discuss it in more detail. If you find that the kid has Cs and Ds in academic subjects, then you can counsel them to make sure they have a wide range of college options.
I do know the school - it’s a pretty well-known school. And FWIW, I did a search here on CC and it is indeed considered a “feeder school” for this particular Ivy. However, while the school is comprised of a significant number of low-income and minority students, my friend and her daughter are neither. Not exactly sure that makes a difference though when talking about these “feeder” schools, and I admit that I wasn’t super familiar with the concept of a feeder school until my CC search…
The Cs and Ds are in academic subjects. Apparently he also gets As in others. (I imagine that he can’t be getting tons of Cs and Ds if he has a 3.8 though.) My understanding is that he has a specific “bent” towards a particular type of subject area and does really well there. From what she says, standardized test scores are good but he is a junior and has only taken the PSATs. She didn’t give me actual scores, and when I asked about National Merit, she didn’t answer. However, she also didn’t know what kind of weighting the school gives to honors/AP so maybe she just isn’t plugged in.
It’s really hard to say things like, “It’s much harder to get into X than it used to be” when she is saying things like, “College Y loves kids like him…he will definitely be able to get in.” Because maybe this whole feeder school thing is a big thing and I don’t know it.
I will be very interested to see how this all plays out for sure - and I wish I could get even more specific info from the CCers here - but I don’t want to post the name of the college nor the high school publicly.
If it is a feeder school then students are being admitted and she is not wrong there. So it comes down to how many normally get in what is the cutoff. It is usually doubtful that people are being considered from top 25% of the school unless there are some specific type of kids your college is recruiting.
URM, single parent, low income, first gen would be the keywords.
I do suggest many Ivies ignore national merit as something they are looking for. I am surprised to see a number of kids who get into HYPS type of schools without NMSF but with high SAT/ACT scores. I suspect it is because the scores are so uneven across states (201 somewhere versus 224 on east coast) that they really don’t want to penalize kids based on an exam taken as a junior on an October morning.
Smile and Nod, Smile and Nod…“Oh I certainly hope so. You can verify that with the Naviance scatterplots and the GC. Like all kids, make sure to have some other matches picked out! How about those Seahawks?”
I actually wouldn’t recommend that she look at Naviance if they use it, as I’m afraid with the blinders she has on, she’ll interpret anything she sees in her son’s favor. If you looked at the Naviance for our school you might think that a 1300/1600 SAT score and a 3.5 ish GPA was good enough for Stanford - only if you are a recruited athlete in a helmet sport and/or both a legacy and super politically connected. (We had one of each from our school and at the time my older son was applying the only two kids who’d ever been accepted from our school - out of a pretty small pool of applications.)
Anyway, I’d really urge her to talk to the GC about which kids are getting fed to this school - she might be right her kid has a decent chance, or she might learn the truth about which kids are getting in.
Back in the dark ages, my private school was a feeder school to Vassar. Our founding headmistress had gone there and there was still an old girl’s network that meant that almost anyone who overreached and got nothing but bad news in April could get a special admission to Vassar. I doubt that’s still going on, but we had at least one girl from our class who got in that way.
“Why do you care?”
-Everybody should care that kids have the same opportunity. Brilliant or not, requirements should be about the same. There are exceptions. But if one is working his…off, gets high stats, high scores, shows certain interests in some personal goals, etc. while another “brilliant” applicant did not care about his grades, did not have to work hard for his Cs and Ds because of his apparent 'brilliance", then the first applicant would not care? Interesting. I personally never cared about Ivy or any Elite school. But some people do and they deserve the acceptance much more than some lazy bum. Of course, in case of private institution, they can do whatever they wish, but if there are any kind of taxpayer $$ involved in this, then, they better accept based on credentials and not because they were told to do so.
Smiling and nodding may be the lesser of two evils when being bluntly honest may prompt an angry reaction borne out of jealousy and perceptions the friend is dumping on the child with C & D grades.
The latter is aggravated if the one being bluntly honest turns out to be wrong and the child somehow ends up admitted.
Just because you went to ColHaYalePrincemouth doesn’t make you an expert on admissions.
As a friend, it is cowardly to ‘smile and nod’ when a friend reaches out.
All you can do is shine a light on facts, and suggest what you personally would do- and LISTEN. You do not need to judge or make pronouncements about what is most likely to happen, you just need to help your friend reason through the process on her own.
Trust that the guidance counselors will do their jobs. You are one spoke on her support wheel. Perhaps compassionate listening, and support for her to share her fears and vulnerabilities is all she really needs? Maybe she needs someone outside of her immediate school community to sort things out with, just to hear herself talk, if you will. Perhaps you do not need to give an opinion at all?
You can always tell her how freaking big the applicant pools are at the tippy tops. And that, if he gets in that will be wonderful (smile,) but that your friends on CC are always preaching “safeties.” “Just in case.”
We’re in the dark about what hs this is, but very few of them get many into the same elites, in the same year. When you have tens of thousands applying, including plenty with straight A’s across a variety of rigorous classes, that’s the beast. The strongest from his hs will have the better shots. No one can count on lopsided being a tip. At that level of college, it’s pure misconception. But I’d still be cautious about what I say. Egos are involved.
I attended a law school where the student body had grade point averages about seven-tenths lower than the rest of the nation. In the typical class there would be one or maybe two 4s, two or three 3.5s, six 3s, Eighteen 2.5s, ten 2s, three 1.5s, two 1s, and one or two buckshots. So a law student with a 3.4 average would be one of the best in his class.
They mailed out a “grade-inflation letter” to all potential employers, but about four years ago they decided to inflate the grades to match other law schools.
Point being, if the Ivies are aware that this school is grading on a truish bell curve, I would expect them to take this into consideration.
Most of the Ivies want the top kids from their feeders, though. Not to mention that feeder relationships have broken down in many places.
Looking through results threads, I do see URM with lowish test scores and some ECs get in to elites, but they invariably had great UW GPAs (the college may decide not to punish them for low test scores when they had made the best of their opportunities available to them).
Also, a non-URM from a feeder got in to an Ivy (one of the bigger ones) with a pretty low (<1400) M+CR SAT score. 3.8 UW GPA.
Might just want to remind her that the competition to get a spot has gotten more intense every year.
I personally know two legacy/development/celebrity kids who have been accepted to the top schools early with test scores that are well below the 25% mark for the schools and a B average. Yes, there could have been Cs and Ds for grades in the quarters, but maybe not for the year end marks which are all that the schools here show. My kids have always had checkered reports that manage to average out ok in the end. IF quarter grades were reported…
I also personally know an athlete that was accepted to an ivy with 1100 2part SAT1s and barely a B average.
@cptofthehouse: development, celebrity, and athlete (assuming that it’s an athlete that would be able to play at the scholarship DivI level) are massive hooks.
The OP hasn’t stated that her friend’s kid has any hook besides attending a feeder.
There are no guarantees so I would suggest applying to a number of schools as a backup.
Each year the number of applications increases yet the number of students admitted doesn’t increase.
If it all works out, good for her but if not at least there should be some other options. Admissions decisions are too unpredictable so no one can assume they are guaranteed admission anywhere. Also no one likes to hear that their child is not the best and the brightest and I think every parent wishes for their kids success. There is nothing wrong with voicing your concerns since she is your friend. If you sense she is not receptive to what you have to say I would just let it go.
Recommend CC to your friend.
Thanks everyone for the valuable input. (Ha ha, I can’t recommend CC to my friend until this thread moves off the front page - I fear that she might recognize herself since we just had the conversation.)
As far as I know, her son doesn’t have any hooks. No sports, no clubs, kind of a loner. I believe he did recently win a city-wide poetry competition though.
I think it’s tough to know what other people’s kids are doing. He may not have any hooks that are apparent, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any. I agree it’s a tough situation, though. I’d just encourage her to cast a wide net because you never know what’s going to happen with admissions.