My daughter has a 3.9 GPA (which is weighted, that’s all her school does). Her school doesn’t rank, but they do send out a school profile which shows her GPA to be in the top ten percent of the class. She recently got her ACT score which is a 34. She is very interested in applying to an ivy ED and is being discouraged from doing so by her guidance counselor, who says you can’t get in with less than a 4.0 and not to waste an ED application on it. We will need financial aid so it’s also appealing that ivies (at least the one she is looking at) meet full need - some other schools she is looking at are “need aware.”
I don’t post much but I do read, and I see plenty of kids applying to ivies with similar stats, although I’m not sure if they get in. Is it truly a waste of an ED application given her stats? Thank you.
National level extracurricular achievement?
Top essay writer?
Excellent recommendation writers?
Good interview skills and ability to exhibit polite upper middle class behavior?
"An alumni interviewer who spoke with an African-American applicant noted the student was “easily the most at ease and friendly minority applicant we have ever interviewed.”
IMO, you don’t give enough info about your D or her plan to answer that question.
Admission to top schools–not just Ivies–is about more than GPA and scores. What else does your D have going for her? Is she a URM? A legacy? A development case? A recruited athlete? Do you live in Alaska or Wyoming or some other state where few people apply to Ivies?
Does she have any academic distinctions you didn’t mention? Things like AIME, Chemistry Olympiad, Concord Review, Scholastic Writing or Art award? Do any research?
Have any different interests? A long time ago, one of my kid’s friends raised the grand champion bull in his state (recognized as such at the state fair.) I’ll bet that isn’t something Harvard admissions officers see very often!
Does she have at least regional recognition in an EC?
Interview skills really don’t matter much, IMO.
Which Ivy are we talking about? Some are easier to get into than others.
What kind of HS? Do lots of kids get into Ivys or equivalent? Does she just make it into the top 10% or is she higher? At our very good suburban HS far fewer than the top 10% get into that sort of school. Probably need to be top few percent with high scores and good ECs, although most did not have national achievement.
If the GC is saying she doesn’t have a shot and there is a slightly lower ranked school where ED could help, she may want to consider that. OTOH, if you need financial aid applying ED may not be a good move since you would not be able to compare packages. In that case, not much to lose in applying to an Ivy, except some time and a bit of money.
I know a student who defied the advice of her counselors and got into an Ivy. The holistic approach of all Ivies means that every one has a chance as long as you apply.
It’s only a “waste” of an ED application if there is another slightly less selective but still reach school that she would attend, but that would require giving up her dream of attending an IVY (because this other non-waste ED is still binding). Without knowing the addtional non-GPA factors that make your daughter special and stand out, I would still say, “go for it” with the understanding that acceptance is unlikely. Don’t be misled by the high acceptance rate of ED applications compared to the general pool. If the early acceptance rate at Cornell and Dartmouth is 28% that does not mean your daughter also has a 28% chance of being accepted ED.
A lot of students get into Ivy League schools with 34 and 3.9. Normally it’s 3.9 unweighted. Unfortunately, many high school guidance counselor aren’t that knowledgable about Ivy League admissions. My D went through admissions cycle last year applying to Princeton, Harvard, and Brown among others. I think where you go to high school is important and having unique and interesting ECs.
WannaB, would your D consider an all women’s college? Think about it – her chance of admission would nearly double! If so, Wellesley’s need-based aid would be right up there with the Ivies’ (and also the education she would receive). In another example, Smith has some merit based aid. not sure how that works with fin aid (sometomes schools “stack” it).
Questbridge is a great program for highly motivated low income students.
ED is not usually a good idea for low income families bc you are locked into a decision and then cannot compare fin aid packages. Supposedly you can get out of it if fin aid is not enough but in our case we didn’t want to set the whole process back. But never say never. S did EA and when he was accepted immediately matriculated bc we knew the fin aid would be the most generous anywhere. Note however it was not ED.
You will learn on this website that “meets full need” is a very tricky – and often misleading! – phrase. Look into it before doing ED.
You don’t need national or regional level achievement. You will need a whole lot more than grades and scores, starting with some real responsibilities taken on and more than just high school level.
3.9 doesn;t tell us what she got less than A in. It can matter, if it’s related to the possible major. At best, what the GC likely meant is you have to face that out of the 25-40 k applying for a few thousand seats, plenty will have a 4.0 unweighted (or darned close,) top scores, and plenty of addl achievement, plus the ability to do well on the parts of the app itself. At worst, the GC has other candidates in mind from that hs.
Rather than look at this as good scores, shall we try for an Ivy, it helps to look at what each of the Ivies says they like to find, what their different flavors are, and approach this with a better strategy.
@ucbalumnus If a candidate says something outrageously offensive, then, yes, it hurts. However, I don’t really consider that a matter of interview "skill,’ though I suppose a more skilled interviewee would not say it. A shy kid who is sincere and has thought out why (s)he wants to go to the college in question will do just fine in an interview, at least with most interviewers.
And there is NO reason to try to act “upper middle class” if you aren’t. My understanding is that most Ivies assign their alum interviewers by geographic area. The alums get the student’s address so most probably have some idea of the kind of neighborhood a kid lives in.
i used to help assign alums to kids in NYC. Based solely on anecdotal evidence, I think alums who grew up in modest surroundings are especially likely to volunteer to interview. They are ROOTING for the smart lower middle class kid and they are NOT expecting the kid to act like he grew up in Rye or Scarsdale. (Of course, if you grew up in Rye or Scarsdale, you don’t have to act as if you didn’t.)
I don’t think anyone has gotten into an Ivy from our high school without being either a recruited athlete or an URM with a compelling story out of the top 5% of the class. How rigorous is her schedule? Are the B’s is something like a foreign language which often gets a bit of a pass? Or concentrated in freshman year?
And as others have said, beyond grades and scores which are good enough for her to get looked at, what else does she bring to the table? From our school these are typical activities: My older son had many activities related to computer science including a part time job with a firm that gave him an enthusiastic recommendation and paid him the same wages they gave people who’d gone to college. He took some Saturday and summer courses at Columbia and was invited to attend an IBM lecture series on science topics. Another kid had extensive volunteering at Hebrew school, teaching in a music camp, and was in two school orchestras, the state level orchestra, and a local rock band. He also played occasionally with a jazz band. Many kids are involved in science research along with Science Olympiad which was very popular and advanced to the state level competition every year my kids were in school. Everyone had a mix of in school and out of school ECs.
You can calculate the unweighted gpa regardless of whether or not the HS does. Do it. Use the actual grades with the same weight, ie without adding extra points for Honors/AP/IB. This will give you a more realistic gpa. I have seen crazy weighted gpa’s here in Florida for the top HS grads that are in the 7’s at some schools and 5’s at others. It all depends on how many honors… classes are available and taken.
Does that moniker refer to MD the state or being a physician??? If being a physician is your D’s current goal then many, many good schools will give her a satisfying and good education.
Ivies and their caliber do not just go on gpa- there are 4.0 students rejected and those with a lesser gpa accepted.
Students are expected to take the most rigorous curriculum available to them. This means students with few AP opportunities are not out of the running while students with tons of AP classes who only get B’s in them do not get an advantage. Hence the value of the unweighted gpa. You will find out where your D actually is compared to others.
@WannaBeInMD, you would get better advice if you just say which Ivy it is that she’s interested in. Plenty of us have kids who have attended and/or applied to various Ivies, know other kids who have attended and/or applied, etc. Admissions is not identical at all of them.
As you may know, the rigor of your D’s coursework matters a lot. Has she taken most things at the highest available level at her school? Has she shown signs of seeking out intellectual challenge and experience? What does 3.9 weighted really mean in terms of looking at the transcript: is it going to show all As in less challenging courses, or is it going to show almost all As of some description with an occasional B+ in AP and honors courses? Has she taken AP exams, and if so what were her scores? Has she taken any SAT subject exams, and if so what were her scores?What do her ECs look like? Does she have evidence of “leadership”? Does she have any awards at the school, regional, or national level?
Have you run the NPC at the target ivy, and can you afford it? We can undoubtedly suggest some other top schools with excellent FA. (And BTW, are you looking for need-based aid, or merit, or both? Big merit aid of $30K doesn’t do you any good if the COA is $60K and you can’t bridge the gap: in that case, the deep-pockets need-based schools are your best bet.)
Do you think the guidance counselor knows what she’s talking about? She might if a lot of students go to Ivies from the HS. If she does not have much experience with that kind of school, I would take what the GC says with a grain of salt.
Also, do you have Naviance to do some comparisons?
Even if she’s a good candidate, her chances are low. In making this decision you should also consider how she will feel if she doesn’t even try. Rejection may be easier to accept.
Well…the Ivies generally accept a very low percentage of applicants…even ED. In the rejected pile are many very well qualified applicants.
She can’t get accepted if she doesn’t apply.
My suggestion is…apply as a reach…but also submit all other applications at the same time. She can a,ways withdraw them if she gets the ED acceptance, but at least they will be done.
Different ivy programs have different admissions criteria. For example, I would not assume Cornell Hotel School admission are emphasizing the same admission criteria as Wharton IS&B or Princeton Engineering. One admission criteria they do share is they emphasizing far more than just stats, so listing only stats does not give enough information to evaluate chance of admission. It’s also particularly difficult to guess at how a weighted GPA will be characterized without knowing more about how the school weights, if she had lower grades in relevant 10th/11th grade classes, etc.
If you want to check if anybody really does get in with the listed stats, you could use your HS’s Naviance or similar. Note that the Naviance admission rate may be quite different from your child’s chance of admission since far more than stats are considered. Looking at the HS I attended’s Naviance, I see that Cornell is the only ivy with a good sample size of applicants (HS in upstate NY). It shows many admits with GPAs of 96+ (top ~6%), a few admits with GPAs of 91-95, and no admits with 90 or below. Applicants with the listed 96+ GPA had a decent admit rate for all SAT/ACT scores. However, there were no 96+ GPA applicants with a lower SAT/ACT than ~1800/27. Your HS’s results will likely differ.