Up thread someone suggested Questbridge - that application was due in September if this student is a senior.
Do students from your high school occasionally or regularly get into Ivy-league caliber schools, or is it a very rare occurence?
(Do you know your daughter’s school’s average ACT?)
What advanced classes has she taken - AP, Dual enrollment? What’s the highest math class she’ll have completed? The highest foreign language class she’ll have completed? Did she take all three of bio, chem, and physics?
Applying ED to HYP is not a problem financially speaking because their financial aid package is likely the best you will get.
However, HYP admissions rests, after the first cut (academics) is done, on essays and extracurriculars that indicate, combined, that the applicant is exceptional in some way.
If you could estimate her unweighted gpa, and tell us which college, what school within that college, it would help. Also did she take subject tests? What race would also be helpful.
HYP do not have ED; they have EA (restricted in that you agree not to apply EA or ED to other private schools if you apply EA to any of them).
Things like “character” and proven ability to overcome obstacles are important at some Ivies. Grades and scores need to meet certain benchmarks but in the end aren’t what really determine admission, which is “holistic” and looks at the whole person.The important thing to understand is that Ivy admissions are generally about the whole class not the individual: it is how a student will add to the mix that they think about. Different interests and talents make for an interesting assembly of freshmen who can then contribute to classes and activities on campus,and cross-pollinate in interesting ways. A campus full of valedictorians who have taken all the prescribed AP’s and gotten high SAT’s doesn’t hold much promise unless they have something else going on that is interesting.
Our school does have Naviance and there are a couple of acceptances in her range to Brown (where she wants to apply) but many more denials, and the acceptances could be athletes or whatever, so it’s not super helpful. D is extremely active in extracurricular stuff with a ton of leadership. She is a class officer and very comfortable with people and with interviewing. She is also a fantastic writer so her essays are really great, in my opinion. (We had hired a person to work with her on them, but it turned out that the person wasn’t a good match as D was unhappy with her suggestions, so she wrote something on a different topic and showed it to her GC and an English teacher instead, and then went from there.) Her weakness is math, relatively anyway, she did finish calculus as a junior but has consistently gotten Bs or B+ grades in math.
I have no idea if the GC knows what she is talking about, a lot of kids around here hire people to help them which takes pressure off the GC to know much.
I’m not sure who said the ivies don’t have ED but Brown does, and I think what the GC is saying is that my D would have a better chance applying ED at a slightly lower school and so she might be wasting a shot at that by applying ED to Brown or similar.
On another note, my D is starting to say that she might not feel comfortable at an ivy anyway because of all of the wealth - although she may be saying this because she is getting used to the idea that she might not have a good shot. She does have a lower than 4.0 GPA, weighted, as I said above.
There are plenty of wealthy kids at Ivies. There are also plenty of kids who aren’t. That would be true at any school she chooses.
Is she interested in any Ivies besides Brown?
Has she considered any of the elite LACs, including women’s colleges?
I agree with Consolation, there will be plenty of wealthy kids at the Ivies, there will be plenty of kids who are not. She could apply this same analogy at your local state U. Does this mean that she would not consider attending?
What is her unweighted GPA?
This is what is going to matter as there will already be an expectation that she is taking the most rigorous courses that her school offers.
You state that she had an unweighted GPA of 3.9 and essentially everyone has a weighted GPA, because that is all that the school reports. We don’t understand the context of this 3.9. Is it a 3.9 on a 4.0 scale, a 3.9 on a 5.0 scale? Without providing the scale that the 3.9 is based on, to say that your child has a 3.9 weighted GPA is meaningless.
How much weighting is given to regular college prep courses, honors courses, AP courses, DE or college courses?
I say go for it! I don’t think there is such thing as wasting an ED shot, as long as it’s reasonably within range. As far as wealthy students are concerned, Ivies meet full need. So there will be more diversity at an Ivy than at, say, George Washington University or similar colleges.
Weighted 3.9, consistent B’s in math. Adcoms look at the transcript. Top grades matter most in the possible major. But so many kids applying will have straight A’s across the board.
Does she have a sense of what makes any particular Ivy a match for her? Granted, the comments about the wealth could be some realism about her chances. (And no, not all kids will be wealthy, not by a long shot.) But I don’t tend to say, “Go ahead and apply, what the heck?,” if you don’t really know much about the schools or what the match is. Other great schools meet need and could be a better fit over the four years. Just saying.
The person upstream said HYP don’t have ED. This is the first I’ve seen of Brown being mentioned…at all.
It’s a 4.0 scale with .6 weight given to honors and AP classes. But no one can take all honors and AP in her school because no AP allowed until junior year and only certain subjects offer honors freshman and sophomore year. As I said, her GPA is in top ten percent of class. The highest GPA I’ve ever heard about was a 4.3 - that’s probably As in every single class and every possible honors or AP. School is very highly ranked public school.
Sounds like she should just stick with one level below. She is not interested in LACs or women’s colleges.
You can dream and try, just be prepared for reality. Getting a bunch of rejections isn’t that fun either, even if you don’t expect to get in, seeing their face when the envelope comes isn’t pretty. Cause in their heart, they think they have a chance, even if it is tiny. We like to think we can win the lottery when we buy the ticket. There are plenty of 4.6w kids with fab test scores, amazing leadership and ECs that don’t get in to Ivys and many other top schools. There just seems to be a lot more students that learn how to take the tests and have always been excellent students. If one tiny thing is missing from your list of goodies that someone else has, bam, you are out.
Not trying to be discouraging, although honestly, the guidance counselor is right. It is easy to say “dream big.” Maybe throw one out there, but limit those skyhigh reaches, cause when those rejections letters come in, it is heartbreak city, no matter how much they tell you they never expected it anyway. They recover, but it still hurts. So just be real.
I do not think that your D should totally shut out the possibility of an LAC.
As there is some overlap in the student who applies to Dartmouth and Brown; there is overlap, between the student who applies to Dartmouth, Princeton Amherst, Williams, Duke and Notre Dame among others (all will still be reaches, but don’t be afraid to expand your net).
I am also a firm believer in not ruling out the excellent Womens colleges.
Wellesley allows you to cross register at MIT
http://www.wellesley.edu/registrar/registration/cross_reg/mit
For example, she may be a viable candidate at Barnard where she could cross register and even live on campus at Columbia.
Bryn Mawr is part of the tri-college consortium, where students can also attend classes at Penn
https://www.brynmawr.edu/academics/bi-co-tri-co-and-penn-0
Smith and Mount Holyoke are both SAT optional, meet 100% demonstrated need (Mount Holyoke gives merit in need) are part of the 5 college consortium with Amherst, Umass Amherst and Hampshire.
https://www.fivecolleges.edu/consortium
Both schools also belong to the 12 college exchange
Her stats are very good, so no harm in giving an Ivy ED a shot
Regarding wealthy students, 70% of Harvard students receive financial aid and 20% go for free.
Without more info on extracurriculars it is hard to say whether she has a shot at an Ivy. Are they all within her high school?
“She is not interested in LACs or women’s colleges.” It’s interesting how the fans of these schools can never believe that anyone who says they don’t want to attend them could possibly know their own preferences.
It seems clear that you and she both want her to attend Brown. The GC may be right, but if you don’t try, you will never know. Maybe she could boost her chance by applying ED to another school, but then she may find herself going off to that school while still wishing she had tried Brown. It seems unlikely to me that she will get in, but it doesn’t seem hopeless. The fact that you posted here about this rather than simply accepting the GC’s opinion and moving on makes me think that you will ultimately be happier having tried rather than wondering.
I still don’t see what the particular interest is in Brown or another Ivy.
We know very little about this kid except the weighted gpa, the B’s in math, and a recent good score (but only the composite, not the individual numbers, which are important to adcoms.) We don’t know her academic or other interests, activities, location, strengths or how she approached the hunt or the match process. Or even what she knows about these new targets.
And I have to note that while CC often complains about kids who just want the prestige of a single digit college, folks can also be very quick to say Go For It or you won’t know unless you try. That seems premature.
@mathyone, it is simply a matter of suggesting that a person try to consider expanding their view of acceptable colleges in order to increase chances at acceptance at a good institution.
There are a lot of people who think that nirvana exists only at the Ivies or their state flagship, or whatever.
The average high school GPA of all freshman students who submitted GPAs to Princeton for 2014-15 admissions was 3.91 (on a 4.0 scale). At UPenn, it was 3.94. So it would appear that these colleges are admitting a few students who occasionally earned less than an “A”.
That said, admission to most of the Ivies is a crap shoot.
A high (if not perfect) GPA is necessary but not nearly sufficient.
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/30/why-ive-stopped-doing-interviews-for-yale/
About 50-60 colleges (many more than the 8 Ivies) claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need.
Some of them are need-blind and some aren’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission
A need-aware policy typically would hurt applicants with high need but borderline stats.
Of course, for the 8 Ivies, almost all applicants have borderline stats.
So you may stand a better chance of getting a good offer from a less selective, full need, but need aware school.