Journey of a full pay high stat white boy

Applying to College Admission Stories
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DS16 is done with applications and I remembered first stumbling across this forum with him a couple years ago and promised we would post when done. We spent a ton of time reading the hindsight threads looking for ways to avoid common mistakes. It was immensely helpful. And a little misleading, but more on that later.

DS is our oldest and is very bright but we (actually me, Notveryzenmom was not on board) decided early we weren’t going to target any top 10-15 schools. I did the math early on and figured if we totally choreographed his high school years, and he dedicated all his waking hours to being perfect, we could get to about a 25% chance of admission to most of the tippy top schools. DS showed no interest in becoming a world class oboist or a rodeo clown so we focused on making sure he did well in school, had a relatively good time, and performed well enough that he would have some good options when this day came.

DS vitals are 35 ACT, 3.8+ GPA, 10 APs, two sport athlete, some impressive published research (business related not scientific), attends a very competitive large SoCal HS that is 60% ORM. He was accepted to 4 of 8 schools that he applied to including 1 top 10 school and 2 top 20ish schools. The rejections all came from schools where he was at or above the 75th percentile. Most of his close friends are high stat tiger kids with a few fellow caucasians thrown in. We had a lot of things we thought we knew that weren’t necessarily true and a lot of things that we thought were true that actually turned out to be true. Here are the top 10 things I learned or myths I fell for that I hope I remember for my next child.

  1. Test scores reallly matter. Not necessarily true. I love the quote I saw recently on CC from an Adcom who said test scores matter a lot less than most kids think and a little more than adcoms want to admit. There is definitely a threshold for elite schools but from our sample size of DS and his close friends, there is no benefit to getting a 2350+ or a 35+ vs. a 2200 or a 32-34. He has 3 friends with 2400s and/or 36s and another 7-10 with 2350s or 35s. They haven't fared any better than their peers just below them. Ironically I think DS's 35 did help with his one top 10 admission but it didn't impress many of his other schools. And his friends have been rejected from lots and lots of top 10 to top 30 schools with similar stats. I remember reading all those threads from kids who said I got a 33 should I retake it. And all those vets chiming in saying don't do it, spend your time on something else. They were right. I think.
  2. Schools really aren't need blind. I remember reading through so many threads with kids and parents claiming their kids got rejected because they needed so much financial aid but were otherwise qualified. I felt bad for them. But I also felt really good for DS since we're full pay and don't need FA. I thought about all those top 30 schools who were just going to salivate or DS and all his high stat full pay friends. Well, we were wrong. All those schools like USC, WUSTL, GT, NW, Vandy, ND, etc... are perfectly capable of turning down full pay kids with 4.0s and 2300+ scores. I'm a believer now. Schools that say they are need blind really are need blind.
  3. SCEA/REA is evil. I thought this early on and after going through the recent admission season I am more convinced than ever. DS didn't apply to any SCEA schools after deciding it wasn't worth the risk and would have cost him too many opportunities elsewhere. We did the math on it and figured once you backed out the legacies and athletes, your odds weren't going to improve enough to justify skipping out on all the great EA schools out there. We don't regret it for a second. Most of his friends got sucked into hype and it didn't work for any of them. Out of the 50-60 kids in his school that took the SCEA route, it worked out for 2. One was a legacy with 7 figure donor parents and the other was URM. All the rest got deferred/rejected and spent winter break scrambling to fill out applications to other places. They missed out on UChicago, MIT, USC, CalTech, and a whole host of other schools that they would loved.
  4. ED is good bet. I still think this is mostly true. DS didn't ED anywhere. Mostly because his two top choices didn't offer it. Several of his friends did and many had good luck with it. Nobody regrets their decisions. It seems to be very helpful with the non-top 10 schools because it is such a great way to demonstrate interest. His ED friends all had top 10 stats so ED is a great way of demonstrating that you a great highly qualified kid who really wants to go to X school and you aren't just saying that because you got rejected by Stanford and Penn.
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Continued

  1. There is a disadvantage to being Asian. I think this is a thing but I don't think it's the thing most people think it is. Granted our experience is limited but DS has a lot of Asian friends. They all have tigerish parents and they all have high stats. They all have gaudy GPAs, 15+ AP classes, 2300+ scores, and yes most of them play the violin or piano and tennis. But I've known a lot of these kids for years. They are all unique and awesome in different ways. But you wouldn't know it from their essays or their transcripts. They all use the same tutors, the same essay coaches, and for the most part they targeted the same schools. And generally their essays were terrible. I mean really bad. Well written but worthless as a chance to make yourself stand out. But more on that below.
  2. Essays don't matter. I was wrong on this one. Totally wrong. I figured getting in was a matter of gpa, test scores, and ECs. DS put a ton of time into his essays for his top schools. If I gave those essays to anyone who knows him but didn't tell them who wrote it they would all have said they were really fun to read and they would have all known instantly that they were written by Notveryzenson. His essays were amazing, insightful, kind of funny, easy to read, a little self deprecating, and generally made me wonder who this incredible person was living in my house. His essays for some of his match schools were a bit "mailed in" and somehow they were smelled out by the adcoms who smartly rejected a kid who was more than academically qualified for their school but not all that interested in going there. His friends' essays that I have seen were for the most part painful to read. They had proper grammer, lots of $5 words, and some lofty sentiment, but they had a certain sameness about them. For some of the kids, I could have just shuffled the essays and said pick one and it would have applied even if they hadn't written it. Essays are a great opportunity to sell yourself, stand out from the crowd, and make people want to meet you. It's not a good time to practice your vocabulary skills. Respect that the adcoms are going to read hundreds or maybe even thousands of them. And when CC parents tell you that overcoming moving to this country when you were 10 isn't a good essay topic, listen to them. Not to take anything away from all the hardships these kids have had to overcome, but the reality is that if 1000 kids write a slightly different version of the same story, you are going to have a hard time standing out.
  3. ECs don't matter. This one is sort of true and sort of not true. For the top schools, ECs seem to be life and death. For the schools outside the top 75 or 100, I'm not sure they matter at all. DS had some interesting ECs, mostly outside school, but I don't think they really affected his admissions one way or the other. He referenced them in his essays and adcoms from two the top schools that admitted him made reference to them in their notes to him but I don't think it was a make or break deal. His friends who have done all the student council, president of 5 clubs, 1000 hours of volunteering, etc... have had some success but not enough where I would say it made a big difference. He has a couple friends who won state and national level math and science awards and those haven't paid off in top 10 admissions.
  4. GPA is really important. Again this is sort of true and sort of not true. DS and frineds have been rejected from plenty of schools where they were at or above the 50% and they've also been accepted at some schools where they were below it. We're in CA and our experience is that GPA, especially weighted, is hugely important to the UC schools. They claim to be holistic but our Naviance shows a pretty bright line for the top schools at certain GPA levels. Load up on APs in 10th and 11th grade, get As in them obviously, and you're virtually assured a spot at the top UC schools. Even if you have an ACT in the 20s and have never left your house other than to go to school or the library. For the other top tier schools we haven't noticed an appreciable difference between the 3.8 kids with 5-8 APs and the 3.99 kids with 15+APs. It's a thing, just like test scores, but it's not THE thing for most schools. Makes me yearn for the stone age when I was applying where straight As and a 99th% test score meant you could go to school wherever you wanted.
  5. Everyone winds up in the school they were meant for. Definitely not true. DS is going to his top choice but I see a lot of his friends having to settle for schools way down their list, not because they aren't qualified or capable, but because they didn't get good advice on the process or because they come from families that are so prestige obsessed that they went into the process with a Stanford/Ivy/CalTech or bust mentality. It's temporarily tragic. I'm quite sure most of them will do just fine wherever they land but they could have done better. And I know they are going to packing for college in the fall and feeling like they failed. That will change with time and experience but it will be painful for a while.
  6. The CDS is always right. I was wrong about this. So many claim that demonstrated interest doesn't matter. But our experience was that if you didn't visit, didn't engage the regional admission counselor, or didn't write a killer essay for Why X was perfect for you AND why you were perfect for college X, then your chances went down exponentially despite what the CDS claimed. We now look at the CDS as a PR tool for the college to let people know what they want you to think matters rather than what really matters for them.
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Thanks for this post notveryzen. Going through this process with my senior now for the first and boy have I learned a lot this year.

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nice post @notveryzen!! very helpful

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Thank you for your sage advice. Best wishes to your son.

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This is very zen.

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Two thumbs up!!!

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Good post. I think calling SCEA/REA evil in #3 is a bit harsh. I like the schools like Stanford that don’t defer many, because it allows someone to “move on” and get over the rejection earlier in the process. But you’re right that it’s a bad idea if it means that the other applications are going to suffer. I think it’s mostly something that benefits the school because they get a big chunk of applications early, instead of all of them on January 1, allowing them to spread out the review process. The supposed benefit to the applicant is not just that they get an early answer but also that they don’t have to do all the other applications. But that last part is a trap, because a smart applicant will cover all his/her bases by having all the other applications done anyway and ready to submit (or already submitted).

Regarding #4 “ED is a good bet.” I agree that for an unhooked high stats applicant, ED is a great way to show their love and stand out before the other unhooked high stats applicants show up in the RD pool (after they get deferred by HYPS). That strategy worked for us. But ED has its own pitfalls, mostly when the ED school is a strategic first choice, rather than a well thought out affordable first choice.

Regarding #10 “The CDS is always right.” I too question whether you can always rely on the statement that a school doesn’t consider demonstrated interest. I sometimes think top tier schools say that so they don’t get besieged with token demonstrations of interest. But I agree that you want to visit, engage the regional admissions counselor, and write a killer “Why College X” essay.