<p>Let's say a student has low 700s scores, and, say, around 10th to 20th percentile rank in a good suburban school. So we're talking about a bright, successful, hardworking student, but one who most likely won't be admitted to the top schools. Ivies, Amherst, Carleton, MIT & Caltech for math/science types-- those are super-reaches. Bowdoin, Wesleyan: reaches. </p>
<p>What are the matches for this kid? What are the schools where the kid has a 50% chance of admission?</p>
<p>My son is more or less in this category. Kids like this would be at the top of the stats of most CTCL schools, and indeed my son was admitted to both Beloit and Kalamazoo with big merit money. Kids like this would be at the bottom of the stats of the very top schools and have essentially no chance of being admitted unless they had a hook. But what schools would they have a reasonable chance of being admitted to, where they'd be in the middle?</p>
<p>I’ve been wondering the same thing. What we thought were matches turned out to be safeties. He has three reaches identfied. We need that middle tier.</p>
<p>Heh, welcome to the club. These are some of the ones that look fairly matchlike for S2:</p>
<p>Brandeis
SUNY Binghamton
SUNY Geneseo
George Washington
Reed
American (looks like a safety actually)
Rochester
Syracuse
St. Olaf’s
Grinnell
Bard</p>
<p>There are probably more of the big publics and small rural privates and I haven’t checked all of them against the school’s scattergrams - actually for midwest LACs except for Oberlin, not enough data points.</p>
<p>I’m recreationally looking into colleges for an unhooked girl like that. She doesn’t want a LAC and wants to be out of the midwest. I don’t know if she would hit the 50% mark but I thinking Fordham, Boston College, American, Wake Forest, George Washington, and some more. Whitman and Bates for a LAC student. She is going to have to position herself carefully- geographically and demographically. I remind her mother that the application needs to be targeted and that the essay topics will need to be chosen carefully. She can’t afford to be generic.</p>
<p>I got to thinking about this because my son and his best friend are in this category. My son fell in love with Kalamazoo after a November visit, applied a week later, got accepted the day after Christmas, and never looked back. His friend applied to, and got rejected by, about ten top schools (including Grinnell, which I think was his only “match”); he’ll be at Beloit. Both boys are happy with their choices, but both will be in the top range of their schools. Friend’s father and I wonder why there don’t seem to be many schools where our boys would be in the middle range. </p>
<p>Kenyon and Macalester might qualify as matches for this kind of kid. I’d think mathmom’s suggestions of St. Olaf’s and American would be pretty safe.</p>
<p>Editted to say: for me, this is recreational. My son has made his choice and the whole family is delighted. He’s an only child, so I don’t have to worry about this again.</p>
<p>From my D’s experience this season, how about Hobart/William Smith and Elon?
HWS really seems like a lovely school saddled with an iffy reputation. I have a friend who is a very well regarded professor and a Hobart grad. He believes it is an excellent school with great faculty. Elon has been attracting better and better students and seems like a wonderful place. It all feels kind of like Goldilocks-- one school is too big (too hard to get into), another too small (too easy) while it’ s hard to identify the one that it “just right.” For my D I think in terms of level that might be Macalester, where she did get in. She was waitlisted at Carleton, which seemed like a great achievement and kind of gave us hope for the rest of the applications – but then she was flat-out rejected at Wesleyan, Vassar, Tufts and UNC Chapel Hill. She’s a non-minority middle class kid from a NYC public magnet where her classmates were a pretty talented and competitive bunch. While she is an accomplished and beloved student at her school, her stats were slightly below many of her peer group, so it was hard for her to break through that crowd at the very popular east coast LACs. Heck, one of her best friends just got into (are you ready?) Yale, Stanford, Penn, Duke, and Dartmouth. I might be forgetting one or two. That’s the level of competition. It’s been a rough few days at our house.</p>
<p>Sounds like my son (intended major - comp sci). He was admitted to Missouri S&T, Rose-Hulman, Allegheny, RPI, and WPI, all with varying amounts of merit money. He is very happy, but dreading the decision.</p>
<p>So yes, there are lots of possibilities for a student ranking in the second decile with respectable test scores.</p>
<p>In Pennsylvania, how about Bucknell, Lafayette, Lehigh, Gettysburg, Dickinson, F&M? I’d say Elon, but this year it seems they’re waitlisting lots of kids with 700-range SATs.</p>
<p>I’ve looked back on one of our many lists as DD’s scores were/are in this range. Some that we looked at: Grinnell, Carleton, Brandeis, Bucknell, Richmond, Michigan, Florida, Rice, Pepperdine, Fordham, George Washington, American, Lehigh, Kenyon, Denison, Elon, Boston College, Boston University, Hamilton, Macalester, Wake Forest, Rice. Please keep in mind this was last spring so scores, etc. have probably changed. </p>
<p>At some point we identified these as places where her scores would put her at the top or middle of the 25-75th %iles, if not slightly above.</p>
<p>The most important factor is a good match, not any knd of ranking. Hard working bright kid will do just fine anywhere his heart desires to be. D used this approach and never applied to any elite school. She graduated #1 in her class and is very happy at state school, having much wider range of experiences and challenging classes than she ever imagined. We are very happy paying much less than we have paid for her private HS.</p>
<p>My gut feeling tells me that the 2nd decile kids with “low 700s” are more limited by the “merely good” grades than the SATs, so I look at the “top 10% class ranking” statistic to find schools that have room for the kids in the 2nd decile, say less than 75% in the top 10%. I also look for reasonable acceptance rates (more than 40-50%) and 75th percentile SAT V+M closer to 1400 than 1500. (Sorry, I’m a numbers guy ) </p>
<p>Some schools that meet these criteria among the USNews top-50 Universities include:</p>
<p>School (% in top 10%, 75th V+M percentile, acceptance rate)</p>
<p>Wake Forest (64%, 1410, 42%),
U Rochester (72%, 1410, 41%),
Case Western (66%,1410,75%),
RPI (64%,1420,49%)</p>
<p>Moving to the USNews 50-100 schools opens up the field a lot, like Tulane, George Washington, Maryland, Pitt, Clemson. Some are probably getting closer to match/safeties (based on the stats, anyway) like Delaware, Virginia Tech, WPI.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about LACs.
(Your mileage may vary)</p>
<p>Drew University in NJ should probably be on this list. </p>
<p>For good students who have less than stellar SATs, Drew and some other top 100 LACs can be attractive because they make SATs optional. (I believe that Drew offers the option of submitting a graded paper.)</p>
<p>BTW do people really think 700s aren’t great SAT scores? Good grief! Only on CC!</p>
<p>What I hear is that “it’s for the bottom third of the prep school class” notion. In other words, rich kids who are not high achievers. That’s all I ever hear and it just doesn’t seem to attract kids in our school.</p>
<p>D, now a first-yr., had stats slightly lower than that, second decile, low 700s in CR and W but 600 math, no real hooks, but full-pay. She applied mostly to LACs in the 30-60 tier of USNews (sorry to use that shorthand, but it’s convenient). I thought that the schools near the top of that range would be reaches, but she was admitted to all. The only place she was denied was Boston College, where she had to submit her ACTs, which were considerably lower than here SATs. Some merit money from a couple of the less selective schools on her list. </p>
<p>Based on her experience, I think that 2collegewego nailed it for East Coast LACs–Trinity, Conn, Union, Bates, Bucknell, Lafayette, Gettysburg, Kenyon type schools are the “sweet spot” for a kid like that.</p>
) </p>