Yes maybe sarcastic wasn’t quite the right word. I was completely exasperated when I wrote it, for the exact reasons @buuzn03 is getting at. That sub makes me crazy.
Maybe my post should be required reading. @skieurope make it so 
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You are much more patient that I am, @DroidsLookingFor. I have also noted many times over the years that even those percentages you list don’t tell the whole story. You need to break them down further into the number of actual seats your applicant’s profile might satisfy. For example, the year our son applied to Choate, the incoming class ended up being 112 boys and 112 girls, so he didn’t have a shot at 224 seats; chromosomes limited him to, at best, half. By the time he matriculated and we attended the AD’s opening speech which outlined this winnowing, we realized that he was in a bucket of fewer than ten seats after the class was segmented into:
Male/female
Foreign/domestic
Domestic geographical
Boarding/day
Full pay/FA
Diversity
Legacy/Development
Siblings
Athletics and other talent (music, academics, etc.)
Each applicant admitted was there because s/he filled a bucket need, but those buckets ended up being pretty shallow–and Choate is one of the bigger schools.
So, what are your chances for the few seats in “your” bucket kid? No one here has any clue whatsoever. Read the sticky and move on.
I agree that @DroidsLookingFor analysis should be pinned.
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Agree with so much of the above. I doubt, though, that CC would ever pin @DroidsLookingFor post that essentially says: this entire subforum is useless. (Although I’m all for it if they do.)
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Pinned. Edited the header slightly
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The flip side of that of course is that most of the other applicants have no shot at getting the spot(s) reserved for your bucket.
But this analysis really does help explain the randomness, or at least part of it. Yep, your D is a near professional level clarinet player with perfect SSAT scores, but we already have a high level clarinet player with good enough scores who is also a soccer goalie, so you are out of luck, even though if she had applied in any cycle in the past or future 10 years she would have been an easy admit.
It largely depends on how many kids applied for your bucket that year, which is impossible to know until after the fact. This is why casting a wide net is so important.
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Heh. Thanks.
I remember doing the math on kiddo’s bucket: here’s how it starts:
70 kids in the class
35 boys
30 male boarders
24 male domestic boarders
12 male domestic boarders from California
4 male domestic boarders from all of Nor Cal.
Then factor in ethnic diversity. Then economic diversity. Then talent diversity.
Ummmmmm yeah.
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A bit of an alternative viewpoint, I suppose: I like the Chance Me threads. I am the father of an 8th grade applicant for 9th grade who has NOT done one. However, I like to see how the kids describe themselves, the talents they have, their situations and compare them a least a bit to that of my own child. Besides giving us a very slight, foggy view into the applicant pools, it’s also one of the inputs into whether boarding school is even right for my child. And finally, when an applicant with seemingly wonderful potential expresses doubt and worry, I like to give encouragement in those threads from time to time, usually starting with something like, “I’m just a parent of a potential applicant, but I think you’re a rock star!”
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When I did that for D21 getting into Amherst ED, it isn’t that hard to get to a negative number…
One thing we looked at was her “hook”, which was geographic diversity. Normally more of a slight bump and not a hook, but I could see that they had 2 kids from our state that were seniors, and 0 frosh or juniors (couldn’t find soph info). So I was hoping that if they had a chance to lock down that square on the map for the brochures for the next 4 years in ED that would be a bigger than normal help. I will never know if that was the deciding factor or irrelevant in the decision, but it worked out.
I hate them because they are just stats. They do not depict the true being that is behind those stats. And then they perpetuate kids to look at themselves only as stats. How can I get my application to look better? I need to add an EC? Take an advanced course over the summer?
It reminds me of teachers who teach for the test. Is that the purpose of an education? I hope not! So, are you just doing this EC so you can look better on paper? Again, I hope not!
I takes the genuine out of the kid and for lack of better words, creates a bunch of robots. And then, when the kids who have stayed true to themselves read all of these amazing stats, they allow doubt to creep in and they compare themselves to these numbers on paper. This should not be the society we are trying to develop. I’m sorry, but it just shouldn’t.
Again. I hate, loathe, abhor, detest, despise (get the picture?) the Chance Me’s. Let’s focus on what the schools have been telling us THEY are focusing on (although I will admit a lot is lip service) – kids being true to themselves.
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We did this for kiddo’s favorite school. I think we figured out there were 3 potential spots she could have. It did not work in her favor!!
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I poke my nose in the Chance Me arena every once in a while.
Occasionally there is a post from a compelling kid who wants guidance more than an evaluation — and is open to “casting a wide net”. I figure I have 1-2 “what do you want out of a boarding school?” posts in me per year, and they can be super helpful to many lurkers, too (speaking as a former lurker). The Chance Me threads are where the kids are, so that’s where those conversations start.
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The good news is that they accept more than those who attend. But even if you double the size of the bucket, yikes.
But it isn’t as bad as it sounds. My guess is maybe 100 Northern California boys apply to Cate each year? It is not a very common thing, even in the Bay Area private school scene. It is almost non-existent in public schools. From what I can tell, there is a pocket of bs applicants from the Marin area, SF proper, and Silicon Valley. Usually they are children of parents who went to bs. From anywhere else in Nor Cal, your kid is a unicorn. So my public school kid from the East Bay was in an itty bitty bucket with very few others.
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Geographical diversity worked in our son’s favor. There was a graduating URM female senior from AZ his freshman year. He was the only student from AZ his remaining three years.* I’m sure it’s not the only reason he was admitted (we were called on M9 to see if we could go full pay, otherwise rejection), but I’m sure it helped.
*Yes, if you are gasping, this IS identifying information, but I outted ChoatieKid early in the CC game. He’s never forgiven me.
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@collegemom3717 alerted me to this thread today. So good, I wanted to pass it on for those who haven’t seen it:
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I’ll add to the chancing conversation that it is not random, but it IS unpredictable. I think confusing the two is a mistake made by many applicants, and there is a big difference.
I’ll also add that the go/no-go decision is largely driven by factors we cannot see in a chance me. (In other words, which trombone player is first in the acceptance line, or which boy from northern cal is higher on the list.)
and for my thoughts on that, I share my definitely-not-pinning post last year on the topic.
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also MISC – I literally just got a BADGE for how I formatted a link so it expanded:
This badge is granted the first time you post a link on a line by itself, which automatically expanded into a onebox with a summary, title, and (when available) picture.
Are we really there?!!! sigh.
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I will give you a participation trophy for your accomplishment, along with a bit of a visual editorial of my opinion of participation trophies.
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Somewhere I have a picture of my son on a medal stand holding a big trophy. He was 4th out of 4. He looked like he was about to attack the photographer with the trophy. He knew exactly what it meant.
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Man, this thread is great. Whoever started it is a genius.
All kidding aside, I popped back in to see what’s been going on since I last posted and it’s nice to see the thread being used for all sorts of randomness that was the original intent. From pizzas to chances to participation trophies!
Regarding the chances threads, I generally hate them…but I do have a story of a mom who reached out to me many years ago thanking me for giving her daughter a word of encouragement on a chance thread (back before I hated them)…girl applied to and was accepted by Exeter. So, mostly bad, but not all bad.
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