I agree about being leery of using Naviance. I know that the GC only entered her lowish SAT score, ignoring her higher ACT one. This definitely skewed the picture at several schools. Also, I noticed that at several schools, Naviance has students attending but no one was accepted and in some cases, applied.
@SlackerMomMD same thing happened at our high school too with Naviance. My D’s first ACT score was inputted (which was her lower score).
GW cares a lot about demonstrated interests and I believe says so in their Common Data set. Our GC told us personally of a kid who was waitlisted there because she hadn’t visited - it had looked like a good bet and was the students first choice. A call by the GC communicated the kid’s enthusiasm for the school and WL became an acceptance, but GC wanted us to be sure that we let GW know we had visited if it stayed on the list.
wow, the way some of you are talking about state schools is just so elitist and way way off base. Fact is Bing is one of the THE TOP research universities in the entire nation, did you know that? Smart successful people will consider ROI when choosing a school not just it’s name. Let your children attend the school where they will be most successful, and comfortable and use some sense and graduate without debt if possible. If that means a state school , great.Another FACT is that those truly concerned with obtaining the best education will go on to graduate school and that my friends is 100% attainable with top grades from a state school.
Believe it or not there are many very wildly successful people that didn’t attend an IVY private school, even in Scarsdale.
Believe it or not many of us posting here have kids that attend State schools and are well versed in their value. However, we also respond to the question the OP asks and the tangents that spin off from that. We don’t feel the need to preface every post with a comment about how great state schools are. But read more threads and you will see that almost all of the long-time posters talk about affordability in every thread about college lists.
Not sure why you feel the need to attack. The posters here may be opinionated but are certainly not dolts. Attacking people is an inappropriate way to get your point across.
Both of my kids attend state schools.
S had very similar stats to your daughter, used Elon as a safety (one where he would go) last year, and got in with a a merit scholarship EA. I would suggest that to improve her chances you should apply EA, make sure her essays are good - Elon doesn’t use common app so it’s an entirely different application (or it was last year), and make sure her regional admissions rep knows who she is. There are a lot of NJ applicants who use them as a safety, and they may be yield sensitive, so as it’s been suggested, treat every app like it’s a reach for optimal results, and take nothing for granted. I think your D will find good success with the renewed list, but it is brutal out there and you are at a disadvantage being from NJ for many of those schools.
@ mathmombGW cares a lot about demonstrated interests and I believe says so in their Common Data set. Our GC told us personally of a kid who was waitlisted there because she hadn’t visited
This is very true indeed and not just at GW but a number of LACs as well. They trak visits to campus or college fairs, look to see if you met with a rep at your hs and even look to see if you log on to check the portal after you applied. Sometimes time and location make visiting difficult, but there are other ways to show interest, and if you show none, you run a risk of denial or WL despite an otherwise strong app
I do believe colleges practice some yield protection with high stats kids, especially those who don’t show much interest, but CMU’s SCS has a 5% admit rate. It’s entirely possible that they could see a kid who is in at MIT or Caltech as not right for their (quite small, 120ish kids) class.
It’s not just about visits or contact. How you show your understanding of the fit is important. And that’s in the app/supp. As mom2and recognized, her son didn’t put much effort into the Why Us. The more competitive the college, the more they want to see you get it. Some kids can’t express that. Or they get wrapped up in the stats match or how the school will ensure their professional success.
Many posters assume that individual adcons are reading all the applications and making decisions. But colleges also use statistical rubrics that can predict chances that a student will accept an offer if one is extended. Take a look at the published research on these issues. Colleges can easily calculate the likelihood that someone with specific demographics and behavior will accept an offer and they do. This is big business with a lot of money involved. They are not leaving it up to a 18 years olds essay promising that the school is that student’s dream-when all the probability research shows that student to be highly unlikely to accept an offer. Read the studies (not just blogs or articles in popular venues) to better understand how admissions works. It is not a put down of any particular school to state that they may decline a student based on probability that the student is unlikely to attend. That is simply business for some schools. They need to make informed decisions. It is not all about who the ad counselors would love to have at their school.
Read, for example, “Students choosing colleges: Understanding the matriculation decision at a highly selective private institution”
Further, yield prediction is not about Westchester vs not Westchester or wealthy vs poor. It is far more sophisticated than that and considers the entire range of variables students present to colleges.
For those of you who can’t figure out why a student with a 36 would be rejected from Binghamton but get into Vanderbilt, there are some “must reads” for you. All but one of these are scholarly articles rather than blogs or popular press articles. At the very least, read:
A REVEALED PREFERENCE RANKING OF U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Christopher Avery Mark Glickman Caroline Hoxby Andrew Metrick Page 6 is particularly relevant!!!
Working Paper 10803 http://www.nber.org/papers/w10803
Students choosing colleges: Understanding the matriculation decision at a highly selective private institution
Peter Nurnberga, Morton Schapirob, David Zimmermana,∗
Applying Data Mining to Predict College Admissions Yield:
A Case Study
Lin Chang
Not nearly as good and dated but overview of some issues in a popular venue rather than scholarly: 
Glass Floor/ Colleges Reject Top Applicants, Accepting Only the Students Likely to Enroll - WSJ by Daniel Golden
Related but not as much (more about legacy and related issues):
Why preferences in college admissions may yield a more-able student body
Dong Li, Dennis L. Weisman∗
The impact of legacy status on undergraduate admissions at elite colleges and universities
Michael Hurwitz∗
lookingforward, you are correct. I should not have written “because he came from Scarsdale”. I should have said “because he comes from Scarsdale and has other attributes that make him highly unlikely to accept an offer if it was extended…”.
We know that. It’s the kids that don’t. And for whatever it’s worth none of the SUNY’s appealed to my kids. A combination of size and location more than prestige. I’m just reporting what I see on the ground.
I’m also not a big fan of ROI as a way of looking at colleges, but I have that luxury.
My D1works for a company that sells software to colleges, and one of their products helps with yield projections and protection. It is a critical business function for a college.
I work for a college too many would like to attend. No rubrics or software decision making programs. Teams of adcoms and experienced readers review apps. Kids do write how they love this school, it’s their dream- and that’s empty without the rest of the “getting it.” We don’t need a rubric to tell us when kid isn’t compelling, in the first place.
And kids do slip and give away that we are not their first choice. Or their writing clearly shows they are looking for something we don’t offer. Or they tell us we offer something that we do not and never have. It goes on. This is so much more than stats and zip.
@lostaccount this was an interesting read, thanks for suggesting it.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w15772.pdf
STUDENTS CHOOSING COLLEGES:
UNDERSTANDING THE MATRICULATION DECISION AT A HIGHLY SELECTIVE PRIVATE INSTITUTION
(It goes into some detail about how applicants are “scored” by the admissions office at Williams, and then into detail about what attributes accepted students have who decide to matriculate.)
Zoosermom, about " also think Binghamton is careful about its number of downstaters. I have posted before, and it’s still true, that very high achieving kids in my area in my daughter’s year did not get into Binghamton when they did get into places like Brown and Swarthmore. When we went to the open house at Binghamton (high school class of 2010) we were told straight out that they were looking for out of staters first and foremost, which would skew the number and balance of in staters admitted."
Strong OOS aren’t jumping off the shelves to attend so that leaves loads of slots. Consider whether those that got into Brown or Swarthmore would have said yes to Binghamton. I’d guess most wouldn’t have. I’ve known a ton of students from those 3 schools. Not many turned down Brown or Swarthmore for Binghamton. I’ve known many who turned down Binghamton for Brown or Swarthmore. Yes there are probably exceptions. I don’t know all who attended these three schools but there are definitely reliable acceptance patterns-and declining Brown for Binghamton isn’t one of them.
Intparent, it makes sense that most schools use actuarial predictions about academic success, likelihood of an offer being accepted and the risk/benefit ratio for a positive vs negative admissions decision. Why wouldn’t they? What would drive a university to reject science in favor of intuition?