S19 got all five of his Bs first semester sophomore year - the semester he grew six inches and started XC which required him to run 50 miles a week. He was exhausted from the new routine and from growing…but he got that report card and was definitely fired up to do whatever had to be done to raise his GPA and didn’t get another B for the rest of high school. I know those Bs didn’t affect his results.
A girl in our local HS who is a top student(36 ACT, double digit AP’s, etc.) in our large public was deferred from WI, but a couple of other kids with far lesser academic profiles were admitted. S2 thinks it’s ridiculous…the other two aren’t even in the same league academically. Their loss, frankly.
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Would the girl have gone to Wisconsin if accepted?
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Good point
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I understand where you’re coming from and my daughter didn’t applied to UCSC. However, as I had mentioned above, her high school had 51% admission rate to UCSD and 69% to UCD last year. Also, those data are not from just top students, over 80% of the whole class had applied to those UCs. She’s well within top 5% of her class and I like her chances. For UCM, the bottom ranks of 17 applied and they were all admitted, but no one had enrolled. I don’t think safety school has to be the one with 100% guarantee, we’ll find out in next two weeks.
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SCAD Atlanta was in my S21’s top 3. He received enough merit to make it work. Loved the facilities and Atlanta for film. Right now Atlanta is Hollywood East. Plus S20 is at GT. I would say Atlanta is very LGBTQ friendly. He ended-up at FSU. He was accepted into Digital Media early but might try to crack the film school one more time.
FSU would not be a bad in-state option. Their Communications school is well regarded and the film school is T20. Lots of artsy types there. They have their own Circus tent on-campus. My son goes thrifting a lot. Apparently it’s a thing in Tally. It’s not a big city but there are things to do. Having a car has helped. He has done a few road-trips.
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I have to agree with this. A single B+ isn’t going to derail any student and it won’t be the reason a student is denied at any school – even the most elite ones. Perfect grades/scores don’t guarantee anything and a B here or there is not the end of the world.
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This is untrue. You are here for that. A lot of students post chance threads about elites. But the majority of people who come to CC are simply people trying to learn more about this complicated process and figuring out what schools they or their kids can apply to.
You came here with a legitimate question and have had a lot of helpful answers. It’s clear your kids need some safeties. I agree that you should find a way to relax about this. Your kids will absolutely be going to college as long as they apply to a range of colleges. Isn’t that the main goal? Take time to digest all this info. Meanwhile, I think it was mentioned already, but arm your kids with a Fiske guide and start looking at safeties. Good luck.
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Yes, same experience at our high school. It makes no sense and is frustrating but I agree with you, their loss. It is nice to know that he is in good company though!
It may seem that CC is focused on top whatever schools- but that’s only if those are the threads you are reading. The community tries to help the B- student who wants to study political science and work on campaigns/voting rights; the community tries to help the B student who wants to become a nurse and is wondering if the cost differential between a BSN and an RN is worth it; we try to help the kid whose choices seem to be a state college close by which doesn’t have their preferred major, or going out of state where the kid could get enough merit to make it affordable. I remember LENGTHY threads about the difference in teacher licensing requirements in different parts of the country and some extremely helpful posters explaining to parents that in some places Special Ed is the ticket to getting hired, while in other places it’s getting a degree in Chemistry with a minor in education.
None of these families are focused on top 30 or 50 schools. Their kids want to go to college and they want to help them get there.
At my HS, most college bound kids applied to the state flagship and two handfuls of other colleges. I grew up in the Northeast- I had never heard of Rice or Santa Clara or Reed or Texas A&M or Earlham or Rhodes- fine institutions, all. Flying was expensive; heck, we called home once a week on Sunday nights when the rates went down. So the idea that you could look at colleges that were more than two hours from home- who did that? One of the top students at my HS got a full scholarship to one of the 7 Sisters colleges. She was really gifted and likely would have thrived there. Her parents were horrified that the GC had encouraged her to apply; she lived at home and took the bus to a local college and became an elementary school teacher. And I’m sure this still happens. Kids attend their “safety” for all sorts of reasons- financial, cultural and yes- not getting in to their #1 or #5 college.
I think this community really tries to help family’s identify viable options. And if that means Muhlenberg and not Dartmouth, or U Richmond and not U Chicago- it needs to work for the kid and the finances need to work for the family.
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My S got B+ in Calc AB and Calc BC soph and junior year. Also had a few B’s in English. He’s at Cornell. D’s good friend is in Vandy, and she had a C on her transcript freshman year (Vandy still REALLY cares about test scores, according to our GC).
A great essay almost certainly trumps a not-so-great grade, and alos…AP Chem B+ is not going to be looked at askew by just about any AO. I mean…maybe one or two of the snobbish uber-elite schools? Sure. But for the overwhelming majority of top schools, it’s perfectly fine. Our GC described it this way to my baseball-loving son… Sometimes it’s better to go 9 for 10 as opposed to 10 for 10. A .900 batting average is more impressive, in it’s depth, than a 1.000 avg.
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You defiantly need to have a couple of safety schools. I had a friend who was incredibly smart and probably deserved to get into many of the incredibly difficult schools that she applied to, but she didnt; she got rejected from all of her schools because she had no safeties. Even for me, I was waitlisted at many schools that I thought I would easily get into. Although I got into all of these schools, the point is that admissions does not always go as you think, and its better to play it safe and have a few safety schools.
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I am probably going to come off as rude here, but I’m sorry. I know this post was meant to be reassuring and comforting, but it points to why many people find the College Confidential forums to be elitist. it’s nice to hear he got into Cornell with a B+ in Calc, but he took it as a SOPHOMORE. this used to NOT be normal. My daughter is a Junior. she has always been strong in math and in her middle school she was pushed forward into the “advanced track.” that meant Algebra in 8th grade, so Geometry (honors) in 9th, Algebra 2/Trig Honors in 10th, and now Precalc/Intro to Calc Honors in 11th, with AP calc in 12th. Somehow, at her high school too, there are sophomores taking Calc, so those kids are TWO YEARS ahead of her in math. I don’t even know how that happened, except I guess very early on in middle school their parents pushed them into high school level math classes. Were those kids inherently smarter than my daughter? some of them maybe, but I am sure not all of them, and I bet a lot of them never even mastered basic arithmetic before tackling Algebra and Geometry.
Anyway, it’s a little hard to be reassured by stories of kids getting into top colleges with B+'s on their transcript when those B+'s came as sophomores taking senior or even college level math.
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I guess we’ll never know, and what’s more, neither do you, or WI.
What I do know is that at least one of the students who got accepted lied about being president of two clubs that don’t even exist.
I don’t think Westchesters is being elitist.
At my kids HS you couldn’t take Calc AB and then BC. Not possible. You EITHER take AB or BC, seniors only. That’s the rule. That doesn’t mean kids are at a disadvantage when compared with kids like Westchesterdads- their HS obviously does it differently, just like thousands of other HS’s in the country, each of whom has their own curricular, pedagogical and grading quirks.
It behooves ALL of us to realize that what we think is the “norm” might be the norm among the 50 or 100 kids we know- but is absolutely not the norm everywhere. And Adcom’s know this.
That’s one of the reasons I think folks here get so worked up about holistic admissions- as if it’s a nefarious plot to deny their kid their due place. But honestly- how do you compare a kid who took AB as a sophomore with a kid whose HS doesn’t offer calc at all- because the teacher retired last year and couldn’t be replaced? That’s what holistic is for.
And not every kid who is accelerated got pushed by a parent. One of my kids had a true math prodigy in their class during middle school. The parents were hippie types who didn’t believe in differentiated education, wanted a “level playing field” for everyone. Teacher’s complained about the kid- he was honestly bored and grumpy doing “normal” 7th grade work. So he had his own math track, despite the parents pushback. Not every parent wants their kid advanced.
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Every school is different. My kids are in MA at a good public high school where the “accelerated” math students take AP Calc AB or BC as a senior (once in a blue moon a kid will take that junior year and AP stats as a senior). That doesn’t keep kids from being accepted to top 20 schools every year. Your child’s coursework will be evaluated in the context of their school - did they take the most rigorous classes available to them - not compared to kids from other districts.
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Just if you want more schools to consider – for your son Connecticut College seems like such a good fit! My daughter had similar but not as good stats as your son but they gave her a lot of merit money too… For you daughter – I know it’s not urban — but Syracuse.
Completely get it, and understand how that could be construed. Yes, AP Calc taken earlier is probably not the greatest example, but my point was that context was unbelievably important with any grade. Our school doesn’t give out A’s like they’re candy, and they’re actually somewhat proud that most valedictorians do not have 4.0 unweighted. So an AO is going to look at a student in context with his or her school.
If that B+ comes in a class where peers who are also applying all received A+, it looks a little different than if that student it top shelf rigor and the HS report is such that A’s aren’t acquired easily.
Again, trying to point out that “Will a B hurt me?” is impossible to answer in general, but specifically the answer is almost always no…subject to context.
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good points. I agree and that all makes sense. I hope you are right about all this…
I apologize to Westchesterdad…I didn’t mean to imply HE was elitist. Just that I understand how some people find these CC boards to come across that way.
Lets face it- there are way more threads here about top schools and top students then the middle and lower tiers. Not CC’s fault- it’s just what happens.
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No offense taken at all. Your points were absolutely valid, and I agree about the difficulty of admissions these days. One thing, though, is that schools have always used school reports as major determinants in analyzing a candidate. There’s a very well known private school in NJ that doesn’t allow students to take more than 1 or 2 APs until senior year. Their students always freak out after perusing CC, thinking they’re at a major disadvantage. But their school report (and rep) plays very well, and they are simply analyzed against each other as opposed to John Smith from a completely different HS.
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