Of 503 entering first-years:
•51% men, 49% women
•66% from outside of New England
•31% students of color
•6% from outside the US
•9% Maine residents
•12% first generation to attend college
•14 states with ten or more students:
CA, CT, IL, MA, MD, ME, MN, NH, NJ, NY,
PA, TX, VA, WA
They admitted 510 men and while the stats likely don’t line up perfectly you could imagine that about 2/3 are from outside New England. I’m guessing that that’s the OP’s area of origin based on the school list, but could be wrong. At any rate, that is about 175 males from New England admitted. With 3,042 male applicants that was an admissions rate for males from New England of 5.75%. The middle 50% of ACT is 32-34 so the OP’s son is in range but just below the median for those who reported.
The stats may be different for the class this year, but once you break it down (even with rough numbers) the chances are much less auspicious than a quick check of basic academic metric might lead a person to think.
I don’t think high scores can be counted on as a hook, but they certainly aren’t going to hurt you. While the schools have said scores don’t matter, there are probably people on many admissions committees that will like to see high scores even if its not official policy.
Don’t forget the influence of recruited athletes to man the sports teams. A small college which fields multiple teams will reserve spaces for those teams. (Playing the sport in high school does not mean you’re recruited for that team.)
Everything has been said. The elite top tier schools, non Ivies, have about an 80% DENIAL rate. No college counselor in their right mind would tell any student they’re a sure thing. Grades and scores can get you in the conversation. For some (and they will tell you) demonstrated interest is a plus. And the rest: extracurriculars should be meaningful, whether they’re community service, sports, jobs, research, additional classes, clubs etc. And, finally, essays have to be compelling and in the student’s voice. Well-written, not adult-over edited and interesting. If the essay prompt is “why us?” you’d better know that college and why you’re interested in it. Location isn’t an answer. Dig deep into the website, look at curriculum and professors and research and clubs and…answer the question from a knowledgable standpoint. This is usually a place where my students fail. Finally, admissions officers know what kind of student fits on their campus: sometimes we don’t have that piece of the puzzle, and there’s no explanation–to us–why one student is admitted over another.
@ohiodad51, I think it depends on the school. Some schools like kids who excel in multiple areas (the tippy-top schools can pick kids who are great in multiple areas). However, some universities (and certainly certain schools within those universities) like kids who are pointy in an area.
@crabby932 - I will echo some of what has been said…first of all, congratulations to your son for the acceptances he did get. Great education to be had at those schools. Second of all, your message is a good one. Until you are really involved in the process, you can’t really know how competitive a LOT of those schools are. Top 1% in your class in HS doesn’t guarantee you anything. Lots of high schools in this world, and the best of the best apply to those top schools…there are only so many spots. I also agree with your take on ECs. Colleges do want diversity, but they want a diverse student body as a whole…they don’t want each student to be diverse. What they really want are high-achieving specialists. Like you said, they want athletes and stellar musicians and people who have won statewide and national academic contests, etc. Have to be a great student with a high GPA and good test scores, but then with regard to the ECs, you need to stand out in one of them. Ok to do lots of things, but many kids do that. High achievement in ONE is what is noticed. I have heard parents of high-achieving students talk in a very confident way about their child likely getting into Ivy League schools, and they look at a 6% acceptance rate and see that their kid is at the top of their class and assume that means they will get in. Just doesn’t work that way. Good or you to put this out there for others to digest.
I hear this line on CC all the time: “What they really want are high-achieving specialists.”
What these highly and most competitive schools want are kids who can both see what it takes to pursue their own interests and goals and who can add a little breadth, have a little fun, try something new- and try to make a difference. That’s what makes for a vibrant campus community…vibrant kids. There’s no guaranteed hook for being the best debater in the country, if that’s all a kid did. The really accomplished kids are engaged in a variety of things, in and out of hs. Don’t think of this in a flat way. But, in the end, the application is the only vehicle to present all this.
@am9799 My point about Model UN/Debate is precisely that the activities are similar. A kid with a real interest in public policy, oratory and the like would be expected to gravitate to like EC’s. What I am saying is that it is not just the kids who do only one thing who are being admitted to the Ivy and similar schools. It is the kids who may do multiple things all of which share some common trait that have been the most successful in my admittedly small sample size.
I mean, I think there is a baseline here. All kids with the academic stats to be admittable at the Ivys have shown the ability to excel academically, and likely have shown an intellectual curiosity that very often is found in people of such skill. But some of them are really skilled or passionate in one area, and being able to express that to a college which values it is a pretty significant advantage.
As an example, my kid had stats similar to what we are discussing, 4 something unweighted in an IB program, 34 ACT, 2320 (I think) SAT. Won a state award for mock trial, built sets for the school play, took pictures for the literary magazine, started a JSA chapter. Smart, well rounded kid. There are ten kids with very similar stats in his graduating class in just one high school in suburban Ohio. But my son happens to be a pretty good football player, and that meant that he picked his school in late June of last year and only applied to one school. A buddy of his will be the valedictorian, did some regular ec’s (mock trial, yearbook) but was really into Latin club (held a national office), and the study of the classics in general. He is going to Brown. Other’s who didn’t have that one thing (whatever it was) sticking out of an otherwise stellar application, did not fair as well with the schools we are all discussing.
They don’t have to all relate. That’s unilateral. And quite honestly, not all apps convey intellectual curiosity. They can convey “good kid in this hs,” which is different than “great kid for our campus.”
Ohiodad, your kid had a great range of activities. What may have stood out for the val was the driving interest in Latin and classics, how he expressed that, was involved- not just the title.
Interestingly, when we toured colleges recently, our tour guides were both kinds of kids --some were spikey and some were well rounded or had multiple interests and strengths. We had the engineers who did a lot of STEM activities or the engineer who played the violin but we also had the cognitive science major who directed plays and sang in an acapella group and did a club sport and organized activities for his house. At another school there was a tour guide who double majored in biology and dance and also played a club sport and did two or three other things.
I get what #68 is saying, but it’s not always so cut and dried. Sometimes it’s about what their friends are doing. My youngest son had absolutely no idea what his major would be going into high school. His favorite subject was history, and senior year he targeted schools with strong IR programs. But he had done nothing IR related in high school. He wasn’t part of our school’s Model UN because he didn’t like the kids in it. They were heavy drinkers with pushy parents. Instead he ended up doing double orchestra with his musician friends. He was a solid violinist who could play on tune and keep a beat, but you would never, ever say he had the makings of a musician. He was in Science Olympiad because he liked the crowd and during the years he was in the high school they had a very strong team that made it to the state level competition every year. Despite STEM not really being his strong suit - he actually did very well and got a lot of ribbons in his events. His other activity and the one he wrote about in his main essay was making and selling origami earrings. It started because he wanted to stay awake in AP Bio and then because he wanted cheap gifts to give his various female friends. He was your prototypical well-rounded kid. He applied “undecided” on the theory that he didn’t look like an IR major.
My older son was a super-pointy computer nerd, but he had good grades and good subject test scores in non-STEM stuff. For his optional essay at Harvard he gave them the list of books he’d read for fun that year. (Over 100 - mostly sci-fi and fantasy with a bunch of computer and math theory stuff thrown in.)
I think most schools have a mix of well rounded and pointy kids, but even the pointy kids will be good at the things that don’t interest them as much.
@lookingforward I agree completely with what you are saying. I seem to just be expressing it poorly. As a recruited athlete, there was no real concern about my son’s other ec’s or his essays, just his raw gpa and test scores to see where he slotted in the academic index. I am sure there was a baseline requirement for the work put into his essays, (one coach told him of a prior recruit who was denied admission because of consistent misspellings in his essay) but it wasn’t a deal breaker. For his friend, I think the ability to explain why he did what he did in high school, what he learned from it and how he hoped Brown would help him further travel that road was, I am guessing, crucial. In short, when faced with a group of kids with grades and scores all in the 99th percentile, I think the essays are key, and a kid who can use that opportunity to exhibit the uniqueness of his application will have a leg up on the rest of the pool. I at least would take a kid with a 3.8 gpa/2250 SAT who has been doing slam poetry every other weekend for the last four years rather than a 4.0/2400 SAT student who took the SAT six times. But maybe I am just nuts.
Ohiodad, I think you have a good read on what makes a kid interesting. Mathmom, too. It’s not that different than what makes us like our kids’ friends- some achievement, some surprises, some plain old good deeds, plus energy and consistency. And more. Some ordinary things, some stretch. Not this CC thing about standing out for being odd or only focusing on “passions.”
I don’t know about other test optional schools, but as had been noted - Bates has been test optional for 30+ years. They have also been doing studies on the college GPA’s of kids who didn’t submit scores and those that did since that time, and have found no significant difference. They do ask for your scores once you have been accepted and commit to attend, and one of the things they found out - which has been written about in their published studies - is that there are some high scorers who do not submit any scores because they are philosophically opposed to standardized tests. So, it’s not only low test scorers who don’t submit.