Parents of the HS Class of 2021 (Part 2)

How so?

How so what?

What do you mean only Texans and Californians have complaints? I think this admissions year has been a crapshoot for everyone!

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I’m specifically referring to (with a smiling emoji) a post about CSU’s and UC’s (CA public schools) and I’ve seen many complaints about UT, auto admits (also mentioned above), CAP, TA&M, Texas Tech, etc.

I don’t remember any complaints about other public school systems although I’m sure there were complaints elsewhere, maybe Virginia.

Well those systems encompass a lot more schools than others, so that makes sense. Plenty of hand wringing in threads for schools in smaller places. This year is messy all around!

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Well, I bought some swags! One of the bookstore links had a 20% discount code. I got my dad, DH, shirts, and D24 a sweatshirt (poor girl has been neglected since college app season, it seems), and my mom a mug. Grandparents merch very sparse, if any. S21 just asked for a hoodie so I got him a couple. One white one so I wasn’t thinking but part of me feels like he knows how to do laundry and an evolved cream or off white hoodie could look good. :joy:

I didn’t get myself anything but hoping to buy my momma stuff in person. The bookstore may have better assortment. That, and part of me get myself to wear another school’s swag.

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My husband and sister were ORIE at Cornell, he can’t convince any of our kids to do engineering :joy:

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The situation in Texas is sad in so many ways. I have relatives who were forced to choose between MIDDLE SCHOOLS for their daughter based on how to get her in the top 6% of the graduating class of high school. Of course the best-funded public schools with the most opportunities for AP’s, etc., risk being put in the position of competing with your classmates for rank. Doesn’t make sense.

Fast forward a few years and they chose the school with more opportunities but where this magna cum laude high school grad with about 10 AP’s and all A’s wasn’t in the top 6% because of the extraordinary student body there. Worth it, and she got in regardless.

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I know that you are not the person who actually made this claim, but do you think it is actually true?

The list of schools that send 25 kids to Ivies year-in year-out is not long, and it is almost entirely made up of uber-wealthy suburban publics, big public exam schools, and high-end privates. The idea one of them was completely skunked this season seems far-fetched.

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I sit on a COVID zoom every week for our state as part of my job, and there is a computational biologist on there and it sounds like the future. Really cool stuff.

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Yes, I do, considering we are a school that usually has around 10 to Ivies and this year have 1 and same goes for the school I work at and we’re not even on the East Coast and then as I mentioned another parent I know said the same thing at their school in NJ. My daughter has actually also mentioned similar stories from her friends who have senior siblings many who also suffered the same fate and who’s best options are not what they might normally be in a typical year. This is not just a trend here in the Midwest, but same trend we’re hearing everywhere.

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I think we have 5 kids from our school going to UT this year. My daughter’s year had 7 so technically for a crazy year like this, I consider 5 from our school a huge success. A few more were accepted (maybe 6 or so) but chose to attend other schools. For an OOS that’s a huge success, but for some reason UT tends to love our school and we often get 30 or so kids applying each year.

Maybe 3-4 schools in Texas get 20+ into T15 schools. I know the one in Houston has at least one going to Harvard. We’ll see how they compare to years past.

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She will be in great shape for grad school. My older daughter is working towards her PhD in genetics at WashU in St Louis. From her experience, I have learned that genetics and bioinformatics are very hot fields. These fields are at the intersection of biology, math and CS.
The main reason we were able to get the covid vaccines so quickly is because of the advances that have happened in these fields.

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We are in a rigorous highly ranked public school in the NE. Compared to last year where ~30 kids when to Ivys, this year it will be around 10-12. BU, NE, NYU, Tufts and highly selective LACs in New England got a lot of the kids bumped from the Ivies. Kids also are going farther, to good colleges where historically they never had applied to before like UT Austin.

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An example would be of BU from US News:
“Boston University has a total undergraduate enrollment of 17,983, with a gender distribution of 41% male students and 59% female students.”

If you are a female interested in taking Bio or going on the Pre Med track, it is harder to get in to BU vs if you are a male.

That’s not the best example, since that only tells us enrollment. We would need to know the number of applicants of each gender compared to enrollment. With only this enrollment info. we could suppose a lot of contradictory things-- BU likes female applicants and takes more of them; or, BU is lopsided in terms of gender and is looking to accept more male applicants to make up for it; or, if offer rates are similar, far more girls apply than guys, etc. We also don’t know anything about different majors from this example. (Just playing devil’s advocate here)

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Or more male students drop out over the course of 4 years.

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I missed the context for the above BU examples/discussion, but apps, admits, and enrollees are separated by gender in the Common Data Set. Come to think of it, I have a column in my spreadsheet for acceptance rates by gender
 (Looking back at it now, places where my boys were rejected/waitlisted have higher acceptance rates for males than females, and places were they were accepted have lower acceptance rates for males - go figure.)

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That’s why you have to take that data with a grain of salt because you have no idea how many applicants there are for each of those majors.

Using the BU example for instance, maybe their ratio of F/M is so great because they are known for one specific female heavy major. I don’t know anything about BU at all so this is all just hypothetical, but for instance - maybe they have one of the best Elementary Education programs in the area, women’s studies, or nursing programs or other female heavy degree programs. The data has to be broken down and if it isn’t, then sure enough you get a disconnected assumption with no basis at all saying that if their overall f/m is 59/41 then it is much harder for a female to get into Bio than a male.

Also separate issue, no one applies to college as Pre-Med. You only apply as a major. My sister in law is an MD and graduated with her Econ degree from Northwestern and then went on to medical school. It’s like people who say “i’m a pre-law major” when all they are is a Psychology major but hoping to go to law school. Don’t get it. Maybe for some it sounds better but no one should have to be embarrassed to tell someone their major or try to justify it. The question/exchange then might be what are you going to do after, or are you going to grad school to which the reply then is “hoping to go to medical school” or “hoping to go to law school” or “work in research” etc. But people speak as if there is a pre-med major or pre-law one and it’s funny. Ok off that tangent.

Bottom line is that people need to look at their stats and do their research and view what schools might be targets fro them but never assume a school is a Target. I read in a post the other day in a different thread someone listed about 8 schools they expected were safeties for their kid according to Naviance and not one was in pre-covid times. Even without a good school counselor (ours sucked this year) everyone can do their own research without spending 5k-10k on a college counselor. I also would not put faith into Naviance and those programs because I often view that data is not recent enough even if over 5 years.

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