Question about school selectivity

<p>Look at Haverford College, NYmom. Strong academics–acceptance rate is around 20-25%. There is a Music Department. Also, Haverford along with Bryn Mawr is in a consortium with Swarthmore. My youngest D (who graduated from Bryn Mawr) had a
roommate/friend who was a music major. She took all her music classes at
Haverford and a few at Swarthmore but what really excited her about being in the Philadelphia area was that she could continue music lessons with an instructor at the Curtis Institute, a well-respected conservatory in the city. So, Haverford might be worth a look for your son. It sounds like your son is passionate about his music, but not seeing it as a career path, makes a place like Haverford good option. </p>

<p>Just about all schools require FAFSA. You can’t get federal (and some state) money without it. So you have to file FAFSA. FAFSA does not even ask for home equity values. The EFC you get from FAFSA is likely to be the least you will have to pay unless you find a lower priced school than that or get merit money. THat EFC says how much you have to pay BEFORE you get a dime of Federal aid including work study or subsidized loans. </p>

<p>PROFILE is just a single form that a lot of school subscribe to. They tend to be the schools that give out more of their own money, though not always the case. They ask about the value of the fillings in your teeth. But how they use the money can differ from school to school. Some may use full value of home equity, some none, some may cap it at 1.2X,or 2.4X income, for example. SOme may ask about your cars. They also often ask for NCP info and sibling accounts. But because the info is used according to the schools involved, you can get different awards from different schools with the same info. That’s where the NPCs individual to each school can be of use, especially for those school that guarantee to meet full need and that have no merit money in the picture. Also if you have your own business or have some unusual financial situation, those calculators can be useless.</p>

<p>Oberlin’s premed curriculum is very good. Excellent school. </p>

<p>DS’ information is not all in yet, but I think I have a good idea of his GPA and SAT score range, and I believe that he would fit Rochester’s profile. The acceptance rate I saw was 35%, with over 50% for EA. So this could be a great option, especially if the music helps here. I can’t be sure about that, as they may be overrun with kids who don’t plan to major in music but want the proximity to the Eastman School.</p>

<p>One thing I don’t know is what his class rank is likely to be. Another unknown is how they view class rank at his HS. It is a large public school with a mixed population. So top 10% there doesn’t mean the same thing as it does at a public school in a different area or a private school. </p>

<p>Bromfield2, Haverford does sound great, and the Curtis Institute is a great option, but around here the kids who go to Haverford are the same kind of kids who go to Ivys. I’m not sure it would even be a reach for him, but I will keep it in mind. </p>

<p>I’m sure I will learn a lot from Naviance once I get access.</p>

<p>Thanks, cptofthehouse. What is meant by NCP? I googled it and found noncustodial profile ??</p>

<p>Mixed population is probably going to be to his advantage especially if your school ranks using weighted scores and depending on what courses get counted in the rank. My youngest had a rank much higher than I expected. Helped partly by AP courses, but also by the inexplicable decision on the part of the school to count both his orchestra courses in the GPA. They weren’t weighted, but the 98’s and 99’s he got in orchestra still were better than most of his other weighted grades.</p>

<p>NCP is non-custodial parent.</p>

<p>I believe class rank is taken into consideration less these days than course rigor and GPA. Don’t get hung up on it for admissions purposes (unless your state offers scholarships to state schools to top 10% of graduating class, and the like). Students well out of the top 10-15% in my D’s school got into some of the most selective colleges.</p>

<p>I am pretty sure that his HS does not weight courses, and I am pretty sure that they don’t calculate class rank. I could be wrong about both of these.</p>

<p>I am wondering about class rank because the website that I am using to research admission stats shows the fraction of admitted students from the top 10%, 25%, 50%, etc. </p>

<p>mathmom, my son gets two full credit courses for band and jazz band (and 1/4 credit applied music for taking private piano lessons). The GC once mentioned that being in a music group was good for the GPA because the grades are usually high. The applied music credit is pass/fail. Now I’m wondering whether that will help or hurt his GPA! He could easily not report it.</p>

<p>Most colleges recalculate GPA and throw out music/art/gym grades. </p>

<p>Rochester has a good music program, especially vocal, but we were told it is not a back door into Eastman. All Eastman students get seated in Eastman groups before Rochester students are offered a position. Additionally, Eastman students can audition for the Rochester groups on par with the Rochester students, which some of the lower chairs do. My son was looking at the 5-year Engineering/Music degree at Rochester, and this is what we were told.</p>

<p>That does not sound great, bp0001. DS would not be looking for a back door into Eastman, I was just hoping that he would have opportunities there as a Rochester student. I’m sure he would not be able to compete with Eastman students for the spots in the Rochester groups, so this might not be a good situation at all for him.</p>

<p>We went to the accepted students day. The opportunities are there, but not as plentiful as the glossy brochures lead you to believe. The best factor is the chance to study with the Eastman professors, but again, this is only if there are spots left open. </p>

<p>Not knowing what colleges would do with rank and how they would recalculate my son’s GPA drove me crazy. But he did much better than I expected him to. His grades weren’t bad, but there were a lot of B+s. It’s an old book but Hernadez’s A for Admissions made it clear at that time rank was more important than GPA. That said if you are coming from a top prep school or an academic magnet school - that top 5 or 10% rank is not going to matter - and in fact most of those schools don’t rank because it only hurts most of their students. But at a big public high school, rank (even though there is no perfect system to account for schedule rigor as well as grades), generally is a good way to sort the top students.</p>

<p>Class rank is deceptive and colleges know this. Students among the top 5-10% at local HS got where they were because they did not take the most rigorous courses they could–and did not get into the most selective colleges to which they applied. </p>

<p>Again, don’t get hung up on rank. Colleges look at the courses offered by your HS, if you took the most challenging within reason and area of interest, and look at how you did in those classes.</p>

<p>Are you aware of Tufts’ program with the New England Conservatory?</p>

<p>NCP is non custodial parent. In a divorce, separation, not married parents situation, FAFSA only requires the custodial parent and spouse to fill out the form with their financial info. The non custodial parent info is not needed. Most PROFILE schools have a NCP form that the non custodial parent and spouse has to complete so that both (or in some cases all 4) parents’ financials are included. Doesn’t apply if you don’t have that situation.</p>

<p>Rigor of the schedule will always trump rank. But if there’s any question (i.e. your school ranks, but doesn’t use weighted grades), you can ask the Guidance Counselor to address that issue in their letter if it isn’t clear in the school profile that they will send to colleges. Our school did use weighted grades, but the weighting was very light and there were occasionally one or two students who slipped into the top 25 (that were honored at an awards assembly) despite not taking a full load of APs. They did not get into as selective colleges as those who did.</p>

<p>

Focusing on stats is only going to give a high correlation with acceptances decisions, if the college also focuses on stats. Some selective colleges with low admit rates do appear to focus on stats and have acceptance decisions that tend to be highly correlated with stats. Examples include Vanderbilt and USC. However, the selective colleges that we most frequently discuss on this forum also emphasize many non-stat criteria, leading to not being able to predict chance of acceptance well by your stats and comments about admissions being “random” or “a crapshoot”. One particular kid might have great stats, yet have negligible chance of admission at Stanford because the rest of his application was weaker than a good portion of the applicant pool. Another unhooked applicant at Stanford might have weaker stats than most of the entering class, but a great chance of admission because of strengths in non-stat portions of his application. A kid might have a great chance of admission at selective college A, but not selective college B, because A is big on demonstrated personal character via service to the school and community, while B does not consider these factors or hundreds of other possible differences in admissions criteria. </p>

<p>You can gain some clues about what particular colleges consider important by looking at how they mark the importance of admissions criteria in the CDS and by looking at past admissions decisions for similar applicants via tools like forum posts, Naviance, and Parchment. For example, the admit rate for Parchment members over the past 3 years for non-URMs RD applicants who had 3.85+ UW GPA while taking 4+ APs and a 2250+ SAT score is below for various selective colleges. I’ve listed the overall published admit rate for last year in parenthesis, sorted from lowest overall admit rate to highest overall admit rate. Note that the admit rate for high stat applicants only has a loose correlation with the overall admit rate. Some colleges with a very low admit rate have 90%+ admit rate for these high stat Parchment members, while others have a very low admit rate for this group.</p>

<p>Admit Rate for High Stat Parchment Members
Yale - 19% (7% overall admit rate)
Columbia - 35% (7% admit rate)
MIT: Male Applicant - 17% (8% admit rate)
MIT: Female Applicant - 43% (8% admit rate)
Chicago - 57% (9% overall admit rate)
Vanderbilt - 93% (12% overall admit rate)
Penn - 41% (12% overall admit rate)
Rice - 83% (16% overall admit rate)
Johns Hopkins - 57% (17% overall admit rate)
Notre Dame - 100% (22% overall admit rate)</p>

<p>“Class rank is deceptive and colleges know this. Students among the top 5-10% at local HS got where they were because they did not take the most rigorous courses they could–and did not get into the most selective colleges to which they applied.”</p>

<p>Absolutely. At our HS, honors and AP classes get a pathetic weighting, so the kids with the hardest schedules were often down around the 90th percentile. And those were the kids that got into the most selective schools. The valedictorian, who took a much lighter schedule, was more or less “disappointed” by his results. </p>

<p>@Data10, how do you find these statistics on Parchment? I have been looking around and can’t seem to figure out how to find the admit rate for a particular set of students, at a particular school. I would like to know two things - the admit rate for the students you described at USC, and if it’s possible, the admit rate for students with a slightly different profile. Can you either tell us how to do that, or if you’d rather, you can PM me.</p>

<p>Data10, that information is very interesting. I am virtually certain that DS will have those stats, but I do not consider him a candidate for most of the schools you list, certainly not for Ivys and equivalent. I have seen who gets into those schools over the years and they are a different breed. So, as you say, other factors that can’t be quantified make the difference. </p>

<p>Actually, from that list I might infer that DS would be a strong candidate for ND or Rice or Vanderbilt - schools I would not have considered matches for him. Does this make sense? </p>

<p>Maybe Chicago might even be a high reach for him? Somehow I can’t imagine he would have a chance there.</p>

<p>Have to get onto Naviance. </p>

<p>I had not heard about Parchment before Data10’s post. I just checked out their site. Is this worth doing?</p>

<p>I’d take Parchment “matches” with a grain of salt, unfortunately. It is self-reported data, and seems overly optimistic. D has input her data on there and the picture looks rosy…until you look a little further. </p>

<p>There are just so many schools (Vandy, Chicago, Rice among them) that are becoming almost Ivy-like in their low acceptance rates. In a sense they’ve become “lottery” schools that may match if you’re just looking at stats (e.g., scores and GPA) but that also routinely reject kids with stats well into the upper quartile. That’s been frustrating to D and has resulted in what we’ve defined as a reach-heavy list of schools to apply to. All of the schools on her list that we’ve labeled “reach” are universities where info on scores/grades may look like a match but where low acceptance rates make them something else entirely. So her “reach” schools have become those where she thinks she will definitely be able to do the work if she gets in (GPA/ACT in top quartile)…but where the chance of being accepted is still probably no better than 50/50 at best (and realistic likely even less than that). As D has said, “I’m ready for a lot of disappointment next spring…but you only need one if you pick them right.”</p>