Question about school selectivity

<p>menloparkmom, I was wishing I’d asked today about my son’s HS experience with applicants to USC. I’m sure there must have been some. It was so reassuring to see how well the HS kids did at Rochester. I wonder if there are sometimes “pipelines” between a particular HS and certain colleges? According to collegeboard, UR takes 97% of the class from the top 25%. My son is going to end up right around 25% (barely in the top quarter). Yet multiple kids with stats substantially below his (expected) were accepted. </p>

<p>Thanks for the USC profile. In terms of stats, I would expect my son to be a match, and they accept 20%. This makes it a reach. I wish I knew how his HS has done. The GC said that published statistics on class rank, especially, don’t mean anything for applicants from this HS. </p>

<p>I am going to suggest that my son start communicating with Rochester. They invite emails on their website. He could ask about music opportunities. </p>

<p>Thanks for that information about Chicago, menloparkmom. I definitely don’t want him to have to take lessons off campus, and find the teachers himself. I didn’t realize that some schools included this cost in tuition - that would be great. I was assuming that we’d have to pay for lessons. It would be so inconvenient to have to travel somewhere for lessons, rather than take them on campus.</p>

<p>I am pretty sure that he could not get into Chicago, in any case. </p>

<p>USC’s admission rate for Class of 2018 is 17.8%. D was accepted early (Presidential scholar), it was her 4th choice behind Cornell/UCLA/Berkeley.</p>

<p>USC’s alumni network is one of the best in the nation. Probably better than UCLA/Berkeley.</p>

<p>That’s great, 2018dad! Where will your D be going?</p>

<p>

Note that at highly selective colleges, the majority of admitted students do not submit rank. For example only 27% of the entering class submitted rank at Princeton, and only 28% submitted rank at Yale. Class rank statistics only include this minority who submitted rank, and HSs where such a large portion of the class achieves high grades like the one your child attends, rarely submit rank. A better metric is admission results for students in your HS, as listed in Naviance or similar.</p>

<p>"I wonder if there are sometimes “pipelines” between a particular HS and certain colleges? "</p>

<p>there were, and in some cases still are, but these days with the internet and the common app students are applying to private colleges MUCH further from home than ever before. For Instance Stanford used to be known, 20+ yrs ago, as the “Calif Ivy” , since over 40% of students there were from Calif. And at the same time, USC was the Southern Calif U for not as smart rich kids [ other wise know as the “University of Spoiled Children”]
It was also a considered to be a commuter school, since the student housing was sub-par and many students went home on weekends. Those days are LOOONNG gone now. Both U’s have changed, USC more so than Stanford in the past 10 years. [We live next to Stanford and have been here for 30+ years. ] How students from your DS’s HS have done is probably not to relevant, unless they have applied to or gone to USC in the past 4 years. </p>

<p>Both colleges now attract students from across the US and world.
Your DS should visit sometime. </p>

<p>“This makes it a reach.”
UNLESS he is becomes a NMSF, then it becomes a match.
USC is hungry to have NMF’s enroll! That is why they offer the automatic 1/2 tuition scholarship! </p>

<p>

USC’s CDS only marks 2 criteria as “very important” – GPA and test scores. Only one additional factor is marked as “important” beyond these stats – secondary school record. This is quite different from most highly selective colleges. For example, HYPSM all mark personal qualities, LORs, essays, talent/ability, and course rigor at the same importance as stats, or in a few cases more important than stats (MIT marks character/personal qualities as the most important factor).</p>

<p>Consistent with this, USC’s admission decisions more closely follow stats than most other low admit rate colleges. It’s generally not a reach for applicants who have good stats, but is a reach for most others. Using some specific numbers, the admit rate for different stat ranges are below for Parchment members over the past 3 years, who were taking at least 4 AP classes. Note that there is a sharp change in acceptance rate at a particular stat threshold. The vast majority of Parchment members who were above that threshold were admitted, and, the vast majority who were below that threshold were rejected: </p>

<p>3.95+ & 2300+ – 100%
3.9-3.94 & 2200-2290 – 88%
3.8-3.89 & 2100-2190 – 81%
3.7-3.79 & 2000-2090 – 9%
3.6-3.69 & 1900-1990 – 0%</p>

<p>There was also a notable difference in admit rate between males and females. For example, in the 3.9-3.94 group, 100% of females were admitted, but only 82% of males. I suspect this relates to the tech majors that males are more likely to choose being more selective, suggesting that chance of admission also has a notable influence from major selection. </p>

<p>That’s good to know, Data10 - that the published class rank data are based on only a fraction of the admitted students. For the USC categories, he would probably be in the third, with an 81% admit rate - worse for males, I guess. But still really high. </p>

<p>If he drops below that category, he will have almost no chance. That’s quite a cliff!</p>

<p>I’m really interested to see my son’s HS history with USC. They use data for the past 3 years only.</p>

<p>It would be nice if he were to make NMF, menloparkmom. I won’t be surprised if he does, and I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t.</p>

<p>A few years ago I learned from the head of admissions at USC that NMFs’ have a much higher rate of acceptance at USC [ approx 50%] than non NMF’s.</p>

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<p>That is not surprising, since NMFs are selected (as NMFs) to have high grades and high PSAT/SAT scores, while others can apply to USC with significantly weaker academic credentials. I would expect that the admission rate for NMFs at any selective college to be higher than the admission rate for others at the same college.</p>

<p>I haven’t found any good data source that characterizes the qualifications of college applicant pools. The Common Data Set numbers capture the stats of enrolled first-year students, not applicants. There is no authoritative source for many schools that tells you how closely the applicant qualifications track the enrolled students’ qualifications.</p>

<p>Based on the limited data I’ve seen, it does appear that as you move through the USNWR top 20 and beyond, the predictive value of stats alone increases rather sharply.
Compare Princeton’s and Georgetown’s distributions,for example:
<a href=“https://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/”>https://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/wcwzfcswo59o21cw6b73”>https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/wcwzfcswo59o21cw6b73&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Princeton rejects 80%-90% of applicants even if they have perfect GPAs or nearly perfect SATs. Based on stats alone, Princeton admission seems to be a crap shoot no matter how good your numbers. However, for some of Georgetown’s programs, the admit rate is above 50% for one perfect 800 SAT score in combination with class rank in the top 5%. </p>

<p>But again, this kind of data is not aggregated and presented consistently from college to college. This presents a big problem for many “chance me” threads on CC. What many top students really want to know is, where is the true knee in the curve for admission to various top colleges? What specific qualifications (other than “hooks”) will put an applicant on the right side of that bend? For the most selective colleges, we really don’t know.</p>

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<p>Naviance may help with respect to applicants at the student’s high school, if there are enough of them. For some colleges (those that admit exclusively by stats, or with only minimal consideration of other factors), there may be a sharp divide between the admit and reject dots, showing a clear admit zone and a clear reject zone. For others, the divide may be fuzzy for various reasons, where there is a stats zone where some are admitted and some are rejected including other criteria (including one underestimated criterion at many colleges, which is major or division applied to). For super-selective schools, there may be no clear admit zone, only a clear reject zone and a small fuzzy zone at the top of the stats range.</p>

<p>That’s a perfect summary of the frustrating situation that compels students to submit a ridiculous number of application in order to avoid being shut out. Of course, it’s in the schools’ interest to hide the information, because if it were public that they have stat “bands” where admission is likely and other “bands” where it is next to impossible, their application numbers will decline precipitously. It seems dishonest to encourage applications from kids who have less than a 10% chance of getting in on stats. </p>

<p>Actually, a lot of colleges do have automatic admission for certain stat ranges:</p>

<p><a href=“Updated list of schools with auto-admit (guaranteed admission) criteria - Applying to College - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1562918-updated-list-of-schools-with-auto-admit-guaranteed-admission-criteria-p1.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums;

<p>But most of these are not the kinds of colleges that eliteness-seekers that make up most of the people on these forums are looking for.</p>

<p>A few schools are rather transparent about what their thresholds are, although the thresholds may only be determined after all applications are in (so that they can be set to admit the desired number of students). Example:
<a href=“http://info.sjsu.edu/static/admission/impaction.html”>http://info.sjsu.edu/static/admission/impaction.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;