<p>Just rename the thread. Something like: “High stats, aiming for high reach schools.” There’s probably an interesting range of opinion and experience among parents with students in this category. For instance, I disagree with post #18, that it’s all about test scores and grades and only 10% about “everything else.” My oldest child was admitted everywhere she applied HYPSM. Like most admits, she had the stats and grades, but she and I both believe that her outcome was definitely due to the “everything else.”</p>
<p>CalAlum–excuse my skepticism, but your D was admitted to (literally) Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, AND MIT? </p>
<p>Or were you loosely using the acronym to represent upper echelon schools?</p>
<p>Well, she didn’t apply to Princeton. So yes, in 2007, that was the outcome. She’s now at MIT. </p>
<p>I’ve been on cc for about four years now, mainly on the MIT board. I starting participating on the parents’ board this year during my son’s college search. In his case, the threads for students with gpa below 3.6 were pretty useful. I think if a thread is started for kids with top scores it will actually minimize the feeling on cc that top-scoring students are the default. Instead, they’ll become a subgroup like the others.</p>
<p>Oh please. If you want a thread for such kids, then go ahead and open it already. Don’t do the faux-modest “is it ok if I open a thread for such kids”? It’s like asking “Is it ok if I talk about my mansion or fancy vacation or fancy car here?” Just do it already.</p>
<p>When I first read this, I thought, “why would anyone want to plan so far ahead to the year 2250?” LOL.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m not for it. I mean, the 3.3-3.6 thread was useful because the wonderful 3.3 kid almost certainly is not headed to HYP (although, perhaps being a legacy/athlete . . . ) So that one made sense for parents seeking directions. </p>
<p>But, come on, this can only escalate. The OP has a 3.9/2250 offspring. Next week we’ll have the thread for 4.0/2300 followed by the 4.5/2400 threads. And the advice and the realities are the same as pugmadkate documented. We’re blessed with some amazing kids and they will not all be showered with sunshine and posies. </p>
<p>I get more use out of the specific threads, as in “What do we do with the kid who tops out with calculus as a sophomore?” or “We’re drowning in EC commitments and need to jettison some. What to choose?” These sorts of discussions apply to a number of families here and other’s experiences and insights are truly helpful. </p>
<p>There is, of course, no laws on this. We could, of course, have a 3.9/2200+ thread for left handed oboe players. There may be commonalities and challenges that are not obvious to me.</p>
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<p>Neither are the high stats kids. The majority of those students will not be accepted to HYP and so on. Please know I am not complaining. I almost wish there was a permanent thread that said something like, “High Stats Student? Raising one? Click for wake-up call!”</p>
<p>Frankly, it came as a surprise to us that our job as a parents of a kid with his high school record was going to be primarily of preparing him to NOT be accepted to the top schools and instead finding schools that were truly matches, that were as interested in him as he was in the school. I truly thank my lucky stars for the google search that led me to CC. I shudder to think how risky the whole process would have been without getting the current information, not what various alum from Ivy League schools were encouraging us to do (my favorite from a well-meaning, proud, Brown alum, “Maybe you should skip Brown and just apply to Harvard.”)</p>
<p>Bad idea. You might as well have a thread for parents of children with first names that start with the letter M.</p>
<p>It’s a big world. Even though our child is the tops in our community, there are 100s of thousands of communities out there who have top kids. The best we can say for these high stat kids is that they have a lot of options, not that they can go anywhere they want.</p>
<p>The OP’s mistake was to ask permission to start a thread first, imo.</p>
<p>Look, what does a thread here accomplish, in its best form? It creates a sort of support group of parents in the “same boat.” Yes, as some of you seem to enjoy pointing out, many parents of these kids will find their kids will face rejection. But don’t forget that in many families, the one who is dreaming of the “Hogwarts” dining halls at Yale, or the physics labs at MIT is the child who sat through an admissions talk, not necessarily the parent.</p>
<p>Every parent needs a thread that addresses the hopes and dreams of his or her child, and I’m certainly not going to rain on the parade of a parent who wants to start such a thread.</p>
<p>Yes, every community has it’s top kids. But it is different when you look up the data at College Board and see that in 2007, approx 3000 students in the nation scored 2300 or higher on the SAT. </p>
<p>Which brings me back to the idea that 90%+ of getting into the top colleges is these numbers. That cannot be true. If it were true, we could make far more accurate guesses about who will be accepted. The scores get your application in the door and a serious look, then it’s a matter of what the college wants and if you match it. It’s the elusive “fit” students talk about from the other side of the table.</p>
<p>Again, I’m not complaining, I truly am not. Just trying to share the reality verses what most people think happens. Parents and students need to be prepared. We had a wonderful college search with our kid. If we’d relied on the advice and wisdom of those allegedly “in the know”, it most likely would have been a disaster.</p>
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<p>This is exactly what I’m talking about. Trying to deal with the reality is most often met with either outright denial or some snide remark. As if I’ve been here for nearly two years and actually “enjoy” talking someone through a process that was difficult for me to grasp. What a rude thing to say. </p>
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<p>Many families? It should be all families. If a parent came here with dreams of Yale for their child, the first question I would ask them is if their child wants to go. </p>
<p>And you’ve made my point exactly. When it’s the child, as it should be, who is dreaming of Brown and Yale, when their test scores and those around them all seem to be pointing th way to those schools, it’s the parents job to encourage that while also preparing the child with matches and safeties they also love.</p>
<p>This thread is starting to resemble the “gifted kids don’t need resources” or “Honors courses are elitest” mindsets that I wouldn’t have expected, here or elsewhere. Perhaps the OP’s making the inquiry was naive, but I don’t think it warranted the dismissive snarkiness.</p>
<p>There definitely are things a high stats kid and family need to know. These things do exist here on CC, but a new member might not know where to find them. It’s a shame that CC’s wonderful helpfulness is running into an odd wall like this in this thread.</p>
<p>I, for one, had no idea PMK’s son had such impressive stats, but her lessons from his experiences, good and bad, could certainly be helpful to a parent of a similar student.</p>
<p>So why all the vitriol to a new poster?</p>
<p>“So why all the vitriol to a new poster?”</p>
<p>That, I never understand.
Though I can see that it would be a little silly to open up such a specific:2250/34Act/3.9 thread…and asking permission is a bit odd. But people who haven’t spent much time on cc may not realize that and other cc etiquette issues.</p>
<p>I don’t think the OP was really asking permission, but rather asking opinions. I thought the initial question simply showed a certain naivete resulting from being new to the process. There is and has been as long as I’ve been reading CC a degree of top-heaviness–that is, parents of high-achieving students and students themselves wondering where their very strong qualifications will get them. Sometimes it is the honors program at their or another state university, sometimes it is a famous private school, and sometimes it is just someplace else. My thinking continues to be that parents new to the process need to know how important realistic goals and varied ambitions are–the classic reach/match/safety scenario. And the safety shouldn’t just be tacked on to a list because it is easy to get into for that particular applicant but because it shares many of the same characteristics as the schools higher on the list. This has ben discussed at length on CC of course but newcomers may not realize that.</p>
<p>It dawned on me as I was reading this thread this morning after having read it and posted on it yesterday that like so many other parents on this board I have a real connection to the OP’s query. That is, although both now-college-graduate children took the Writing exam as an SAT II just before the three-part SAT I came into use, they came very close to matching the OP’s query–one was a 2290/3.8 UW child and the other a 2300/3.7 UW (these were unweighted GPAs at an excellent independent school with rigorous courses even when not designated honors or AP, and both had lots of meaningful but not unique ECs). They had the advantage of excellent college counseling at their school as well as very specific preferences about the kind of school they wanted, and their lists were well selected. To no one’s real surprise, neither was accepted at the one Ivy to which each applied (not the same one), nor to their initial first choice (that is, their ED school); the one with the lower GPA but more unusual resume got into a few more (and slightly higher-ranked) schools and landed on fewer waitlists. In the case of my children they ended up with a lot of good, even enviable, options and were very happy with their eventual choices. But times have changed, competition is more complex than ever, and waitlists are used a lot more, whether as holding tanks or (not successfully in my opinion) to soften disappointment. </p>
<p>In any case, when I see a poster asking about a 2250/3.9 kid, I simply think to myself that this is someone who is admissible, and now the real work begins in terms of finding the “right” schools for a particular applicant.</p>
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This is a joke right? Because that adds up to 110%.</p>
<p>“Though I can see that it would be a little silly to open up such a specific:2250/34Act/3.9 thread”…</p>
<p>yes, and that’s what the thread was titled…nor has the OP come back to clarify or ask further questions…was he/she testing us? or does he/she really want help?</p>
<p>If it’s the latter, fire away…</p>
<p>NoIdeaDad, what are your concerns? I’d like to hear them.</p>
<p>I’m thinking he’s now gotten the message and become “badideadad” and gone away. I hope not. But I wouldn’t blame him.</p>
<p>I don’t see a lot of vitriol on here.</p>