Rooming next to a lifeguard with AP credit in environmental science?!
How do these kids cope? It must be devastating.
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So many on CC tell parents and students that it is not all about stats: scores and grades. And often once you meet a benchmark, admission is about other things. A 35 ACT does not have a better chance than a 34, etc.
I am curious about the music EC’s, since music is often a help with admissions. Granted, violin is a competitive instrument. Did this student submit a music supplement with recording.video, music resume and music letters of recommendation? What orchestras was she involved in, did she win any awards, what solo performance was involved?
I would also ask if the online classes taken outside of high school were adequately explained as a response to the lower quality of classes at the high school. I would not expect the GC to write that so that explanation would be up to the applicant, perhaps in a supplementary essay. It always helps to explain things, and an authentic desire for quality would be better than appearing to enhance and application.
Congrats on the acceptances and no usefulness in looking back, so I suppose my questions are for others reading this thread, so apologies if I am causing any regrets with my post!
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My daughters were accepted to UMASS bringing the cost down to in state, maybe the OP’s daughter will be dorming next to students like them, top of their class, AP honors with distinction, varsity captains, top 1% test scores, who also had jobs all though HS and several over summers (no fancy academic programs for them). There are many top students at public universities because they need merit to make it affordable who worked as hard if not harder than those waitlisted at t20’s.
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Strong “not our kind, dear” energy there, to be sure.
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Yes, we need an update from @Andres_A on Ivy Day and what the O in OSU stands for!
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To provide an update on candidate’s train ride:
Harvard - waitlist
U Penn - reject
Yale - reject
Princeton - reject
Columbia - reject (parent alum)
Yes, from this crop of “need the magic silver bullet” Ivy schools, the expectation was more along the lines of 2/10. And while 0/10 would not have been an improbability, combined with the poor outcomes at the other T30, even though some folks here will say the first post list is also “silver bullet” schools, the combination does show something askew from norms. (T30 schools reputations are most definitely more dependent on quantitative rankings than the Ivies. E.g., if Tufts dropped from 29 to 39, it would be a significant blow than Brandeis hanging around in the 30-40s).
There is refinement needed to the explanations proposed so far – it goes something like this: it appears that during the covid-cancel-kids years, performance music was disproportionately affected. Basically within the classical music community, no live performances were held. All suspended. For an entrepreneurial mind, that might spur a musically focused student to innovate by developing another outlet such as virtual teaching. Not all artists love technology. For the most, honing new pieces and maintaining their repertoire takes time, and there is rarely enough of it. The “no room at the Inn” issue, therefor, appears this year to be particularly acute for candidates whose “hook” is orchestral music but are not going the conservatory route. This was a early-fall decision change by candidate, ostensibly attributable to 1.5 years of “cancelled” music (compare to athletics back in < 6 months). Among those who opted to defer for a year from the class of 2025 to join the class of 2026, it appears that a disproportionate number of those may have been violinists.
Candidate likely could have improved odds of acceptance at Harvard - based on as other have noted, the significance of performing arts on campus, with Early Action. If there were openings for 10 freshman violinist in HRO, the first 10 in to claim the prize apparently walked away with it. In times not that long ago, this was more fluid, and musical accomplishments counted for more than filling a seat “recruit style”. For candidate, having genuine interest in other schools (and limited opportunities to “pick one” based on traditional campus visits) she opted to do early action to OSU instead. OSU is infamous for their in-state numbers game on a HS-by-HS basis. There is always some “guaranteed to get in” by the numbers candidate - basically beyond 99% for the school - dumbfounded by a rejection letter. So yes, of course this stuff happens, someone past the 90-ith percentile appears to the schools as though they are in the 10-th percentile, but always there is some peculiar considerations behind it (like spreading out state dollars in proportion to votes). Also legacy doesn’t seem to count for anything, possibly even put at a disadvantage relative to FGIC.
The two schools candidate physically visited were OSU and U Rochester. Cost savings at OSU would be meaningful to candidate’s family, but classmates preceding her from her HS have struggled there for a number of reasons (typical “big State U” issues like class size, feeling lost, etc.; rooming next to folks who held summer jobs not so much - that is just trying to stir an anti-elitist pot and isn’t in the least big constructive. What is more likely to be disturbing is rooming next to someone who goofed their way through HS by had that all compelling “hook” - athletics. Yes, it’s everywhere, but Big State U’s tend to have a much higher proportion. It wasn’t long ago that Harvard depended on new-to-sport walk-on’s for sports like crew and fencing to round out their teams). USF would be 100% free (applied to as the 2021 HS class #1 is attending there on full ride + stipend; with the change to Benequisto it would be tuition + r/b for her). USF also has a largely marketed (although nor sure of quality) a 7 year BS-MD track that is available to candidate. The wash out rate from this “track” appears to be rather high in the first year.
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Hi OP. I’m very sorry that your D did not have better admissions results. I do think Rochester is an excellent school and there will be many, many kids there that excel and are motivated like your D. She can find her people there, to be sure.
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Big universities tend to have a smaller proportion of recruited athletes than smaller schools with similar sets of sports teams, because sports team sizes do not change with school size.
However, many of the more selective big universities tend to be much more flexible with academic requirements for recruited athletes than the more selective smaller schools are.
I.e. among more selective schools, big universities have a smaller percentage of athlete hook students, but the magnitude of the hook for each individual athlete hook student could be significantly larger.
Many of these BA/BS → MD programs have a high college GPA requirement to stay in the program. For USF’s program this GPA is 3.60 first year and 3.70 afterward, according to 7-Year B.S./M.D. Program .
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I know what you wrote - which apparently wasn’t what you meant. Are you my wife’s long lost twin sister? 
Disagree with your claim, regardless of whether it referred to REA, SCEA or ED.
For my son, REA to Harvard worked out superbly. Harvard REA applied, admitted. Yale RD applied, Admitted with academic (YES-W) likely letter.
His HS’s naviance indicated REA apps to Harvard had twice the admit rate of RD apps, while Yale admit rates were basicly a wash early vs. RD.
In a situation like that REA is an obvious choice.
The fact that it worked out for your son is sweet and irrelevant. Obviously it will work out for someone; at no school is 100% of the student body hooked. But the actual admit rate for unhooked applicants is well below the overall published admit rate at these schools, and that, frankly, makes it a poor choice to waste the one and only early shot there, and in so doing, forfeit your chance for an ED to Rice or Vandy or wherever.
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OP, how committed is your D to becoming a doctor?
I ask because my D will be applying to med school this cycle, and it is pretty scary.
Google Table A-23 AAMC and also google Table A-18. Table 23 will show you that even for kids who have grades and MCAT scores in the top bracket the AAMC reports, 16% of those kids don’t get into ANY US MD medical school in any given year. And Table 18 shows you the grades and MCAT scores of accepted applicants according to race.
I bet your D would have no problem continuing to be a high achiever, so the high GPA threshhold at USF won’t be a problem. And honestly, to get into any med school, she’d have to have that kind of a high GPA anyway. To me, the issue is the 16% of the high achievers who don’t get into ANY MD med school every year with those top stats.
Even if med schools accept those high achievers in later years after they’ve done more work, being postponed really hurts kids who are lower SES and/or female applicants who know they want to have kids.
If your D’s not 100% sure she wants to be a doctor, though, I think the 7 year program is a tough sell since I think the 1 year reduction (it would normally take 8 years for undergrad & med school) is taken from the undergraduate years, so the program would be narrowly focused and intense. And your D would miss some of the other great opportunities available in college for different electives.
Wishing your D all the best as you all parse through the options.
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As mentioned in another CC post, Harvard had 3% acceptance rate this cycle. That includes all of the recruited athletes, URM applicants, first generation, children of Harvard employees, children of major donors, children of the rich and famous, and whatever percentage it sets aside for international applicants. I’m glad that REA worked out for your son, and the fact that he was also admitted to Yale RD suggests that he either had a hook, or some extraordinary achievement(s) far beyond what the typical Harvard/Yale applicant has (or both). That said, the odds of acceptance for most kids applying to Harvard are pretty close to 0% whether they apply REA or RD.
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Jumping in here late. My D, with impeccable credentials was waitlisted at 8 selective schools. It is beyond frustrating and inexplicable. Rejected by 7 and admitted to 4. Her best option right now is UNC and we are grateful for that. She will try to work on about half the WL schools, but the numbers are not promising. Very tough year and very hard for kids who worked so hard and sacrificed so much. But, onward we go. Good luck to OP and all the others in the same boat.
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Honestly, I think this attitude about some EC’s and paths being so much better than others is what often gets kids (and parents) in this situation. Colleges don’t want their entire freshman class to be made up of those who studied “Comp Sci at Columbia or violin at X program”. They want some kids who spent their summers lifeguarding - kids learn valuable skills working and some kids do have to earn some money over the summers. They want diversity of experiences. How boring would it be if an entire freshman class was made up of kids who were exactly the same?
We sat in on a presentation given by an AO at a top school and he said they get calls every year from parents angry that their child with a perfect application was not admitted when someone else they know with a less perfect application was. He said that we should think of building a freshman class like drafting a football team. A football team does not want all quarterbacks. They want players at every position. You might be a good quarterback, but if they already have a quarterback you might be rejected while a good tight end is admitted instead.
Personally I think that kids who do the “right” activities just because they think it will look good on their college applications are making a big mistake. When a college is reading thousand and thousand of applications, those who show passion for their activities, regardless of what those activities are, probably stand out. A student with good grades who was a lifeguard because they loved it or because they needed the money and writes an excellent essay about their summer experiences might catch the eye of an admission officer. A student who did not have time to study comp sci at Columbia because they needed to work to help support their family, and was able to do so while maintaining their GPA, says a lot about what type of student they might be in college. Or a student who took AP environmental science because they have a passion for the subject and it shows through other activities, might make a lot of sense to an AO over someone who took AP Anatomy simply to have another AP to put on their app. Sometimes I think parents seen admissions as checking the boxes of building a perfect, if not boring, application.
I completely get how frustrating this process is when you KNOW your child is “worthy” and they don’t get the love you feel they deserve from the schools they apply. But I think the take away needs to be that spending all of high school trying to build the perfect application in order to be successful in the college application process may not be the right choice. I think kids should study hard, take classes that interest them, make connections with teachers, get involved in activities they enjoy, have some fun and start to develop into well-rounded humans.
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Amen!
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This cycle BU (and Northeastern) were reaches for most everyone.
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Thank you to the person who posted the helpful information about reaching out to the director of Harvard’s orchestra. It seems that post has vanished. Could you please repost (or direct message to me) that information?
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I believe that may have been @parentologist
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She may have more luck with those waitlists than in another year! They may also start pulling earlier from those lists.
A lot of kids applying to more colleges than in previous years but they cannot attend them all. Spots will open up.
I am pushing my kid right now to pull the lever and accept her school and tell the other schools to release her accepted spots. Other kids are waiting for these.
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I assume you mean academically goofed? I always figured that division I recruitable athletes worked incredibly hard at their sport to achieve that level of success, with a few exceptions.
Today my kid and I were discussing the issue of whether “luck” was a factor in Ivy admissions. Kid said “yes for many kids, but some earned it. Like Chloe Kim.” To my kid, achieving that level of athletic success is something that she celebrates even if it means there isn’t a spot for herself (more academic kid) at the particular school. There is no right or wrong, but I think a lot of athletes weren’t goofing off (overall) in high school.
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