<p>Hello everyone. I would like to ask all of you for a little bit of advice regarding applying to colleges via QB. Harvard is probably my number one choice school, and unfortunately not a partner with QB. They have opened up their SCEA this year, which has the potential of increasing my chances to get in. On the other hand, ranking the 4 non-binding QB schools may be better due to a higher chance of being accepted at at least one (MIT/Yale/Princeton/Stanford; close seconds to Harvard and I'd be more than happy to go to these schools).</p>
<p>To sum up: Would I have a better chance with QB National match or Harvard SCEA.</p>
<p>Little about my stats:
-2260 SAT
-3 760s SATII
-4.0/1st in class
-Science oriented ECs, with research involved.
-Family of 3, less than 20,000 per year (0 EFC)
-Permanent resident of US, but immigrant from Europe.
-Not first generation</p>
<p>That’s a tough question – if you’re not a URM or first generation college student, your odds of getting into the top-4 non-binding QB schools is probably less than the odds of getting into Harvard: well under 5 percent between the four of them.</p>
<p>My son applied to MIT and Yale via Questbridge last year and didn’t get matched to either, ED or RD. He’s white, both parents have completed college and he had a 36.0 ACT and a 1/400 class rank, plus dual 800 SAT II’s.</p>
<p>He did get matched to Brown, Amherst, Williams and Northwestern during RD – all fine top-notch schools. He chose Brown, but had a tough time when it was his turn to say “no” to the others.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input. I am not URM, but I am a European citizen which is a slight hook, I’ve been told. I am also a woman in science so I feel that’s unique as well. I didn’t know it was less than 5%, where are these numbers from?</p>
<p>A higher-end guess. Only about 10% of the finalists get matched during the first round. Back out the URMs and 1st generation students who are most likely to get placed, then back out those students placed with the other binding schools besides MIT/Yale/Princeton/Stanford, and you very likely have less than 5% of the candidates placed. I recall reading that Princeton took 14 applicants out of 2700 last year in the match round - about one-half of one percent.</p>
<p>I don’t think being a European citizen is a plus, but being a woman in physics or engineering would be – a woman in biology/pre-med would not be.</p>
<p>Being a European citizen, especially being born there and speaking the language is a definite plus because it brings diversity to the campus. Schools boast about those statistics all the time. As for the chances of getting into one of the nation match schools, a large part of it is 0 EFC which I doubt all the applicants in your estimate have. Just a thought.</p>
<p>^
Are you a permanent resident? If not, there are only 4 schools that you can apply to.</p>
<p>As far as who has got in where and their ethnicities as pertain to certain schools, the only thing you can do is go through the student profiles for the past few years and click on every student and compile your own data.</p>
<p>Of course diversity is a plus; the question is whether your particular diversity is scarce relative to the demand for it. I would say the supply of Europeans educated well enough to succeed at an Ivy League school is much greater than the supply of well-educated URMs who grew up attending poor inner-city American schools.</p>
<p>In any case, any advantage you would have as a European would apply equally whether you chose Harvard SCEA or the first Questbridge Match round. Why not go with your first choice first? SCEA at Harvard should give you an edge. By contrast, the vast majority of QB candidates get placed during the regular decision round – if you were to get into MIT/Yale/Princeton/Stanford during the match round, you would certainly also get in during the RD round. </p>
<p>And at these schools, the RD financial aid package would be pretty much the same. My son’s out-of-pocket cost was $3000 a year, based on some work-study and a summer job. Effectively, this amounts to free tuition and free room and board, with the $3000 covering books, travel expenses, and minor personal out-of-pocket costs.</p>
<p>That’s actually a good idea, thanks. I’ll take a look. :)</p>
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<p>That is true, but my country is very small and suffered a lot after the soviet union collapse. I only point this out to say that there’s a huge difference between well-educated wealthy Europeans and where I come from, and it’s a part of my QB story. </p>
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<p>Congrats to your son, he is very lucky, and I appreciate you sharing from personal experience. The reason behind ranking schools instead of applying to Harvard was that I would have a better chance (4 vs 1 kind of deal, if you will). That’s my I made this thread, because I started to question how founded that assumption was.</p>
<p>So you think if I would be matched this round but didn’t rank, I would still get in regular decision? Is there any advantage to ranking non-binding schools then? Financially you have to have 0 EFC anyway so it would stand to reason you’d get the same package during the regular round too.</p>
<p>I think your odds are better applying to Harvard SCEA than to 4 non-binding Questbridge colleges. From what I read on CC, Princeton only took 14 QB match-round applicants last year, just over one-half percent of the 2748 finalists. Yale, according to this link, has taken 75 match-round applicants over the last 4 years, about 19 a year, for an acceptance rate under 0.7%. I would assume the other two schools would also be in this ballpark:
[Frequently</a> Asked Questions - QuestBridge Program | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/faq/questbridge-program]Frequently”>QuestBridge Program | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)</p>
<p>The acceptance rates in RD are much higher (at Yale, 240 vs 75 over 4 years). QB schools have to pay the program a fee for every match acceptance (I read around $30,000) PLUS give those students free tuition. Naturally, these schools are inclined to mainly cherry-pick those students they need most during the initial round: URMs and 1st generation college students and those who might have a particular talent in sports or music which needs to be filled.</p>
<p>It makes sense. Thanks for doing so much research on this, I appreciate it. It’s looking like I’ll be applying to Harvard SCEA and doing the QB regular decisions round. If I do become a finalist is that something that should be listed as an honor when applying to Harvard?</p>