I believe all you can predict is whether a kid is likely to make it past first cut. Then the hard part begins.
No, you do not need state or national awards. You need some savvy, some larger perspective than your own little hs, and some sense of what that college is about and likes to see. And that’s rare. (And it’s not claiming, “But I went to an info session and the rep said…”)
In order to believe in crapshoot or lottery, you have to believe all apps from high stats kids are great apps.
I do believe some instances defy explanation. Our daughters experience in the admissions process I found peculiar.
She applied to 15 colleges and was waitlisted at 5, rejected by 2, Brown and Princeton. She applied to 8 elite schools and was accepted by 1, Middlebury. She came off the waitlist to be accepted by Cornell and Harvard. So 3 for 8 at Elite Schools, with 2 of those schools coming off the waitlist.
She had a very high GPA, she was only mid range as it relates to standardized scores at the most elite schools.
She had shown some remarkable resilience in High School, battling anorexia for two years while involved in many extracurriculars, she started a club in school to assist others with body image. She was her classes valedictorian. To accomplish what she accomplished while battling anorexia was truly remarkable. Her common app essay was about her eating disorder.
Why did her application resonate with some admissions officers and not others?
The Middlebury admissions officer said that her application was one of his favorites, her Harvard admission officer told us it was her character that made the difference for her.
A sweet story relating to coming off the waitlist at Harvard. On May 13th of 2014 our daughter called me at my office and said “Dad are you sitting down” I said “don’t tell me you have come off the waitlist to be accepted at Harvard”. She said “Dad, I have come off the waitlist to be accepted at Harvard”. Then she started to cry, then I started to cry.
We are so thankful but I cannot say I entirely understand the process.
@Greatkid -Congrats to your daughter!
Your DD wrote a risk essay. It was a risk because it could be the thing that drew attention and set her apart from other applicants (good) – but could possibly be offputting to some (bad). So your DD had strong academics, leadership & community involvement…and she made her essay memorable by writing the essay that some students would be afraid to write and many well-meaning parents or guidance counselors would advise against. I’m sure you were probably aware of the risks and may have agonized over it at the time.
And taking risks can be a very effective strategy overall. It could have been what got my DD accepted at U. of Chicago a decade ago – different type of essay, but equally risky.
So your daughter’s results didn’t fit a pattern because she followed a path that was bound to produce unpredictable results. Fortunately she got lucky where it counted, and it turned out that one of the handful who were favorably impressed by her essay was that Harvard admission officer.
There is no formula as it is said thousands of times in these boards. This year both the girl that got into MIT and the girl that got into Yale from our high school absolutely did NOT have any state or national awards. Brilliant girls with high gpa and high sats and nice ECs but in the mortal range. Robotics, student council and local volunteering. Those are my kid’s close friends, we grew up together. Also the boy most wanted this year was a boy with a weighted gpa of 3.9, unweighted 3.6! Another brilliant kid, huge SATs and in this case a killer EC. He was told he will be viewed as a slacker and the bulk of his app were very reasonable schools. This kid was not even sure about his rec letters since some times he would not return homework. Just in the last minute he added a bunch of tipy tops and he got in every single one. I am sure all three kids impressed the schools some how but it is not like they checked some rubric like some posters suggest. None was a URM, all middle class, and the high school very average and urban.
I am not saying that admissions are random and everybody has a chance. Far from it.
Your right calmom . We knew her essay was a risk. We, mostly I, agonized over it because I knew it could have been perceived negatively. She had worked so hard, I didn’t want her to miss out on opportunities. Initially she was going to submit another essay, she came to my wife and I and said “Mom and Dad, I have to write about my experience with an eating disorder.” She felt like she wasn’t being authentic if she didn’t, I was incredibly proud of her and incredibly concerned for her at the same time. It is likely that the honesty and openness of her essay was a deciding factor both positively and negatively.
My opinion is that most elite admits have something very compelling going for them in addition to outstanding academic success.
But maybe not “about an eating disorder,” alone, but what she made of it, how she reflected, grew, came through it, and what that showed adcoms. That’s different than the frequent example of kids who just want to tell what holds them back. Congrats to her.
It’s not about the risky essay as much as how you form it.
My son wrote his Why Chicago essay about all the reasons he didn’t want to go there, and why he changed his mind. It was quite funny. The first line was “I thought my parents were crazy when they suggested I apply to the University of Chicago”. (We know they liked it because they said so.) The risky essay can be quite effective, but may have uneven results. I don’t think GreatKid’s results are so unexpected. It sounds like she was one of the too many who are perfectly good contenders, but not quite shoo-ins. Congrats to her!
This.
For some kids, it’s unthinkable to give up your shot at Stanford (or its equivalent) and consider the idea of a binding commitment to a slightly less elite school. But using ED in this way can be a very effective strategy for those whose personalities permit it.
And going to WashU is a very good outcome, after all.
Agreed mathmom, we never believed her to be a shoo- in at any elite schools. Certainly viable but not a shoo-in. As odd as this may sound and as much as I hate the thought of it, her eating disorder and how she had dealt with it could very well have been the thing that tipped the scales at Harvard for her. I wouldn’t wish what she experienced and what we as a family experienced on anyone! It was horrible, and so very scary.
She worked in the Harvard admissions office last Summer and all the admissions people knew who she was. She would say to me “Dad it is a little creepy, they know so much about me.” We are so thankful that her admissions officer advocated for her so strongly.
I also believe/know that most students and parents have no idea as to the level of competition for acceptance at elite schools.
So are there any good strategies for this? (My guess is they would be about as effective as “Beating The House At Slots!” types of strategies, lol…) Aside from the obvious “If you love it most use it” how do you help a smart but inexperienced young person not make a regrettable choice?
@Postmodern, I don’t think you can.
Some kids simply can’t get their heads around the idea of giving up all hope of going to Stanford in exchange for a better shot at Wash U. They would regret all their lives that they didn’t try for Stanford.
Other kids not only would be willing but may think of the idea themselves. (My daughter thought of it herself, although the schools in question were different.) She was far more concerned about reducing her chances at her WashU-equivalent than about taking a shot at a super-elite school.
I don’t think you can turn one of these types of kid into the other.
I think it also matters what high school the student attends. If your HS routinely sends several students to elite schools every year, it can be relatively easy to predict who will be accepted each year. Certainly, the best students at the top boarding and day schools absolutely know they will be accepted to a relatively small bunch of elite schools.
One of S freshman roommates at Harvard was the Val at a nearby public HS - a nice kid and a good student with no hooks, and not national award winning or particularly brilliant. Harvard likes to show the love to its neighborhood. Brown usually accepts the val or sal at local high schools, assuming test scores and ECs are very good and the kid applies ED.
One the other hand, a non-hooked val from a school that rarely sends students to elite schools is unlikely to be accepted…with one caveat, the school is podunk enough to offer geographical diversity.
And sometimes, a college will look at an applicant and realize he/she is not a good fit for their school, even though everything else checks the boxes that the student is extremely qualified to attend.
Both my kids got into exactly the schools that fit their personalities and styles. I think that was no accident. Those essays were revelatory to any adcomm who was paying attention. CS/math major with three major national awards in his field? I am certain some schools looked at him and knew he’d be much happier elsewhere. We had a similar experience with my S who was interested in LACs. He got into the mid-sized research schools, but was rejected/waitlisted at all of the LACs. I’m sure his interests and opinions, as reflected in his essays, telegraphed where he would be a better fit.
IMHO, it’s all about the essays. Risk, reveal, reflect.
The Ivy League is an athletic conference with a disparate set of schools that are quite different.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia seem to be significantly more selective these days than the bottom half of that conference.
Cornell is more like non-conference peers than those 4.
“And sometimes, a college will look at an applicant and realize he/she is not a good fit for their school, even though everything else checks the boxes that the student is extremely qualified to attend.”
And that comes from your full app. Every question is, in effect, a test. Kids should know the colleges they target and the whys. And how they match- for the 4 years.
I’d also add this to CountingDown’s insight: “Risk, reveal, reflect,” but also the 4th R: make your essay Relevant. Means both relevant to what those schools look for and, generally, relevant to the kid you are now, not pre-hs.
Ivies and other private schools claim that 50 percent of their students are from public HS. However, only 10 percent of US kids go to private schools. To increase one chances (by close to 90 percent), the first step is to go to a private HS. I have witnessed this in my own neighborhood where our elite public HS may send 2-3 kids a year to an Ivy + Stanford whereas the good (but not as good academically) nearby private HS sends close 30 (and it is a smaller school so percentage wise, it is a huge difference). A lot of it has to do with ‘packaging’ and how close the counselors are to those in the admissions office. The counselors in private HS have the time and energy to advocate for each kid. I hope the kids from good public HS don’t beat themselves up; the odds are against them for reasons beyond their control.
@marian The overall acceptance rate at Cornell is 14% - I don’t know if that can be described as “not that difficult to get into” LOL
Okay. This is admittedly very silly. But was fun to construct and probably has some validity. For non-hooked applicants with top stats, it is the last element (“Great & Unique Essays, Wonderful Recs & Interviews”) that is next to impossible to judge from the multitude of “chance me” posts on CC, but probably is the source of the non-random clustering (i.e., where, for two applicants with similar stats, one gets in to many elite schools, the other none).
+-------------+ Yes +-----------------------+ Yes
|Famous, etc.?+------> |Meets minimal baseline?+------> You're In! ;)
+-----+-------+ +-----------------+-----+
| | No
| No |
+-----v--------+ No +---> Sorry :-(
|Great Student?+------> Sorry :-(
+-----+--------+
|
| Yes
+-----v-------------------------+ Yes
|URM? Recruited Athlete? Legacy?+--------> You're In! :x
+-----+-------------------------+
|
| No
+-----v------------------------------+ No
|Top half a percent stats? +------> Sorry :-(
|(GPA 3.9+, SAT 1500+, ACT 34+, etc.)|
+-----+------------------------------+
|
| Yes
+-----v--------+ No
|Fantastic ECs?+--------> Sorry :-(
+-----+--------+
|
| Yes
+-----v--------------------------------------------+ No
|Great & Unique Essays, Wonderful Recs & Interviews+--------> Sorry :-(
+-----+--------------------------------------------+
|
| Yes
v
You're In! ^:)^
@foosondaughter - Nice chart, but just want to comment that being a URM can be a healthy bump, but not a guarantee of getting in.
Re #57
URM and ordinary legacy are like nowhere near recruited athlete in effect.