<p>Pizzagirl, when our Intel finalist valedictorian gets into H, Y, P, M and rejected at Stanford and you see that over and over again - you begin to wonder. I think Stanford thinks they get enough suburban New Yorkers from Scarsdale and the privates and only takes kids from our school when they are top flight athletes. If you have regional reps, you know that the top students are getting a great education at our school, but I’m not sure Stanford knows that. The Yale and Dartmouth reps come to our college night every year. The Harvard one fairly frequently. A Brown admissions officer has actually said they think our students are a better bet than some from more sheltered schools. But to Stanford we are just an average looking public school. Will one of our top students get in one day? I sure hope so! But I’m not holding my breath.</p>
<p>“That would be a safety? Please advise”
-I am confused - why anybody would waste time looking for such a useless inforamtion?
Do student seriously planning to attend UG based on the rank or the label of “safety”, “reach”, whatever? Big mistake that will backfire in most cases. One got to detrmine which UG fits an applicant personally including wide range of current and potential intersts. This has to be based on deep research, including several visits, overnights, talking to current students, researching potential program/major(s)/minor(s). What label of “safety”, “reach” or nay kind of ranking has to do with it. If student will not make decision based on a serious research, there is a good chance that he/she will not be happy there. Unhappy student cannot produce the happy results and the goal (whatever it is) of UG education for this person may be completely derailed. Up the level or down the level should ONLY reflect the position of each school on YOUR PERSONAL list and not any other list that exist out there. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl you seem to keep missing my point. </p>
<p>My point about the comment between Stanford and Harvard was that for someone like my D1, Harvard could have been a reasonable 4th or 5th choice school to apply to. It was a match. Stanford could never have been. The probability of attending would have been too low to make such an application worthwhile. </p>
<p>The regional bias was not Stanford’s bias against east coast schools, but Harvard’s bias in favor of the top students from public schools in their own region. </p>
<p>I make no judgement as to whether the decisions that were made were reasonable. How could I. </p>
<p>I make no judgements on whether a person’s EC are good enough. How could I. </p>
<p>The only thing the Naviance data could tell me, is that given her GPA and SAT, that the best estimate I could get for her chances were fraction of the dots in her Naviance Neighborhood that were green. </p>
<p>My point is simply that if you have the Naviance data, it can be very useful in assessing the probability of admission. Obviously if there isn’t enough data, the conclusions are less meaningful. </p>
<p>I think Naviance can be very useful, but I don’t think it’s all that useful for the most selective colleges. My kids went to a magnet high school, with a substantial number applying to and attending highly selective colleges. But if you looked at Naviance, you would think that chances for any of them to get into HYPS would be very low. And they are low. But a couple of kids get into one or more of them every year–you may not be able to predict what kid, though. And there just weren’t that many kids in each year applying to any one of these schools.</p>
<p>I think Naviance is much better in figuring out whether a school is a solid match–if your dot is in a nicely populated zone of green dots, you can feel pretty good about it.</p>
<p>Let me add that Naviance might be useful in learning that a school that is a match for others is a reach for you. I just think it breaks down a bit for schools that are reaches for virtually everyone.</p>
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<p>You’re not trying to predict which kids get in.
You’re not trying to predict whether you will get in.
You’re only trying to estimate the probability of admissions conditioned on GPA and SAT.
In our suburban public school there is certainly enough data to do so for most of the top schools. I suspect there is enough data for your magnet school also. </p>
<p>If what you describe is true then the probability of admissions IS low. Is it 30% or 10% or lower? It it lower than the admissions probabilities supplied by the schools?</p>
<p>I’ll bet that you would find some surprises looking through the Naviance data. Some schools will admit your students at a rate much higher than the norm, and some much lower. That is the benefit. The example I gave between Harvard and Stanford illustrates how wide the discrepancy can be. </p>
<p>I guess I didn’t see much of a discrepancy for any of the most selective schools. They accepted a small percentage of the kids who applied. Sometimes you could figure out that it was a kid with a hook, and sometimes you couldn’t (we also observed this from kids we knew). We knew a kid who was a Stanford legacy who was rejected by Stanford (not even waitlisted) and admitted by MIT, as well as a couple of Ivies (if I recall correctly).</p>
<p>It’s my view that if a kid is interested in the very most selective schools, and has the kind of stats and achievement that make admission plausible, it’s very hard to make any kind of educated prediction about which ones will take him (if he doesn’t have a hook–and to some extent, even if he has one). There are just too many unknown factors at work. Even the fact that no kid from the high school was admitted there in the last five years may not actually represent any kind of pattern.</p>
<p>Let me add that you did begin to see some interesting patterns as you went to somewhat less selective schools–perhaps in the neighborhood of Vanderbilt, or Emory, or Tufts. You began to see some schools that seemed to care more about scores than GPA, or the reverse, and some that seemed to be waitlisting “overqualified” applicants (although Tufts did not exhibit this). So I don’t entirely disagree with ClassicRockerDad–I just think it’s much less likely to see those patterns for Harvard, Stanford, etc., unless you’re talking about a high school with many kids applying to and being accepted to those schools.</p>
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<p>I do not think that 100% guarantee is a good proxy for the term safety school. Further the definition of guaranteed affordability is also very fluid. It is good to remember that the finances in Year 1 might be drastically different from the subsequent years as most financial aid is on annual renewals. </p>
<p>Of course, I also profoundly dislike the term safety as it:</p>
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<li>contains a pejorative connotation of lower quality</li>
<li>and is confused with guaranteed admissions. </li>
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<p>In my book, the old “safety, match, reach” mantra should be rewritten as “highly likely, likely, and … unlikely” </p>
<p>Those possibilities are hard to define in general terms as every application is unique. For some students, their local state schools, including the big names in California and Michigan, are as close as a guarantee as they come. Despite the claims of holistic reviews, most schools still rely on numerical rankings that define a class “must admit” class. Unless one believes that the “scorecard” used at UCDavis has no counterpart in Berkeley, Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, or Madison! </p>
<p>As far as the Naviance goes, it is helpful but also could be misleading as it does not report the individual attributes that separate admissions from rejections. Where are the LOR, essays, SES, financial needs, and character elements? </p>
<p>Also, what should we look at? The admissions or the enrollment? For instance, there is a tremendous number of cross-applications between Stanford and Cal (as most competitive local students apply to all the top schools) and there is a reasonable number of cross-admits. Yet, the enrollment data shows that only a handful students who were admitted at both schools end up attending Cal. Looking at enrolled students’ numbers might not be the same as looking at the admitted numbers, and especially at schools where the yields are vastly different. </p>
<p>ClassicRockerDad pointed to local preferences. Don’t you think that Dean Shaw has a good idea about which student from Harker or Gunn will seize his invitation to join Stanford and ignore Cal’s siren calls? And which kid from Boston Latin might opt for one of the other HYP? And don’t you think it plays a role when making the final decisions? </p>
<p>In the end, it is ALL a matter of common sense. </p>
<p>I can see that safety seems pejorative with respect to the schools, but I think “unlikely” seems a bit pejorative to the students.</p>
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<p>… why Stanford is so right in determining that such artificial and manipulated competition should play little role in college admissions, and there is enough salient information in the rest of the application to separate the real aspiring scientists from the StonyBrook paint-by-the-numbers gurus! </p>
<p>Fwiw, the real action for the Intel competition is at the semi-finalist level. The final decisions come out way late in the decision process. </p>
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<p>Chances are Stanford’s Dean of Admissions knows your school well from his Yale years! Shaw led Yale’s undergraduate admissions and financial aid office from 1993 to 2005! ;)</p>
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<p>True! Would “less likely” work better? Of course, we live in a world that describes admissions at HYPS as crapshoot and pure lottery. We might find a whole lot of better terms to describe schools with singkle admission rates. </p>
<p>How 'bout St. Jude schools? He’s the saint of hopeless causes. ;)</p>
<p>I put all the schools my son applied to in a spread sheet and then used the sort function. I could sort by GPA, percent in the top 10% of the class, percent of applicants accepted, and by math or verbal SAT scores, or the combo. Then I’d have fun sorting them into gradations of color from most to least likely. Amusingly the only sorting that accurately predicted where younger son got in (and it was perfect if you accounted for the EA admissions rate at Chicago) was the percent of applicants accepted. For older son - a student with higher stats - the system broke down - as one might expect for the lottery schools dominant list. </p>
<p>xiggi, it wasn’t just Intel winners, but other awards and achievements as well. I’ve yet to see a Stanford acceptance that wasn’t an athlete. (And in at least one case also a legacy and URM.)</p>
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<p>Mathmom, you might hear the same thing from many places around the country. When Ty Montgomery was accepted at Stanford, the parents of the highly ranked students complained --including right here on CC. After all he was a black athlete! But schools look for future contributions in college and thereafter. One can assume they are pretty good at handicapping the chances of particular students to contribute based on past records. How many students are there with great HS credentials who drop their “passions” for science and music the day they enter college? Schools are no fools! </p>
<p>But it is an undeniable fact that Stanford attracts many of the very best athletes who could do the work as keeping the Director’s Cup is important to the balance of the school. Furher, the school is a very active participant in the Questbridge program, looks at Gates Millennium with a tender eye, and works hard at hitting less advantaged areas of the country. But is also attracts plenty of “mathletes” … all contributing to making it the most selective school in the nation in terms of admissions. </p>
<p>There are indeed patterns in applications. I will gladly agree with you that it is harder for students from schools such as St Marks or Jesuit in Dallas to get the nod than it is for students from less advantaged parts of Texas, and this transcends ethnicities. On the other hand, athletic talent and lower SES do play an important role. </p>
<p>That is simply the nature of the beast, and will remain so for a long time! And why people who recognize the patterns gain some advantages in finding a better fit. In the end, the system does work … most of the times. </p>
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IMO, only if you are overly sensitive. It is unlikely I will toss heads 5 times in a row, but I don’t feel like I am dissing the penny! It is by definition unlikely any particular student will get accepted to Stanford, excepting recruited athletes and people with their family’s name on a building. That isn’t pejorative towards that student in any way that I can see. Either your application measures up to a certain level for a particular school combined with all the other factors that go into that school’s admissions landscape, or it doesn’t.</p>
<p>I remember advocating something very similar to “highly likely, likely, and unlikely” a few years ago, except I think for the middle one I replaced it with something like “50-50” or “even chances”. Doesn’t flow as well, but I was trying to basically divide into 3 simple groups. On the positive side of 50-50 by a fair amount (an intuitive version of 2 standard deviations), straddling that line, and below that line by those same 2 SDs. Whatever the terminology, I heartily agree with xiggi’s sentiments on this.</p>
<p>Also with regard to Stanford, we have to keep in mind it is a very exceptional case. How many schools have their overall academic stats and compete at such a high level athletically? NU, Duke, … Vandy is high level but not Stanford level. And many years they were not all that competitive, and neither was Duke except for basketball and lacrosse in term of visible sports (and I am being generous to lacrosse there). NU has mostly been non-competitive athletically, with a few years of exceptions in football. Anyway, you get the idea. To focus too much on Stanford is to focus on the exception rather than the rule, at least in discussing athletics.</p>
<p>What was wrong with “HMFR”? It’s descriptive, memorable, and accurate. </p>
<p>Well, not very comprehensive, no matter how descriptive.</p>
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<p>I disagree. You (Data10) gave one exception and ucbalumnus gave 2 exceptions. Three exceptions don’t make a rule, or invalidate my rule of thumb. At the vast majority of selective schools, where the acceptance rate is less than 30 percent, for the vast majority of students applying, that school is going to be a reach. Hunter and UT Autin may be exceptions, and an applicant would be smart to look closely at schools to determine if their admissions policies are quirky. I think you are doing CC readers a huge disservice to argue that there is not a connection between a college’s admit rate and your chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>There are quite a few exceptions. A lot of CUNY’s and Cal States have low acceptance rates.</p>
<p>There is a strong connection between a college’s admit rate and the average applicant’s chance of admission. That’s not the same at all as “your” chance of admission. Even at a school with 7% admission, a certain number of applicants have much higher (and lower) chances of admission. But at those schools, very, very few people have better than 50% chance of admission, which I why you’d better treat it as a reach even if you have a gold-plated hook.</p>