<p>L O C A T I O N
Being in the Northeast or California generally equates to more applications and lower acceptance rates, even where the entering student scores are similar. This is slowly starting to change, particularly at the top-ranked southern and midwestern schools. Until about 10-15 years ago, places like Carleton, WashU and Vandy had MUCH higher acceptance rates. Can you believe that applicants had better than a 50-50 chance of getting into WashU and Vandy during that time? It’s true, though it seems like ancient history now.</p>
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<p>I’m not pitching Wellesley against Brown. At 1500/1600 and 3.8+ UW GPA, Wellesley is a safety for most girls. </p>
<p>BTW, since when is 48% = at least half. =). </p>
<p>Do you honestly believe that for a student with Academic Rank 2 would have an easier time getting into Dartmouth over Northwestern or WashU? Forget easier, same chance? This is why I don’t believe selectivity should be based just SAT range and HS GPA.</p>
<p>^^^ WashU’s decline in acceptance rate has been assisted by an apparent desire to deforest the planet. If you’ve got decent SATs, you’ll need an extra room to store all their mailings. They just began contacting my son, who’s a first-semester HS freshman. More applications = more candidates to reject!</p>
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<p>Yeah, and they’ve been at that game for a long time! I am, by far, the youngest of three kids, and my pack rat mother kept almost all of my older siblings’ college recruiting materials when they were applying in the early to mid-90’s. WashU is very well-represented in that very large box of papers… as are RPI and Case Western, though it is pretty difficult to lure kids to a tech-heavy school who aren’t already interested in that sort of environment. </p>
<p>The funny thing is that my mom’s reluctance to throw anything sentimental away has given me a huge array of historical info about colleges. I can look up the tuition and average entering stats for almost any major college and university during like the 92-93 and 95-96 academic years. For whatever that is worth, ha ha.</p>
<p>“Consider Art schools (RISD), Music schools (Julliard), and the special-focus schools at Cornell in Hotel Management, Industrial Relations, Architecture, and Agriculture. Students attending these special-focus schools have the highest level of ability in those specialties but don’t necessarily have the highest SATs.”</p>
<p>Your argument makes little sense for Cornell’s specialty schools. It is clear that you can demonstrate talent in art and music by sending supplements. How exactly does a 17 year old show special TALENT in a hotel management, industrial relations, architecture, or agriculture though? Be a waiter? lol</p>
<p>They can show well-founded, demonstrated affinity for, or at least interest in, the subject area, perhaps borne of related experience. And they may be able to show talent, for instance via recommendation letters, 4H club membership and awards, etc. In the case of architecture, perhaps relevant talent can in fact be demonstrated via a portfolio of some sort. I don’t know what they actually have to show though, in fact.</p>
<p>Just remembered, I wrote a recommendation letter for a family friend some years ago who was applying to the college of Industrial & Labor Reations. She in fact had worked for a labor union, at some time in some capacity that I don’t recall. Presumably she got a rec letter from someone there, who spoke to her connection with the field; and capabilities if she had demonstrated any. Unfortunately in that case these letters were insufficient to overcome her mediocre academic qualifications, and she was waitlisted into oblivion.</p>
<p>When I got there as a suburban kid, I didn’t realize that this 4H club thing really existed, and was a big deal in some more rural areas. But I learned that it does, and it is.</p>