Son's optimism over UIUC admissions

Applying to College
1

<p>Our son is fairly optimistic over an UIUC admission into their DSC school. </p>

<p>UIUC's published stats as follows (I have deleted the data for other schools.)</p>

<p>Middle 50% of Admited Students
College ACT Score SAT Score High School Class Rank
AHS 26 - 30 1700 - 1985 84% - 95%
DGS 25 - 30 1780 - 2000 80% - 93%
Campus 27 - 32 1860 - 2110 85% - 97% </p>

<p>His interest is to enter DGS(General Study). When he files his priority application in October, his SAT school will be around 1650. His class rank, I guess, will be at 75 to 80%.</p>

<p>The logic of his comfort level is, his SAT is in the 40% to 50% percentile because 1780 minus about 10% is probably around 1602 to 1779 on a normal bell curve. </p>

<p>Granted the admission is a holistic appraisal believed to base primarily on a test score, the school performance, & the essay plus many ther secondary factors, I do not feel as comfortable as he does. I believe that the curve is possibly/likely a very skewed one which may just shoot up very high after 1780 then drastically drop off to almost zero students considering the factor that many of them are already 'self screened' applicants - even though 2 out of 3 in the >20,000 applicants, therefore many will got rejected, yet most fo these will not even be applying to begin with if their SAT/ACT is not within reach of the low point of the published 50% levels. </p>

<p>In my mind, this bottom 25% is therefore filled from a large field of closely competitive candidates. This long line mathematically will equal to about 9 times the number of the students who finally got accepted in this 25% group. Challenging!</p>

<p>Of course, there will be some isolated cases of exception w/ exceptional single 'talent' but I will not assume my will fall into this category.</p>

<p>Please share you insight.</p>

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<p>Your son is VERY optimistic. The 1780 IS the 25%ile of those enrolled. It is not the 50% (the 2000 is the 75%ile). Many of the people in the bottom 25% are recruited for something like sports. 57% of the enrolled are in the top 10% of their class while your son is at 20% or lower.</p>

<p>According to the Common Data Set rigor of schedule and GPA are the most important elements. Next are class rank, application essays, ECs and SATs.</p>

3

<p>Erin’s dad is exactly right. This is a considerable reach given both rank and scores.</p>