<p>Bovertine, read a book or two.</p>
<p>jym626, She didn’t sweep them, she got 9 out of 10 (Harvard said no, LOL!). She does not have a secret, but she is a really compelling lady. We are very proud of her.</p>
<p>
You first, then share your new experience. I’d suggest “The Price of Admission” by Golden.</p>
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I’m sitting here reading this and wondering who actually wants to go to school with a group of people who think they are perfect? That would seem insufferable to me. Even DS remarks on some of the kids at his school who have become rather arrogant, pretentious, and insufferable. They are not people he cares to be around.</p>
<p>Do the Ivies have a box to screen for that too?</p>
<p>ETA: S and I even have an inside joke about one of the other mothers who always comments when she sees me about how well her S is doing and how he gets “upset” if he gets anything less than a perfect score. The kid himself seems pretty normal, but his mother is a bit overbearing. I got the feeling she was rather disappointed when he decided he wanted to go to the local State U.</p>
<p>Gourmet mom–</p>
<p>Not to be disrespectful, but it isn’t actually true that those who are poor have an advantage in the admissions game…at all. Do you have a source for this? My sources say, no.</p>
<p>[The</a> Nation’s 15 Richest and Stingiest Colleges - CBS MoneyWatch.com](<a href=“MoneyWatch: Financial news, world finance and market news, your money, product recalls updated daily - CBS News”>MoneyWatch: Financial news, world finance and market news, your money, product recalls updated daily - CBS News)</p>
<p>From the article: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sylvan: Nothing in my post said anything about “perfect people”. My post discusses the “application”. Why did you say that?</p>
<p>There is no magic formula to get into Harvard. Harvard does not require specific high school courses, nor even a high school diploma for admission. Anyone who scores 600 or higher on the SAT CR is considered qualified to do the work.</p>
<p>D2 is a junior now. Recently she competed for a very prestigious summer program in our state. They only allowed few students from each school to apply (nominated by GC), and criteria was highest GPAs. Out of those few hundred applicants, they selected 100+ to interview. D2 was one of those people who made it to the next round. </p>
<p>Parents were invited, and students were placed in a small group to have a discussion about a particular topic. In D2’s group, there were 3 Asian girls and 3 white kids. Right away I noticed there were a disproportional number of Asians kids.</p>
<p>The program took less than 40 kids/year, and when I looked at who got admitted (they publish their alum’s names), there weren’t 50% of Asian kids (I figured it out by looking at names). I am happy to say that D2 was accepted (she is only half Asian).</p>
<p>In this case, just based on stats, ~50% applicants were Asians, but when it came to the final selection, a lot fewer Asians were selected. I would imagine that’s the case when it comes to tippy top school admissions. They want diversity with a right mix of student body. You need to be able to get pass page 3 of common appl to be read by adcom, but after that is more about who applicant is as a person, and how will that person fit into the community.</p>
<p>If Asians want to get into those top schools, they are going to have to differentiate themselves from the norm - different ECs, area of study, and type of schools to apply to. A lot of top LACs still want more Asians, and instead of engineering or math, maybe more humanities majors.</p>
<p>Anyone who goes to a school that subscribes to Naviance would do well to take a look at the distribution of accepted/waitlisted/denied applicants from his or her school. More to the point, the parents of these kids should look. When I look at the graphs on Naviance I see big red clusters at the high end of the chart representing kids with 4.0 GPAs and 34-plus ACT scores who were not accepted into Ivy league schools. In six years, Harvard accepted only three people from my child’s very good (very large, too, with about 3,500 kids) high school, which boasts many high-achieving students. I don’t pretend to understand how keenly these Ivy hopefuls feel their loss when they are rejected. I’m just a bit taken aback when people who are presumably smart enough to know how to read a graph express outraged disbelief at not being accepted. I wonder, does the OP really think (especially with acceptances at places like University of Chicago, Rice, Carleton and Vanderbilt) that he has lost out on the chance for a superior education? Or that, had he gotten into one of the Ivies he was shut out of, he would have gotten a BETTER education?</p>
<p>Sylvan–I suspect that many Harvard attendees don’t think of themselves as perfect, just incredibly lucky.</p>
<p>IMHO, the perception of pell grant recipients being discriminated against is not supportable. Ivies are not giving an admission because someone is poor - they are giving admission to someone who has met their overachieving requirements despite being poor.</p>
<p>Every school website I’ve ever seen has a page on the scores of attendees. Take a look and see the magic number for the top schools = 2200 plus.</p>
<p>My point was NOT that anyone was discriminated against, Tex. My point was that somebody said that the schools were FAVORING the impoverished applicant over the non-impoverished. My data says no. But, I also do not think they are discriminating. It is much, much more difficult for those who are less wealthy to amass the kinds of scores, grades and EC’s routinely presented in applications to these schools. The discrimination, for these kids, or should I say, the lack of opportunity, happens WAY before the college app process.</p>
<p>But, certainly, there is no favoring of the poverty stricken over the middle class or wealthy in the process. </p>
<p>Honestly? I don’t think there is favoring of any class or race in this process. Just a group of adcoms attempting to make the best class possible. Most, given the stats, aren’t going to make it in. Such is life.</p>
<p>
You used the word “perfectly” 6 times in your post. The application reflects what you have done, and your contention appears to be that everything you did must have been done “perfectly”. You chose the perfect EC’s, excelled by being perfect in them, got perfect scores on your exams, etc. What youth, having gotten a 100% on every exam, every paper, every homework, made every basket they attempted, won every award available to any endeavor they undertook, blah, blah, blah, would define themselves as less than “perfect”? </p>
<p>As I said, even some of DS less than perfectly achieving classmates have become insufferable.</p>
<p>Congratulations on our dd’s summer program acceptance, oldfort! And beautifully worded post above. I totally agree that if a disporportionatley high number of students apply to any school or program, then it may look like a disproportionately high number are denied acceptance too. It is about Baysean statistics (base rates).</p>
<ol>
<li> 3 of us have 4.0 UWGPA (I am the only one without perfect GPA)</li>
<li> 2 of us have perfect SAT or ACT</li>
<li> All SAT II scores are either 800s or close to 800</li>
<li> 1 of us won a significant award</li>
</ol>
<p>Other Comments
- Yes, my friends and I have options other than Ivies, Stanford, MIT.
- I don’t think we could have gotten in some selective colleges without some unique ECs or good essays.</p>
<p>My HS is very strong and it has sent many kids to Ivies and SM. But, the lists RARELY (I mean EXTREMELY RARELY) include Asian males. No exception this year.</p>
<p>What do you think is the chance of getting rejected (or few waitlists) from every school (Ivies and SM) for all 4 of us?</p>
<p>Agree with texaspg–our high school seems to be a pipeline to Harvard and Stanford for high achieving Pell grant students. The problem is that the actual number of these kids is infinitesimally small.</p>
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<p>This is deceiving. Few very low income students apply to Ivy League schools in the first place, so the pool of applicants is quite small, and unfortunately, not many kids in dire economic circumstances are high academic achievers. However, for the few who are, they have a pretty good shot at a free, top notch education. Many people still assume that a private or Ivy League education is financially unattainable. Brown, for example, covers all need below $60K a year. There is a big effort to get more low income students - inner city blacks and hispanics and poor, rural whites to apply. Questbridge has increased the number of poor applicants threefold at some schools. High achieving, low income students most definitely have a leg up at the most selective schools, as well they should.</p>
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Amazing! Something which appears on every school website has somehow eldued every single poster to this message board.</p>
<p>Perhaps you can give me a link to a few of these websites where the “magic number” of 2200 is listed. </p>
<p>Everybody can read a CDS. They do not say what you claim they say. Somewhere there may be a school website which lists a cutoff SAT number for consideration. I have yet to see it.</p>
<p>Gourmetmom-- Yes, you may be right. I only have access to the data I have access to.</p>
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<p>OP, at this point, the chance is 100%.</p>
<p>I wish you great good fortune in the future. Where have you decided to matriculate?</p>
<p>poetgirl - i agree with you that Pell Grant recipients probably lost out long before they start applying and that may be the problem with their low representation compared to their percentage in overall population. </p>
<p>If we look at the application process, they ask everything about your grades, test scores, ECs, what you did last summer, what degrees your parents have but only one question about finances - do you plan to apply for aid. Other than writing up in an essay about their hard circumstances, there is no place to bring up their income level in the common app.</p>