<p>Sure. But it sends a very clear signal about the kind of kid who does this. It sends a signal that this kind of kid is so incredibly naive that he actually only believes that the top 20 (or whatever) number of schools are worth getting into. For the life of me, if you had a really smart kid, I don’t know why you wouldn’t focus your efforts on say, the top 40 schools, instead of the top 20, and identify those schools within there that are particularly compelling or interesting, instead of this continued hokey assumption that OMG-if-you-don’t-get-into-Ivy-or-heavy-sigh-the-rest-of-the-top-20-if-you-must, you just won’t be among smart peers. It doesn’t reflect the real world.</p>
<p>Well said Brooklynborndad. Thank you. However, I would not be surprised if a poster or two does not believe there is any randomness to admissions.</p>
<p>I happen to think it is a sign of the OP’s intelligence that he did apply to bunch of excellent schools that have good need-based aid, some of them no-loan, and many of them offering some merit scholarships. I agree with Bbdad that the ridiculous admission rate stats is an unfortunate consequence of that strategy.</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem to me that the OP is whining about his options, so much as expressing surprise at the complete Ivy shut-out of his group of friends. To the hypercritical and negative parents on this thread, I am wondering if your responses would have been so mean if this kid and his friends were sitting in your kitchen saying “Wow, we didn’t expect to wash out that bad”. Hand them a cookie and a hug, for heaven’s sake, not a lecture about how they were so ignorant that they didn’t understand the current admissions scene.</p>
<p>My kids were way too busy in high school to pay a lot of attention to the finer points of college admission. I think that was a good thing.</p>
<p>Nowadays you have to be impressive outside the classroom in order to get into a top colleges. There are students from my son’s HS who got accepted to Harvard, Cornell, etc… and almost all of them were highly ranked in their respective sport. Just getting good grades is often not sufficient, because there are too many students like that everywhere. You have to be also outstanding in something else.</p>
It could be that all four of the students OP refers to got into top 20 universities or top LACs. The OP certainly did. If the first post has said that, there would have been little to discuss.
It’s true that applying to more schools doesn’t by itself increase your chances of getting into one of the schools. But while your qualifications don’t change, the schools are different, and what they are looking for is different, and the decisions are being made by human beings using subjective criteria. Therefore, it’s easily observable that lots of kids get into some top schools, and not others, and you can’t tell why, and there’s not a clear rank order. Thus, as long as you have qualifications to consider applying to top schools, you may in fact increase your chances by applying to more of them.
Do top schools discriminate against Asians? This has been discussed a lot, and I think the data are inconclusive. It does appear that it’s tougher for high-scoring Asians to get in than high-scoring whites. But it’s not clear to me whether this is a result of schools trying to avoid having “too many Asians,” or the possibility that Asian applicants tend to be more similar to each other than white applicants, and thus are competing for fewer “slots.”
Were mini and others too mean? Well, maybe a bit. But the OP was definitely suggesting discrimination, and he was unclear in suggesting that he and his friends were shut out–they weren’t shut out of top schools at all.</p>
<p>This entire post can be applied to the smart, white female student. Many schools need to balance the male/female ratio, thus, boys get accepted at a higher rate, with other hooks, etc. Move on everyone.</p>
<p>My son’s close friend has a brother. The two boys go to Yale and Harvard. Both Asian, nearly perfect SAT1s and they took 4 -5 SAT2s with near perfect scores. Both were in the top 5 of their graduating class which is a known academic powerhouse high school. Most of the top 10 went to schools with single digit selectivity. They each had national honors in some things on their resumes, but their ECs did not have any huge hooks. They come from an overrepresented area. A lot of kids with this profile, more than the usual % of any group get accepted to HPY, from what I can see. You gotta be at the top of that particular stack in order to get into such schools.</p>
<p>Where I see a lacking from a lot of these kids is that they did not take or do as well in a number of SAT2s. Yes, the count–very heavily. Also those national math awards tests, debate, Siemens, national recognition count a lot. With that combo, most of the kids regardless of background get inot a top school if they are top 2 in their high school taking very difficult courses, or top 5% of a nationally recognized high academics high school.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t seem to me that the OP is whining about his options, so much as expressing surprise at the complete Ivy shut-out of his group of friends.”</p>
<p>The thing is that it’s not 0 for 20, we know that the OP got accepted to many other colleges. It’s probably more like 20 for 40, but there was just no mention of any acceptances in the OP.</p>
<p>OP- hugs. You will do so well in life regardless of which fine college you choose to attend. Congrats!</p>
<p>One thing missing in this discussion-- let’s suppose OP’s math teacher didn’t like OP. (just for the sake of argument). So the school’s that rejected OP weighed the teacher recommendation very heavily; those that accepted him did not.</p>
<p>That’s when holistic admissions works in favor of the applicant- whether asian, Af-Am or white. One school reads, “Joe absorbs new material very quickly. Unfortunately, he has little patience for other students in the class who need more time and practice to master the subject matter”. Adcom A see’s Joe as a pain-in-the- neck know-it-all. Adcom B sees Joe as just the kind of lightening quick student their professors crave.</p>
<p>Or Adcom A thinks they’ve already admitted enough know-it-alls, and the one’s they admitted are also published poets and experts in climate change/polar bear habitats. Adcom B thinks the experts in climate change they’ve admitted need a few more “normal” high achievers as balance.</p>
<p>cuts both ways.</p>
<p>Any event- OP, you and your friends are off on your great adventure!!!</p>
<p>I don’t - not when you’re talking about single-digit acceptance schools! And it’s very misleading – because the OP <em>did</em> get into quite a few very nice elite schools – just not into those in a particular sports conference. It’s a distinction without a difference.</p>
<p>20more - I said nothing whatsoever about Asians in this thread. I couldn’t care less what race you are. That has nothing to do with my remarks. I think it’s unsophisticated for a smart high schooler to just select the top 20 schools and apply to all of them – it says such a student is chasing prestige versus really thinking through the whole thing. I think it’s unsophisticated for a smart high schooler to think that even 3.96 and near-perfect SAT’s make him any sort of shoo-in, whatsoever, for schools at this level when it’s abundantly clear that these schools don’t select based solely on stats. I think it’s unsophisticated to pretend it’s some great loss not to get into Ivies when you’ve gotten into 6 schools that are equally as fine, because you’re not missing out on anything. Now, since none of that has anything to do with anyone’s race, I expect you’ll apologize.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I have little sympathy for the student who is consigned to the hellish nightmare of UChicago, Vanderbilt, and Middlebury, and then wants us to express our sympathy for his eternal night because it happens that he and his friends are “Asian” (whatever that means - is he Afghani? Hmong? Mien? Bangladeshi? Mongolian?).</p>
<p>(For the record, I have an Asian daughter who is a musician. Couldn’t the headline have been “Five Asians Accepted to Fantastic Schools”?)</p>
<p>What I’m saying is “yes” there is a bias. But only in so much as one population is being compared to itself and not to other populations.</p>
<p>For example, even if Harvard needed a top oboist (to use the favorite metaphor), the would take THE BEST top oboist they could get. Not every athlete has an equal shot at getting a Likely from Harvard. They are compared to one another. There is a roughly even split of m/f acceptances. Why? </p>
<p>There IS bias. But this bias creates diversity. Diversity creates a lack of descrimination in the world, which leads to a situation where 4 % of the population can be represented by 20% at the top schools. It is only because of the push for diversity that this can happen. So, you cannot benefit from diversity push on the one hand and then call it racism when it is working against you. </p>
<p>It’s all just part of living in a multicultural environment. Is if fair? NOPE. It is fairer than it used to be, less fair than it may be in the future. </p>
<p>Good luck OP. You have some excellent options. Do you know where you intend to matriculate?</p>
<p>I guess I see statistics differently from a lot of you. If an acceptance rate is 25%, that means you have a 75% chance of not getting in. So while it may be disappointing that you didn’t, why would you have worked yourself up to EXPECT to get in?</p>
<p>I played it very much on the down-low for my kids. “Your top schools were reaches, and you are within the ballpark to reach for them, but they are reaches, and do not take it as any kind of reflection on you and your capabilities if you don’t get it - it’s just that you won’t get in if you don’t swing the bat.” I am constantly amazed how people on here look at schools with single-digit or similar admittance rates, and think of getting into those schools as anything but a lucky event, no matter how qualified they are. I don’t know why you’d ever want your kid to think that any school with a 30% or lower acceptance rate is ANY kind of a shoo-in, no matter if your kid hung the moon, cured cancer and won the gold medal in the Olympics.</p>
<p>EXACTLY. Such a student clearly thinks that the Ivies are some kind of cut above that he’s failed to achieve and woe-is-he. I wouldn’t have any patience for that, either as expressed online or if the kid was sitting at my kitchen table.</p>
<p>Before we get carried away by emotion, lets see what research has shown us. The Duke Study (check the graph) shows us how admission works at an elite:</p>
<p>I think the OP is being eminently rational. What he fails to realize is that these institutions are the bastions of the rich, powerful, and famous; the proletariats are only there to serve institutional needs.</p>
<p>Then again, if not for the scions of the elite, the proletariats would not be fighting for a spot in the first place. What irony.</p>
<p>OP, you are making some posters uneasy. I agree with the sentiment expressed here:</p>
<p>Coming in late to this thread. While I am sorry the OP and his friends were disappointed by their Ivy experience, I really, really wish they would look past what I call the “car window decal” prestige and recognize that they have some wonderful acceptances at wonderful schools, and that applying to all the ivys for the sake of applying to all the ivys means to many posters here that there was less attention paid to what school is the best fit vs what is the most prestigious. Just sayin’</p>