Straight-up advice about getting into top colleges, for the "average" excellent student

Applying to College
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(With permission from @skieurope…this thread is originally on the Parent’s Forum. If interested, there were many useful comments to the thread “Truthful Advice about getting…”)
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1878059-truthful-advice-about-getting-into-top-colleges-for-your-average-excellent-student.html#latest

I created a thread back in 6/14, when my D was just thinking about college. We didn’t have many ideas about what colleges to look at, so I asked CC users to give suggestions. I know now, but didn’t realize then, that she is NOT exceptional in any way (except to us, of course:-). Great suggestions poured in, here is the original thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1658573-where-do-the-cool-kids-go-to-college-p6.html
To see where she applied, read post #83. To see where she has been accepted, read post #163. She hasn’t made her final decision yet. I will update when she does.

Thus began a process of educating us both about the realities of getting into top colleges in America today. At the time, I thought my kid had very good stats. She does, but they are nothing special compared to the Ivy-obsessed students on CC, all wondering how to get into HYPSM. We were learning but still ignorant. We began visiting colleges, and like many people, we looked at the “super hard to get into” ones first. Soon, we realized it was important to look at the “not as hard to get into” ones, which were more difficult to pin down. Eventually, she came up with a list of 12. The list had 2 dream schools, 3 “realistic” reaches, 5 matches, and 2 safeties.

By the time she applied, we were far more educated, but the damage had been done.:wink: We had already visited the dream schools, and she liked them. To our credit, we always knew they were difficult to get into. As we learned more, we began to understand that she had virtually no chance.

A couple of match schools stayed on the list that she really shouldn’t have applied to. It became apparent that she had no real interest in them, even if accepted. But they had app fee waivers, so she applied. Apps are a lot of work, so it was wasted time.

Meanwhile, I spent a shocking amount of time on CC and other websites and became more and more informed. Here is the biggest lesson I learned, and I say it sincerely, without envy or bitterness:
The excellent student, (especially if a white girl, or Asian), in a good school district, with excellent test scores, grades, and a range of ECs is very, very unlikely to get into any school with an acceptance rate under 20%. UNLESS you are, or do, something exceptional, or have a hook.

Note what makes these students in our HS “exceptional”: U Penn girl, recruited for sport in tenth grade. MIT girl, RD, Intel science contestant. Cornell boys, ED, cool websites that many people used, great students, one Hispanic. Columbia girl, RD, Hispanic, good but not amazing student. Brown guy, ED, truly gifted in many areas, very clever and intellectual. The surprise Harvard guy is a good student, but not stellar. Class pres. He had many very committed ECs that showed his interests. Think it was probably ED and that his great personality must have come through in his essays and recs. Vanderbilt girl, ED, recruited for sport. Tufts girl, ED, another science contestant. Now, for the one kid who had nothing “exceptional”, except stellar grades and test scores: “Under 15% acceptance rate” LAC girl, RD, valedictorian, Asian, nearly 2400 SAT, denied at all Ivies and Tufts.

My D was accepted to 7 in all, 5 with merit aid. 1 of those was a reach (25% acceptance rate, and her stats were at about the 60th percentile for that school.) She was waitlisted at 3, including her top two “realistic” reaches, and a match school. Denied at the 2 dream schools. She has wonderful choices and is very happy about her results, except for being waitlisted at her top 2. She knows the chances of getting off WL are slim, and will try, (tbh, I don’t think she will try that hard), but is proceeding as though that won’t happen.

Here is what I hope you can take away from our experience:
Do not invest all your hopes in a tippy top school, unless something about you is exceptional, or you have a hook. By all means apply, but ensure you understand that you have very little chance of getting in. Like hardly any chance at all. It is CRITICAL to apply to an appropriate range of colleges. Every year around this time, students post threads called “why didn’t I get in anywhere?” The kids are truly shocked, because they usually have great stats and applied to top 20 colleges, assuming that at least one would work out. The more sensible ones applied to maybe one safety that they don’t seem to like, but threw in just in case.

Don’t waste time and money visiting a lot of reach schools. Your efforts will be much better spent visiting match and safety schools, because there is a good chance you will end up at one of them. You need to know what the match and safety schools offer and see if you like them. I think in general, we actually did most things right, except for visiting too many reach schools and submitting too many applications. When we do this again with my S in a couple of years, I will especially discourage those two things. I will encourage my S to be committed to a few good ECs, as I think they really do matter. Remember also, good grades and test scores matter, a LOT. I am very sure my D wouldn’t have been accepted or waitlisted to her “realistic” reaches if she hadn’t had very good test scores. In addition, if my S likes one school above all others, I will encourage the use of the ED card, as long as the school is within the realm of possibility for his stats.

Another last piece of obvious, but overlooked advice: colleges want to admit people they like! Be likable, be genuine, (this applies to the essay especially). Ask for recs from teachers who really like you, and who you like in return. I am sure this is why Harvard kid was accepted. I am actually pretty sure this must be why my D was accepted to her reach school, which had no supplemental essays. Her teachers must have written good recs, and the college must have liked her essay. Apart from her test scores and course rigor, we can’t think of any other reason why she was accepted. Good luck to all of you as you work through this long and crazy process!

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Great advice here that all future applicants should read!

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Thanks doschicos. Hopefully now that students are coming home from school they will have a chance to sit down and read this.

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Bumping again, because after reading a couple of new threads in this forum today, I am more convinced than ever that there many students out there who could do with a dose of reality. :-B

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Great post! This should be a sticky or something.

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Best advice we got early on with our first child…choose 9 schools, tops, to apply. 3 financial or academic (or both) dream schools. Shoot for the moon on those, but don’t feel bad if you get a no or get a yes, but not enough money. 3 absolute safety schools. These are ones to which admission and requisite funding is nearing 100% guaranteed. (by funding, I mean it is affordable with no or ‘guaranteed’ scholarship money). The last 3 are a hybrid of reasonable financial or academic reaches. These are schools that will probably admit the student, but may run a bit high without scholarships…

D1 got accepted at 8 of 9. The 9th was her absolute dream school. She was offered a development program at a sister school, but without a major that interested her. Her bar was a bit lower than some kids as she is high average, but not the type to go to elite schools. This has given her the ability to negotiate for money and to be the one making choices rather than the schools holding the power.

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It’s been a few years since I applied to college, and I’ve recently started browsing this site again out of curiosity as I’ve been doing interviews for the uni I attended. Just wanted to comment on this post because while this seems like very solid advice, it also sounds - like many other posts on these forums - quite pessimistic!

Your post describes the kind of student I was in high school to the T - excellent grades and scores, range of ECs that weren’t exceptional - and I was accepted to several schools with low acceptance rates and ultimately attended an Ivy. While I realize that many here would say I was an exception to the rule and I consider myself very lucky, I also met many students in college with similar high school backgrounds. It’s definitely a good idea not to put all your eggs in one basket, but it is absolutely possible to be accepted to one of CC’s coveted unis as an “average” excellent student. I would advise prospective students to be realistic, but to take some of what they read on these forums with a grain of salt as well since CC has a very self-selecting group of users.

In any case, congratulations to you and your daughter! Hope she has a wonderful time in college. :slight_smile:

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@cribelle “It’s been a few years since I applied to college” I think you probably don’t realize how much the landscape has changed since you applied to college. I don’t think the OP or anyone else here is advising not to apply to reaches, but to realize how slim the odds have gotten. What year did you apply and what was the acceptance rate for that year vs. now? Schools are also more interested in cultivating a diverse student body in terms of racial and economic diversity, first generation, etc. Feel free to look at postings in the Ivy forums and in the College Admissions forum and see how many “average excellent” students get shut out.

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I’ve been keeping up with this thread a bit and I would like to add the perspective that students’ matches may vary widely and this makes it difficult to identify good matches for certain students. By example, students with good ACTs (25-29) can find a wide range of colleges whose acceptance rates may be 40-60%, so several can be identified as matches for those students. But students whose ACT scores are in the 33-36 range need matches as well. When those colleges have acceptance rates of 5-20%, it’s unrealistic to pick 3 or 4 as match/target colleges. The odds are so against getting in that one would have to select two or three times as many to have a decent shot at getting one (I’ll let someone who is skilled at statistics figure that one out). My sister-in-law has a stepson who is a junior with a 34 ACT and A- average. She told me he is interested in UPenn, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern and those are the only schools he will apply to “because they are target schools” for him. Woe is me.

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@cribelle I looked at one of your old posts from way back when and I think you are being a little humble. Maybe your ECs were nothing to brag about but your tests scores were near perfect and you were No. 1 in your class (Val). I think that puts you in the excellent camp instead of the average excellent camp. :slight_smile:

@momzhood I hope you encourage your sister-in-law and nephew to spend some time on CC, especially now where all the results posts are easy to see. I agree it is harder for higher stats kids to target matches as a lot of the schools they want are reaches for anyone. Schools like Emory or state flagships like UMich might be good schools for him to consider if he isn’t interested in smaller LAC like schools.

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^ It would depend on where his A- puts him in his class. Unless it is top 5% and they are just hard graders at his school, good luck! Even then good luck! Unless you have been through the process and seen it first hand, you do not believe it is as impossible as it is.

OP, do you list your D’s stats?

I appreciate the thread and the thought behind it. However I have gotten very depressed reading this and other threads knowing all the college application work that is still ahead of us. I do appreciate @cribelle post. I hope their version of admissions is the correct one. At this rate I will tell K2 just to apply to our state flagship (assuming K2 even gets in!) and not to bother with anything else. I do not say that to be negative but we have a decent state school (not Penn State but on that level). I have told my children from the beginning, I am not paying out of pocket for a school that is not at least the equal of our state school. I almost feel like why go through the torture? I know I do not mean it but maybe if K2 realizes.

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Pay attention to the following:

a. Not all colleges look for the same thing when deciding which students to admit. Be really careful about assessing reach/match/safety if the college tends to emphasize different criteria than is commonly emphasized.

b. Some colleges admit by major or division. This may mean that a school which seems to be a match based on overall stats may actually be a reach for a particular major that is more popular than its capacity. Or the student may be admitted to the school, but not the major, only to find that getting into the major later is difficult.

c. Check possible costs with net price calculators and scholarship listings before applying. If a scholarship is needed for affordability, reach/match/safety must be assessed on the scholarship, not admission. Competitive scholarships should be viewed as reach in the absence of any other information on how selective they are. If the parents are divorced, pay attention to whether the college requires both parents or just the custodial parent to provide financial information.

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Very interesting how this has been perceived differently in this forum as opposed to the parents forum. @SeekingPam and @cribelle this isn’t about pessism. My D and I are happy with how it has all played out. This is about realism. Over the nearly last two years on this site, I have seen sooooo many parents like me. Here at home, I talk to soooo many parents like me. We are all trying to figure out how our kids can get into Ivies, JHU, Duke, etc… And these parents all have kids like mine, with great grades and high test scores. They play sports, are in clubs, volunteer,etc… They are all great kids, but they are probably NOT going to get into those schools. And even if they are the Val with a 2400, they are probably not going to get into those schools, or at least HYPS. Of course, why not try? We did. My post is about accepting reality. Once we accepted reality, it was much nicer.

My Ds SAT sections were 760-720-760. Her GPA was a little low for her reaches, probably didn’t help her, 3.75 UW. 8 AP classes, 5s on the three APs so far, lots of honors classes. Fairly run of the mill ECs. Art, music, clubs, volunteering. She is an exceptional kid:-)

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@momzhood Our personal experience does not match the belief that somehow top students can’t actually fit on campuses with lower ranked avg scores, especially larger publics.

This is just one of our kids’ experiences.

Our current college sophomore graduated from high school with courses and accomplishments that put him in an atypical group of applicants. By the end of his sr yr in high school, he had completed university physics 1&2, modern physics, and classical mechanics 1&2, multivariable, diffEQ, and linear alg. (All with close to the highest, if not the highest, grade in the classes.) He attend SSP and different math camps. That is on top of other strong academics like 3 yrs each of 2 foreign languages, etc.

He was accepted to every school he applied to except 1, but when it came down to it, finances made the decision. He applied for several extremely competitive scholarships and did not receive most of them. He was, however, accepted into an elite research honors program at an avg state school. Financially, his offers ranged from $0 to $160,000+.

Based on CC philosophy, you would think that he would never be able to find “intellectual peers” on a non-elite, very avg state university campus, and only tippy top schools have students with his level of abilities. Based on posts on CC, you would also think that he would not face any intellectual challenges, be taught by grad students, and no mentors.

That is not his reality at all. He has a great group of friends who are his “intellectual peers,” and both those kids and he are found on a public non-elite campus. His classes are taught by professors and he has great mentors in his dept. He has been active in UG research since his freshman yr. (His current research prof has told him she treats him like a grad student and that he meets those level of objectives for her.) Research is his passion and it is meeting his needs. He will be taking 3 grad level physics classes next semester (on top of 2 typical UG core classes…that makes me a little nervous, but 18 hrs per semester has been his norm, so he thinks he can manage. If not, he will drop on of the grad classes.) His goal is a double in math and physics with completing his masters in physics simultaneously with his bachelors degree, all in 4 yrs.

Tl/dr version: Top students are found on avg state public campuses. They can find peers there. They can find great prof mentors there. They can have excellent UG opportunities there.

Roll Tide! :slight_smile:

Fwiw, his 11th grade sister has equal levels of accomplishments in different areas and her college search is going to be very similar. Another top student on an avg campus. We have met similar kids already at the schools she is researching. Lots of top kids follow merit $$. Those kids are on those campuses.

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While I think your post is excellent overall, our local high school acceptance history is quite different from this. About 25% of our graduates attend colleges with acceptance rates in that range. About 5% attend the Ivies or Stanford/MIT each year. And this is a public high school, although a highly rated one, with most of the kids being either white or Asian.

History could change of course. We will face the admissions gauntlet this year for my oldest.

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There are exceptions, of course. I suspect that the experience is different for prep school kids, and it seems clear that your high school has established relationships with top colleges if one in four kids is going to HYPSM and the like. I guarantee you that is not typical.

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@hebegebe, careful, you may get all of CC wanting to move into your neighborhood! Are you in Scarsdale, New Trier, Jericho, Milburn, Lower/Upper Merion?

I always thought it was harder to get into Top 20s from those school districts because of the competition.

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@SeekingPam,

LOL! I won’t say anything more specific than saying we are in Massachusetts.

I think Lindagaf might be right about the relationships with specific colleges though. I can see through Naviance that we do really well with certain colleges and horribly with other colleges that have roughly the same admission rate.

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You know I am right about that, hebegebe:-). I have seen umpteen posts on CC from kids who go to high schools that have never sent a kid to a top 20 college, or maybe once in a blue moon. Our high school sends a respectable number of kids to top colleges. There are roughly 300kids in my Ds class, and I would say less than 10% are going to highly selective colleges, though plenty more are going to equally wonderful colleges. Just not necessarily those with an acceptance rate under 20%. Nearly all the kids who got to tippy top colleges are either hooked, ED, or recruited. No way of proving this at all, but I am going to guess that a significant number of CC users attend a high school more similar to ours than to yours.

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@Lindagaf its partly or mostly my anxiety about the process. I know what is coming and I am starting to dread it again. Plus K2 is so confused and not helpful right now and for some reason my kids hate college visits which we will be doing next month. Also, this next kid is not my best student. K2 is fine, but not the same type of student K1 was. However K2 either needs a meets full need school or will be going to our state school (which will cost more than going to a meets full needs school!) Other states are not an option and most merit scholarships will not get us to the same point since we will have 2 in college for 3 years. K2 really does not want to be a big fish in a small pond, both of my kids have always had that and they are so sick of it and they want to head out to the ocean!

Knowing who older K1 is as a student and she is just the middle of the pack at any Top 20 school, I do not think a HYPSM or Columbia or UPenn is where K2 belongs. So maybe she should consider a Great Lake rather than the ocean but those are competitive enough.

The frustrating thing is that I know K2 has that elusive “it” quality in K2’s non academic ECs. They are very interesting, much more than K1’s but I know it is not enough either.

@hebegebe completely do not know anything about Massachusetts other than having visited BU and MIT!

One caution, our school had and has relationships with certain schools. In one case they had a relationship with a particular Top 20 school and then the staff at that school changed and they went from sending kids there regularly to almost never. So make sure those relationships are in place before your kid applies. Also, do not waste your ED on a place with a poor record for your school. This happened at our school, one of the ivies we just never get anyone in. No idea why. The Val last year applied ED, got deferred and rejected and ended up at another Ivy but only after much anxiety.