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

@SeekingPam My feeling about my kid’s acceptances at some of his reaches is that they were able to detect that “it” quality that wasn’t completely obvious in his transcript, and decided it was what they wanted to add to their mix. Others either didn’t see it, or saw it just fine but took a pass for other reasons. I was very anxious that he might not have very many options by the time decisions rolled around, but he does, and that’s in large measure because we helped him curate a list that was wide-ranging in terms of selectivity, but also targeted in terms of interest and fit (and by targeted, I don’t mean they were all the same type of school – they just all addressed his interests/preferences in one way or another). He would have done fine at any of the schools he applied to, but we’re thrilled to discover that he has some choices across a range of types, and a lot of thinking to do in the next few weeks. @Lindagaf’s advice is really spot on – and I actually see it as encouraging rather than discouraging. It’s a daunting process, but really not bad if you don’t go in thinking that only the “best” (whatever that means) is right for your darling.

@hebegebe My experience is the exact same as the OP. Year after year I see smart diligent high stats white girls from our comfortable suburban high school shut out of top 30 coed schools including my D1). I tried to warn the guidance counselor of this in October when my D2 was applying. He leaned back in his chair and replied," She’ll get in everywhere because our school district is #1 in the nation according to " an online ranking group.

No change in results for girls this year. Boys did well, but they have done well in the past too.

Our district has another high school that appears every year to have better results that may be attributable to “relationships” with top schools but those top students tend to be Asian.

For D3 I’m encouraging her to focus exclusively on one sport and appealing for a transfer to the other high school.

My high-stats UMC white girl was fine, but I do think it’s a problem similar to the one that high-stats Asian kids face. It’s hard to distinguish yourself from others in your demographic and it’s almost as if stats are discounted or attributed to obedience/diligence rather than brains, curiosity, or ambition. I wonder how much of this is admissions officers’ perceptions vs. perceptions of HS teachers/counselors writing recs.

In D’s case, I suspect that recs and essays set her apart (her EA/dream school is notorious for its bizarre prompts), and coming from a well-regarded private HS probably mattered as well, but within her class, results I’ve heard thus far suggest boys are getting the schools they want and comparably qualified girls may not be.

Anticipating this problem, our strategies were (a) find a public school you love (Madison was D’s) (b) consider Canada (McGill had programs she wanted and admissions criteria seemed really straightforward/objective/predictable) © know the highly selective schools you are applying to well and write the supplements in a way that highlights fit and how you’re a candidate that brings something fairly specific that they’re looking for to the table (d) write fun/memorable CA essays. Basically, the challenge here is to stand out in a pile of numbingly repetitious applications, most of which probably get 5-10 minutes of a reader’s attention.

It sucks that, after 4 years of hard work, admissions to a coveted school may turn on a 500 word essay written in response to a trite and uninspiring prompt. But it is what it is.

-geographic flexibility helps with your astute observation above. Our D1 wanted no parts of schools in the midwest- until she visited. Is very happy at Oberlin.

It seems there are a lot of “number 1 in the nation/state/NE/etc” high schools out there!!

@hebegebe I bet your town begins with an L.

Is it harder to get into a top college as a female than a male? Is this just for white females or Asians too?

It’s hard for anybody. This thread applies to everyone. But in general, and this is very general, more women than men apply to college, with exceptions like MIT and CalTech. I believe that the worst demographic for chances of getting in to tippy top colleges is white women, followed by Asians. This is just my opinion, bear in mind. There are a ton of exceptions all over the place. I love to joke with my son that we will be moving to North Dakota in his junior year. And I joked with my daughter that she should say she was going to major in engineering and philosophy.

@Lindagaf That’s interesting, I thought Asian male was the worst demographic to be in overall for admissions purposes. I know it is hard for everyone, not trying to undermine anyone’s achievements.

@Classof2017 have a look at this: http://www.nber.org/digest/jan07/w12139.html

I of course don’t know about all colleges, but I do know that at Brown for example, about 25% more women apply than men. This is true at a lot of universities and colleges that focus on liberal arts, historically the backbone of many top colleges. I imagine the numbers are maybe a little more balanced at some other top colleges. When I was a CC newbie, this disparity bothered me, then I just accepted reality. The truth is, there are so many wonderful colleges out there that there is a great place for everyone. It just may,not be Stanford or Princeton.

Most interesting thread. The pattern that @hebegebe describes (i.e. some elite high schools are definitely feeders to some elite and near-elite colleges), is very real. It’s right there in the Naviance data for my D’s high school. There must, therefore, be a flip side. Students from merely above average high schools like the one I graduated from years ago (“Northwest Podunk High”) must be disadvantaged in today’s admissions derby. This despite the fact that the NW Podunk may well have delivered a better education to the student than the elite high school did. I think back to my own experience, and I am certain that NW Podunk was better in many ways than my D’s elite high school. And yet there is no way that two “average excellent” students, one from NW Podunk and one from my D’s elite public high school, are facing the same admissions landscape. I thought holistic admissions would act as a kind of a leveling-out process, but that is just not the case.

Lindagaf and RustyTrowel have wisdom that comes from experience. Thought I was crafty, however, S1 spun wheels and settled on a solid merit-aid school. He transferred to a near-elite school but had to get a new wardrobe to keep up with the prep schoolers (Nice kids … but $). Fortunately S2 and S3 learned from this and perfected their athletic hooks. Prep schoolers have a clear advantage based on my three data points. Best wishes from deplorables country!

I think it is hard to deny that prep school kids reliably get into top universities disproportionately to kids from regular suburban high schools. I don’t think anything is going to change in that regard. But in some areas of the country, kids from suburban high schools certainly do send plenty of students to tippy top colleges. Our high school this past year sent kids to five different Ivy League’s, MIT, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Amherst, JHU, and many other excellent colleges. So did one of our rival high schools. It will be interesting to see if that holds true this year, becasue it is acknowledged in our district that for whatever reason, the Class of 2016 were pretty exceptional kids.

On a totally different note, I can update my D’s outcome, which other students might find useful. D ended up depositing at an excellent LAC with a sub-25% acceptance rate. She was then offered a spot off the WL at another excellent LAC, with merit aid. She declined, deciding that in fact, that college probably wasn’t for her. She was prepared mentally to attend College A when she was taken off yet another WL in the summer. College B is also an excllent school with a sub-25% acceptance rate and had always been a top choice. She chose to attend College B and is just about to finish up her first semester there. If anyone wants to see where she applied, please refer to the link in the initial post.

@Lindagaf I think that students from suburban high schools in some parts of the country get into top schools. That was certainly true when I lived in Westchester County, NY and Fairfield County, CT. However, I am currently living in Broward County, FL and there are far fewer (as a %) students from suburban public schools who get into elite colleges.

We didn’t move our kids to private schools because of college admissions. It wasn’t on our radar when they were 11 years old.

Part of the reason FL doesn’t get many public school kids into top schools (relative to its population) is that FL kids seem to be more adverse to going out of state than kids in other states. They have great weather, good public university choices (even a public LAC) and U of Miami offers great merit aid to attract students away from UF. When my oldest announced he was going to Case Western he got two different reactions from his friends in public schools. The first was “Cleveland…You know how cold that is?” The other was “Didn’t you try for UF or Miami?”

There is another reason. That reason is that in my area the public schools are giant. Really really giant. The high school we are zoned for has 2400 students. The high school we were zoned for in our last home has 4400 students. Both are suburban high schools. In those giant schools top colleges go on the radar in junior year and that is often too late.

What is interesting about private schools is that they put the top kids on the track to elite college admissions without focusing on elite college admissions. I ran into another mom I know. Her oldest went to the same private school as my kids. Her youngest is a senior and did not get a scholarship so they put him in the local public school (the one with 4400 students). She told me that if she didn’t know what to do from her experience with her daughter it would have been too late for her son to do the right things.

I do think that it is easier for kids at private schools because their entire high school career has them pointed toward selective college admissions from day 1. I think that in areas with better (and smaller) public schools selective college admissions is more common.

This is debated heavily from time to time on the prep school threads, and it may be a matter of semantics, but one of the main reasons prep school kids reliably get into top schools at a rate that is disproportionate stems from the fact that the prep schools themselves are highly selective, many taking under 20% of their applicants. It is true that if a kid is an academic standout at Lawrenceville, for example, no tippy top school will doubt that student’s ability to do the work. At the same time, that kid may also have 30-40 really amazing, as in equally viable, classmates (including athletc recruits who did a PG year) who have applied to the same school. So the prep school may be able to report 10 acceptances to Princeton, but 20-30 very, very good applicants still were rejected. But from the outside, 10 kids to Princeton alone looks sort of amazing. Know though, that at all of these schools there is a small cohort of parents every year who are unhappy with the college outcomes for their kids, and it’s one of the reasons that all of the parents on the prep school thread reiterate that you should choose prep school for your child if you think it’s the best place for them for high school, not for the four years after that!

Certainly, adcoms know about the quality of many excellent public schools and their students, and the success at @Lindagaf’s school and her daughter shows that. With that said, the depth will not be the same at a public because the public doesn’t have the luxury of choosing only the “top” 20% of the 8th graders (and not just from its feeder middle school ) and “not inviting back” or “counseling out” students who are struggling with the breakneck demands of those schools over the 4 years.

I’m not disagreeing that prep school kids are “over represented” at many top schools, just pointing out that admissions comparisons are tricky and the perceived “preference” may not be quite as clear cut because the pools can be quite different.

It is true that prep schools almost always offer better college counseling and support, and there is a benefit in that for sure, especially for the kid who is “only in the middle” of his class at Exeter (and whose parents are wondering if he’d have been better off in the college admissions game staying at his public school, where he’d have been at the top of his class… I’m guessing probably not, but who knows?)

And as @proudpatriot points out, no matter which classes one chooses at prep school, it’d be hard to select a path that would “look bad” on a college application. Some may look better to some colleges, but overall, all roads lead to college. But then again, they’ve selected kids who were probably happy to be on that road.

As in so much, there’s a huge "it depends " in all of this. The process is really competitive and somewhat random with both students and colleges trying to evaluate each other based on data each has curated to appear as attractive as possible to the other. Speed dating with consequences! The reality is that there are a lot of great schools out there, and a good student will get tons of value out of any of them regardless of where they went to high school.

@Proudpatriot , you might have been spot on with one of those counties as to where I live:-)

Excellent points, @gardenstategal . I do not begrudge the kids at prep schools. Wealthy kids, by and large, whose wealthy families are possibly alumni and possibly generous donors, likely do very well in terms of achievement at their schools. Why wouldn’t Princeton want Mr. Jones’ son, when Mr. Jones is an alumnus, as was Mr. Jones’ father, and bothe were generous donors? I get that.

The thing is we aren’t any wealthier than we would have been in NY or CT.

Most prep schools take large numbers of scholarship kids.

Good, that’s nice to hear. I really don’t know much about the prep school world.

So yes, there’s enough truth to go around on this one.

As @OHMomof2 notes, at most of the top prep schools 40-50% of the class may be getting financial aid. And at least based on the families that I know, if you needed FA for prep school, you need it for college. Just like everyone else, they are choosing based on affordability. (And this is one of the reasons, when you look at prep schools to see where kids matriculated, that you’ll see a bunch of good, but not totally tippy top, schools in that list. Trust me, this is generally not a reflection on the quality of kids in those schools or the quality of the education but an indication of how committed that school was to taking kids who couldn’t write a check for full tuition. In other words, it’s just like the rest of the world!)

On the other hand, the other half of the class is full pay. And many of those kids, as @Lindagaf notes, are from VERY wealthy families. Many will have had all the advantages imaginable, from tutoring to travel to whatever. I think that many prep schools DO tend to give some thought to college admissions when they are admitting their freshman class. The kid who is already an athletic stand-out, whose parents are big donors to HYPS schools, who has won international math contests – in other words, the kids who will have hooks for college admissions – is attractive mostly because he/she will be interesting to have in the community but also because he/she will be easy to place in college…

But definitely, it is not all wealthy kids…