<p>He should be fine. DS’s list only had one school (Harvey Mudd) where top 10% was part of a slam-dunk scholarship formula. And his application year they changed the policy because it had caused them to not award the scholarship to a 11% student from math/science magnet hs. </p>
<p>For schools that are safeties- why does he need so many of them??? They must not truly be safeties Do not waste your time and energy obsessing over this. Remember that despite a common application he will need to spend time on each application. Are so many really necessary for him? Consider how much pressure is being put on him with this exhaustive college application process. </p>
<p>Remember, he may get into multiple colleges but will attend only one. Let him focus on his senior year and doing well in it to get the best knowledge base for whichever college he attends. Also let him enjoy being a senior- be sure there is time for more than college applications this fall.</p>
<p>@wis75 - He likes and has visited most of the safeties. He said to me last night, “Of course, he would go to any of the schools he was applying to, it would be silly to apply other wise”. We are also looking for merit aid and since LACs don’t follow formulas when it comes to merit aid, an admissions safety may not be a financial safety (those are the 2 in-state options). Also, a lot of things impacted our finance last year so it is hard to get a clear picture of need based aid even with NPCs.</p>
<p>I agree he should enjoy his senior year. Most of his essays were written over the summer and applications will be submitted once class rank is released. I want him to have choices come spring because I realize kids change and grow. I strongly advised against taking so many hard classes senior yr but lost that battle. His main regret about HS is that he was not very social until last yr, he started to blossom socially as a junior and even though we are only a little more then a month into senior yr, he has already socialized more then the first 2 yrs of HS combined.</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone for calming me down. Part of the reason I posted here was so he wouldn’t see my stress and I could calm down and process the info. I really am coming around to the conclusion that everything will be fine come spring no matter what.</p>
<p>From a former stresser (and an always worrier) I’m glad you are calming down. I promise it will all work out at the end!</p>
<p>I just saw the teacher evaluation form that oldfort posted. It’s from a previous year. Does anyone have a link to this year’s form? Is it exactly the same? </p>
<p>I am pretty certain it is exactly the same. For what’s worth, D2’s private counselor told us adcoms paid attention to those check boxes. </p>
<p>I’m sure almost all adcoms look at grades and class rank (along with curriculum taken). I’m sure almost all look at test scores. Those are the key comparative quantitative measures of academic ability and performance. Virtually every other type of data and information supplied by the applicant, the school, and letter-writers, is qualitative, not quantitative, in that they reflect a few people’s subjective judgment of the student’s ability, performance, and character. Obviously, questionnaire-type assessments by letter-writers can be summarized and scored quantitatively. But they do not reflect fundamentally independent judgments of the student’s ability. I believe that for the vast majority of applicants, grades and test scores are key qualifying facts, along with the applicant’s own essays and “presentation of self” in the application. But merely qualifying to compete doesn’t add up to a winning application.</p>
<p>If I’m on an admission committee of a highly selective school, I’m looking for more and better evidence of the applicant’s merit, especially relative to thousands of other applicants who may have very high grades and test scores.</p>
<p>What’s left – but not mentioned in the comments so far – is demonstrable achievements both within the school and outside of it. Not (to my mind) merely demonstrations of activity (volunteering, community work, participation in sports and other extracurricular things at school), but whether the student has earned distinctions that speak to her motivations and public recognition, beyond the testimony of letter-writers and guidance counselors.</p>
<p>Examples: (a) championships or prizes in competitions outside the school context: math, debate, art, geography, musical performance, computer science, journalism, etc. Wins and prizes of this sort can more than compensate for merely outstanding grades, test scores, letters of recommendation, and application essays. They speak to distinctions that are very hard to achieve, require initiative, sustained commitment, and hard work “beyond the call of duty” as a student.</p>
<p>In addition, I would be looking for (b) students who win public recognition or awards for achievements in the community, business entrepreneurship, or public service; students who create things that can be demonstrated to affect the lives of other people – achievements that testify to the student’s commitment, brilliance, social consciousness, and other aspects of character, beyond the mere words offered by a high school letter-writer. And beyond the cumulative GPA or standardized test scores.</p>
<p>In sum, my point is this: Don’t fixate on grades or test scores, or on letters of recommendation. They are important but not decisive if the student is applying to the very most selective colleges. </p>
<p>
If my kid could cure cancer, why would he/she need a LOR.<br>
No need to get fixated on grades or test scores if your kid is a national champion for a sport, invented something, national top performer of some sort…Yeah, because he/she would be recruited.
For goodness sakes, we are talking about 17-18 year olds ("creating things that be demonstrated to affect the lives of other people?!!!) My kids were just really nice, smart, engaging students in high school. They were just beginning to figure out who they were as people. I would be surprised if they were really committed to anything. I know in college they were still searching. The idea that the way for 17 year olds to get into top tier schools is to be able to demonstrate their commitment, brilliance or social consciousness so early on is very bizarre to me. All of those qualities didn’t come to me until I was much older. :)</p>
<p>Update: I was worried for nothing, but thanks for the support, it helped. DS is 19th out of 373 seniors, so not only top 10% but top 5%. He has requested Qdoba’s to celebrate and I am very happy to comply.</p>
Good for him! I was going to repsond to this:
D received Wooster’s largest merit scholarship and she is just outside the top 10% of her class.
Strange that our HS dropped rank when my D was entering as a freshman, yet they still recognize the top 5%. Seems like ranking to me!
While reading this, some questions occurred to me;
- Given the vast differences between various HS classes, how important is the 10% cut-off in the big picture of admissions?
- If you personally felt it was so important, wouldn’t you do your best to stay away from the cut off line?
- If you’ve done your best in the first place, why would you worry about where the line ended up falling?
- Have admissions committees who put too much weight on the 10% cutoff become corrupted by metrics?
- Why would you want to go to a school like that in the first place?
- Are GC’s responses over time analyzed to see if the proper portion of the evaluations end up in the 1%, 5% and 10% categories?
@JustOneDad - All I can do is tell you how this impacted DS1, who graduated in 2013, was a NMF and SAT scores of 1600/2340.
- He was accepted at 8 of the 9 schools he applied to and received merit at 7 of the 8. He did not receive merit at the 8th which was lower ranked then several other schools because his class rank was below 10%. Other kids that year who went to schools that did not rank received merit with lower scores and lower GPAs.
- In our county class rank is calculated only once, fall of senior year. There is one HS in the area that is well known for kids getting straight As, taking 9 or more AP classes and still being outside the top 10%. Some of these kids also take required courses over summer school to have space for more weighted classes and therefore higher GPAs. This years valedictorian at DS2s high school did that. I think this is an argument to get rid of class rank.