<p>It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that form letters are easily personalized. The local Mercedes dealer can also send out a postcard that says “A new Mercedes can belong to the XXXX Family at 123 XXX Drive!” and that doesn’t mean that I believe that someone at Mercedes really, sincerely cares about me. How do they differ from junk mail, except that they are well-written junk mail?</p>
<p>Although it may be naive for students to be unaware that those “personalized” letters from colleges are mass mailings based on nothing more than standardized test scores, I don’t think that we should discourage or ridicule people for their naivete. CC in general – and the Parents Forum in particular – are places where people come to learn. Some of us have more to learn than others do.</p>
<p>I have asked my share of naive questions here, too.</p>
<p>Edited to add: Cross-posted with vossron.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that form letters are easily personalized.”</p>
<p>It just takes a bit of naivete. I think we should be patient with high schoolers who have no experience with our subject, and may still be enamored and unsuspecting of every college feigning interest.</p>
<p>As the student who receives the letter from Harvard may well be the only one in his circle of acquaintance to, it isn’t surprising that he thinks it is more personalized that the postcard from the local car dealer that everyone gets…</p>
<p>Many kids are naive as to the ways of the world, or at least to the ways of college admissions. We had a girl at our high school who was sure that Harvard wanted her because she was called in for an interview. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that practically every applicant has an interview.</p>
<p>Fair enough. I’m batting 0 for 2 today, so I’ll just stop here :-)</p>
<p>What happened to the OP? Did he/she get run off? I hope not, I think he/she could really gain some valuable information here. COME BACK OP we all mean well!!</p>
<p>Perhaps OP is out researching more schools a level or two down to bring up for discussion.</p>
<p>Agree with all parents posting. Just to give the OP some perspective–University of Wisconsin has an overall acceptance rate of around 56% and a ranking of 35 on USNWR list–they post a chart with likelihood of acceptance based on SAT/GPA and ACT/GPA. With an ACT of 30-36 and a GPA less than 3.1 = 30% chance of acceptance, the average SAT 640-680 and GPA less than 3.1 = 20%.</p>
<p>JHS: I sincerely apologize for my extremely rude comments. I now see that what you meant by “unsophisticated” is not what I perceived it to be. In the context of the topic of financial aid - something which is more or less directly tied to socioeconomic standing - I interpreted that remark as a dig, as opposed to meaning that I was green around the gills - which I obviously am. Again, I apologize for the overtly aggressive retort and snide remarks.</p>
<p>EDIT: I think it’s also worth noting that you responded much better to a much more offensive post than I did to a minor misunderstanding. I’m sure that’s blatantly obvious to everbody else, but regardless I wanted to point it out.</p>
<p>In regard to me feeling “entitled” to responses, I can assure every poster that I do not take any advice for granted, much less feel obliged to it. I apologize again if anyone mistook my responses as such. In fact, I greatly appreciate all the extremely helpful information that has been provided here.</p>
<p>Again, to reiterate: I fully apologize to JHS and am very thankful for all the help.</p>
<p>To the above: nobody drove me off. =] I’ve been preoccupied with work and college research. I hope to have built up a more realistic list by tomorrow.</p>
<p>Thank you all very much for the information.</p>
<p>Penn Lover, that was a mature and gracious post. Good luck on your research.</p>
<p>Penn Lover,</p>
<p>You are a fast learner. Way to go being so gracious with criticism!!! This is a very important quality for long term success in your professional life (and personal are too!)</p>
<p>We are all parents here and trying to help. I can assure you that I have never found a better group of thoughtful, intelligent, helpful, and knowledgeable adults anywhere else on the Web than the parents on this forum. I got so much good advice and input from this board when my S1 was going through the college appl process last fall, and am continuing to learn so much for my S2 application next year. I was not kidding when I said these parents are better than 1000 private and high school counselors put together AND no personal gain/interest to color their advice. AND they are such nice bunch (most of them), so eager to help and willing to lend a helping hand out of their busy schedule. The reason why I am responding and trying to help when I can is because I believe there should be a cosmic balance and equilibrium. I can’t thank and reward each parent who advised me, but I can help others whenever I can. That’s my way of saying “thank you” to all others. </p>
<p>Back to school list, be conservative. Aim high but have your feet firmly on ground (you know what I mean). You are white, non-athletic (meaning, not an athlete), non-legacy, and honestly, and your EC is not in a “I won an Olympic gold medal” category (you know what I mean). As such, in order to consider a college a “comfortable match”, your “numbers” must be closer to the 75% range than 50% in the general accepted student distribution, and the acceptance rate must be above 30% as opposed to those in teens. </p>
<p>Just to give you some idea: My son had 2400 SAT 1. 800’s in SAT II, all 5 in APs, something like 3.8-3.9 in a HS rated to be within top 5 public schools in USA. And, his GC and other teachers were in love with him - he is a very smiley, relaxed and pleasant kid. His GC told him the essays were very good too. He got rejected by HYP. Why? Because he did not rack up any meaningful, formal ECs that can be easily verified by institutional recognition, award, etc on a national level. (he did win several awards in econ/finance - just not national/global scale). College gaming wise, he was an odd ball. He did not follow any predictable college resume building exercise. He spent first two years of HS becoming the youngest game master in the on line game community, and last two devouring any and every econ/finance books he can lay his hands on. He became a minor expert in the field on his own (could hold his own or even win debates discussing international finance with parents of friends working in Wall Street firms) but alas, no certification from any institution that put a seal of institutional acknowledgement. Traveled to more than forty countries so far. NONE of this compensated for the critical deficiency: the lack of well documented ECs. </p>
<p>Granted, you are not aiming for HYP, but you get the idea: in competitive colleges with less than 20% acceptance rate, you have to be UNIFORMLY outstanding to be a comfortable match unless you are URM, legacy or athlete. There are always stories about so and so non athlete non legacy white kid who got in with low GPA and SAT and so so ECs. BUT, would you count on a lottery winning for your next meal if your bank account is empty? </p>
<p>Good luck, and listen to the parents on this board. They are the best possible advisors who come out of the woodwork to help hapless <em>deserving</em> teenagers!</p>
<p>Penn Lover:</p>
<p>That was a very gracious apology!
With this, let me suggest that you focus your attention to colleges that do a holistic approach rather than the more numbers-driven schools (which tend to be publics that receive so many applications that they don’t look at anything much beyond scores and GPAs).
I would encourage you to consider colleges that are SAT-optional. Of course, you want to submit your scores: they are your greatest strength. But these are colleges that pay a lot of attention to the different parts of an application and may, as a result, be willing to overlook the weak GPA, especially since it went up in junior and senior years. </p>
<p>You will need to explain your low scores for freshman and sophomore years, preferably, someone other than yourself (such as your GC) should do so. You do have an impressive list of languages: there can’t be many college applicants who have studied Latin, Greek and German! You also have quite an array of APs. That is good. </p>
<p>Use your essay to emphasize the positives; you want the college to see you as someone who would contribute to the community.</p>
<p>Since you have already graduated, explain what you have been/will be doing in your gap year before college–make the most of this time.</p>
<p>I agree with those who say that you should not put any faith in the encouraging letters your received; chances are, colleges saw your high PSAT scores or SAT scores. But there is no harm in applying to some reach schools (and some on your list are reaches for everyone) as long as you have some matches and safeties. In your case, since there is such a gap between your score and your GPA, it is a bit more difficult to determine what is a match and what is a reach. Bear in mind that for OOS applicants, the bar may be quite higher than for in-state applicants (this is the case for UNC-Chapel Hill and UVA for instance). </p>
<p>Your lists seemed to cover a wide range of colleges and universities, but you also said you were not interested in Mizzou. Let us know a bit more about what type of school (size, location) you would like to attend. CC parents know about a wide variety of schools.</p>
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<p>hyeonjlee: Kids do get accepted to HYP without awards or achievements on the national level. You mention that your son had a 3.8 or 3.9 GPA. Where did his GPA place him relative to his classmates? Colleges emphasize grades and courses more than any other factor. It’s possible that GPA was the reason for his rejections.</p>
<p>The fact is, when it comes to HYP, it’s often impossible to know why a candidate like your son (who sounds most interesting) didn’t get accepted. We don’t know exactly what goes on behind closed doors. But I don’t want any student contemplating an application to HYP to read your post and despair his/her lack of nationally recognized ECs. Yes, they certainly help an application to HYP, but they are by no means essential.</p>
<p>^Agree that one doesn’t need to be accomplished on the national level to get into HYP. </p>
<p>The biggest problem with a HYP rejection is that the applicant usually has NO idea why one person was chosen over another for the vast majority of the applicants. Everyone will tell you what they thought sunk the application–the scores weren’t high enough, the classwork wasn’t rigorous enough, the recommendations weren’t good enough, the ECs weren’t national enough, the essays weren’t compelling enough. But no one knows.</p>
<p>D was rejected by Y on the EA round. What was wrong with the application? Must be the essays, maybe the ECs weren’t national, not enough community service…The same application garnered an acceptance from H. Now the application is deemed by all to be perfect. Same application…go figure.</p>
<p>My point–when it comes to a HYP application, unless you are in that 10% of the applicant pool who are rejected outright because the application DOES have a fatal defect, you really can’t know what was “wrong” with the app.</p>
<p>Nothing was “wrong” with the application. The applicant just didn’t fit into some institutional need that would have led to an acceptance.</p>
<p>^^ What wjb said.</p>
<p>S1’s HS did not rank AT ALL. There are only 60+ kids with kids scoring extremely high on SAT: two 2400 in his graduating class of 60+ and another 10 or so over 2300. It’s an extremely selective school and the school does not think it’s fair to punish extremely well qualified kids by showing Jonny to be ranked below 10% when this kid can be a Val hands down in most other schools. In terms of where he stands with GPA, based on information available, he was within the top ranks - so I don’t think its GPA (this school does not hand out As willy nilly either so GPA 3.8-3.9 was a very good one).</p>
<p>Anyway, HYP admission process in my mind is truly a black box.</p>
<p>I don’t discourage anybody from applying to them, just be realistic and build a good back up list. I shudder to think what would have happened if he did not get an EA from a school which turned out perfect for him, since we were way to complacent and did not consider any school below the top 10 on the USNWR - we were EXTREMELY naive (so naive that we considered UC Berkeley as safety - yes, he got that safety acceptance all right, but only fools like us would ever think a school with a caliber of berkeley as a safety as an OOS student).</p>
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<p>Good analogy!!</p>
<p>Well, I think I have a pretty good list now. I’ve chopped out all but one large university and have almost strictly LACs, most of which are SAT optional:</p>
<p>-Claremont McKenna College (Focus is on aspects like Gov’t, Psych: things I am interested in, involved in a seemingly good consortium)
-Connecticut College (SAT optional)
-Hamilton College (SAT optional – really looking at this one)
-Macalester College
-Occidental College
-University of Minnesota
-Wheaton College (SAT optional, cross-enrollment at Brown University)
-Penn (might as well! =])</p>
<p>Thoughts? I know I’ve got some reaches in there. I’ve also considered Middlebury (SAT optional) because of the extremely proficient foreign language programs – which I believe includes some assistance in getting students into a UN translator position – but am still undecided for two reasons: One, it is a massive digression from the law, poli sci areas and I’m not sure if a chance would pay off; two, it’s in Vermont (which is practically Canada…) and is apparently smack dab in the middle of farm land. Not so sure about it.</p>
<p>This is a pretty good list. Perhaps others will suggest a safety?</p>
<p>Work on your application essay now. Given the unusual GPA/scores, it will be quite important. Also make sure you line up teachers who can write excellent recs. Especially since you moved schools, the teachers may not know about your earlier GPA, so they will need to address the discrepancy between the before and after, but this should not be the main focus of their recs. Give them personal details, remind them of something that you did in or for their class that they can use to flesh out their rec.</p>