My understanding (at least from the first new SAT sittings and concordance) is that the new SAT is easier for the under 1400 scorers. At the very top of the scoring range, the SAT may be harder because some of the questions are not clearly right or wrong (ambiguous). The pentalty for one wrong in English was steep and the wordy math is helpful to some and not others.
The ACT is great for kids who can work quickly and the answers are more straightforwardly right or wrong. If the student does not do well under time pressure they really should focus on the SAT.
Back to the original Topic- in my kids small boarding school class this year, many of the top students early decisioned at top but not super reach schools. Like Tufts, WUSL, Wake Forest, etc. The Ivy admits were only a handful and three of them were recruited athletes, another was a URM, and only one was an unhooked top scoring white kid with an interesting EC and great Recs.
Good school counselors are recommending ED for kids who can afford to full pay or will certainly qualify for financial aid. None of the kids that need Merit applied ED.
EC's: Turns out, you should be interesting OUTSIDE the confines of your school and it's own programs - not just an award/ title hoarder within your own student body. Seek out opportunities others students in your building are not. So when you both apply from XYZ HS with similar GPA's, test scores, and varsity letters one of you will stand out.
RECOMMENDATIONS: Use social media as a currency and an extension of your application. Conduct a google search of your name and view it as an external letter of recommendation in pictures and tags from the real world. With that said, be sure to manage your image well.
2017 Wildcards:
A. FAFSA skipped a year, asking for an older tax return than in the past. Think some families might have missed opportunities as a result.
B. New SAT: when in doubt, sent everything - each ACT, SAT, and AP test, leaving it totally in the hands of admissions to wade through. Figured they were going to see how the new SAT truly balanced out instead of using a pre-determined College Board "comparable" chart and guessing on my own. Curious to see how the comparables actually shake out.
The Midwest went through a baby bust when the current group of graduating students were born. The bust continued for a number a years, and demographically the Midwest will have a few years of declining graduating seniors especially since it is the part of the country least likely to attract immigrants. This situation will likely exacerbate in the next few years.
“…there are a lot of good schools that will offer FA to students that is in the form of tuition discounting, and not specifically “merit” money per se. That (not asking for FA) may be a good strategy for the elites, but not necessarily all the good/reachy schools. JMO”
Could someone please explain “tuition discounting” as an idea distinct from “merit money”? Where is this available, how do you get it, is this available at highly ranked schools? This admissions cycle, my kid received a huge merit award from Vanderbilt. My kid did not ask for FA, but we are in the situation where we truly hoped for merit money and are very grateful to Vandy for providing it. I have a kid applying to the class of '22 and another in several more years. I can’t count on another large merit award, so what about “tuition discounting” as described by @jym626?
@pantha33m and @PurpleTitan I agree with Post #134. With many kids coming out of good high schools and in many cases either having access to a decent GC or a private college counsellor, I just don’t believe that the essays are the deciding factor for the top 20-ish Unis and LACs. I think that the schools use essays as a red herring, whereas in reality they are just filling out their classes with URMs, first gen kids, North Dakotans, Philosophy majors, etc. In addition some schools have well trodden quirks (such as the example of the schools that reject kids that just fall below the top 10% (which is a bit crazy if you think it through as most schools don’t rank anymore for that reason). For example, Dartmouth loves valedictorians, Vandy loves NMF, etc without proper context these accomplishments have little to do with college success.
On the other hand, I think that school recommendations are very important particularly for high schools that are sending kids to the top schools. Assuming that the Adcoms are familiar with the high schools, they should be able to know when a kid is getting a truly great recommendation or not from the high school’s GC.
@Dolemite “Like many people say college admissions isn’t random.”
I and many others here would disagree. The essays do make it somewhat random, or if random is a bit harsh, it is very subjective. Basing someone’s application (which is essentially a summary of four years’ hard work) on a three or four paragraph writing exercise is extremely subjective. While some kids either don’t write well or send in a rushed essay, most kids can send in at least a very good essay. This stuff about school “fit” is also part of the opaqueness and nonsense of college admissions. In most cases, a school (for example Yale) could put together approximately four similar classes of the same quality for each year. How Yale, Princeton, etc takes that 4X class size and only accepts 25% of the most qualified kids then becomes primarily a random exercise.
Essays and other subjectively graded criteria make it look random from the applicants’ point of view, even if it is much less random in actuality. This is because the evaluation of essays and how they figure into the admission decision are typically opaque to applicants. Think of it like taking a class where an essay is an important part of the grade, but the instructor never returns the marked essay or any indication of the essay’s contribution to the final grade in the class (revealing only the final grade in the class). But it is even more opaque because the applicant to a college has no possibility of any comparison with the vast majority of other applicants, unlike students in a class.
Recommendations also inject the recommender’s recommendation-writing quality into the process, which is even less observable and comparable than the applicant’s essay.
I think you ( @londondad ) are right that there is an unavoidable element of randomness in admissions decisions at the tippy-top colleges, and you are wrong to suggest that that element of randomness predominates. I also believe that what looks like randomness to us may not be random at all. The classic example being we can't tell the difference between Bobby and Susie, but to the committee Susie is an oboist and the orchestra is going to need some oboists when the two they have now graduate this spring, and Bobby is a harpist and they admitted some of those last year.
In my experience, lots of very good students have a great deal of trouble producing a very good essay. Plenty of kids get accepted to top colleges despite not having written very good essays, if their other credentials (including achievements) are strong enough. But it is very powerful when a kid in fact writes a very good essay, and that has a big impact.
What's more, while in theory essay grading is subjective, and even in practice making fine distinctions between two essays of similar quality is subjective, in practice a group of readers will generally have a high degree of consensus about what is a really very good essay and what is just an OK essay.
As with everything else, there's a ginormous class issue built into the whole essay cult. It helps a lot with college essay writing if kids have a lot of practice writing in school, and get a lot of meaningful feedback on what they write every time they write, and are taught how to edit themselves, etc. And it helps a lot with college essays if kids are well-read. Which is all a way of saying that it helps with college essays if kids go to expensive schools (public or private), have well-educated, involved parents, and lots of resources available. Of course, there are poor kids who are fabulous natural writers -- and people go ga-ga over them -- but in general this element of holistic admissions, like so many others, cuts in favor of the affluent and sophisticated. That said, the affluent and sophisticated are probably held to a higher standard of writing ability in the admissions process.
@JHS: “And it helps a lot with college essays if kids are well-read. Which is all a way of saying that it helps with college essays if kids go to expensive schools (public or private), have well-educated, involved parents, and lots of resources available.”
Or just read 100+ books a year checked out of Podunkville’s small one-room library.
@londondad: “While some kids either don’t write well or send in a rushed essay, most kids can send in at least a very good essay.”
That may depend on your standards. Almost all applicants on CC seem to think their essays are terrific, but what adcoms who read college essays for a living say is that most are awful and few stand out.
Remember that you’re trying to impress someone who reads hundreds of essays a week.
Yes, and applicants and the few other people the applicants ask to read their essays may think that their essays are great, but none have any way of comparing them to the vast majority of essays written by other applicants to the college. Perhaps the given applicant’s essay may be the best ever seen by a reviewer, but ordinary compared to that of thousands of other applicants to the college.
I would love to read the essays of kids who got into top 20 schools with strong grades/test scores and strong ECs but nothing super exceptional. Not the athletes or the URMs or the North Dakotans. Kids from the suburbs of big cities. These kids DO get into top schools. I know a bunch of them. Not sure what tipped the bucket in their favor. Recs must be important too. Of course, people reading apps would love to know another adult’s opinion of the student.
The advice my D got for her essay was that the first few sentences were the most important and have to grab the readers attention. Also that the essay had to show who she was. My D did get into some of her reach schools. Meanwhile a friend of hers did not. She told me that she got to see their essay, she felt like the essay did not show who her friend was, outside of what their interest was. I do know that one school in the acceptance letter to my D talked specifically about what she talked about in her essay.
Now I dont think my D is an exceptional writer, so i think in that sense, Adcom’s dont distinguish, but when two students, Johnny and Susie, both have 35’s on their ACT’s. UW 4.0, 9 AP’s, good EC’s and leadership, what they say about themselves is important.
I have done some hiring for my company. We can have two candidates with similar backgrounds and experience, but how they indicate it on their resume can make a difference on how we rank and perceive them .
I think that recommendations from private schools and high-achieving public schools that are “repeat customers” of selective colleges carry a lot of weight. The GC who writes a half-dozen recs a year to a college and gets to know the adcoms at that college, can probably make a difference when he or she gives special notice about a student. Same for the special long-standing teachers of difficult subjects at such schools.
Where randomness really comes into play is who actually reads the essay. Several years ago, a UVa adcom used to post that s/he favored applicants who had taken AP Calc, while his colleague favored apps that had done drama/theater in HS. Neither alone was good enough, but it helped in the review scoring.
Or, perhaps the essay is written extremely well, from a grammar and flow standpoint – its an A essay in English class – but its a boring/uneventful story.
Exactly. Of my two kids, #1 had a wonderful, day-in-the-life essays, and punched way above his weight in college and law school admissions (based on numbers).
Kid #2 had a trite college essay – but perfect grammar, flow and syntax – but had fewer and lower-ranked acceptances.
A truly exceptional essay has to have topic first, tone second, writing and grammar third…but all top notch. It’s very difficult to achieve all three, but those who do likely do warrant a second look in admissions if they are not already on the radar. I also think that those exceptional essays cannot be coached all that much and really do stand out.
@pantha33m I think your point is a good one. Our very competitive large public school sends kids every year to Ivies and Stanford, as well as dozens of kids to the rest of the top 20 universities and LACs. I think admissions people definitely know our school and how tough the curriculum is for the honors/AP kids. Many of our GCs have been around a while and have relationships with colleges. If a student makes an effort to get to know his GC well and gets a strong recommendation, I’m sure it helps a bunch.
Our school has no grade inflation. Very few kids out of our 700+ per class end up with straight As in all honors/AP classes. Plus, the school consistently wins state championships in many sports (10 last year!) and academic competitions like Mock Trial and Science Olympiad. The reputation of the school plus a good rec from a seasoned GC seems like it could go a long way.