Aye Carumba. Citivas, pm me if you want to carry on this conversation. There is,no fixed defintition for any of this.
I like to err on the side of caution. Too much time on this website has shown me that there is almost nothing that would surprise me when it comes to admissions.
I’m glad you loved the school! If my praise for the school didn’t already give it away, I think I should state that I applied to Colgate Early Decision and will be attending in the fall. I knew that I was giving up Bucknell, Wake Forest, and several of the other schools you listed when I chose ED.
If ED is something you’re remotely considering, it is something I can also talk about. I needed financial aid to attend Colgate, so finances were definitely a factor in my decisions. Keep me updated, as I would really like to see how your list shapes out. I applied to a lot of the same schools, so I have a lot of personal interest in your situation!
OP, for most of these colleges, it’s not just about stats. The reviews will be holistic. Eg, they will look at your actual grades, not just GPA. Depending on your possible major, it can matter what courses you got less than A in. Plus how your activities seem to relate, how much real responsibility you took on versus some clubs/titles. You can get off Naviance now and try to learn what those schools value, figure out if your picture will be a match to those values, overall. And Nav doesn’t tell you the whole story on those other kids. Eg, someone may have had a 3.7 based on lower grades in less important classes, aced the rest. Or had a lower freshman year, followed by excellence and rigor. Etc.
Run the Net Price Calculators (NPCs) for targets,from their financial aid pages. We don’t know your financial position, previous family income levels, assets, whether a parent will find work and at what income. But you can start NPCs with today’s input. Read up on what matters for financial aid, what the schools look at. Or what brings you merit aid, at some colleges.
Get a Fiske Guide or similar, so you can identify colleges and get a summary of what they’re about. Then go directly to those colleges’ web pages, see what they say, what sorts of kids they tout.
And check out a sample of the Common App and different colleges’ supplements. If there is a Why Us type of question (it’s not always phrased so obviously,) you’re going to need to know why you match them and they match you.
Last, your essays aren’t just about your confidence in your writing skills. The app questions aren’t usual high school writing assignments. What you choose to write about matters, shows your thinking and even your understanding of what those targets look for.
@Lindagaf Tulane = safety if OP shows interest. I am not sure why people think Tulane is such a selective school.
Hmmm. So I wonder if the 73% of applicants rejected at Tulane failed to express interest?
“People were predicting doom and gloom for the OPs son, predicting he would be shut out of everything but Binghamton and urging him to add more schools. In the end the kid did very well, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Hamilton, Vasaar, Bates etc.”
It turned out well for that student who apparently had some very nice offers and won’t have to attend a school he didn’t like. Nice outcome!
It seems like OP’s family is expecting financial aid to take care of the 60K+ tuition at many of these colleges? That in itself would make merit chasing a top priority. Also, what is the EFC of the family? Do they understand that financial aid is need-based? That a student can only borrow $5500 per year? I think @mom2collegekids alluded to this, but most of the posts seem to be about fine tuning definitions of matches and safeties.
I don’t see how Colgate or other comparable colleges are going to be affordable unless family’s EFC is very low.
Has OP considered colleges like Trinity in CT? Stats would put him in top quartile, but not ridiculously so. Likewise for Dickinson. How about Fairfield? And someone already mentioned Muhlenberg.
@Lindagaf for someone with stats like OP, Tulane is a safety. Look up Tulane’s stats in the CDS.
It feels like this topic is turning into a metaphor for capitalism vs. communism – a debate over meritocracy vs. equality. Some of us believe that each student has unique odds based on their individual accomplishments and situation and someone believes that no matter what you do your odds are exactly the same as everyone else’s.
Some of us think that when the admission rates are low, you can’t assume you know for sure where you stand in the pool. The college probably gets more well qualified applicants than they can accept. They also want to protect their yield, which can affect who they decide to admit from the qualified pool.
I don’t think anyone on any post on any side of this issue has ever suggested anyone can know for sure at any school. Too many variables. But knowing there is a small chance that a school might deny a highly qualified candidate well above their typical admit for yield protection (or whatever reason) doesn’t automatically make it a reach school. Or at least some of us don’t see it that way. There’s long been the saying that one person’s match is another person’s reach, etc. Historically that has meant that one person’s qualifications make a school a match that for another student might be a reach. But now we can redefine it to mean that one person’s definition of a match is another person’s definition of a reach.
In any event, it’s all good. I was just having a little fun with the communism metaphor. I think we can all agree that it’s good for students to have a large diversity of acceptance rates among their applications to assure there are some they are extremely likely to get into.
@SeinfeldFan1, OP is an impressive candidate, but stats are squarely in Tulane’s 25%-75% range, which is 30-33. (or at least it was for last year’s slightly less competitive class). Tulane is also notoriously hard to predict based on stats because it has been making herculian efforts to notch up its freshman retention and 6 year graduation rates, and they don’t want to admit people who are not highly interested in its offerings and also likely to be happy there.
@NJDad68 oh, wow I did not know all of that! I stand corrected, thanks for the information! I should have used the word target/match, not safety.
@lookingforward I want to major in English. I got a perfect score on the ACT for English/writing and I’ve gotten all A’s in my English classes. I specifically want to do creative writing, like comedic writing, but I would probably just major in English and do creative writing on the side w/ skits and improv, etc. I started a satirical magazine and I coached my own improv troupe/was a founding member of ours at school. That being said, I am NOT good at math. It significantly brings down my GPA (always B’s or B+'s), I’m in the “advanced” track, but not AP until next year, and I got a 28 on the ACT for math. Do you think that this will significantly hurt me, or will colleges see that I do excel in the areas I’m interested in? Similarly, I enjoy science to an extent, but do not plan to do anything scientific in my career or in college. I’ve always taken advanced science classes and done OK (ranging from A- to B) and got a 31 on that for the ACT.
If colleges are truly holistic, will they be able to look past my weakness in math in favor of my interest and talent in other areas?
@californiakid17 Was Colgate’s aid really helpful? I’m looking to take out as little loans as possible in fear that I won’t be able to pay them back. Do you know if they offer any scholarships or significant merit-based aid as well? Thanks so much!
@Dustyfeathers No I’m a girl. Would that hurt my chances?
Yes, harder for girls to get into LAC’s because the applicant pool is significantly skewed with more girls but most of the schools try to end up with roughly equal class breaks between genders. So you should consider that when looking at the admission stat averages. Check out the link that was posted on the previous page of the student who got into a bunch of the LAC’s. Read it and you will see the father of a girl who had even better stats than the OP whose daughter didn’t get into many of those. That’s a vast generalization and there could have been many other reasons in their two cases but what is absolutely statistically true is the ratio of applicants to acceptances is harder for girls than boys at this LAC’s.
You may be ok, with strengths in your interest areas and good LoRs. But that’s where savvy and strategy come in: choosing the colleges that will like and want what you offer, get excited. That’s much more than matching stats. You dig enough to get behind the veil, so to say. What they value, what they really offer you and what you really offer them. I’m not sure you’ve named the schools that may turn out to be it for you.
And your app pkg itself will matter very much. I’m curious about the rest of your ECs and what sort of volunteer work. Anything outside the hs context?
About being a gal. True, LACs can need guys. An interest in a humanities major can sometimes boost a guy, since they’re often disproportionately female. But all this is more than stats or some anecdotes about some kid with better numbers who missed an admit. This is holistic and we don’t know what another kid put in her app, what came through or not.
LACs, though tending to favor men statistically, do vary with respect to differential acceptance rates. As examples, Bates and Bowdoin statistically are easier admits for males, Colby is easier for females and Hamilton is nearly neutral.