This is a very insightful & helpful post - we are currently going through the process - and i feel too my typical, smart whit S has nothing really as a hook or “Major enough” accomplishment to get into a very highly selective engineering school. Looking for more matches/safeties & some CC’ers have given good advice. What a process and so much to consider - but targeting a good range of the somewhat less selective schools & visiting them if possible before applying is certainly on our to do list. Thanks for all the tips and for sharing your and your D’s journey!
This is a good thread -- very informative and uplifting. Congrats to you and your daughter and best wishes for your son's path.
Re: 8
I think too many people overlook LACs. I feel like at least the top seven are direct Ivy equivalents in terms of quality – maybe as many as the top 12, through Vassar.
So if you hear that someone got into top a top LAC, like…
Williams
Amherst
Pomona
Swarthmore
Middlebury
Wellesley
Bowdoin
Carleton
Haverford
Claremont McKenna
Wesleyan
Vassar
…it should be treated with the same level of awe (this gets silly, but you know what I mean…) as if the person were headed for Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Cornell or Hopkins.
I completely agree, @prezbucky, and quite a few students who get into both Ivys and the top LAC’s choose the LAC’s
Well, LAC Val girl got into three of the LACs on @prezbucky 's list, one of them being in the top three on that list. Her parents had never heard of it! Me personally, I have become a giant LAC fan and am very certain my D is going to end up at one. I am already scheming as to how to get my son interested in them. (He says they are too small.)
@maya54, RD chances may be a bit better for non-special high-stats kids at Vandy, WashU, and Tufts, I agree (though nearly everyone engages in yield-protection as well).
For NU, that’s probably only true for Chicagoland kids.
Many elite privates give a slight tie-breaker boost to kids in their home city/metro/state/region.
That’s definitely the case for Harvard, UPenn, Duke, Cornell, NU, UChicago, and WashU. Seems to be true for Stanford as well.
@HiToWaMom, a school with a <20% acceptance rate is a reach for any kid, even one with stats in the top percentile. For students like that, the idea of matching where your scores and grades fall in the percentiles of accepted students just doesn’t work a lot of the time. For example, a kid with a 2370 SAT and a perfect GPA will be in the top quartile of, say, Harvard’s, accepted students, but that’s no guarantee of acceptance, unless he or she has a hook, a fabulous EC, and is perhaps a legacy.
My D was a 2340 SAT/salutatorian/ interesting but not outstanding ECs and was still flat out rejected by Stanford, where she was also a legacy. We didn’t have much expectation of her getting in though, because we knew the odds weren’t in her favor, and that there were tens of thousands of equally qualified applicants.
I think a match for top students (one where they’ve got a good shot at getting in if their application is strong) is a school with an acceptance rate above 40-50%. A safety would be a school with a rate of >60%.
Another part of it is the common misconception that only universities have strong STEM programs which isn’t necessarily true.
For instance, SWAT and Smith have engineering programs and several of the ones on that list and my LAC(Oberlin) have strong STEM departments. Oberlin’s neuroscience, biology, and physics are some of the notable departments and an older classmate who did a double degree in Viola/Chemistry is in the latter stages of a Chem PhD at Harvard.
It also depends on the history of some of the LACs.
For instance, during my HS years in the early-mid-'90s, a woman getting admitted to Vassar was regarded as highly as someone getting admitted to an Ivy/peer elite or FSA for that matter.
However, due to the fact men were still being admitted to Vassar with far lower GPA/SATs because there was still a strong prevailing stigma of it being a former women’s college, a male student being admitted to Vassar wouldn’t be given the same level of kudos from most peers and even some admins/teachers at my public magnet back then.
In the case of Barnard, there was the IMO strange dynamic of Columbia U’s Columbia College and SEAS* women and female HS classmates who were admitted to Columbia College regarding their Barnard College counterparts as “lesser than”. It wasn’t helped that Barnard’s STEM programs weren’t considered as strong as Columbia’s even though Barnard and Columbia students in practice cross-register and take courses on each other’s campus regularly.
- This was even more strange as back in my HS years and earlier, one could be admitted to Columbia SEAS with far lower HS GPA stats** than Barnard(Seen SEAS admit HS classmates with B/B+ level GPAs whereas one needed a minimum of a high B+/-A to even be considered by Barnard).
** Granted one had to have grades/SATs strongly lopsided for STEM which was common at the HS I attended.
Great post, @Lindagaf! I only wish it was posted in the College Admissions or College Search and Selection sections so more students would read it in addition to parents. Thanks for taking the time to type out your family’s experience.
Lots of good advice here but also agree with @maya54 with the under 20% comment. Especially at the top non Ivy universities like G’town, Northwestern, Wash U, Tufts, Hopkins etc. , you will find more non hooked than hooked kids. Smaller LACs due to the small size can be tougher and unpredictable, but also remember that you will never make a shot that you don’t take. I’m not advocating applying to 8 Ivies, but do think reaches are part of the process. Yes, there are threads here with posters shut out of all top schools, but there are also plenty of posts with kids trying to decide between a few top options.
A few points to add. We tend to focus on stats because those are transparent and published. But the deciding factor among candidates with good enough scores comes down to the subjective. How good is that essay really? Everyone thinks their essay is fab. In reality most are not. The supplemental essays need to be just as good and tailored to the specific school. The ec area of the common app needs to let your ecs shine, not be a laundry list. These are the things that set the high stats kids with top acceptances from the high stats kids with no top acceptances. The difference between a truly good essay and a mediocre one is more significant than a 33 vs 34 ACT. And do your homework on your own schools track record. My D’s small school (fewer than 65 per class) gets 5-8 girls per yr into a particular tippy top university with about a 15% accept rate. And they are not all hooked. That school obviously likes our kids. Another similar type school we have less success with. Talk to your gc. Sometimes the most helpful info is looking at the stats of those denied vs those accepted.
Our gc is very strict and conservative with the safety schools - they require them to be on the list. But at the same time they want the reaches on the list too.
Good luck to all.
@doschicos , I was planning on posting it in the Admissions forum, but I thought I would change the title a bit. I also don’t want to get put in jail by the moderators if they think I am spamming!
I think this is a very useful post, @Lindagaf. I’ve followed your other thread with interest.
This also bears repeating as an exceptional essay can override an otherwise humdrum or even abysmal GPA/SAT stats.
One HS classmate was accepted to Middlebury was regarded by several HS classmates as a fluke because his GPA was extremely low for that LAC(Barely a B+). He himself was shocked at having been accepted as his GC told him Midd was “sheer fantasy” as far as his GPA/SATs, GC report, and essay were concerned.
He felt the strong essay his GC disparaged* and interview with a Midd alum interviewer were the key reasons why he was admitted.
- Essay was admittedly off-the-wall....but he pulled it off very nicely IMO....and the Midd adcoms seemed to agree.
Great post. I know with my first one seven years I gave him a $300 limit and told him to apply to any school he wanted to, especially as we were told by the GC that financial aid could make some of the ones I knew were expensive affordable. (My son was val of his hs, 35 ACT and a NMF.) My son didn’t apply to any tippy top schools so did get into all the ones he applied to. Then came the financial packages. Definitely opened my eyes to what is offered and what we could afford. He got into an excellent public in a nearby state, which offered a wonderful NMF scholarship and with our financial help, graduated debt free.
Two years later his brother (val, 36 ACT, NMF) started the application process. He only wanted to apply to MIT. I now had 2 years on CC and a little experience with his brother, so I “let” him apply to MIT, but “made” him apply to 2 other public universities and 1 local LAC where I knew he would get excellent merit awards. I kept telling him that he probably would not get into MIT, and my husband was mad at me for “crushing his dreams” but I am realistic. He has no hook. Looking at the MIT admittance stats back yhen I think only 33% of whites were accepted in a class of 1100. That meant 340ish students, and I believe this statistics was for white males and females (although I can’t remember and it might be just white males.) Consider the 1000’s of white males that were applying, alot with more to offer than my student, his chances were very low. He was not accepted. Luckily he checked out the other 3 universities, and really liked his visit in March at the one he ended up attending. He recently graduated from there and has a wonderful job in his field. (And has no debt.)
My youngest son applied to only 3 schools, and got into the one that he wanted to attend with a merit scholarship. By this time we knew exactly what to do and what not to do with regards to applying to a dream school. I just wish others would learn by reading all these posts on CC too.
On the flip side of kids feeling crushed or worrying about people making comments if they don’t get in to tippy-top schools is my son. He watched D go through the process 3 years ago. He looked at a few “reach” schools, but decided against applying to any. He knew that even if he did get in, the net price of the school would be more than the match schools he targeted - where he was eligible for significant (competitive) merit aid. Graduating debt-free - and not being a burden on us - were goals for him.
Yes, I know top schools are more generous with need-based aid even to families with higher incomes, but we ran the numbers - the “reach” schools would potentially be manageable, but not with just savings and current earnings. He has a strong desire to graduate with no debt, and would like the opportunity to travel abroad. His major will make a semester abroad difficult to manage, so he asked if he could use the savings from a more affordable college to travel in the summer.
He’s now deciding between several schools where the net price will be well below our budget and where he believes he will be challenged and have lots of opportunities. He now finds himself explaining why he isn’t going to a “better” school. He just says he feels he’s found the right schools for him.
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@wisteria100, considering that Northwestern fills roughly half their class with ED admits these days, I daresay that non-hooked applicants who applied in RD are in the minority at NU now.
Thank you so much for this!!! Great, great advice:))
@PurpleTitan considering that Northwestern fills roughly half their class with ED admits these days, I daresay that non-hooked applicants who applied in RD are in the minority at NU now.
Don’t think the numbers would bear this out. NU admits about 1000 in the ED round. In the RD round they admit around 3,250. The majority of athletes will be ED, and a bunch of legacies too, so don’t think the vast majority of the 3,250 in the RD round could possibly be hooked.
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@wisteria100, sorry, I wasn’t clear enough.
What I meant is that since ED admits make up half the student body now, it’s almost certain that less than half the student body is made up of folks who are unhooked and also applied in RD.
With NU RD admit rates below 10% now, I think that it behooves unhooked RD applicants to NU to regard it as a lottery school where no stats, no matter how high, would mean a good chance of admission.
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This also bears repeating as an exceptional essay can override an otherwise humdrum or even abysmal GPA/SAT stats."
I don’t believe this for one second! The well written essay probably does little to nothing as the adcons know that they can be edited and edited some more by professionals, parents, teachers and others vested, for one reason or another, in the candidate’s future. The only caveat I’d add is that the essay may help when it provides information about the candidate that has not been already supplied by others (letters) or in other ways (objective data). By that I mean if the essay provides information that tells the reviewers that the student was homeless then that added information may make a difference. But it is the new information and not the “passion” or wonderful phraseology or “perspective” contained in the essay that makes the difference. Maybe a beautifully written essay may help over an abysmal one for two equally strong candidates but that is about it, in terms of the value of the essay. It is way over valued by posters on CC compared to the value that it has for the applicants when read by admissions counselors.
Otherwise, while some supplemental essays may help reveal aspects of the candidate that speak to the candidate’s fit with the school, I’d say little else is garnered by them and they impact far less than readers and students would think-even with holistic review.
@wisteria100 , I agree 100% that all kids should have some reaches. It gives a kid something to strive for. I know that, especially early on, my D and I were much too focused on the reaches, when it’s the match and safeties that really needed more consideration. In the end, I think her list was excellent. She is happy with how it has played out. And frankly, she has herself to blame for being on the waitlists at her top two choices. She had extra supplemental artwork she could have submitted, but she absolutely refused, and still refuses, to do so. She is a wonderful artist. She is also modest, shy and private, and sharing artwork with strangers makes her uncomfortable. It’s a shame, because I think it might have really made a difference, particularly at one of her top choices. But you can’t force things. She is also a bit of a fatalist. She believes she will end up where she is meant to end up.