Hear hear @Pizzagirl ! Those high schools are not the norm.
To the several posters who have talked about their “average” excellent kids who did get into “below 20% acceptance rate” colleges, I actually don’t think your kids are the “average” excellent kids I am talking about. Your kids seem to be playing multiple sports and winning “minor awards”, submitting multiple supplements, AND doing all the stuff my average kid is doing. This isn’t any kind of competition, but I don’t think my average is the same as yours:-) My “average” excellent kid plays an instrument, does art, is active in a couple of clubs, volunteers, did a couple of good summer activities two years running, and babysits on occasion. No awards, no interesting supplements.
The valedictorian in our school who was shut out of all Ivies and Tufts (referred to in original post) is the type of “average” excellent kid I refer to, with ECs more similar to my kid’s ECs. Also, I would say in the last four years, the college admission game has become more brutal than ever as the number of applications by each kid seems to shoot up every year. What worked five years ago doesn’t anymore, as far as I can tell.
This isn’t to say that doing even more ECs will improve your chances either. I am sure that interesting ECs are more useful than uninteresting ones though.
hi. I just had a question concerning the comment about University of Rochester. My son(a junior) is interested in UR and I am wondering what the one writers response was thats a totally didn’t atmosphere there… Could someone elaberate on their thoughts about UR? thank you We were there last summer. the campus was beautiful and the admission session was impresive.
My point is, with some knowledge, “average” excellent kids can probably put together a stronger application than they realize.
I worked with a student this year who was your average excellent kid with a lowish ACT score (28) for the reaches she wanted. She got into UCB, which was definitely a reach for her. I believe in working with her, we were able to draw out some things from her “average” activities that made her a stronger candidate.
Now, I agree that if a student has good grades, good test scores, good course rigor, and good ECs, but there is nothing they can do to communicate to a reach college why they would be an excellent fit, then yeah, I guess I would agree that this is your “average” excellent student and he/she is unlikely to get into the reachy colleges on their list, but I think too many kids don’t know how to communicate to colleges in a way that really helps colleges to know them and why they’d be an asset to the college.
And I don’t see how a Val can be average, to be honest! They’re the best in their class; that’s not average excellent.
OK have to jump on the Whitman train. Just got back from a visit last week. It started at the bottom of the list and only as a safety because I made my son put it there. He had no interest in the location or the school really but I thought, good fit for a safty.
He got into 8 great schools including Berkeley and UCLA. Whitman sent have him a likely letter with a mention of merit so we planned the trip and figured, great FA package so why not.
Guess which school just shot to the number one choice. Still have not made the decision yet. We need to check out Reed and Oxy. But he said it would take a lot from any other school to knock it off the top of the list. It is worth a visit.
I wish I had read this thread a year ago. It would have been very helpful. I guess it is part of the curse of being the firstborn for my daughter. My second kid will benefit from our experience in eight years when it is her turn.
After being rejected by the Ivies she applied to and wait listed at Barnard, my daughter has acceptances from Northeastern, BU and GW. She also always has the option of our local state university, her safety, with the added benefit of her already have completed 48 credits there with a GPA of 3.8. We home schooled, which is how she was able to do so much at the University. And we didn’t have to pay for a good chunk of that so double bonus. I think staying here and being done in less than three years (and debt free) and then applying to an East coast school for grad school would be the smartest choice. But she wants out of the Midwest, so I am think my chances of convincing her are pretty slim. She wants to live on the East Coast (my husbands family all from New York City).
The aid was good for all three, need based and merit but she is still going to come out of school with about thirty thousand of student loan debt. And then there will be more debt for grad or med school (which is what she is thinking she wants now). I guess I am feeling a little shell shocked by the whole process and the idea of that much debt at such a young age.
We have eliminated GW and my husband is going with her in a couple weeks to look at BU and NEU. We are all thinking that Northeastern sounds like a better fit for her. She would start in the biomedical physics major. It looks like they will transfer a lot of her credits from the University here so she should be able to do the four year program. At least I am hopeful, they have transferred credits from the U here in the past. She has no interest in the five year option. She is very a very focused, dtermined, and independent (stubborn) person and does not care about the “typical” college experience. She didn’t care about a typical high school experience either. She wants an urban school and loves Boston. I am hoping that the trip to Boston and seeing her options there will bring her through all the stages of grief she is experiencing over not getting into Columbia or its equivalent in prestige.
Anyway, thanks for reading. It feels good to get it all off my chest.
@sbjdorlo Not to argue a point, but, I will. The Val of course isn’t average. But, she didn’t get into a single Ivy, or even Tufts (prob Tufts syndrome.) She is however, “average” in the whole package, as in she is Asian (or white, whatever), no interesting ECs, no research, nothing special, apart from grades and test scores. (BTW, I know her very well, good friend of my kid. In real life, she is isn’t average at all.) Therefore, she is much like the “average” excellent student who doesn’t get into any of the mega reach schools, the kinds of kids we see on CC all the time who didn’t have the sense to apply to more reachable reaches.
As I mentoned, the Val got into other fantastic colleges, inc. three extremely prestigious LACs. Maybe in dissecting this post, the distinguishing factor could be ECs, but even then, that doesn’t always work, as we all know. It all boils down to this: The overwhelming, vast majority of really excellent students will not get into Top 20 colleges. This includes my kid and lots of others. Do not count on it happening, and assume it won’t.
Many high-stats kids look at the SAT/ACT score ranges and GPAs for top 20 schools and think “I got a 35 ACT and my GPA is 4.0, I have a good chance”. They don’t understand that high test scores and GPA is a baseline and it takes SO much more than that to get in. Unfortunately many spend way too much time and energy on applications to top 20 schools. I wonder what the acceptance rate for a non-hooked, non-minority kid applying in the RD round would be? Probably a small fraction of the overall acceptance rate (which is already miniscule).
Our high school routinely appears in the third quartile for our county, but the top performing kids still do very well and there is always plenty of Naviance data for at least the east coast schools. It helps to be a big school.
Well of course it depends on your definition of excellent student. Mine sounds similar to rosered’s D from post #133, 4.0 UW/35 ACT. No awards, no research, not top 3 in the class, 2 sport athlete but not recruited, not much else in ECs, (I think she was NHS VP), took 10 AP classes with 5s on all tests. Very good results in top LACs, which I attributed to her essay and recommendations. Her teachers loved her, she was a curious and intense student. She applied to a lot of them not expecting to get in to so many. For her it definitely was worth it to spend time on those apps. The attitude of assuming you won’t get in does not lend itself to maximum effort , as long as they understand the odds it is not a bad thing to try.
@Lindagaf, totally agree with the statement, “Do not count on it happening, and assume it won’t.” As a private consultant, that is what I try to communicate with the students I work with, but it can be hard. I try to be gentle, but help them to be realistic. So many students don’t realize just how many kids across the country and beyond are applying to schools.
My only point is that I do believe that kids often have more interesting stories to tell than they realize, and a good GC/teacher/parent/consultant can draw them out. I think colleges like creative kids that think for themselves. It won’t necessarily translate into admissions into some dream school (which I STRONGLY tell kids not to have!), but it might be the thing that gets them surprisingly into an excellent school over others that look the “same”.
@mamabear1234 , I hope you don’t mind me saying that your D, IMO, does not fit my “average” excellent student demographic. Managing two sports, ten APs with all 5s, perfect GPA and extremely high test score is a little better than average excellent:-) Even the oft-mentioned Val (with almost identical stats) can’t compete with the two-sport advantage that your D has. Colleges do love athletes who are also amazing students.
“And I don’t see how a Val can be average, to be honest! They’re the best in their class; that’s not average excellent.”
There are 33,000 HS valedictorians every year. So 66,000 Vals + Sals. Harvard has 2,000 spots a year. Among the applicant pool to Harvard, being a Val/Sal is, in fact, quite average.
As noted above, Brown rejects 82% of the Vals that apply there. Since Brown has an overall 10% admissions rate, that means that a Val is a slightly above average applicant.
And I’m going to add that that’s OKAY. It would be tragic if it meant that talented and intelligent students who did not make it into a Top 20 college were doomed to an inferior education. But, thank goodness, that’s not the case. These bright, motivated, engaging students will find wonderful colleges to attend, colleges full of challenges, opportunities, worthy peers, and dedicated professors. As long as they (and their parents) have crafted a college list that includes a range of schools and they are not blinded by the disappointment of not having those Ivy admits or a bumper sticker that will inspire envy in the neighborhood, THEY’RE GOING TO BE FINE.
And that’s been the most valuable lesson of CC for me and my own “average excellent” child.
@sbjdorlo I agree that kids often need to have someone help them draw out their information. They all need to say what they are about, tell their story to the adcoms and many don’t understand this. I worked with a student who had a classic story of moving to a new area with major adjustments and, after much question/answering, she was finally able to articulate how she is resilient and has developed a “can-do” attitude. That was much more interesting than her first comments to me. My D2 was very particular about her essays and felt they had to communicate her “essential self” (my words). She was waitlisted at an Ivy she cared very much about but her reaction was: “It’s okay - I don’t have to go there, but someone heard me out of 32,000 applications. Someone - not every member of the admissions committee - but some of them got me. That’s enough.” I think the writing can do much to differentiate a student but it needs to be genuine.
@EllieMom Exactly. For those who worry that their classmates won’t be as stimulating, I say, well, where do you think all those wonderful, smart, talented students who can’t squeeze into so-called top 20 or 40 schools are going? All the other schools, of course! Same with the professors.
Lknomad, your post makes me smile. my son also passed up UCs (including Berkeley) and several other more “highly ranked” schools for Whitman. Over the years, we found a bunch of others who also made the same decision. My son had a great college experience and I fell so hard for it, here I am 6 years later singing its praises.
@Lindagaf - Just adding my voice to the chorus of thanks for sharing your D’s journey and all the hard won wisdom picked up along the way. Your D sounds a lot like mine (how many times have you heard that from fellow CC posters lately? ) though my D17 is a little more science leaning.
I have to say, the thing that’s stuck with me the most from what you all have been through is really taking the search for great safety options way more seriously. I don’t want to say my D and I have been dismissing that, exactly, but up until now hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought beyond which state schools to consider as “well, she can always just go to ____” while the bulk of thought and research was going into reach/match schools. I realize now there’s no reason to “just go to” anywhere, and if as much care and thought is put into selecting safeties as into the reach/match schools, her outcomes are way more likely to be genuinely happy.
Agree with #156. Last week my son went to an accepted students day at a college that he never considered very highly.This is a fine college but since it is first a state school and second not as hard to get in (50%overall, assume harder for certain majors) is considered not as rigorous academically blah blah. Well, he was very surprised. I am not sure what he was expecting to see. He met quiet a few better students than he is and he saw work from last years freshmen and saw their accomplishments and he sobered up very quickly. Sure there are exceptions and sure fit is important but academically most of the 4 year good colleges are fine for most of the students.
