Under 3.6 (GPA) and Applying Top 20 Parents Thread

Parents Forum
1081

<p>

</p>

<p>Here, the local whizzes not going to the t20 (again, used as shorthand) will typically go to U of Illinois. Why wouldn’t they? It’s got a very solid reputation esp business and engineering, most of these kids want to stay in the Chicago area anyway eventually, there is no shortage of opportunities, it’s a top 40 school and at a reasonable price compared to privates. Some will go to Indiana or Wisconsin. As for more local colleges, beyond NU and U Chicago, I think DePaul and Loyola are really the only ones that would be sufficiently interesting to someone not from this area. To me, the others tend to fall into “that’s fine, but you probably have something just like it in your backyard.”</p>

1082

<p>FOTB, the problem with your questions is that it’s very easy to fall into the same traps that we fall into when discussing the merits of the Top20. When I think about lesser known schools where the “local whizzes” go, I come up with a list of schools that have good reputations in a particular academic area, a sort of specialized, local top 20. </p>

<p>For example, way back when in the Boston area, many students went to the three "B"s, Brandeis, Bentley and Babson. All three were and still are very well regarded for their business programs. Kids interested in engineering went to Northeastern and Worcester Poly. Here in Michigan, Eastern Michigan has been a “Top 20” school for elementary education for years and Michigan Tech is a very strong engineering school. Your still stuck with talking about who does what the best.</p>

<p>The alternative? To me it’s liberal arts colleges. From what I’ve seen the smaller size gives students the opportunity to really get close to professors and to really immerse themselves in studying the things they’re interested in. Academic options are partially limited, (e.g., no business or engineering schools), but the student bodies and campuses seem to have personalities all there own. Being smaller schools there are also just fewer distractions flying around. Maybe it’s simplistic on my part, but with 20,000 students around it’s 20X more likely you’ll get side-tracked than if you only have 1,000 classmates.</p>

1083

<p>

</p>

<p>Time to make a bold statement here. I actually think many of our kids with 3.5+, 2300+, rigorous class load, good EC’s have fair chances of getting into a few T20’s. Furthermore, “fair chances” turns into “great chances” if the 3.5+ GPA comes with a 10% class rank.</p>

<p>By now you may be saying, what’s this guy talking about? Well, within the T20’s, there is a huge difference between the upper echelon (including all Ivies regardless of where each may fall on the USNWR rankings) and the bottom few in terms of the emphasis on GPA. </p>

<p>Some of the lower ranked schools are really working hard to move up by improving the metrics relevant to USNWR rankings. If I’m not mistaken, the class rank in decile is much more important than raw GPA, weighted or unweighted. The adcoms from these colleges realize that they really can’t compete at the HYPSM level, but they can certainly grab the 3.5+’s with high SAT scores who they know the Ivies would turn down to improve their overall stats, and it just gets better if the 3.5+’s happen to be in the top 10%. Don’t forget, they also want to improve their yields, so the “Ivies would turn down” part, aka Tufts syndrome, is fairly important.</p>

<p>Based on my, eh, research (mostly done on CC :wink: with support from my school’s Naviance, so YMMV), these schools in particular would look favorably at our “blind chicks”: WashU, Emory, Rice, Vandy, Notre Dame, and CMU (just outside the USNWR T20’s, and as Pizzagirl said, don’t get too hung up on the exact demarcation). Importance of GPA becomes less and less as you move down this list.</p>

<p>So am I confident that my DS1 will be accepted to a T20? Yes, if he applies to most of the schools listed above. At this point, I’m not sure he will apply to more than just a couple.</p>

<p>Now how much money we can get from them and whether or not our kids like these schools are questions for different topics.</p>

<p>p.s. I really wanted to replace “great chances” with “lock”, but I have to say, “lock” may be a bit too strong :).</p>

1084

<p><<am i=“” confident=“” that=“” my=“” ds1=“” will=“” be=“” accepted=“” to=“” a=“” t20?=“” yes,=“” if=“” he=“” applies=“” most=“” of=“” the=“” schools=“” listed=“” above.=“”>></am></p>

<p>I know this is a thread about Top 20 schools, but the statement above is just about one of the most WRONG things I’ve ever read on CC. What do WashU, Emory, Rice, Vandy, Notre Dame and CSU have in common, besides a section the USNWR rankings? Are they similar size? Near each other geographically? Same majors? ECs? Atmosphere? </p>

<p>No, just some arbitrary ranking system places them near each other. And for that reason you’d like your kid to apply to all of them. Puh-leeze.</p>

<p>“Whether or not our kids like these schools are questions for different topics.” Actually that’s question Numero Uno. And if the answer is NO, then you need go no further. </p>

<p>Remember, your kid is spending the next 4 years of his life somewhere. It’s not about being able to brag around the water cooler about what college your kid got into. It’s about your kid going to the place that’s the best fit for HIM. If it happens to be one of the schools above, great. </p>

<p>And you’re ignoring the numerous posts that were listed earlier about the rules of statistics and probability. Applying to school X does NOT in ANY way increase your chances of being admitted to school Y. Applying to 10 schools with 15% admit rates does not make it more likely that you will be admitted to any one of them. That is a mindset I see over and over on CC, and it drives me nuts.</p>

<p>If your kid likes a “reach” school and wants to apply there, great! Go for it and best of luck, maybe it will work out! But don’t kid yourself that applying to a lot of reaches makes it more likely that he/she will get into one of them. </p>

<p>Our kids are NOT blind chicks, and colleges are not interchangable kernels of corn.</p>

1085

<p>Forget your GPA, a high level award/accomplishment easily negates a low level GPA.</p>

1086

<p>Lafalum84 - before you vent like this, please remember the context. My last post was in response to “I thought the preface was that these kids probably would NOT be admitted to those schools.”</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Again, I did not say the question is not “Numero Uno”. The reason my son did not want to apply to many of the schools I listed is because he doesn’t like some of them for one reason or another.</p>

1087

<p>Laflum: That is the best post on this thread yet.</p>

1088

<p>

</p>

<p>I’ve seen many arguments on this, and I did not ignore them (at least the ones I saw).</p>

<p>Here is what I see. I agree that applying to more schools with the same admit rate does not make it more likely that you will be admitted to any one of them. However, it does statistically make it more likely that you will be admitted into one of them. Of course, the increase in likelihood is not a simple X multiple over the a single school’s admit rate, but it’s there.</p>

<p>Surely the chances of me getting a head when I flip the coin 20 times is greater than that of flipping just once.</p>

1089

<p>

Of course, even this is not necessarily true. It still requires careful planning to make any statistically significant difference. I guarantee it doesn’t matter if I tried out for all NBA teams or just one, I’m not going to make it.</p>

<p>I think it’s better to look at it in a “cost-benefit” methodology - how much harder is it to apply to one more school, compared to the overall possibility of admission.</p>

1090

<p>To repeat something I said some pages back, I haven’t picked any of the schools on my son’s list. He decided he wants to apply to 10 to 12 schools, and the ones he has picked so far are mostly T20-ish. Since he picked them, there must be some degree of “fit,” even if it’s just in his imagination, so I’m not going to second-guess them. I’m just going to help him get in if I can. My only meddling, if you can call it that, is to insist that he apply to at least one true safety (practically guaranteed admission and likely merit aid).</p>

<p>On a different note, I was scratching my head about all this talk of blind chicks, until I remember the chicken-and-corn analogy from a while ago. I thought it was supposed to mean something like “ugly stepsister”. Duh.</p>

1091

<p>

</p>

<p>Only if you are fully qualified. If you’re not qualified for one of them, then applying to all the others is not likely to be successful, either. Do a search for “admission,” “statistics,” and “probability” to see several discussions of the math ad nauseum. But, o dear God, please don’t discuss it here again.</p>

1092

<p>^^^ Agree with the “careful planning” part. The NBA example is not applicable here because we are not talking about a 0.0000001 chances for any one of the schools listed above.</p>

1093

<p>^^^^ It depends on which school. If you’re talking Harvard, there are lots of students with .0001 chance of getting in. I contend .0005 is not really much better.</p>

1094

<p>

</p>

<p>If you are not qualified, you have zero chance! If a school clearly says you have to have a 3.8 or you are out, then I’d say if you don’t have a 3.8, you have zero chance. At least on paper, these schools do not have a minimum GPA requirement. Like I said, the school Naviance confirmed that there are fair chances to these schools for my kid.</p>

<p>I agree about not spending effort on the probability theory here.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I was not talking about Harvard. My list above does not include any of the Ivies.</p>

1095

<p>If you simply apply a variation of the Friedlin-Wentzell Theorem assuming an approximately normal distribution of SAT scores across all populations (which we can all acknowledge is a slight oversimplification, ha-ha), then the Kolmogorov Continuity Theorem implies that…</p>

<p>Ah, forget it.</p>

1096

<p>If just one of the teacher req’s describes your kid as a brainy slacker or lazy or only works to his potential when he thinks it’s “worth” his while, or has an attitude that “homework is for loser’s”, then in fact, applying to all top 20 schools is a waste of $65. And that’s the only part of the application you will never see and will never know.</p>

<p>Which is why there are actually kids in America who don’t get in anywhere. And kids who end up at their Safety schools (hundreds and thousands of them) even though their stats suggested on Naviance and elsewhere that the schools on their list were moderate to high reaches but not “total waste of time”. And kids whose transcripts read, “tons of potential but not someone who goes the extra mile”. And if you were the JHU adcom and had your pick of beautful and uncomplicated transcripts and unambiguous recommendations that say that this is a kid whose face lights up when he learns something new and is a joy to teach… you may not be so inclined to invest a whole lot of time figuring out if your institution is the right place for a really smart but maybe slacker kid.</p>

<p>I’m not suggesting your kids are slackers. I’m pointing out that to you, the non-A’s on the transcript read, “This kid is really special, so special his grades aren’t always perfect.” Which is great. But if there’s even one teacher who has bortzed about your kid being a know-it-all and obnoxious in the teacher’s lounge, and your GC is having a bad day and chooses to include that comment in the packet- well, don’t you think the JHU adcom would have to be crazy to keep parsing the fine print on the app instead of just rejecting? Especially if the EC’s are all of the “I love research in a lab” ilk, of which Hopkins gets THOUSANDS in a year!</p>

1097

<p>

</p>

<p>I’m curious about this because on our school Naviance, I don’t see any students with less than a 4.5 or better seem to get into the Top 10 or even the most of the Top 20. I’m not totally sure what that means. Our school is very academically competitive with a lot of 4.0 WA and higher students. </p>

<p>For example, no one with less than a 4.8 got into Harvard or MIT out of 2 dozen applicants between the 2 schools.</p>

1098

<p>

</p>

<p>My school’s Naviance is based on unweighted GPA on a 4.0 scale, so the highest GPA possible is 4.0. Is your school using a weighted GPA system or simply using a 5.0 scale unweighted?</p>

1099

<p>blossom, you raised a very good point on the recommendations, which we don’t get to see. </p>

<p>You are right about how they could easily ruin our chances if negative qualities are either directed stated or implied. But, I can’t go on worrying about things that neither myself nor my kid has any control over. The best my son can do is to find teachers he has had a good relationship with and who appear more than glad to write him a recommendation.</p>

1100

<p>That’s why Naviance is important. At some schools so many kids get straight A’s you are in real trouble if your kid gets more than a couple of B’s. The lowest score for Harvard at our school is 94 weighted, which is probably a 91 unweighted. Moving down to colleges near the #20 position Vanderbilt and Emory go down to about a 91 weighted. Most of the rest the cutoff is around 94, but with more in the 94 range than places like Harvard or MIT. So it looks like A- is a minimum *at our school *for top 20.</p>