unhooked admission at top LACs seems close to impossible

Parents Forum
21

thanks all for your thoughtful replies! I’m surprised by the number of parents advocating against a re-test. I lay out my argument below:

CDS misleads parents - #Data10 thank you for taking the time to look at haverford’s CDS but what haverford really means is that for unhooked candidates, ECs are more important than standardized test scores once you’ve hit their 75% percentile. If not, how does haverford end up with a 75th SAT percentile of 2240? why do naviance statistics for our nationally ranked hs show no one in the last 10 years has gained admittance with an SAT score less than 2300? Given my D’s converted sat score is 2180 and the naviance low water mark for our school, I think it obvious she needs to re-test to have any real chance of admittance to Haverford.


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1 point improvement - my D may end up with a 35 or 36. So she’s not just fighting for one point. She most often scores a 35 on practice tests.

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Ivys - my d may decide to apply to other schools where a 34-36 score will help. for example,
wash u is on her list of schools to investigate and apparently they like high stats kids. I’m sure she’ll apply to a couple of ivys.

Merit - we believe our boys received large merit awards due in part to their high test scores. We’ve given our kids a budget that will pay for undergrad. However, they are welcome to take a merit package at a less competitive school and use leftover money for grad school.

collateral learning - When my d started the test prep process, her writing mechanics were horrific. She read meltser front to back, practiced quite a bit, wrote essays and now she has a fine grasp of writing mechanics (and she moved her act English score from a 28 to a 36). Likewise math study has improved her understanding of the subject.

pride - I’m not pushing my D to take the test, she feels she underperformed the test and
wants another shot.

investment vs reward - my D is going to work 45 minutes per day for 3 weeks and take the test
again. Seems like a small investment for the potential return.

here’s a forbes piece on the three biggies lies in college admission:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevecohen/2012/09/29/the-three-biggest-lies-in-college-admission/

"So if a kid sees a school’s 25th-75th range as 1280 to 1430, the student might reasonable think that their 1300 SAT score gives them a fair shot at admission. Wrong. In reality, the bottom 25% (below 1280) is reserved for the school’s “special interests”: athletes, students of color, development (big donors.) “To have a real shot,” says Muska “you really have to be at the upper end of that range.”

22

I agree with @quietdesperation about the retake. Nothing to lose and then you will have no regrets. And I say that especially since she is a junior and has time on her side. She can retake in Dec or Feb before all the madness sets in and then use the rest of jr yr and first semester sr yr to take subject tests if needed, work on essays, apps and interviews. If she were a senior now, she may be better off using her time elsewhere, but since she is a jr, I say go for it

23

Note that my post said “recruited athletes”, not students who play a sport at the college. The NYT article I linked mentions 71 out of 550 are recruited athletes, which is 12.9%. A more detailed explanation of NESCAC Div III recruiting limits is at http://bowdoinorient.com/article/9151 . They mention 66 recruited athlete spots at Amherst and ~75 at Bowdoin, so a significant number of selective LACs seem to be near 70, with specific limits depending on supported sports.

24

I will also put in a plug for geographic diversity (Maybe Kenyon instead of Oberlin for your D?) and women’s colleges. In particular, Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke are part of consortiums which will expand her opportunities.

BTW, I agree that test scores are more important than colleges like to admit. I don’t think it will hurt to have her re-test, particularly as a Junior. She has plenty of time. And for sure it helps with merit!

Good luck to your D; I am sure she will do more than fine!

25

Hard but not impossible. D was a white female with no hooks besides stellar academics and all around athlete and musician. No specific athletic or musical hooks. 5 years ago applied and accepted to Williams, Wesleyan, Oberlin, and Davidson. Did not apply to the others so no rejections.

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@JHS There’s no way that athletes represent less than 13% of the students at Williams. It has 30 varsity sports, and only 550 students per entering class. 13% would be about two per team

But it would be 550 x 4 classes, so while 13% seems like it could be low - 40% is way to high. And remember, not all athletes are recruited. There are walk-ons in every sport in the fall, and some kids approach a coach in the spring (or vice versa) once they are accepted in the spring.

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I think that means only 13% get and admit preference. The rest get in on their own steam. Some with a spot in the team IF the get in? That makes more sense. You can’t save a preference admit for every athlete in every sport.

28

Can she take a more active roll than just raising money and awareness ? How about a summer service trip to one of the countries or a more active partnership with one of the charities ? At the very least it will build a really interesting essay. This may or may not include all 4 or 5 friends (it could, if they are all trying to beef up their EC creds, or might not …). Raising $7000 is not that exciting on a US admissions stage, but building a school might be. Similarly, there are lots of local US charities working to improve education or the lives of underprivileged youth, maybe the next “country” she targets should be say East Orange or Bronx or Baltimore or whatever. And yes this includes encouraging more women of color and of modest backgrounds to go into STEM fields or to pursue higher education.

Also, find some safety schools that she is really interested in attending and leave the top tier schools as reaches, even in your mind. Admissions is crazy competitive, combined with the low admission rates for women, it is possible that it will not work out. Rather than seeing this as some tragic unfairness, find some schools where she can really shine in the top 25% and be happy and have a high GPA for grad school and maybe get some merit money. Advice to seek schools that not the entire top 10% of her HS are applying to is also wise, which likely includes some schools that are far enough away that she will be a geographical diversity interest (which is also good for her personal growth since each area of the country is pretty different).

29

Note that the article I linked mentioned a recruited athlete limit of 2 per team, aside from some special cases like football, so ~2 per team sounds about right.

30

My S got into a top LAC (Wesleyan - 6 years ago) with about a 3.7 and a 2190 SAT without any hooks.
He did apply ED, get waitlisted and then got admitted off the waitlist. He went to a top private school that has a zillion kids apply to Wesleyan, so that probably hurt him a bit.

31

MIT’s website explains this test score correlation effect more eloquently than I could at http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/the-difficulty-with-data . MIT has 25th and 75th math SAT scores of 740 and 800. Their stats show 800 applicants have a higher admit rate than 740, so does that mean unhooked applicants need a 75th percentile score of 800? The admissions officer explains:

I realize MIT is not the same as a LAC, but some of the LACs on the list have made similar comments about emphasizing far more than stats. For example, the first paragraph on William’s admissions website is in big letters stating,

A 33 ACT is a great score that is well above average in the entering class at all of the colleges on your list. If you are rejected, I think it is unlikely that increasing from a 33 to a 34 by studying and retaking would have changed that. However, taking it again won’t hurt unless studying for the test takes time away from other activities. For example, if you spend your weekend studying for that extra ACT point when you could be instead be accomplishing something interesting, enjoyable, and impressive out of the classroom, then it could hurt. Highly selective, holistic colleges generally don’t want the type of student who spends their weekends studying for the highest possible scores and does not do much else. Instead they want students who add to the community, as mentioned in the Williams quote above.

32

@wisteria : I checked what I wrote about Amherst. Amherst has classes of about 450 apiece, 1,800 total. There are 714 people listed on the current rosters of its 25 varsity sports, which is just a skootch short of 40%. Of course, there are probably a few people playing more than one varsity sport, but it won’t be that many. And the current rosters don’t include people who may have played the sport for a year or two then quit the team or retire because of injury, things that are extremely common. I stand by the conclusion that over 40% of Amherst students play a varsity sport at some point during their college careers. It’s possible that’s wrong, but it won’t be wrong by any meaningful margin.

Among men, who represent a little less than half the students, the participation rate is way over 40%. There are 432 men listed on varsity rosters. That’s close to 49% of men.

My point remains: There may be only 71 people per class that are considered “athletic recruits,” but the admissions office has to find probably three times that many people capable of and interested in playing varsity sports. And given that Amherst’s yield on RD admissions is fairly low (something that’s true of all LACs, even the best ones), there’s a lot of incentive to fill as many of those slots as possible in the ED pool.

33

I checked the Williams men’s teams, too. They have about 465 men on varsity sports rosters (the skiing team is coed, so I had to guess based on names, and I tried to exclude female coxswains on the crew team on the same basis), and a little less than 1,050 male students at any time. So the percentages are in fact a little lower than at Amherst, but not by much.

34

The post I initially replied to that triggered this discussion talked about “recruited athletes.” If we are instead talking about student athletes who were not recruited, yet still are playing on a Div III team at a small LAC, then there is a lot of variation in how much that sport influences admission, in some cases not at all.

For example, Stanford is a Div I college that has won the Sears award for the highest ranked sports teams across a large number of sports for each of the past ~20 years, beyond just the popular ones like football and men’s basketball. Even with Stanford’s top sports rankings and far more extensive recruiting than the discussed LACs, I played 2 sports teams at Stanford without any previous athletic team experience during high school or anything athletic on my application. The first was crew. Crew had a few recruited athletes, but was mostly composed of walk-ons like myself, many whom had no previous rowing experience. Instead when the school clubs were recruiting towards the start of the year, the crew team had booths encouraging students to join where you could row against current team members on an erg, ask questions about the team/practices, etc. I don’t know how all the teams work at the discussed LACs, but the point is I wouldn’t assume all non-recruited team members are getting a notable admissions boost, particularly in sports that aren’t especially popular or money earning.

Also note that the varsity participation rate is well below the numbers you listed. You are ignoring persons who are on multiple teams, which is ~1/3 of athletes at the listed schools (specific numbers vary by school). Amherst claims less than 1/3 of students participate in varsity athletics, Swarthmore claims 20% participate in varsity athletics.

35

For “recruited athletes” perhaps it means “tips,” those who are guaranteed ED admission. “Tips” are not wasted on athletes who can be admitted without “help” from the athletic department.

36

Haverford also says 40% of its students participate in varsity sports. But Haverford doesn’t emphasize competitive varsity sports nearly as much as Amherst and Williams, which are way over at one end of the scale among LACs in recruiting for varsity sports and giving preferential admission to recruited athletes. Haverford doesn’t even field a football team, and its basketball team usually isn’t very good. It usually does very well at cross-country, and only occasionally in some other sports. A Haverford coach may occasionally persuade the admissions office to give a break to an exceptionally gifted athlete who wants to attend, but there’s no way recruited athletes make up anything close to 40% of the entering class. Most varsity athletes are unrecruited. Heck, I know for a fact that some varsity athletes join the varsity team as novices to the sport, just because the team is so desperate for warm bodies; it’s more a social thing and a physical fitness thing than anything else. And while playing a sport Haverford offers may be a small “plus” factor in admissions—one among many–I very much doubt the admissions office is keeping a running tab to see that it’s offered admission to “enough” squash players or fencers to fill the varsity roster. That’s a headache for the coach, and for other roster players who need to go out and recruit their classmates to join the team in order to have enough warm bodies to keep the sport viable.

My D1 was admitted ED to Haverford as an unhooked white female applicant, with no varsity sports experience. She had excellent stats and some quite compelling and unusual ECs, but I think applying ED made a big difference in her case, as did “demonstrated interest”–she visited the college twice, the second time for an on-campus interview, and of course, nothing demonstrates interest quite as much as that ED application—and most of all her essays. She’s a stellar writer, and one of the essays was the Haverford-specific essay, where the applicant is given the opportunity to show that she “gets” Haverford, and that it’s just the place for her. I can’t overemphasize how important this latter essay is. Haverford really isn’t looking for cookie-cutter applicants with stellar test scores, GPAs, and all the usual honors, awards, and ECs. None of that hurts, of course, but what they’re really looking for is good students who really want to be at Haverford (again, the ED application is the acid test) and who get what it means to be part of the Haverford community. Haverford likes to think of itself as not just another generic LAC with high academic standards, but as someplace different and unique. And in some ways it is, with its Quaker heritage and the special prominence it gives to its Honor Code, which it describes as “the purest expression of the College’s values and an intrinsic part of a Haverford education.” If you don’t “get” the Haverford Honor Code, then you don’t “get” Haverford, and you’re probably applying just because it’s on somebody’s list of top colleges. And if you apply in the RD round, there’s a good chance you’re applying as a “back-up” in case you don’t get into an Ivy or some other highly prestigious institution. Those are the students Haverford doesn’t want. ED matters. It helps the school manage yield. It builds the core of the entering class, ensuring, inter alia, that their target SAT and GPA medians remain in reach. And it separates the wheat from the chaff; you don’t apply ED unless Haverford really is your #1 choice, and if your essays confirm that you really understand Haverford and aren’t applying just because it’s on a list of “top schools,” that makes the ED applicant very attractive, provided stats, ECs, recommendation, etc also check out.

37

Haverford, however, also has half the student body of many LACs at 1,200 students.

Athletes getting acceptances aren’t just those getting “tips”. If you are an athlete on a coaches list, tip or no tip, and have the academic chops to get in, you have a higher likelihood of acceptance than another applicant who won’t be playing a sport, even at a college like Haverford which might not emphasize athletics as much as some of the NESCAC colleges.

Stellar essays do matter greatly at Haverford and as @bclintonk says, showing you “get” Haverford and are a good fit.

38

Haverford is hardly representative of selective LACs when it comes to sports; I doubt any peer college is less sports-focused, although Reed may come close. Swarthmore does recruit, but barely. All of the NESCAC colleges, however, take sports pretty seriously, as do many others.

A third of the varsity athletes at Amherst play two varsity sports? Yeah, right. Why don’t you check the rosters and report back?

39

I’m going to weigh in with the minority who agree with OP’s plan to have his/her D try once to raise her ACT. It’s halfway through junior year so I think starting a brand new EC now looks somewhat like resume padding. Try once to raise the ACT, keep grades up, demonstrate interest and decide which are the top 1 or 2 picks. Obviously essays will also be very important but they can be worked on later. A lot of schools have ED1 and ED2 so consider planning on applying ED to the first two choices. My D was an unhooked white female who got into her first choice ED1, although she also had strong stats and decent EC’s. On the other hand, on Move In Day it seemed like every other kid we met was an athlete. But I certainly think she’s got a shot so go for it and also have some safeties and matches.

40

In my opinion, most of the top ~40 or more LACs offer a very similar academic and social experience.
There is less difference between, say, Williams and Whitman than there is between Princeton and BU (or UCSD). So instead of bemoaning the selectivity of the top few LACs, just broaden your focus to include more good schools. To do this, yes, you may need to look beyond the Northeast.