<p>If my kids did some of the stuff I read about here with regards to EC’s and leadership I’d be telling people I know about it too. Good for them. It is something worth sharing.</p>
<p>I agree 100%. More power to these high-achieving kids and their proud parents.</p>
<p>I object ONLY when people make invidious comparisons, which either strongly imply or outright state, “My kid is smarter / more worthy than yours.” I can give examples of such behavior and cite chapter and verse. IMHO, that is the ugliest part of CC. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does, it’s pretty obnoxious.</p>
<p>3togo, the numbers as you present them, work. Intuitively, it seems there has to be more leeway than that, but it has admittedly gotten even more competitive the last couple years. But as you say, if there are 300,000 kids in the top 10% of their high school class and there are a handful of LACs looking to admit 500 or so freshman each, and a baker’s dozen or so of Ivies and top privates each adding a couple thousand here or there, that still leaves many great candidates looking elsewhere. I think “the hook”, the “intangibles” do figure in as a longshot–and it only costs about $60 each to apply and take a few extra shots. BTW, I hate it when you numbers guys make sense.</p>
<p>You are wise to shift your definitions of reaches. You want to find places where your student’s scores put him in the 75% percentile of accepted astudents. And even with that supposed comfort zone, you must still look at whether he fills the rest of the equation, so nicely defined above by Limabeans:</p>
<p>Scores + grades (and class rank) + number of scores of APs + leadership + awards + Hooks + essays + recommendations + demonstrated interest (though not used at Ivies) = acceptance.</p>
<p>I think the key is to be realistic. My son has a 2200 SAT, is valedictorian, played varsity sports, is an accomplished guitarist, yada yada. He applied to 16 schools (8 more than I wanted him to) - 1 safety (he felt very good about this one) and what turned out to be 15 reaches. He was accepted to 2 of the reaches, and waitlisted at 4 others. That’s 9 rejections. And the 2 reaches did not offer enough money to outweigh the safety, so it looks like the safety will be his only viable option. Before this process started, we thought his chances at the reaches were better, but we found that the admissions process is a mysterious blackbox. Couple that with the large number of applications being submitted by the Common App process, and you have something that appears random at times.</p>
Let’s be honest here. This is only true if you are using a fairly wide definition of “top.” There really are not very many students at the top Ivies with sub-2000 scores unless they are hooked or have some really extraordinary other achievement. Certainly, there is no harm in anybody applying to Harvard who wants to, unless it distracts them from creating a really realistic list of schools.</p>
<p>99% on the SAT; 34 on the ACT; Has a 3.8 ish unweighted thats with 7 AP’s and engineering courses;national merit commended; visited and interviewed at choice schools; plays sports;volunteers; works; had good recommendations and guess what-didn’t get into the top schools-Our problems-hes a white male from the Northeast in a good school district and everyone is applying to the same schools; daddy didn’t graduate from “there”, daddy didn’t give money to “there”; he obviously does not fill some sort of quota; He either got merit from his colleges or denied-no in between-There isn’t really anything as parents we can do-just when we do it again with our next child (if we do) make sure we account for these factors-life isn’t fair-our kids are getting a taste of it now</p>
<p>Numbers are important, but they’re hardly everything.</p>
<p>
But there is still room for non-URM, non-athlete, non-legacies without the top stats, but with compelling essays, recommendations, and activities. I was admitted (because of my essays, I believe) with a 3.65 GPA, even counting my sharp upward trend (3.95 for junior and senior years), which was around top 6 or 7%. While I did have a 2280, I don’t think that’s the main reason for my acceptance. Things at top colleges can get very holistic.</p>
<p>
Why would a school lie? Also, I feel you are underestimating the difficulty of getting in. And 50% isn’t that impressive when compared to some of the even more selective schools. As admissions rates decline, number of 2400s rejected steadily increases across the board, when such stats are reported. It’s not like ND is an anomaly; they fit right in at their place.</p>
<p>still a great score youwrotethis. I agree many schools take the CW section lightly, or ignore it outright. That’s hard to figure given all the wailing about how the university system graduates students that often have limited writing skills. The world still needs poets, writers, and a handful of people that can carry a conversation more than 30 seconds, not an intelligent conversation, any conversation.</p>
Unfortunately, the writing section is not predictive of one’s ability as a poet or a writer; any essay where you can get a perfect score while writing about how King John Kennedy of the Saxons defied his elders and led his nation into disaster in battle against the country of Lilliput or how Barack Obama spent time in a Basque prison with Winston Churchill is pretty messed up.</p>
<p>Though my writing score was significantly higher than my math, and I was disappointed that one of the schools I applied to discounted it completely (though I had barely any chance of getting in anyway).</p>
<p>Reading this board and from my kid’s own experience, college admissions is a giant crapshoot. For some schools, it is just a numbers game. But those aren’t (from my experience) the very top schools. </p>
<p>For the top schools, they try to look at the whole student as presented in his/her application. Typically you need to meet a minimum score, but that isn’t 2200. After that, explain why you would be an asset to the school. That would include; sports, music, leadership, genuine depth of interest in your choosen major, etc.</p>
<p>You can’t let what you read here color your view all too much. Or, when you get to the point where it seems like everybody else’s kid is scoring in the top 1% on his standardized tests, carrying weighted GPAs that aren’t even possible at your school, and curing cancer . . . take yourself somewhere else for a reality check.</p>
<p>The average ACT score is 21.? (can’t remember the decimal). A fairly decent percentage of kids graduating from high school do go on to college. Obviously, those kids are going somewhere. Top colleges are overrated. Plenty of kids get fine educations from places never mentioned on CC. I know where the members of my 5 person department got ther undergraduate degrees. I really don’t know or care where anybody else I work with went to school. And those who do like to drop names, get a lot of eye rolls from a lot of people. The financial reality for many students, including those with some pretty killer stats, is community college for 2 years and then a transfer to an in-state public (go to the fin aid board and see). </p>
<p>Look, it can’t hurt for a kid to apply to a “top” (whatever that means) school. And when people tell you he’s got no chance, just smile and shrug.</p>
<p>It comes down to numbers. There are only so many spots at the top colleges in the country.</p>
<p>Based on a number I saw upthread, let’s say there are about 30 million graduating high school seniors each year. If you add up the total freshman class sizes of the top colleges, how many students do you get?</p>
<p>I’m just guessing, but let’s say for the Top 20 U’s and Top 10 LACs, each U had 1500 students (the highest ranking schools tend to be small-medium sized) and each LAC 500 students in the enrolled freshman class, would add up to ~35,000 students. Perhaps about 20% of the enrolled students are international, leaving about ~28,000 domestic enrolled students. That’s not enough room for the Top 1% of US high school students, which would be ~30,000 students. And what about the hooked applicants? My numbers were just pulled out of a hat, so aren’t accurate, but they are hopefully somewhere in the ballpark.</p>
<p>There just isn’t room at the very most prestigious US colleges to fit all of the Top 6% (94th percentile) students. Certainly some students outside of the Top 1% in test scores will be accepted, but they will likely have other characteristics the colleges value highly.</p>
<p>back in the day, way back, I went to a decent H.S. in California that had a graduating class of nearly 500. A vast majority of the kids as I recall applied and went to either the UC (like myself) or Cal State schools, w/a smattering going to the local CC. I recently visited the H.S. website several decades after my graduation surprised to find well over half the graduating class going on to CC.</p>
I can play the anecdote game too. My white boy from the northeast no hooks, 2050 SAT, B+ GPA in academic courses, though 3.8 or so weighted the way the school weighed grades got into Chicago, Tufts and Vassar - all top schools. He didn’t get into the school (an Ivy) where he was a legacy - no surprise there his grades weren’t good enough. He also didn’t get into the other Ivy he applied to with single digit admissions. </p>
<p>In any event I am quite sure that there are plenty of unhooked candidates with SATs under 2200, but with holistic admissions you have to bring more to the table than just scores and grades. A lot will come down to recommendations and essays. My younger son knew exactly how to play the game, my older son not so much, but landed right where he belonged.</p>
<p>Both my kids found two safeties they were happy with and didn’t really bother with matches at all. They had 5-7 reaches. (In older son’s case the reaches were stat-wise matches, but had admissions rates that mean no one (well except Yo Yo Ma) can count on admission.)</p>
<p>The reason so many HS grads are going to CC’s is because they aren’t dumb and don’t fall into all of the BS and hogwash about college rankings. They go to school where it is conveinent for THEM. Period. The sun revolves around their back-sides in many cases so this should come as no shock. </p>
<p>I, for one, don’t buy into all the rhetoric about how hard it is to get into certain schools excluding the Ivies and a few select other schools such as Duke and Stanford. As for the majority of the LAC’s and many, many other brand name schools I just don’t believe you can find that many suckers to pay $50+ per year. Hard to get in? No, actually, they are a little more desperate than you might believe. </p>
<p>That is one reason why grads of such places go to such lengths to convince anyone who will listen how great the place is. You got to reel in a few more suckers or else you have less than 2,000 total students. It gets embarrassing at some point. </p>
<p>Excuse me if I don’t believe some of the propaganda.</p>
<p>sacchi, you are on the right path, but some of your numbers are off. I agree with approximately 35,000 slots for top 20/10 private colleges, but international students are nowhere near 20% of that. It’s more like 5-6%, overall . . . and they take the SAT (or ACT), too; I think they are included (or should be) in the SAT percentiles. But there may be 6,000+ athletes in there (some of whom are also top test-takers), and lots of people with other qualities. Realistically, there are probably 20,000 “academic” slots at those schools. But then there are an awful lot of places available at top publics (Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, UVa – they would all have good arguments for being included in the top 20, and they would blow your numbers wide open, except UVa), and even more places in honors programs at not-quite-top publics. And honestly it’s hard to make a big deal of the difference between the #10 LAC and the #20 LAC (whatever they are – there are an awful lot of people who would probably rank Harvey Mudd – tied for 18-20 – or West Point or Annapolis – tied for 16-17 – higher than Davidson or Haverford – tied for 9-10).</p>
<p>My point being that in fact there’s still a ton of room at the inn for the top 1% of test-takers. It just isn’t all in the Ivy League, or at Stanford or MIT.</p>
<p>But isn’t what you just said conventional wisdom here at College Confidential–that there are these few uberselective schools, that is the focus of most of the intense discussion, and then there’s the rest? I have rarely seen anyone talk about how hard it is to get into LACs beyond several well-known high ranking LACs. I don’t see anything approaching propoganda about how hard it is to get into most LACs.</p>
<p>I think it is important to emphasize that the bar is different for different subgroups of the population. Non-URM upper-middle class kids are held to a higher standard as far as test scores and the depth of their ECs. Nothing wrong with that as top schools, in the opinion of many, rightly consider the context and advantages some kids have had to help them excel. So yeah, I would agree with the OP that in general, without a “hook” or a compelling background, a 2200 and 3.8 is about the minimum to be a serious candidate at top schools, unless of course, the kid has some outstanding quality or skill that can offset weaker stats. No one should be defeatist in applying to reach schools, because you never know if you has some particular attribute that they are looking for that year, but you should go into it with eyes wide open and prepared to accept any outcome.</p>