Thank you. After seeing all the rejections, she and I didn’t want to say anything. She was actually accepted to A&S, social science major.
I think legacy helps if there are 2 equal applicants as Penn’s ED legacy rejection rate is 75% (last year) vs. 90% ex-recruited athletes, Questbridge, and legacy. She applied to 3 safety state schools (1 full tuition, 2 full COA), 6 private schools hoping for 3/4 to full tuition scholarships (WashU to SMU) plus Penn ED. We only paid application fees for Penn and 1 private as the rest either waived them upfront or via attending a virtual scholars day. Her thoughts were if she didn’t get into Penn ED, then other Ivies were not going to happen. She calculated RD ex-ED acceptance rates for ivies ranged from 2.5% - 4.5%, with Cornell at 7%. If rejected/deferred, she planned to submit 4 more ivies anyway + Stanford & Duke by Christmas. If rejected from all her ivies + Stanford, she would then attend the private school which gave her closest to full tuition. She was just invited to submit essays for 2 full scholarship types at Miami.
I think her essays pushed her over the top. She didn’t select any of the standard CA prompts as they seemed confining, and one seemed a poor topic. After taking the ACT in April, she spent all summer writing them, which is a reasonable amount of time. She had a few different main essays with our family voting on the best one, and then her tweaking it. After completing her main essay, she completed most of the secondaries, but not all the ones for her Christmas week schools.
Her opener exhibited several personal traits and a theme which she used during a few points later including her closing where she stated her career goal. The end of the opener had a line which I think connected with a reader, while being humorous. She then transitioned into finding herself, from an activity she failed at to what she found of interest. She included diversity, how she brought people together with her clubs, and impacting society in the future. She included her magnet program to where the reader felt her story made sense for supporting her major and career goal. She also discussed a community activity to display impact outside the school, and impact of her parents. There was a lot conveyed about her in the essay including additional implied traits.
Her 2nd essay did a nice job discussing classes, professors, advising, research, plus a variety of less visible academic offerings. She also made a comment about classroom discussions.
Her 3rd essay discussed clubs and supportable community impact off-campus based on H.S. activities. All 3 were solid and nicely done. Due to word limits and theme topic, she didn’t continue it in latter 2 essays.
I hope the above helps others these last 2 weeks.
Her writing quality and intelligence are beyond my level. And I was accepted as last round applicant in the Wharton MBA admissions cycle when acceptance rates were 1 out of 40 vs. 1 of 10 in the 1st 2 rounds. (The MBA program had rolling admissions over 20 years ago)
Her stats, likely within the range of most of the applicant pool:
- Nat’l Merit (in a high index state). All Ivies provide need based aid only (no merit scholarships of any kind) and no athletic scholarships. (Questbridge program scholarship is need based) Although about +/- 100 Nat’l Merits attend each ivy/yr, they don’t receive any money. Her public school district had a total of 4 Nat’l merits.
- 36 ACT (single test), and top 1% writing section score.
- Ranked 4th in large but not gigantic H.S.
- 100/100 for almost all H.S. courses including current Calc BC, a few 99s. She had counselor send 1Q grades to show 12th grade performance.
- 7 AP, plus 2 dual enrollment. I prevented her from taking AP in 9th/10th as my oldest (starts top 25 med school next year, used different strategy) had trouble with her AP in 9th grade. To provide and idea of how much D likes to learn, she is still upset by this. (We didn’t mention my limiting her in the app)
- President of 2 honor societies and a couple more clubs, class officer, officer of a few more clubs including 2 related to her career.
- Typical community service.
- Co-captain of varsity sport and a non-athletic competition team where she’s also a mentor.
- Local coordinator for elementary school free tutoring organization
- Not an underrepresented minority
- Good interview
Her financial aid package matched the Net Price calculator. Outside our contribution amount, $3K student contribution and $3.5K work study (which she’ll decline), received rest as institutional grants.
Financial aid also informed me that Penn will keep the parental contribution concurrent sibling spit for institutional aid. (December law stopping the multi-sibling concurrent attendance split on federal aid side effective 23-24 year). Tulane also confirmed maintaining the split on institution aid side. Others may or may not have decided yet.