Hey, I found a website where you can enter your kid’s stats, and it finds other students that are similar as well as what schools they got into.
Also, it seems you can filter by schools, and we were looking at the stats of other people that got into Upenn.
What do you guys think about this? My (now a senior) really wants to get into UPenn for business, do you think we should do some popular extracurriculars this semester that many other students that got into UPenn did? What can help his chances?
Hi - were you trying to recommend the web site you found? If so, you forgot to include the link.
Or are you trying to ask about your students ambition to UPenn, and ECs, etc. Then your subject line will not invite people who might have input - and at minimum you’d want to tag UPenn to your categories for your thread (possibly even move the thread).
Most of those types of websites are useless, because you cannot compare hooked vs unhooked kids and chances for admission (once someone has the basic stats) depend on other things not chartable on a website(course rigor, rough class rank, engagement and longer term involvement with meaningful ECs, how the HS has done in the past with admission to UPenn).
Adding an EC now is very unlikely to increase admission chances.
So if you want detailed chances from CC readers, do a “chance me” thread.
In general, knowing nothing about your kid: if they have all As or nearly all As and have taken the hardest courses available across core disciplines at the HS, have scores within range for unhooked kids(1500+), and can show with ECsthat they “fit” wharton(since you mentioned business I assume your kid is applying to Wharton), then your kid is definitely in the running. Realize that more than half the 59,000 applicants likely would assess themselves as meeting the criteria I just listed. The RD acceptance rates for Penn are very low, so if it is the top choice definitely do ED!
Take all the energy you are expending on comparing him to other kids and focus on finding OTHER colleges which are statistically easier to get accepted to, which he can also fall in love with.
That website sounds absurd. A kid with an A average and high scores from a top HS in an affluent community isn’t the same as a kid with an A average and high scores from a lousy HS in a disadvantaged community, when that kid has also been working at the family’s grocery store for 20 hours a week since he was 14. If you see that many successful admits to Wharton have worked in a family business- what are you going to do- open a dry cleaners next week?
Focus on what you CAN control. Your son’s list. Reaches, matches, safeties, which you can afford and which he can get excited about.
I think your senior should be doing ECs that are of interest to him/her. He/she should NOT be adding ECs at this point simply because you think they will impress some adcoms at UPenn.
UPenn is a reach school for most applicants. We don’t even know what else is part of your kid’s application like grades, SAT or ACT scores and ECs already being done.
Apply to UPenn and see. If this student doesn’t get accepted…or does…you will never know the exact reason why.