<p>No the Mom gets it, but she’s having trouble selling it to the kid. I get it. For this particular kid, it’s more awkward because she doesn’t think she wants a small college, and unfortunately most of the test optional colleges are small. I think the best advice is to look outside the geographic region. I’d also have a powwow with the GC and see if she has any suggestions for colleges that might be willing to give a little more leeway because they know the school well. I also think blossom has a good suggestion for looking at top departments. If this student can say I’m applying to American because they have the best internship opportunities it may take the sting out of not getting into Georgetown. </p>
<p>Op,
There are many variables that can and will be taken into consideration as the adcoms are trying to craft a well rounded class that aligns with their institutional mission .</p>
<p>I am going to recommend that you read The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins.</p>
<p>From page 202 of the Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins
</p>
<p>With college admissions becoming more and more competitive, your D may not necessarily be a shoo in for school where 40-50% of the kids from here school end up attending.</p>
<p>For those of us who have been around for a minute, your post is not new, as there are no new post under the sun at CC.</p>
<p>I am going to recommend that you peruse this thread</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/97255-whoever-has-most-aps-wins-4.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/97255-whoever-has-most-aps-wins-4.html</a></p>
<p>Good discussion of how AP classes figure into the “college admissions arms race.” Post #49, by Ben Jones of the MIT Admissions Office, is particularly worthy of note; it is full of wisdom as well as information.</p>
<p>Especially take note of post 49 by Ben Jones- Admissions REP @ MIT (and former CC poster)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Gonna also recommend that you read through this thread</p>
<p><a href=“My Dinner With An Admissions Officer - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/118616-my-dinner-with-an-admissions-officer.html</a></p>
<p>@mathmom, I may have misunderstood. When I read the post that listed the schools, then seemed to dismiss the schools as being great schools but only for those in the 40% mark of the class and concluded with:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>well, then I get the feeling that the mom is not quite getting it.</p>
<p>May I also recommend the following threads:
<a href=“My Advice to the High School Class of 2015 - Admission Stories - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/admissions-hindsight-lessons-learned/1641072-my-advice-to-the-high-school-class-of-2015.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“Not Quite Over, But This Story Shows How Drastically Lists Can Change Over Time - Admission Stories - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/admissions-hindsight-lessons-learned/1619370-not-quite-over-but-this-story-shows-how-drastically-lists-can-change-over-time-p1.html</a></p>
<p>and </p>
<p><a href=“After the Dust Settled: Results for high-stats, merit-seeking kid - Parents Forum - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1647834-after-the-dust-settled-results-for-high-stats-merit-seeking-kid-p1.html</a></p>
<p>These are veterans of this year’s application process. You can see their journey from the sophomore desire for a top tier school to where they ended up and why.</p>
<p>@RenaissanceMom, May I ask where your neighbor’s son ended up?</p>
<p>That’s a really tough story to hear. I have a feeling my d in in for a rough ride in the next year.</p>
<p>I’ll PM you because I don’t want to potentially compromise his identity, since I may have given away mine w that post. He’s still also hoping to get off a wait list. I do want to say, though, that I think mathmom is right. I would also encourage your daughter to look in a geographic area outside of your own. Although my S was applying from Westchester, a difficult sell because there are so many qualified students from this area, I think he had great luck w schools on the west coast and Midwest.</p>
<p>You can tell a kid all you want about the great dept of Lawrence, or that the SUNYs wonderful and one can get a fantastic education at them, and how beautiful Elon is and that the sky is the limit at BU and you got Boston,too. Some of these kids are hanging around kids that will quash all of that with a smart remark–I’m not smart enough to come up with one, but believe me they are devastating smashes, because so much truth in them The truth being that most of the parents and kids would pick HPYMSC et al in a heartbeat most of the time over any of these other schools That’s the truth of the matter. The GC will talk a good talk about Muhlenburg and St Joes, but you see those big beaming smiles and the brags about the the kids who got into the ivies. No sense lying about the situation. One prefers those schools, most of the time. Most people do. It’s a a sign of achievement; the reactions tell it all. </p>
<p>Rice and Vanderbilt would be super reaches, with test scores below the median, regardless of her GPA and school rigor.
You really don’t want you daughter to be applying to mostly reaches. You may want to be able to choose acceptances from a group of schools based on scholarship information.</p>
<p>My daughter had 1430 SAT, 4.0 W GPA with 8 APs and she only applied to one reach.
She was denied at WUSTL (the reach), BU (?) and waitlisted at GT and CWRU. GT was accepting students with median of 2200 SATs, and this is a science/engineering school where reading and writing may not be extraordinary.</p>
<p>Michigan will be flooded with apps, and will not have a holistic application process, when reviewing tens of thousands of applications.
Vanderbilt and Rice will also be looking for high test scores.
She really needs to have some good AP or SAT IIs to offset test scores that are good, but not exceptional.</p>
<p>My daughter was one of the few in our affluent NJ town who didn’t have SAT tutors. I regret that, because I think it could have helped with bringing up her math and writing scores by 50 points each.</p>
<p>If you daughter is obsessed with status, look for smaller schools that have the time to read applications.</p>
<p>A lot of schools get 50,000 appplications.</p>
<p>It’s too bad about Vanderbilt, in 2007 they came to our school and begged kids to apply - especially those outside their usual demographic. Unfortunately the word is out, and they are much more selective than they were back then. It’s hard when you go to a school where all the top students are gunning for the Ivies. One of my son’s friends Mom’s asked me where my youngest was applying - she was surprised he wasn’t applying to the Ivies. She assumed he had the same grades as her daughter (he did not!), but he did have slightly better SAT scores so did better than we dared hoped. </p>
<p>It’s all very well to say she should look at smaller schools, she doesn’t think she wants one. I think your best bet there is to drag her to a couple as a “let’s humor the parents” thing and maybe look at some of the ones that are part of consortium so that you have some of the advantages of larger schools.</p>
<p>Your daughter can apply to a lot of reaches if she’s willing to accept the fact that she may be looking at a lot of rejections. Just make sure you start the list with some safeties and matches she doesn’t hate and make sure those applications are given full attention. Apply rolling or EA wherever you can. After that part of the application process is done, you can decide which reaches are most likely to overlook the weaker SAT scores.</p>
<p>@marymac - Michigan is well known for having a holistic review process:</p>
<p><a href=“https://umich.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4/kw/holistic”>https://umich.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4/kw/holistic</a></p>
<p>
I’d also consider whether the college places a strong emphasis on test scores. Historically decisions on Parchment for Vanderbilt and Rice show such a correlation with test scores. Among non-URM 3.8+ GPA applicants with 4+ AP classes in the past 3 years, Parchment members with a SAT below 2100 had a 0% acceptance rate at both Vanderbilt and Rice, and members with a 2350+ had a 91% acceptance rate at Rice and 96% acceptance rate at Vanderbilt. They get a reputation for being less selective than the colleges we tend to focus on because 90+% of top stat students are getting in. Decisions don’t seem as random as ivies, for the typical high stat applicants we see on this forum. The flip side of this stat focus, is if you don’t have high test scores, acceptance rates approach 0% in this sample group. </p>
<p>Colleges that focus less on test scores show a very different pattern. I mentioned stats for Cornell earlier, so I’ll use it as an example. Cornell had a similar overall acceptance rate to Rice and Vanderbilt this year, yet Parchment results show many acceptances for this high GPA / relatively low SAT group when Rice and Vanderbilt did not, even at scores of as low as 2000 for non-URMs. As one would expect, with less emphasis on scores, Cornell shows a much lower acceptance rate for top stat applicants than Rice or Vanderbilt. So Cornell, Rice, and Vanderbilt have similar overall acceptance rates, but show very different degrees of selectivity for different types of applicants. Rice and Vanderbilt could be great suggestions for an applicant whose weakness was non-academic factors. And Cornell could be a great suggestion for a for an applicant whose weakness was test scores.</p>
<p>CPT- I’m sure you’re right but the numbers don’t lie- a lot of these kids with the great scores and the great grades (like the kids ranked 1-17) are NOT going to be heading off to HYP this year. HYP don’t want to become the fifth year of HS for kids from Great Neck or Armonk or Scarsdale (or even Winnetka and Lexington and Atherton so it doesn’t look like I’m picking on NY suburbs). My own kids HS (NY metro area) which did not rank but is frequently a powerhouse in elite school admissions ALWAYS has kids who have “the goods” who end up at safety school, or sometimes safety+ school. Finances, luck, a bad admissions strategy, counting on legacy which only gets you so far, Tufts syndrome- whatever you want to call it. </p>
<p>So my point is not that the OP’s D should be doing the happy dance that she’s going to apply to BU. My point is that every kid in her HS should be looking at sobering numbers- but if they’re not, the D is at least ahead of the game. Maybe she’ll get excited about Barnard. Maybe she’ll decide that getting a merit award and being a “scholar” at her safety school is just as exciting at going to U Penn. Or maybe her ACT scores will in fact, make her competitive.</p>
<p>But it seems to me that giving the kid even more test anxiety by making her feel like less of an applicant by harping on the schools which are reaches- vs. talking up the schools which might be solid matches- is the least acceptable option from a parent’s perspective.</p>
<p>We didn’t have to talk up MIT when my son was applying- he fell in love on his own. The challenge was talking up Rutgers Engineering and finding success stories at Case and Purdue and UIUC.</p>
<p>“It’s too bad about Vanderbilt, in 2007 they came to our school and begged kids to apply - especially those outside their usual demographic. Unfortunately the word is out, and they are much more selective than they were back then.”</p>
<p>My sister’s step son just graduated last year from Vandy and his HS class (2009) was the last one where they were actively begging kids from the Westchester elite districts to apply. He had the test score (34) and a pretty high GPA ( but not an apply to Ivy league-like GPA. ) They even threw gobs of money at him even though he applied ED! According to my sister, by the next year it had totally changed. Her SS’s bizarre result was getting rejected at Binghamton - where both his parents were alums. </p>
<p>Probably went to an easy high school.</p>
<p>
Bingo!</p>
<p>Where DO the students like her go? I mean the students who graduate at the tippy-top of their class, took a bunch of APs, are smart, driven, and ambitious–and have good but non-stellar standardized test scores? </p>
<p>Her scores are right smack at the median for University of Wisconsin. If GPAs were not submitted, University of Wisconsin would be a target school.</p>
<p>“Probably went to an easy high school.” </p>
<p>^ Who? My sister’s step son? Or are you referring to the OP’s D? </p>
<p>To the OP: Here is a list of schools that may be a good fit for your daughter–in other words they are great schools and would also fulfill her requirement of being able to hold her “head high” in the context of her hs social milieu… (I’m assuming she is full pay so not addressing cost of attendance.)</p>
<p>Michigan: Great idea. I know east coast kids from top public schools do really well with admission to Michigan. Also, she could apply early action and if she gets in the pressure will be off. You should be able to get a good sense from Naviance whether she’ll get in.
Emory: Although her SATs are low for them, they are very familiar with the top east coast high schools so they may see her GPA in full context (GC should know). May be worth a visit and applying ED (along with applying EA to Michigan) if she loves it.
McGill: She will get in.<br>
Rice: I don’t know enough about Rice to comment, but the sense I have is that NY might be a geographical hook there, and their admissions is somewhat holistic. So it would be worth researching.
Brandeis: Easier admit than Tufts. Not sure she would have to submit her scores, even. Brandeis will definitely “get” her high school. The school is quite diverse (def. not all Jewish) and has a lot of academic status.
Colorado College, Pitzer, Oberlin, Bard: I know she doesn’t want LACs, but these have “cool” reputations among NY-area kids. Oberlin and Bard if she’s edgy/artsy type.
btw, I would not recommend Vanderbilt unless her hs has a long history/relationship with admissions there. Although being from the NY area is still a bit of a hook for them, they also tend to be very score based–and the scores rival top Ivies.
I hope this was helpful. I had the opposite problem with my first child: amazing scores, very low GPA. They all find their place.</p>
<p>It seems like there may be two possibilities. One is that she is just not good at this kind of test. The other is that she is just psyching herself out and getting so upset she can’t sleep the night before or gets so flustered she simply can’t answer the questions. A confounding factor, however, is that she performed so well on the AP tests (also high stakes testing) and so it may not be testing issues. Given that she has had a lot of tutoring, maybe talking to someone about the actual testing process - even perhaps a counselor - may help. </p>
<p>I understand that your hard working, all As daughter may want to attend a super elite college and believes her hard work means she should. She should certainly go for the gold, but also understand and accept that she is not a loser if she ends up at BC or Tufts or even BU instead of Harvard. Plenty of very smart, hard working, accomplished kids go to these colleges and thrive. It would be a shame if she views her hard work as wasted if she doesn’t get into the super elite. </p>
<p>I also think your impression (or you daughter’s) Is a bit skewed. Even at the tip-top high schools, not every top kid gets into a super-elite. It can be upsetting to both kids and parents when the tip top don’t come through or when they see another kid that is (in their opinion) less deserving gets in. I get that, but I hope she comes to love some of the schools ranked in the 30s which may welcome her with open arms and where she may well be a star. She has a great background and a good work ethic and will ultimately be able to do whatever she wants in life - even if she doesn’t attend a super elite college.</p>
<p>I stand corrected on Rice, based on Data10’s post! Probably too score-based for OP’s D.</p>
<p>I know plenty of high GPA kids who not only have chosen Tulane, but are gettnig significant merit money! If the OP is using US News & World Report rankings to make a serious list, she should move beyond the Top 20. And consider some great regional mid-sized universitites like Santa Clara University (beautiful campus–great opportunities for internships in the Silicon Valley); Villanova, Gonzaga, and Loyola Marymount. Believe me, she’s going to find incredibly smart kids who are going to give her a run for her money in the classroom. How do I know? Because many of my daughter’s brilliant classmates will be attending! </p>