@mathmom It’s not about D’s self esteem, rejection hurts every human so my concern is valid.
@thumper1 This is good advice.
Lynn O’Shaugnessy at the College Solution blog also recommends the strategy of applying to second tier schools to receive merit awards.
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/different-scholarship-results-for-national-merit-finalists/
OP, in your first post you asked a bunch of “is it worth it” type questions. I think you now understand that it depends on lots of other factors. For my pups, they understood our financial situation due to my medical issues / inability to work. They knew they had to excel in HS, and they understood that class rank matters. Our state provides a full tuition scholarship to Flagship State for val/sal. So they knew they had to shoot for this, and that meant taking the highest level courses possible, and then getting the top grades. D knew it meant she had to give up playing her instrument, because music is weighted level 1., below honors and AP. But it was worth it. They both were valedictorians.
S graduated from Columbia last May, and is happily working in his field - he has no loans. D is a sophomore at Stanford - working extremely hard and loving it.
Your child will be humbled (but also thrilled) when s/he finds out how many other brilliant people there are out there. My pups played the game as good as anyone else, and it has paid off for them.
About half of the elite school accepted students don’t have to worry about finances. But for families like ours, course selection matters as much as grades.
OP: it is easy to become discouraged, but really your daughter could not have done much better in high school. Depending on where she is in class rank, she likely has at least a shot at either the tippy top (if she ranks near the top of her class) colleges or the just below those schools. It seems a bit much to decide that a kid with those stats has to go to a tier 2 school for merit - unless your definition of tier 2 is anything below the top 25.
Naviance is easy to use. I always started with the scattergrams to get an idea and it was somewhat comforting to see that there was a wide range of schools that my kids were pretty likely to get into. The stats on acceptances etc are also helpful. It was also realistic and sobering to see that kids with top grades and scores were still quite likely to be rejected from HYPS but encouraging to see that those same stats were admitted to BC or Notre Dame or Northwestern.
Your first step should be to really look at finances and decide where if there is a “quality line” at which you would not be willing to be full pay. Certainly, I would not waste her ED on a tier 2 school but use it for a high reach and see what happens. Also, going to an excellent but not super elite school is not a sign of failure to play the game. There are just too many excellent, smart students for the top 20 schools. Good luck to her.
Thank you for your encouragement. It means a lot. I’ve noticed that not many people show empathy for the struggles of a parent navigating college admission maze for first time, it’s confusing for all but truly mind boggling for ones who aren’t a product of this system.
That’s the drawback with a conversation on a forum. We literally only know what one actually writes and sometimes strain to read between the lines. It’s not lack of empathy.
There are kids who post, confused, at first. But the ones who clarify (and seem to grow in understanding) can find progress. Just think about that.
On the issue of admissions to “elite” colleges for “hooked” versus “unhooked” – While it appears true that there are some who are VERY hooked, meaning that they are pretty much guaranteed of admission (like pre-screened recruited athletes or maybe legacies), there are lots of types of demographics in demand that can affect the admissions chances of an “unhooked” applicant. These schools look for lots of different types of diversity, not just measured by race or ethnicity. There is regional diversity, diversity in type of school. Just trying to make the point that this admissions process IS super complicated. And while it does seem totally random for most applicants, why not just go ahead and apply to a handful of reach schools and see what happens? Sure, there are costs of applying, but not THAT high and some high quality schools do not have admissions fees.
I worked in college admissions until a few years ago. The weighted/unweighted issue didn’t come up as our admissions clerks calculated GPAs and so “unweighted” everything. We went by our GPA calculation and not that provided by the school. We also had regional admissions counselors who knew the schools in their territories well, and so we were also able to compare schools and were aware that an “A” at one school was the equivalent of a “B/B+” at others (indeed, all applications were initially reviewed by region).
@twogirls Agree 100%.
The school I work for does not recalculate and B’s are B’s. I note this because it’s risky to assume one way is the same way. We look at transcripts, not just some final standalone gpa. And that B from a highly competitive/rigorous hs may not be fine if other applicants from that school are getting all A. Or from an equally rigorous hs in the nearby area. Just saying.
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I mean odds for an unhooked ORM are so rare. This is like setting D up for dissapointments and feeing incompetent... <<
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As the parent of an unhooked ORM who has just gone through this admissions cycle, I don’t think that way of looking at things is constructive. If your kid’s grades and scores are in range, she has a chance. I would look at the things that will affect those chances.
On CC, I feel there is an over-obsession with stats, when stats are not the tipping factor at the most selective schools. They have ten or twenty applications with acceptable stats, why should they pick yours? In #32, suzyQ7 stresses the importance of having a story to your application. What is the elevator pitch? How interesting is it, how convincing is it, how much does it permeate every nook and cranny of the application?
If I had to offer one piece of advice, it would be to find a passion and go for it. Do insane, amazing things in pursuit of that passion and when the time comes to write the essays, they will write themselves.
When DD was a freshman, she heard all the stories about how terrible the odds are for ORMs; why bother even trying? For my part, I was very concerned that she would suffer from hurt pride if she aimed too high. I always tried to keep the expectations in check. As time went on, she developed a passion and just kept at it. I watched as her confidence and ambition grew over time. It’s amazing how these things can snowball (there’s a great biography of Warren Buffett called The Snowball, btw). In DD’s case, this wasn’t something that resulted in some prestigious national or international recognition. But it was unique enough for her to get in to her SCEA dream school unhooked.
Last December, before the SCEA results came out, she reflected on her journey over the past four years. She said, in a way, it didn’t really matter whether she got into this school; just the process of doing all the stuff she had done during her HS career had been so transformative. In this sense, I feel that facing “impossible odds” is actually a blessing in disguise. Drive, initiative, and carry-through discipline are qualities that will be beneficial throughout life, no matter where you go to school.
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Truth be told, whole elite admission process seems like a sham.<<
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Maybe it is a sham. But it’s also an opportunity that can pay off in unexpected ways.
Muchas gracias!
Exactly. My younger kid had a hobby of making origami earrings and got good enough that he sold them through local galleries. He wrote about it in his main essay. He also wrote a nice essay about a project he’d done cataloging the neighborhood association’s papers. He wrote about how only seeing one side of any story - often without a resolution in the printed material available - made him feel like a real historian as he could see the limitation of primary sources. His essays showed him to be creative, funny and thoughtful in a way that his stats did not.
The top schools will want you take a rigorous program and get A’s. But not all students who are admitted do so. IMHO, the rigor of the classes is more important as it shows that you are challenging yourself rather than skating by.
Do what interests you in high school, take an active part in it. Don’t just be a “joiner”. If you don’t get into a top school, you will still have prepared yourself to be the best you can be.
If you want all the admittance numbers (GPAs, test scores, etc) and even more info, just search for any college’s “common data set”. It is standardized set of info that all (?) colleges publish. I looked up Harvard’s. The average GPA was 4.03 (obvious a weighted GPA), 87% had GPAs 3.75 and above, and there actually some admitted students with GPAs in the 2.50 to 2.99 range.