<p>Since colleges know that schools vary greatly, they consider each applicant within the context of the school which s/he is attending. Adcoms would not expect a student whose school offers only 4-6 APs and limits the ability to take those to juniors and seniors to take all of them or compete against students whose schools offer 20 APs.</p>
<p>I think a sub-text of this thread is: “How can I help S, D, younger relatives, and maybe good friends’ children who are Ivy-caliber or nearly so have happy outcomes from the applications process?” in a non-helicopter sort of way.</p>
<p>First, I observe that a student does not have to go to an Ivy to get an excellent education. The U.S. has a number of very high quality public, state-flagship universities, where the total cost of attendance may be appreciably lower. This would especially impact students from moderate to upper-middle income families, who could otherwise be looking at substantial loans. In addition, there are outstanding private universities of many different types. In some fields, these would be better than many of the Ivies. Further, it should be emphasized that in the U.S., the connection between future career success and attendance at a particular college is much weaker than it is in some other countries, even though there are some career tracks that are easier to enter from an Ivy. </p>
<p>But, since I am not a fan of the whole “rejection builds character” school of thought, and since an Ivy-caliber applicant is likely to be applying to at least some of the Ivies (or schools at a similar level), I think we could collectively offer some advice to increase the odds–even if the student eventually decides to matriculate elsewhere. </p>
<p>For example, I think there are different “tipping factors” at different schools. I’ve suggested a few for Stanford, and would welcome counter-arguments or suggestions of other qualities. If the Ivies (or HYPSM+C) constitute–say–3 out of the set of a student’s applications, then I think it would be advisable for the student to send at least one of those applications to a school where the apparent tipping factors will tend to work in the student’s favor (with the recognition that a few applications “against the grain” are also fine).</p>
<p>GFG- you can’t control for the rest of the applicant pool. Any given kid can write a nice essay about how he picks up trash as he walks to school in the morning and what it’s meant to his consciousness about the environment-- and then a kid with identical stats from 1500 miles away writes about the same topic but does a much more compelling job of it. So the adcom reads both and has to decide to admit Kid A who is great and did a solid job on a quirky essay topic, or Kid B who is just as great and wrote something that could have been published in the New Yorker or Atlantic… and opts for Kid B. No slight to Kid A- but this adcom is only taking one “I pick up trash” kid today.</p>
<p>Which is why it’s great if your kid is Kid B, and Kid A applied to Yale and Amherst and yours applied to Yale and Dartmouth. Kid A may end up at Yale and your kid may end up at Dartmouth and everyone is happy. </p>
<p>Some parents in my town act like the schools “owe” every high stats kid a reason why they didn’t get admitted. I have to tell them that it’s not the civil service exam, where any score about a 78 gets you considered for a job at the DMV-- and if you get a 90 on the test and don’t get a job at the DMV you have standing to sue. Have the high stats kids fall in love with a range of schools with a range of selectivity or quirkiness in the admissions process and everyone will be happy on May 1. But if you assume that once you’ve crossed the threshold into admitability there’s some correlation (if my kid can get into Yale surely he’ll get into Cornell since Cornell has a higher admit rate than Yale) you will be in trouble.</p>
<p>I think we can all agree that no one on this thread - at least folks who posted on this thread - would be really surprised to see a most-rigorous-curriculum-4.0-2400 student getting rejected by any of the tippy-top schools, particularly HYPSM. The rejected kid would need to have something else for the rejection to surprise us. What is that something else? Furthermore, as QM said, there are tipping factors specifics to these elite schools. What are these? Can the differences in these tipping factors explain what blossom posted above?</p>
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<p>Otoh, I for one would be surprised if a most-rigorous-curriculum-4.0-2400 student gets turned down by Tulane or U. Rochester. Another game we can play is this: pick the band of colleges when a most-rigorous-curriculum-4.0-2400 student is no longer a lock?</p>
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<p>Getting to the finalist level at any of the olympiads - be it in math, biology or linguistics.
I am actually expecting full scholarshisps for students like that to tippy top schools, one kind or another. But I know it is not happening.</p>
<p>And FWIF, in my opinion putting such a huge emphasis on essyas which are produced not in a controlled environement - this is probably the single area in US college admission that is the most unfair and most easily to be manipulated with.</p>
<p>This is interesting - I found it in one of the threads that popped up at the bottom of the page.</p>
<p>[The</a> Swarm of the College Super-Applicants – New York Magazine](<a href=“http://nymag.com/news/features/24398/]The”>The Swarm of the College Super-Applicants -- New York Magazine - Nymag)</p>
<p>Paperchaserpop:</p>
<ol>
<li>Most rigorous curriculum–yes, tons of APs but no classes outside of high school offerings. Was eligible under high school umbrella to take class at local college since was advanced in one area, but that would have required his own car which he didn’t have. This fact wouldn’t necessarily have been clear from transcript, though.</li>
<li>Top 2% class rank–yes</li>
<li>2300+ SAT I or equivalent ACT (it’s high because I’m covering only the overlap now)–yes</li>
<li>760+ on SAT II’s if required–no, all were in 700’s but I think at least one was lower, like 730 or 740</li>
<li>2+ state or 1+ national level award/recognition, excluding NMF’s & AP Scholars.–yes</li>
<li>1+ academic area beyond high school AP curriculum–no</li>
<li>Excellent writer and communicator–yes</li>
<li>Community involvement with demonstrated initiatives–community service but no proven initiatives, but yes initiatives related to his employment.</li>
<li>Excellent recommendations–not sure, know they were at least good since also won outside scholarships with same recs.</li>
<li>Demonstrated value-add leadership (what is being led is made better)–yes but not sure it came across in applications</li>
<li>Demonstrated creativity–not sure, don’t think essays were particularly creative</li>
<li>1+ EC’s(or job) with sustained commitment and proven accomplishment–yes</li>
</ol>
<p>^^^
My goodness, look at GFGs kids fantastic stats and all the places he didnt get in. It’s nuts. And he had a URM hook too. Granted, he got in some high level schools, but I dont see how anybody can hope to predict any of this. If youre up there, write some good essays and cross your fingers.</p>
<p>Bovertine- so using your logic, if GFG’s kid had applied to fewer places it would be less nuts?</p>
<p>Any single kid can increase the number of schools they DONT get into. The trick is finding the right matchup between the kid and the school-after all, no single kid however extraordinary can attend two colleges simultaneously.</p>
<p>To clarify my earlier post, I was unsure of what to expect with regard to admissions results for S. I understood how competitive Ivy admissions were and knew that he had some weaknessess in his application. Also, I had no idea how much URM status would help, eg. would it compensate for the 730? What I was trying to point out is that I think in S’s case people put too much weight on the URM thing. People who should be “in the know” were convinced he would get in everywhere. To be honest, that was understandable judging by the results for URM’s of a different ethnicity from our same high school. Isn’t there a difference between the boost given to African Americans males compared to Hispanic males?</p>
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<p>I have no idea what you’re talking about Blossom. All I’m saying is that I would have expected his kid to fare better with what I consider to be outstanding statistics.</p>
<p>I’m all for applying to as many places as you can afford, and trying to find the right places.</p>
<p>My point was, how relevant is it where he was rejected if he got accepted to a school he was excited about attending? That’s sort of the process- find a macro list of places that meet the criteria, understand that there won’t be logic obvious to a parent or kid in terms of where he’s in and where he’s not. You can’t see the rest of the applicant pool, don’t know how many kids wrote an essay on the same subject as your kid but did it better, don’t know how many kids just like yours applied but are from rural Oklahoma whereas yours is from New Jersey, applying to a school in the NY metro area, don’t know if the guidance counselor report implied that your kid was a hard working grade grubber or a genuinely intellectual person, etc etc. So all you can do is develop the macro list and assume that at the end of the process you will attend one school you are happy with.</p>
<p>It would be nuts if GFG’s kid got in nowhere. But counting the number of rejections doesn’t tell you much about the process- just tells you he had a balanced list, and potentially a GC and teachers who assumed too much about ethnicity/URM. Maybe URM’s from rural Oklahoma have a hook- and URM’s from suburban New Jersey don’t get much of a tip-- let alone a hook. But the parents seem to have guided this young man appropriately- and he sure sounds like a great kid!</p>
<p>Lake: S took 13 AP’s, got all 5’s on the exams, including the supposedly hardest ones like AP Calc BC, AP Physics (the engineering one), AP Bio, and APUSH. Had only one B on his report card, 800 verbal SAT score, etc. etc. I think people thought all of that plus being a URM was golden. It wasn’t. Not complaining at all–he did well. Just trying to make the point that this is not easily predicted nor understood even by the people who should have some perspective on it, like the GC’s.</p>
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<p>This would have happened had he only applied to Yale, Princeton, Columbia, UPenn & Georgetown, and not to Cornell and Dartmouth.</p>
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<p>Of course it’s not relevant how many schools a kid got rejected from. But I don’t think it’s necessarily always possible for a kid to get into a school they are “excited” to attend. It certainly isn’t always possible for a kid to get into the school they are most excited to attend. Sometimes they have to settle for a school they are contented to attend, or they have to have a level of maturity that allows them to get excited about their second, third, or fourth choice. And that’s because of this -</p>
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<p>There will always be a level of mystery about this process from the applicant side. I don’t
think that even the most experienced college counselor can guarantee to pick the
school(s) where any given kid will get in, given the very things you mention above. I’m certain none of them would bet their life’s savings on it.</p>
<p>PCP- what GC would allow a kid- even the most gifted with the most superior profile, to apply to Yale, Princeton, Columbia Penn and Georgetown? The GC’s at my kids school- in general, a very sophisticated, experienced group with decades of experience and terrific track records getting kids into the full gamut of competitive schools- won’t even let a kid start to wax poetic about Caltech or Princeton until parents, kid and GC have agreed to the safety school.</p>
<p>^What I meant is only those schools for “reaches”. If he had done that, he wouldn’t have had any acceptances at that level. Sure, he’ll get in to his matches and safeties.</p>
<p>So far we have two profiles against the 12 criteria listed upthread. Please add more cases if you are familiar with other “Ivy caliber” students who had gone through the admissions process. Perhaps we can triangulate and come up with profiles that get close to the elusive real things, if they exist.</p>
<p>And don’t we all know kids who end up at a safety or a match who could have gotten in to a “higher ranked school”? You can talk yourself blue in the face, but if a kid in suburban Boston won’t look at schools outside the northeast corridor, or a kid in Menlo Park will only look at either coast… there are great, reachier schools that the kid could attend but for no regard to geographic concentration.</p>
<p>I know LOTS of kids (no knock on the fine public university system of NYC) whose strategy is Columbia- reach. NYU- matchy/reach. Fordham- match. So they end up at CUNY. Many of these kids could be at reachy or matchy schools all over the country. But they don’t want St Louis or Minneapolis or Houston. They don’t want to hear that Pomona is a fine school or that Reed has everything they are looking for intellectually or even that Rolla, Missouri has lots of very smart engineering/science kids. So it’s Baruch, even if their stats puts them well over the 75% mark statistically (lots of smart kids at Baruch, but there isn’t room at Columbia for all of them, and all of them can’t afford Columbia even with generous FA.)</p>
<p>Which goes back to my point that it’s pointless to measure the rejections. They don’t tell you much about the admissions process, although they tell you a lot about a kid’s application strategy or the lack thereof.</p>
<p>There are plenty of CCers who claim that these schools differ so much from each other that the student who applies to all, or nearly all, is a prestige-*****. S did not apply to H or B, but to all the others. What was interesting to us is that had we targeted fewer of the Ivies, we would have selected the wrong ones! For example S thought the Columbia application showcased him the best, yet he didn’t get in there. Princeton has a history of taking URM’s from his high school every year (with lesser academic qualifications in fact), and he won several awards from Princeton, yet he didn’t get in there either. (The woman in charge of that particular progarm was indignant, lol.) Penn has also accepted a number of URM’s with lesser stats from his school in the past, but wrong again.</p>