<p>^^ Yes. I am so weary of the canard that high/perfect-stat kids are one-note automatons, capable of doing nothing beyond studying. I’d venture to guess that the vast majority of perfect or near-perfect stat kids are also engaging in all sorts of interesting pursuits, both academic and non-academic, and engaging in these pursuits at a very high level.</p>
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<p>I didn’t use the word “guarantee” because anything can happen, but I get what POIH is saying. The definition I use is this: If a candidate satisfies all 12 overlapping criteria gets rejected by any Ivy, then it would be a surprise to most people who are familiar with elite college admissions (see #102).</p>
<p>I hate to pull the cancer-curing example again…but, assuming no major character flaws, who does not think a 4.0-2400-cancer-curing-olympic-athlete is a lock on Harvard? If everyone agrees such hypothetical candidate is a lock, then clearly we can gradually lower the bar until some of us believe it can’t be any lower before we lose the lock.</p>
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<p>PaperChaserPop: You don’t need to go to a hypothetical student unless at DD high school, if a student become Valedictorian and get rejected by Harvard. It hasn’t happen since the school matriculated its first batch of students.</p>
<p>The day that will happen, I’ll also withdraw my conclusion till than it is possible to have a lock on Harvard admission.</p>
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<p>But that person doesn’t exist. It’s unrealistic to expect someone who hasn’t even graduated from high school to cure cancer and go to the olympics. I have real kids. I don’t like these kind of benchmarks that are impossible to meet.</p>
<p>Incidentally someone I work with told me that Harvard gets more applications from valedictorians than they have room for in their class. I can’t confirm this.</p>
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<p>OK, that’s fair.</p>
<p>Pea:</p>
<p>You forget the Hughes sisters. One went to Yale, the other was (is?) at Harvard. Both ice-skating Olympic stars before they went to college. Still, neither has cured cancer…yet.</p>
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<p>I was simply listing what TheGFG posted as a start. Feel free to add criteria for Brown or any other Ivy peers.</p>
<p>Rachael Flatt, the U.S. figure skating national champion, is a high school senior.</p>
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<p>Pea, I was making a point through exaggeration. Even if you don’t like the exaggeration, the logic still holds - we can find a realistic bar by gradually lowering what intially appears to be an unrealistic bar.</p>
<p>Sure, I haven’t seen a single 4.0-2400-cancer-curing-Olympic-athlete applicant yet; however I HAVE seen the remote possibility of achieving this quad feat. Just for fun, I’ll break it down for you. We’ve all seen 4.0 students and we’ve all seen 2400 stats. No one would argue there are 4.0-2400 students around every year. Here comes the fun part. Many of our Olympic gymnists are high school students! Lets look at the “cancer-curing” part. While I’ve never heard of a high schooler who single-handedly cured cancer, but I’ve heard of high school interns on cancer-curing research teams that came up with cures to particular types of cancer. My senior son is currently on one such team, but I don’t believe his team would be able to declare success before he graduates.</p>
<p>Ah, the thread has morhped from who is Ivy caliber to who can get admitted.</p>
<p>Kind of an adult intellectual version of “chance me for an Ivy”. </p>
<p>Maybe if the ivies were less concerned with preserving social classes (14% of the admits at an HYP children of alums) there would be more room for Ivy caliber students NOT as well connected by class.</p>
<p>I remember a Boston Magazine article ~ 10- 12 years back that described the largest admissions preference progam at Harvad, 3 times large than affirmatv action: legacy admits. Other Ivy caliber admits were not admitted for that class-based criterion.</p>
<p>So . . . please add a 13th criterion: be born to an alum. That appears to be a stronger admit factor than curing cancer . . . and if you’re after what gets a kid a lock on admissions it’d be dishonest not to list it :-)</p>
<p>Kei </p>
<p>P.S. OP had a good point about “superscoring” increasing the number of high SAT scores; it serves the function of inflating SAT scores so that more kids and parents can complain that there 2300+ didn’t get them admitted to a Ivy.</p>
<p>Actually athletes, not legacies, are by far the biggest preference. Given the number of sports and sports teams… National level swimmer I know was recruited by all the Ivies in his jr year. And chancing Ivies is pretty pointless… My son will apply to all ivy/ivy level schools and we will see…</p>
<p>I’m still dismayed that, disclaimers to the contrary, this thread is more about Ivy than about top schools. </p>
<p>Being a track star would probably be a hook at Harvard, but I doubt that Chicago–which I consider every bit as good as Harvard (despite my dislike of its writing prompts ;)) would consider it a hook. Or Caltech, or MIT, which are just as good (or even better) in their different ways.
Swarthmore got rid of its football team, claiming that it reduced its ability to promote academic excellence. Again, a Swarthmore undergraduate education is every bit as good as a Harvard one, but being a star quarterback won’t get you into Swarthmore. It would be a great hook at Harvard or Princeton or Yale, however.</p>
<p>So can we stop obsessing about the Ivy League? The US is blessed with so many excellent colleges and yet, too many discussions revolve around only 8, which in fact, are rather dissimilar.</p>
<p>“Ivy caliber” has apparently become a coined term, not much different than someone who says s/he will “Xerox” a copy for you when we all know there are other great copy machine brands. How about “I’ll google it”? The unfortunate thing with a coined term is that some people cannot separate the concept from the example. Mia culpa for using the coined term. </p>
<p>I agree with marite, we should including other top schools in our discussion. Chicago, Swat, Caltech & MIT are all examples of schools with “Ivy caliber” students.</p>
<p>“Ivy Caliber” type kids do not necessarily need perfect board scores in fact most probably don’t. What they do have is a passion for learning and an inquisitive nature. They are students who have demonstrated this through their years of highschool and not just when college applications came on to their radar. They are kids who will attend school, perform well, and search out other ways in which to enhance their education. They are kids who excell in every subject, but show great promise in a particular area. They are interesting kids who have many interests, and are passionate about the things they do. That has been my experience with these type of kids. This type of kid can be found at any of the top 20 schools.</p>
<p>To be honest, with very few exceptions, “Ivy-caliber” students are usually those who chronically procrastinate, never turn their work in until the last minute, but still study profusely for exams, and usually ace their classes while ****ing off everyone else who works harder.</p>
<p>Interesting thread. Here’s my two cents: A good, well-rounded student who has passion and drive and is an EXCELLENT writer should be considered an Ivy/top school caliber student. I’ve seen this thread morph from the OP’s initial quest to the student who can get into IVY schools. Among my daughter’s friends, 2 got admitted to HPS and neither of them has found a cure for cancer or made it even remotely close to the Olympics. The two of them and all the kids I know who got accepted into top schools had varied EC’s. The common thread between them all was of course their academic record and their prowess as writers. And no, they were not published and most didn’t win any awards for their writing either. They were just passionate, driven kids who did extremely well at school and had interesting activities outside of school.</p>
<p>I don’t think many people when talk about Ivy-Caliber applicant are talking about the original 8 Ivy colleges. It just means top schools they have in mind.
Whenever I post anything in this regard then I mean HMSPY.
If some one is a strong applicant for these 5, then (s)he will get into one of the top schools.
Re-iterating once again with a quantified measurement of a strong applicant to HMSPY.
- A strong GPA in a tough curriculum in the context of the high school.
It can mean nothing less than a Valedictorian at an average high school to up to 30% at private prep high school.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A set of Advance Placement or College level Courses</p>
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<li>AP Scholar thru AP National Scholar</li>
</ul></li>
<li><p>A strong score at Standardized tests SAT1, SAT2, PSAT</p>
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<li>NMSF, NMF, Presidential Scholar Candidate</li>
</ul></li>
<li><p>Strong Writing skills - I can’t emphasize any less the importance of strong writing skills
A strong score of 4/5 on AP Euro History, AP English Language and AP English Literature is a good quantifiable measurement of strong writing skills.</p></li>
<li><p>Strong Extracurricular Activities - Having passion for sports, Robotics, Research, Debate etc. and excel in it.
Winning awards at regional/national level are quantifiable measurement.</p></li>
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<p>Unless you are trying to be funny, you are not being honest, but are uninformed. Ivy league caliber kids from our local high school are almost always one of the top 5 kids in the class, do not procrastinate and work like crazy. I should know–I’ve had two of them. I think that the situation that you posit is the exception, not the norm.</p>
<p>Actually, ellemenope, there may be a grain of truth in that post. Top schools-caliber students may not need to work as hard as some to ace classes or get top scores. This is what adcoms try to discern (not always successfully) when evaluating applications.
I got flack for mentioning the MIT recommendation form that asked teachers to check out one of several boxes as a reason for a student’s high achievement:</p>
<p>memorization
hard work
grade consciousness
brilliance (or some such).</p>
<p>It seemed to me that the MIT adcom were trying to isolate the brilliant kids, though many parents quite rightly said that grade consciousness was a very valid motivator for achieving high.</p>
<p>Colleges do get concerned that students who have achieved high in high school by dint of great effort may not be capable of the extra effort needed to achieve high in college. By the same token, however, they are equally concerned that students who never had to work to succeed (the “underachiever”) may not have the self-discipline to succeed in college, either.
Admissions are not an exact science; mistakes are made all the time, both in admitting and rejecting applicants.</p>
<p>PoFIH:</p>
<p>I disagree. Too many posts discuss legacy status, and other hooks that have nothing to do with some top colleges–such as those I used as examples: legacy status at Caltech? athlete’s hooks at Swarthmore? What’s the point of discussing these if not because people consciously or unconsciously equate “Ivy caliber” with “Ivy?”</p>