<p>I doubt anyone, even someone with a supercomputer capable of complex algorithms, can figure out a way to out think or improve the current system, because it is based on too many factors and the decisions of too many people. In many ways it is a crap shoot, especially for those aiming for the most selective colleges. It needs to be though of that way, if the only schools a student decides to apply to are those with the smallest acceptance rates. If students or parents do not want to base college choices on what amounts to a “roll of the dice”, then they need to apply to safeties where they will, with a genuine show of interest, be accepted.</p>
<p>Puzzledad:</p>
<p>First, I want to add my congratulations for doing such a job raising your son (want to help me with mine?) Although I know that the outcome of his college search must have been very disappointing, it in no way detracts from his accomplishments.</p>
<p>Second, speculating about the specific issue faced by Asian-Americans in the admissions process is wasted effort. They are what they are (or are not) and have no bearing on your original question, which I understand to be “How can I help my second son?”</p>
<p>Third, with respect to developing a list of safeties:</p>
<p>Scattered throughout the boards on specific schools is info on the stats for students who were admitted, waitlisted and denied. You might want to start with those on the “Top Universities” and “Top Colleges” list and work down. (The stats are SCARY this year at virtually all of those schools). Maybe find a few others where the stats for S2 are in the top third. Maybe identify a handful of those schools that look interesting, investigate further, and identify two or three that you and S2 particularly like.</p>
<p>I know that these ideas are kind of prosaic, but there is no real magic involved in the process of picking safeties.</p>
<p>"A girl who is interested in and well qualified to major in engineering is going to do better in the admissions sweepstakes than a girl interested in majoring in creative writing. It’s not really about discrimination; it’s about wanting to have “diversity.” "</p>
<p>Jonri is very right about this, for EXACTLY the reason many have stated: you need to be DIFFERENT than the majority of applicants, whether they be Asian-male-science-and-math-focused, or female-liberal-arts-focused.</p>
<p>D2, accepted to everywhere she applied except for WUSTL (waitlisted), stated her intended major was biomedical engineering and/or premed. She is not Asian (blond and blue-eyed in fact), but her high school transcript reflects BOTH a very focused and strong INTEREST, as well as TALENT in math and science, which backed up her intended majors. </p>
<p>Furthermore, her ECs evidenced a VARIETY of other talents such as leadership (president of her class, among other things), theater (lead role), and passion (one community service, teaching science to URMs).</p>
<p>What D2 did NOT do was stress about perfect stats: she took the SAT ONCE (fall of her junior year) and scored 2280. She took the most difficult classes available in the subjects in which she had an interest (including math, science, history, spanish, and literature), but earned a few Bs in the process…</p>
<p>We ALWAYS told her to DO WHAT YOU LOVE, NOT what would look good on her college apps, which she ALWAYS did. And, perhaps MOST important, we had not a clue whether she would be accepted to any top tier schools, but we felt it was MORE IMPORTANT for her to love what she was doing than to worry about what adcoms would think.</p>
<p>We obviously are very pleased with her acceptances, but the important thing to me is that she didn’t do ANYTHING just because she wanted to get into a specific college…that was only the bonus result.</p>
<p>cgarrett101: Your girl sounds like she naturally fit what most colleges like to see, no modifications necessary. I hope you realize how LUCKY that is. As parents, you did everything else right, too, without even trying. I mean, you didn’t try, and that was doing everything right. </p>
<p>I wish I had had the courage to follow my gut instead of listening to the supposed experts. Still, everything is turning out for the best, I think. </p>
<p>puzzledad: How is your son doing with all this?</p>
<p>jnsq-</p>
<p>Not all my children are like D2!!! And your are correct that we are lucky; she was mostly born with her personality/talents/etc. We realize that all too well…</p>
<p>With D1 we were just happy she found a college she liked, and even then, she transferred to another after her sophomore year. I know she will be successful even though she did not go to a top tier school because she wants to succeed and is willing to work for it. </p>
<p>S (the youngest) is brilliant, but may not be top tier material, either. He is a little quieter and hasn’t shown a lot of drive toward leadership. He’s only a freshman, so it’s difficult to predict, but he may prefer a less intensely competitive environment. I believe every child is different, and it’s not all about how smart they are; their personalities are just as important when choosing a college.</p>
<p>The strategy being proposed on here is smart, but it has its limitations. It all depends what the admissions goal is for your student. But it should be stated that one flaw is this: applying where you’re likely to be wanted most might make it a little hard to love your college list. Chances are, if the college needs a student like you, there’s a very good reason behind that scarcity. Maybe what you want to major in isn’t an area of strength for the school. Or the school’s team in the sport you excel at is less than stellar. Or maybe you’re of an ethnic group they need a greater respresentation of, but that could mean if you attend you might feel less comfortable or perhaps have fewer dating opportunities, etc. Maybe the school is clear across the country, so the geographic element might help. But it also means being far from home and high transportation costs–hence why others from your part of the US don’t tend to chose to go. </p>
<p>S was accepted at a top 15 LAC, with an almost full scholarship. The generosity we attributed to diversity considerations. The problem? There’s a very good reason why that college has a tough time atrracting minority applicants. And that’s the same reason my son would have been reluctant to attend.</p>
<p>So if the goal is to simply get into the highest-ranked school you can with the most merit money, then this could work well. But if you’re a proponent of fit (esp. feeling comfortable) and convenience, then maybe not so much.</p>
<p>“Maybe what you want to major in isn’t an area of strength for the school.”</p>
<p>I for one would certainly never recommend this. But in my research even a few years ago I discovered many LAC’s with strong departments in areas of D’s interests, but were not “top 15.” Nevertheless, solid, quality curriculum with superb faculty. As mini says, plenty of spaces for warm bodies.</p>
<p>A safety or even an alternate (I prefer to think of it that way) should not be a significant academic compromise so much as a less-preferred location, size, core requirements, etc. It’s just that the public seems to believe that there are a handful of quality colleges out there, & that is simply not true. After I finished doing research, I had “too many” colleges, actually. Had we not needed very strong financial aid, the list would not have needed to be reduced.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend this either, epiphany. We would have chosen the lower-ranked school with the stronger department. But in my status-driven area of the country, I’ve seen some odd choices. For example, one of S’s friends was very intent on being admitted to an elite college. So she chose a school well-known for science and engineering and applied as a film major. She got in, but has to go to a neighboring college to take classes because the dept. at her school is negligible. But hey, she got into a top school!</p>
<p>I’m not sure you’re understanding what I’m saying, The GFG. My son found schools that were a great fit at all different levels of selectivity. I’m estimating acceptance rates because I don’t know what they were this year, but an example would be: Goucher (60%), Macalester (45%), Grinnell (35-45%), Carleton (30%), Vassar (20%) and Pomona (15%). At any of these schools, my son felt he could get a great liberal arts education from full profs in small classes surrounded by interesting, quirky students.</p>
<p>Bethievt: I was mostly responding to jonri’s post which suggested that students demonstrate themselves to be different and seek out the less obvious choices in colleges. Jonri says:</p>
<p>“It also means applying to a college where their academic interests are rarer. So many kids research to find out the highest ranked engineering programs, or best physics programs, or best history departments…and then those schools gets hundreds of applicants interested in those fields.”</p>
<p>I can’t find your post right now, but I think you also commented that the colleges on your S’s list were ones that he was certain would be looking for someone just like him. By that I assumed that somehow your son would be slightly different from the majority of applicants in some way, such as higher stats, from a different geographic area, from a less represented ethnic group, or having a less popular major. Did I misunderstand you? Or did you just mean you didn’t limit your list to the same elite schools targeted by everyone else?</p>
<p>GFG–</p>
<p>The OP originally asked what his second child could do to improve his odds of getting into a top college. I answered that question. </p>
<p>I think that it helps kids to understand that college admissions is a lot like casting a school musical, even if they are a soprano and don’t get the part. So many kids really don’t “get” that they aren’t just vying to be one of the 7.1% of students admitted to Harvard, they are vying to be one of a smaller percentage of applicants to Harvard who are the equivalent of sopranos who are admitted–and I personally think it helps to know that when the alto in their high school class gets in. </p>
<p>It also helps to understand that if you are not “naturally” different from the typical applicant, you should do what you can to make yourself unique. My example about an essay on the topic of growing up in two worlds, one Asian and one American, is not fiction. I know a wonderful girl who actually wrote such an essay when she applied to Stanford. I cringed. I knew that killed her chances. (That essay could certainly work in the right hands; it’s just that you’d have to be an excellent writer to be able to impress an admissions rep who will have read lots of other essays on the same topic.) </p>
<p>There are schools, e.g., Duke, which weigh the essay much less heavily than most top colleges–and if your kid just can’t write a good personal essay, I think it helps to know that. You can say it’s phony or artificial for a kid who is interested in engineering to apply to Duke rather than Stanford because he can’t write that well and Stanford weighs the essay more heavily than most and Duke less. I don’t think there’s anything wrong in doing that. And, while the kid might prefer Stanford, he might be happier at Duke than at Rose Hulman or RPI, which might have been his “matches.” </p>
<p>I think there’s some validity to your criticism, but I still think my advice is valid. You know, there might be a lot of schools in between the point at which your type is so rare you are given an almost full merit scholarship as your son was and the colleges where you can’t get in because there are a zillion candidates just like you. It’s not always one extreme or the other. There are, for example, schools which are not more than a quarter Asian-American, a la Stanford, but do have more than 10%. There are also kids who choose to go to a college with few folks who look like themselves, but find a way to interact with them out of school. One young African-American woman went to a women’s college with few African-American students. She became very active in a national association of African-American college students and made African-American friends through that. </p>
<p>I assure you the young Asian girl in my kid’s class who went to Harvard to major in studio art would have preferred to attend Yale, which rejected her, but I don’t think her life was over because she went to Harvard instead. </p>
<p>Andison is extremely happy at MIT–and it wasn’t on his original list. </p>
<p>And my young female neighbor is very, very happy at Macalester, which ultimately became her real first choice–even though she only visited it in the first place because her guidance counselor sat her and her parents down and said in effect “If you are willing to go to college in the Midwest, you’ll be able to go to a better school than if you insist on staying within a few hours drive of New York”–which was her original plan. And, yes, though it take a bit longer to get home, I think she is–and more importantly she thinks she is–happier than she would have been closer to home at a college less academically rigorous and with a less diverse and talented student body than that she is enjoying at Macalester. </p>
<p>And seriously…at the undergrad level does it really matter if you go to the college ranked #1 in sociology or #8? But the way the most academically oriented American kids choose where to apply too often assumes that it does. And at least half of college students do switch their majors. (My kid would be one of them.) </p>
<p>So, yes, following my ‘strategy’ might not get you into your “dream” college–but from what you said, your S didn’t get into his “dream” college without following it either. And every spring, I listen to kids who look at the list of colleges which have accepted them and start talking about a gap year because they don’t want to go to any of them. And I think that some of them are all-state musicians who applied to Yale and Harvard and were rejected, but would have been happy at Stanford (which gets FAR fewer apps from all-state musicians) and actresses from Westchester County, New York who get rejected at Vassar, who might have been accepted to and happy at Carleton. (And the Lenny Dee Players are darn good.) Yes, it’s harder overall to get into Carleton–but not if you are applying in the regular round as an actress from New York. That’s the point. </p>
<p>In any event, I hope that your S and the OP’s S are both happy when they get to college; most kids are. But I hope neither of your sons looks back at his high school career and says “If I’d known where I’d end up, I wouldn’t have bothered to do X, Y or Z in high school. I only did that thinking it would get me into a more elite college.If I had known that it wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have done it.”</p>
<p>I don’t disagree with you at all, jonri, especially since you stressed that the student does not need to reinvent himself to employ the strategy. And yes, my example of a school where the student is perhaps too different may have been extreme.</p>
<p>However, as je<em>ne</em>sais_ quoi laments, the average person doesn’t have easy access to the type of information you cite above, which would be invaluable when applying. That MIT must receive bizillions of applications from Asian science kids would be an easy guess. But how do you know that Stanford receives fewer applications from all-state musicians than Harvard or Yale? If I were more involved in the music world, would that be an equally obvious assumption, or are you a college counselor?</p>
<p>“But how do you know that Stanford receives fewer applications from all-state musicians than Harvard or Yale”
It is known that Stanford has a weak music dept, and there are also relatively few performance opportunities for non music majors on campus. So students who are committed to continuing with music apply to Y and H over Stanford, becasue of the overall strength of the programs at those 2 universities.</p>
<p>
Even if they are not committed to continue in music (they don’t make any commitment at the time of application), but are good enough to impress the music department with their audition tape, they get a leg up in admissions. And it is easier to impress the music dept at Stanford than it is at H or Y from what I heard.</p>
<p>I don’t think I would recommend Stanford for someone looking for a music career, but for students who want an opportunity to play in the orchestra or wind ensemble while pursuing another major, Stanford is a wonderful choice.</p>
<p>The GFG</p>
<p>Yeah, I mostly mean if you figure out what you’re looking for, you can find good schools that will give you all of that at every level of selectivity unless you are stuck on a handful of schools, mostly in the northeast, that hardly accept anyone. But the geograpfic factor plays in, as does a boy applying to a formerly all-girl school for an admissions advantage or a girl applying to an all-girls school for the same reason.</p>
<p>I’m an attorney/parent of '07 law school grad who is a refugee from the law boards. I’m not a professional–just someone who got interested in the whole process back then–as many CC parents have. </p>
<p>If you were more involved in the music world, it would be an equally obvious assumption. As menloparkmom’s post indicates, the fact that Stanford is weaker in music than H or Y is well known. Kids who are interested in music but aren’t <em>superstars</em> in music; I mean kids who are all-state in orchestra, but are unlikely to ever become professional musicians–figure that out and apply to H or Y because they get more excited about the opportunities for musical ECs at H or Y than at Stanford. They ignore the fact that everyone else can figure it out too. </p>
<p>They apply to H or Y and then apply regular round to “safeties” like Oberlin or St. Olaf’s–other schools that also attract a lot of excellent musicians and have filled a lot of their places already in the early round. Then they are surprised when they get rejected despite much higher than median gpa’s and SAT scores. </p>
<p>ALL of this stuff is public knowledge. And all kinds of kids make the same “mistake”–it’s musicians, actors, debaters, chess players, kids into robotics, whatever. Which colleges have the BEST chess teams? The high school chess players research and find out and then apply to the colleges with the best chess teams at every level…just like the majority of all the other high school chess players in the US with high gpa’s and SATs–even when the applicants are good, but not great chess players at a national level. </p>
<p>Then they do the same for majors. Which is the #1 ranked history department in the nation? Which is the BEST French department? Which is the BEST creative writing program? For the last–my “safety” will be Sarah Lawrence. Yeah right…it’s harder to get into Sarah Lawrence as a creative writing major than it is to get into MANY colleges which are tougher to get into overall–and which have very good creative writing programs. </p>
<p>It’s not rocket science…it really isn’t. Hey, if you’re good enough for Julliard, I’m NOT suggesting Stanford. I’m just saying that while there may be fewer performance opportunities for non-majors at Stanford, the good but not superstar musician might have a better chance of getting into Stanford and participating in what’s on offer than getting into H or Y and making the student symphony orchestra. </p>
<p>If you are interested in a particular field, you usually can find info about it on the internet…kids already do. So, lets say you are into robotics. You check out college competitions. You see which schools do best in them. How about seeing which schools ompete but do not excel? Where you can be on a robotics team–but one which isn’t going to be inundated with apps from every other kid into robotics? </p>
<p>Again, I’m not saying not to apply to the team with the best robotics team, if that’s your dream. I’m just saying not to apply ONLY to schools with great robotics teams. </p>
<p>I’m also saying that when you look at reach, match, safeyy categories, especially at LACs, you shouldn’t just look at the stats, but at the concentration of kids like you. That becomes crucial if you are applying in the regular round to a college which has an early round. </p>
<p>I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but I am sincerely trying to help. If anyone thinks my ‘strategy’ is repugnant, well, there’s no need to use it. But, quite honestly, I don’t think most kids or parents will find it such…and if used judiciously, I think some kids, at least, would be happier when the envelopes arrive.</p>
<p>Jonri - I agree.</p>
<p>For example if you have really high SATs and aren’t applying to Wharton go for Penn where they need talent for CAS.</p>
<p>If you are a guy, try Brown where they are short on guys. If you are a guy with a high verbal score, even better because guys with high verbal are hard to come by unless you are Yale.</p>
<p>If you are a swimmer with really good academic credentials but not overwhelming, don’t go for Princeton where they send kids to the NCAA’s, try Yale or Penn.</p>
<p>Etc.</p>
<p>“ALL of this stuff is public knowledge.”</p>
<p>completely agree. There is so much information available to non-insiders; it just takes time.</p>
<p>Will Brown forgive my younger son’s low math score? (Based solely on current PSAT score.) I agree with Jonri, I had a friend at Harvard who was the third best oboe, she hardly ever got to play, since most pieces only needed two. For playing opportunities she might well have been better off elsewhere. </p>
<p>Still you still need to go someplace that’s good enough. I think it’s okay to still apply to those top programs, but agree that casting a wider net for safeties, may be a good approach.</p>
<p>I hope this sheds light on whats happening in selective college admissions, and how one can gain admission to the most selective schools.
College admissions has become the most competitive ever. There are more children of college entrance age than at any other time in US history, but the size of college classes has not changed that significantly. As a result at many schools across the country there are 24,000 applicants applying for 1600 spots.
Added to this is the fact that several of the ivies and other selective schools have done away with single choice early action and early decision. As a result with over 20,000 appicants competing for admission, it is becoming virtually impossible for applicants to stand in the admission pool. In fact, the exceptional student with outstanding SAT scores and grades, and great extra curriculars often becomes ordinary.
It is important to stand out from the other thousands and thousands of also outstanding applicants. in order to get an admisison officers eye - especially one is not a highly recruited athlete, an under represented high achieving minority, a developmental legacy, or from an under epresented state like Idaho.
Of the 24,000 applicants who apply to very selective schools, the majority will have excellent SAT scores and grades. The majority will have more than just a checklist of extracurriculars. Most will be active in their school commuity. The problem is that there are thousands of applicants who are President of their class, and head of the debate club, star in their schools musicals and and/ or are Editor in Chief of the yearbook and Captain of their varsity team. As amazing at it sounds to have academic achievement and time for leadership in school and sports activities, this becomes ordinary, as everyone is exceptional.
At very selective schools there are ways that some applicants stand out amongst who also have the academics and scores to get accepted. One is for having passions that span years with extraordinary achievements on the national or international level in the arts and in areas that are out of the ordinary. Or to have interesting passions without those achievements but that show they have been developed over years. Other ways some applicants stand out are for having extraordinary academic achievement. These are the students who have perfect or near perfect SAT scores, while being number one in the class, and perhaps having published their research or were a semi finalist in a competitition like Westinghouse.
There are some applicants who just have really good SAT scores and grades, but the combination of the things they have done, or their essays and teacher recommendations just make them more interesting applicants, or the admissions committee thinks they will bring something that is needed to the campus.
What has happened in college admissions is that many who did not get into their early school if they did apply to one, or choose not to apply to one, found that in the regular decision pool, it was just too hard to compete against 20,000 or more applicants for a small number of spots. Many unfortunately found that they were waitlisted or denied. at schools that normally would have been considered matches. It used to be that passions and unusual achievement was needed to gain admission to just the ivy league and other first tier schools, but for second tier competitive schools, very good SAT scores and grades and extracurricular activities with leadership was enough. That has changed however. These second tier schools have found that they can be very selective as they have received also over 20,000 appiicants at most schools. They also hope to capture the students who were qualified for the ivy league and top tier schools who were waitlisted or not accepted.
I do feel that there is a lot of hope for waitlisted applicants this year. In previous years it was impossible to get off a waitlist as colleges estimated correctly the percentage of students who would come if accepted. However, this year is different. Many selective schools do not know who will accept their offer, as many who might have been accepted early to other schools did not apply early, and may be hoping to gain acceptance somewhere else.
Many colleges could not predict yield but still wanted to remain selective, so they accepted the number they did last year, but waitlisted a number just as large. I do believe that many will be offered spots off the waitlist.
For those of you waitlisted at one or several schools, who would rather go there than the schools you were accepted to, I would remain on the waitlist and rally to get one of those spots.
This was probably the toughest year in college admissions.
Where you got in or did not is not a reflection of who you are, and you should not take it personally if you were not taken. I am sure you were outstanding. It is just hard to stand out when everyone is outstanding</p>