Ok, so maybe not the tippy top schools, but aren’t there highly selective schools that are need aware? Wouldn’t it be an advantage to be full pay?
Agreed. And even if we do go by USWNR rankings, I’d say that any in the top 25 to 30 would be considered “elite”.
@clarinetDad16 - In this context, as I explained before, I used elite to mean selective. This does not mean I believe only the top 20 schools can provide a good education, are worth a small fortune or are the only choices for top students. On CC, elite has often meant selective. Other posters understood what I was saying.
Clearly you have an opinion on the matter since you’ve made several comments directed toward me. What are your thoughts on elite?
Essays and recommendations. You hear it from college admissions folks all the time. They can spot the generic essays and those written by committee. Beyond stats, they are looking for people who will bring something to campus. College life is not just about the classroom. Who is going to contribute to campus life and culture? Who has a personality? Who has something a little different to offer? These things come through in essays that are truly personal, and in recommendations from teachers and others who see certain passions in these students. This is also why kids with lower stats sometimes get into “elite” schools.
Regarding recommendations, the quality of such is largely an aspect of an application that the student has little control over; from the student’s point of view, recommendations can be effectively a randomizing element. Even among several teachers who really like the student, there could be significant variation in quality of recommendations.
MIT has a guide on writing recommendations at http://mitadmissions.org/apply/prepare/writingrecs , but it is likely that few students, teachers, and counselors are even aware of that.
Thank you for this description @lostaccount, because this is my youngest. Teachers keep him after the bell to continue the discussions he started. He argues most of the conclusions his long suffering teacher draws in economics (politely, she assures me). He reads and researches esoteric topics because he loves to learn. We won’t be looking at Ivy’s for him - (too expensive and he only has a 3.8 UW gpa) but we’d like him to find other thinkers.
uscalumnus, I think most MIT students are well aware of that guide. Since MIT does not use the common App, I bet most perspective students scour the MIT admissions site and blogs. It is a great guide.
Agentninetynine, a 3.8 is not going to be cause for rejection at a place like MIT. That isn’t to say your son would be accepted-who knows? But if he is not accepted, it won’t be because he has a 3.8 rather than a 4.0. My impression is that MIT would accept a student with a 3.8 over a 4.0 if the student with the 3.8 is enthused about what he/she is studying while the 4.0 worked for grades. (which isn’t necessarily the case-this is simply a scenario that would favor the lower objectives in favor of genuine scholarship and exploration over grade grubbing).
Well worth a read for any student-not just MIT interested students: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/50-reflections
However, lots of students applying to highly selective colleges are not interested in MIT, so they may not have encountered it.
Of course, that is if they can tell the difference between genuine enthusiasm versus being able to to make it look like genuine enthusiasm. Cheating scandals that occasionally pop up in highly selective schools (e.g. Harvard Government 1310 “Introduction to Congress”, Dartmouth “Sports, Ethics, and Religion”) indicate that their selection processes do not completely filter out the grade-grubbers, some of whom go far enough to cheat.
Thanks for the link @lostaccount. We are full pay so MIT would not make the financial cut. Ds is leaning toward LAC’s since those smaller schools would more likely be able to provide that intense discussion format. He desperately needs this. And we need him to find it. I love him but some nights my brain is overloaded listening to him.
I too found post #45 by @lostaccount to be very interesting and it really hit home with me. As @Agentninetynine states above, this describes my son perfectly. He is an engineering/science/math kid really, but he loves learning all different topics in general. He loved his history classes, constitutional theory, AP Macroeconomics, etc. He is forever sitting at the computer looking up things online just because he likes to know how things work… and he loves to sit and discuss current issues and politics endlessly over skype with a few other friends. Last fall, he regularly skipped lunch to go sit in a class with a teacher he liked, even though he had already taken that class with another teacher in the school. He genuinely liked hearing the subject matter presented in a different (and more interesting) way. This particular teacher ended up writing a recommendation for him. While I never saw any of the recommendation letters these teachers and his counselor wrote, I have to believe this was conveyed to the schools he applied to. I also think his essays really reflected who he is. My son isn’t at the very top of his class, although he did score extremely well on the ACT. He only applied to a handful of schools that he could truly see himself attending, and he’ll be going to Cornell in the fall.
As usual, some here are looking at this backwards, which can’t possibly help. You think grades, scores, and some club titles, some award, even something very unusual, are what makes a kid stand out (hey, it’s what the high school likes- but this isn’t an app to transfer to a better high school.)
It’s more about how a kid thinks than just the stats he gets. and how that comes though in the app, the cjoices made in hs, the experiences, and how one writes/presents that. What he or she holds him or herself up to and goes after. Meaningful? Or rote? Forgive me, but most don’t think enough. They assume being great in their hs, praised, raising a few bucks, winning some award, etc, is all it takes. I try to get kids and parents to read up on their targets. They turn right around and say it’s stats. They tell me adcoms lie, that it’s a lottery, that it’s all about US News standing for a low admit %, that they won’t have smart peers if they don’t go to a TT, that their life shot is diminished at a non-TT, that URMs are the only real types sought, that Asians are dismissed, (and shouldn’t play tennis or violin, cuz it’s too common,) share some wacky anecdote about some kid they knew. And then one who stated, with all the colleges a kid is targeting, it’s impossible to research them. Sigh. What kind of thinking is all that?
There are more need aware and selective schools than need aware ones. Anyway, yes at need aware, full pay is better. Most except state schools that are mentioned in this thread are need aware-now whether they meet full need, that is a different questions
I still don’t understand…there are far more “selective” schools than the “Top 20”. Even the Top 50 is highly selective. I suspect once folks go through the process, those definitions change. It is not as easy as ppl think to get into a “lower tier” school with 20% rates either…using “lower tier” ironically.
Assuming a student with a great stat has a chance to be accepted to one selective school is 20% and the chance is independent from one school to another school, then the possibility the student is rejected from 10 selective schools is (0.8)^10 = 0.1 i.e. 10%. I think there must be many students who were shut out.
I think that the expectation that a “great student with great stats” should be able to get into a selective (whatever that means) school comes from how everything has worked up until then. I mean if your kids is “darn bright” then getting good grades and a good SAT score is often just a matter of hard work, attention to detail, studying and prep for the test. Do everything right and you’ll get the results you want.
Entrance into dream colleges is really the first time that life doesn’t work like that for these families. It’s not “fair”.
Now the rest of life doesn’t work like that either. Getting laid-off in the midst of a recession through no fault of your own, running for congress (or town councilman) but not getting elected because your party is out of favor this year, not getting the job because there’s a hiring freeze, getting a new manager who can’t stand you and undermines your authority, the list goes on and on. Hard work is a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for “success” however you define that to be.
Not to mention devastating health issues or other tragedies.
And not to mention being a kid growing up in a terrible school with violence on the streets and overworked and undertrained teachers who are overwhelmed, as most posting here have no idea about.
And given that admissions among selective schools is not independent, the chance of being shut out is considerably higher.
@Agentninetynine - let’s look at “elite” schools as you define them by selectivity. Here is one school as an example…
Is it fair to say U Chicago has been one of the nations best colleges for many, many years now?
But by limiting the “elite” tag to the most selective schools - U Chicago for many years would not have made the cut as they used to accept 40% of their applicants.
Does better marketing and admissions yield management suddenly make U Chicago significantly better and more elite (or now elite) now their selectivity is below 10%? Or is the quality of their education and the success of their graduates just as strong as it has been for many, many years?
No one really has that hypothetical chance at a holistic just based on stats and rigor. The whole app is key.
I know I oversimplified the situation and very hypothetical but I think it still holds the fact why we see many students are shut out.
High stats are the minimum expected at extremely selective institutions. That’s why they look for the “something extra” to distinguish between candidates.
To use a poor analogy, it’s like modeling. You have to be thin in order to be a model. Every model is thin. You can’t say, “hey, look at all these thin candidates who didn’t get picked to be a supermodel!”
Of course they’re thin. They’re aspiring models. But they’re looking for “something extra” to select someone to actually be a model.
Thin = Minimum needed to even apply
Great looks and “wow” factor take you to the next level.
I know, poor analogy…there are plus size models. And there are “Colleges That Change Lives.” I don’t think any of those are ivies.