@theloniusmonk I agree with you 100%. What I was trying to get across is that high stats are necessary to open the door, the spark, gets you through it
@ninakatarina @LakeAlto If you think getting into the ivies+ is a “lottery”, then you need to apply to as many as you can manage and afford. On the other hand, if you think that it’s not a lottery, then you should really study up on which ones you have the best fit with and, therefore, the best chance of getting in.
@SDCounty3Mom I haven’t had a chance to read through other responses, but just in case, this article does a very good job at describing what is a “Stealth Candidate.” http://www.thecollegesolution.com/why-you-shouldnt-be-a-stealth-college-applicant/ Also if your username indicates your geographic location, then I suggestion you attend one of Lynn O’Shaughnessy’s local events. I learned a lot from her with very happy results for my own children and my students.
I usually have my students write an email introducing themselves with one positive fact and one reason why they are interested in X college. I also have them ask to be notified if there is any event locally and included in that email list. I have to say about 90% of the time my student gets a very nice response. I try to be mindful not to read too much into a lukewarm response because admission reps are pretty busy during certain times of the year. If my student then meets the admission rep, I make sure they introduce themselves and refer to the fact that they sent an email. Just something subtle. The best contact is a visit to the college and from my own children’s experience, they always make an appointment with the regional rep when they visit the campus if the regional rep is located there. They come in prepared and ask questions for info not found on the website. My daughter is at a reach school and the admission rep told us that her contacts made a big difference to them since her stats fell into the bottom 25% of the entering class. My son sent to Ohio State and his contacts got him a paid visit to the school his senior year and they really pushed for scholarships for him and he ended up with a full-ride scholarship. In fact the admission reps have become personal friends of our family and we visit them if we happen to be on campus. Now my history doesn’t mean that ever applicant has to do the same, it just worked out nicely and our friendships were genuine. Plus I have found that these kind of contacts has usually led to a more personal invite for an event locally for my children/students. Also remember that things change from year to year and budgets vary so what may have happened one year may not happen the next.
You always want your child to make the contact unless you have a question related to a parent concern. Also some parents pretend to be their children, don’t do that or refer to 'we are applying to college." Reps hate that. Also don’t be pesty, just one or two emails (I help out some schools and you would not believe how certain students/parents bombarded the rep). I was surprised that even for some ivies, the contacts seemed to matter since I know the ivies and Stanford reps just get inundated with contacts. Go to a college fair and see the parents and students falling over each other to get to those reps. By the way a good place for a not becoming a stealth applicant is attending the National College Fair. If you are in my area based on your user name, it is coming up around the third week of April. I recommend you and your child attend it and try to meet the reps-don’t forget to get their business cards and have your child follow-up with an email. During my DD’s sophomore year, she met the rep of her current college and wrote her when we found out we would be nearby the college. The college wasn’t on her radar until the national college fair and the rep did an outstanding job of setting up an all-day visit for my DD (she is an engineering student). Totally changed my DD’s life (really not an understatement), my DD loves her college and will be graduating this year. She has had opportunities beyond my wildest dreams and I hate to think what would have happened had she not attended the college fair and emailed the rep. You just never know!!
@SDCounty3Mom Good luck and I hope I answered your questions.
@itsv , interesting, thanks. I don’t want to get too sidetracked on demonstrating interest, as there is a lot of info out there. What’s the best time of year to reach out? My own child got very discouraged by contacting regional reps. She did pretty much what you suggested and even reps who claim they love to hear from students would rarely respond. She certainly didn’t make herself a nuisance. It really put her off, so she stopped doing it. We assumed it was probably just them being busy.
@itsv Extremely helpful insights – thanks very much! I appreciate your taking the time.
I think most are stressed out due to $$$$$ need, if you remove $$$$, many parents are happy with lower ranked schools too.
@itsv Thank you so much for taking the time to share that—I wish I had read it a year ago, as D18 did not take the time to form relationships with her regional reps until late in the game. She contacted various AO’s instead of seeking out her regional rep and being consistent. It was definitely an oversight on her part (and on my part for not advising her better.) It didn’t cost her any acceptances, but having someone push for you in terms of scholarships couldn’t have hurt. Now at least D20 will know better! 
S did not get into one of his top choices which is a T20 university and in retrospect, I am fairly confident that the issue was that he applied to one of the more difficult majors to get into at that school. Some colleges deny that there is a better or lesser chance of admission to certain majors. In this case, I believe it was close enough to where an application to the less popular major could likely have been enough to gain admission. The particular university is known for ease of changing majors, so it was not the best decision to apply to the more popular major. Other schools are more wary of a strategy some students take to apply to easier or less popular majors, to gain admission. S ended up waitlisted for the difficult major,but fortunately there are other good options so it will all work out in the end.
Because my essay wasnt that great
I don’t know if you’ll see this, but … My son got accepted to Columbia U as a John Jay Scholar and wait listed at Middlebury, his top choice. Any advice? Is it a good idea for his school’s school councilor to talk with Middlebury’s admissions councilor - son’s high school is a new, very small, school.
My son just did stuff he like doing - like reading, writing, playing the piano. He wrote a philosophy paper that got published in a journal for graduate students. He mentored one kid for several years and did a bit of tutoring with other kids. That’s about it. He got into Columbia.
@gallentjill , re posts 86-88: look on Harvard’s website/theater programs: they have visiting directors, an in-residence group, descriptions of student productions/casting, etc, all indicators Harvard is invested in theater and seeks undergrad involvement. So, no , there is no “audition” as with a classical MT program, but if you have good stats for Harvard , a lot of in-depth HS theater experience would very likely be seen as positive in admissions, depending on how they were aiming to build a class that year. More and more colleges want a vibrant undergrad experience, including the performing arts, so yes, they have to take that into account when choosing a freshman class.
Getting back to thread topic, as others have pointed out , not highlighting your passion well (theater or otherwise) on your application could indeed limit your likelihood of acceptance.
Thanks to all who have contributed to this great thread–as a parent of D21 and D23, it is very useful to understand the factors that are at play, well before our house faces applications.
Well this thread has been quiet, but I’ll give my opinion: there’s so much misunderstanding among those posting here, as to what these schools want. It’s not the same as high school, it’s the college leap. It’s not your perception of a kid’s worthiness, the stats, ECs, wonderfulness, potential, etc, that you think are enough. It’s up to the adcoms representing those colleges.
And they’re reading your app and maybe a supp. It’s all they have to go on. They don’t know you, live with you, teach in your hs, mentor your clubs. It all hangs on your app and supp, your self presentation.
You either present yourself well- or not. And all those assumptions about lottery, unfairness, how one has to be rich, how many titles you think you need, or awards, or “passion,” that you have to start in 7th grade, pack your schedules, and on and on…don’t make for a great, well thought out, well done app/supp.
It’s much like any major competition. You represent yourself through your record, but also your words, even the choice of what to write about and how. Then how you match what it is they;re looking for. The more you look into what the colleges value, like, want, and expect, the more you learn for your own strategy. Skip this at your own risk. The top colleges want the sort of kids who can think at a higher level, explore, consider, and understand. Be that sort.
It’s not a lottery.
It’s not a lottery certain applicants for sure - the hooked ones, athletes (who in many cases reject the school, not the other way around), urms, first-gen, development (J Kushner, M Obama et al.).
For the rest, it’s pretty much a lottery or at least appears as one, which is the important thing. An applicant getting into Yale and Princeton, wait listed at Harvard, rejected by Stanford shows the randomness. BTW, there’s a lot of research showing decision making having so many biases and events being a lot more random than we think.
“The top colleges want the sort of kids who can think at a higher level, explore, consider, and understand.”
How would adcoms even know what this higher level thinking is, from the essay, teacher recs? Unless it’s Einstein coming back and saying this applicant understands the universe like I do and can think across disciplines like I can, I wouldn’t put too much stock in that. As the adcoms themselves say, there’s not a whole of difference between the admits, the wait-lists and next set of applicants that were rejected.
If colleges say their class is 15% first gen, 15% urm, and from all fifty states and 70 countries, and you’re an Asian or white from California, New York or Texas, good luck.
It is not a lottery, but more of something like this:
You are in a distance-learning class (where you do not know all of the other students, or even know how many there are) where there is an assignment or project as the only means of evaluating the student’s performance. The instructor give a very general idea of what s/he is looking for, but with much less detail than for a typical assignment in school. After turning it in, the only feedback is the grade “passed” or “not passed” (you do know that the instructor gives out only a limited number of “passed” grades, regardless of how many students are in the class and do the assignment or project). You get no feedback on why you earned a “passed” or “not passed” grade, and no comments on what aspects of your assignment or project are good or not good or can be improved.
Imagine doing similar, but not identical, assignments or projects in several classes with different instructors, each of whom may have different grading criteria (which they do not tell you in detail to know how they differ except in a very general sense).
“An applicant getting into Yale and Princeton, wait listed at Harvard, rejected by Stanford shows the randomness.”
Why should these distinct colleges yield the same results? That’s part of my point: this isn’t generic. Nor is it the high school scheme.
It’s not all about stats. Merit is a qualitative element, as well as quantitiative. What a Dart, located in semi rural NH values, offers, and wants is contextually different than Columbia. Assume it’s all the same, at your own risk.
And you can tell from what a kid choses to write and how she does, her level of thinking, awareness and more. Believe it. These are hs kids. In fact, we adults on CC may judge each other’s sense and savvy, their perspective or lack of it, based on what they write, right?
Btw, despite frequent comments on CC, URM and first gen candidates can be as qualified as others.
And geo diversity is a goal, not a secret.
The more one digs, the more one can learn.
@ucbalumnus Your post #195 is outstanding and made me realize that one can easily characterize the college admission process as Kafkaesque. In Kafka’s book The Trial, the protagonist K is accused of a crime but, despite all of his efforts, no one will tell him what the crime is, how he is to be judged, where the trial will occur, or who his judge will be.
I find the obsession with getting into top name schools so disturbing. The most successful people I know went to schools people outside of the Northeast have never heard of.
My daughter is finishing her freshman year at a highly ranked, uber competitive public HS. She’s a great, hard working student, and nowhere near the top of her class with straight A’s because she only took 2 honors level classes instead of the 4 she qualified for. She does cheerleading year round, 8-10 hours a week plus extensive travel during the winter months. She works as a camp counselor in the summer and volunteers at an animal shelter - because she likes kids and dogs. We can’t afford fancy summer experiences and she’s not really interested in them. She picks her own electives based on what she likes and is interested in. She was confused at the end of 8th grade when all her friends were shocked she was taking Creative Writing and Ethics & Law. Weren’t her parents forcing her to take all the STEM electives like their parents? I asked if she liked the STEM classes. She said no. My husband and I said then why would we make you take them??? It seems obvious to me. Apparently not.
She also tells us that most of her friends average 3 hours of sleep a night because they take all honors classes, and do ECs that take up a lot of time. And the parents don’t understand why there were 5 attempted suicides last year alone. What kind of life is that for a kid??? I want my kid to be a kid, do what she likes, and the rest will fall into place. If that means Ramapo College, then good for her! She will kick butt at Ramapo and move on.
Lol, I find it equally absurd, WIYQ, that people get so flustered, worring about what colleges want…but don’t seem to do the appropriate digging. In a way, that is the first hurdle to being worthy. They want kids who “get it” and you either try or not.
In all the years I’ve been sayng to do this digging, only some have come back to me for clarification. A few really bright kids did this, had some questions, re-viewed, and the lightbulb went off over their heads. That’s outweighed by comments on threads that I’m just flat out wrong.
In addition to the years of dedicated, smart work, it takes some savvy to know how to form your app/supp. This is serious stuff, tens of thousands of apps for a few thousand spots. You’re either on your game or not. And that’s more than lots of AP and top stats and some titles.
That seems to get lost in the sea of “be yourself” advice and frets that being active or energized is automatically padding. And so on. So often, being yourself is not what those top colleges kids cry over are looking for- you could save yourself a lot of grief if you did some vetting.
I’m not supposing. I see it first hand. It’s a shame.
In hs, you have one scheme: take on challenging courses and do well, be engaged, mind the rules: the admin, teachers, and coaches love you. It takes more than that to get into a fiercely competitive college.
It takes more than “loving science,” founding a science club or having a title or dreaming of an Intel win, to get there, too.
@NJWrestlingmom " I want my kid to be a kid, do what she likes, and the rest will fall into place"
While I hear what you are saying, for some kids, they welcome the chance to take challenging classes and get exposed to many different disciplines (e.g. STEM). For example, I like the fact that my D20 is taking honors and AP classes as she can handle the workload, is learning to manage her time effectively, and getting in to a good fit college gives her an attainable goal. She still has time for a varsity sport, student council, and spending time with friends and family. Some kids are wired differently and thrive is a challenging environment, others are not cut out for it.
btw- D20 goes to a large public HS (1600) with many kids taking honors/AP classes and zero suicides. IME, the suicide attempts have more to do with the social aspects of high school and not necessarily the academic rigor.