D24 was deferred from her ED1 school and wants to apply ED2 to a school where the #1 ranked student in her high school was just admitted ED1. D24 is quite different from the other student (different major, different interests), D24 also has great activities and a lot of APs, but is in the top quartile of her class despite having great grades. Anyone have thoughts about this?
No college has a min / max / quota per HS
5 Likes
Another student’s success in gaining admission to a particular college doesn’t indicate much of anything about your daughter’s chances.
You posted elsewhere that she was deferred by Vassar. What’s her ED2 choice? Does she have compelling reasons for picking it, and are her qualifications in range for that school?
1 Like
Depends much more on what that ED1 school is and whom they have accepted from the school in past (ie what rigor, rank, general EC type kid gets in Ed1 or 2 from there). If in the past few years admits have happened regularly with kids similarly-profiled to yours, then they have a great shot! The fact that the school already has one from the HS isn’t relevant.
Four kids from my son’s HS were accepted to the same school. Colleges don’t care.
1 Like
It is actually an important factor that the college has accepted an applicant (or more) in the past 5 years. It confirms that it recognizes the high school, the strength of the academics, etc. The only instance where it is a negative is if they had already admitted 3-5 from the high school in the ED1 cycle
That shouldn’t be a problem. Go ahead and apply.
If she isn’t accepted, it won’t be because of the ED1 acceptance from your school.
3 Likes
They don’t have hard quotas as that’s illegal, but they definitely have soft ones. The best thing would be to check Naviance and see the numbers there, if the HS has a Naviance account. I had mentioned before where a college counselor at a local HS went through the Naviance data and it showed that colleges like Stanford accepted pretty much the same number (5) of students the past 2 or 3 years. There may be some variation but her point was it wasn’t going to 10 anytime soon.
1 Like
When I looked at SCOIR data for our feederish HS, it was pretty apparent what the competitive ranges looked like for different highly selective colleges in terms of GPA/test score combinations.
We also do not get 10 (or in fact 5) people into Stanford every year, but that is probably because we did not have 10, or indeed 5, people in Stanford’s competitive range applying to Stanford every year.
With colleges like that, sometimes it will be 0, sometimes 1, sometimes 2. But I saw no evidence it was somehow fixed, we just never had enough applicants in their range that it would be likely to be more than 2 anyway.
By the way, ideally the OP would have similar data (or the counselor does). Like, personally, if in the past people with similar grades/rigor/ranking had been competitive for this college, I would not worry about someone who was further above that range getting admitted ED 1. Of course they did, but I really do doubt most colleges would view that as important when evaluating ED 2 and RD applicants.
But if few if any people in that range have been admitted, I personally would not count on ED 2 changing that barring truly unusual circumstances. But it wouldn’t be the ED 1 admit that was the problem, it would be that sort of historical pattern suggesting how this college was evaluating applicants from that school.
3 Likes
Yes, in DS’ class, there was much grumbling because Penn accepted 4 kids ED, and the word around school was that 4 was the “quota”. So what a surprise it was when several more were accepted RD. A few years later, the same happened except that MIT was the school in question. Colleges want to build great classes, so students are more important than the high schools they are coming from.
Sure, colleges don’t want to fill the freshman class with kids from only 4 high schools, but generally, the concern about competition from one’s own high school is misplaced.
2 Likes
This shouldn’t be a surprise, but my feeling is this principle combined with a little reflection on how things likely look from different colleges’ competitive situations more or less explains almost everything we can observe about unhooked admissions. Obviously it gets complicated when an applicant could help fulfill other institutional priorities. But outside of that, I really don’t think there are many, if any, notable proven cases of a college not just trying to build the best class it can (as it defines that, of course).
1 Like
I agree that colleges are trying to build the best class they can. Will some limit number of kids from a given HS? Probably yes. But also probably not at one or two students as in the OP.
We don’t know much about OP’s kid, but for me the bigger concern is that the student is in the top quartile of the class, so I assume ranked between 20%-25%ile…that’s not going to be competitive for many schools that offer ED2 unless OP’s kid is hooked in some way, or attends a highly competitive HS.
1 Like
IMO, if it’s the top remaining choice and you’re comfortable with the binding aspect of ED, apply ED. The other student at the same HS will have no effect on your child’s acceptance or denial. Good luck!
This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. If you’d like to reply, please flag the thread for moderator attention.