Oh different years. Wow. Impressive.
The Sal seems impressive. Maybe it was LORs or the essays. One never knows. I’m sure wherever they land, they will crush it.
The one thing I’d be curious about, especially with @heavyweightcollege ‘s first point about grades + SAT as a threshold to be met, is how, if at all, does your high school matter? I have the impression (I can be convinced otherwise) that the high school is actually more of a determinant of college admissions success overall than we might care to admit. Seeing the string of Ivy+ acceptances at your D26’s school is an interesting indicator to me considering that there are many overall lower-performing schools that still produce high GPA / high SAT score kids that don’t see this level of performance at the most selective colleges.
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One issue with those who need a large enough merit scholarship to make a specific college affordable is that merit scholarships other than those given automatically for stats are typically more opaque than college admission in terms of being able to estimate chances.
So a student in that position may have only safeties (automatic large enough merit scholarship for the student’s stats) and reaches (non-automatic large enough merit scholarships for which criteria and selectivity are opaque and therefore considered reaches).
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Do you mean success in college, or success in college admissions?
The high school certainly does affect both, but not necessarily in the same ways.
I was thinking specifically of success in college admissions.
Edited the original comment to avoid confusion.
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And don’t forget there are schools cheaper full price than others with merit. People need to look at cost, not necessarily merit especially when opaque.
UF is cheaper than many publics with merit. Hartwick is inexpensive full price. Some have chosen to take the guess work out.
Merit hunters need that assured to hit before sampling the maybe will hits.
Even though we go to a public school, the parents/kids are pretty savvy and many probably use private college counselors. we also have kids who win art/music contests and many are also really good athletes (not recruited).
Not sure if D26’s BFF (or her parents) really understood the college admissions process well and may have made some slight missteps - not sure if it was the essay topic, the way she framed her extra curriculars, or something else.
This is my guess because in additon to almost perfect grades and SAT score, she has a really high emotional IQ. Her recommendations shouldve been strong because she won a school leadership award that is based on faculty voting.
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Isn’t it fairly obvious that, for the same student, and for high schools with similar quality academic offerings that the student will choose, the high end private school with dedicated college counselors and teachers trained to write good recommendations will likely improve college admission success over a public school with overloaded general counselors (who handle other things in addition to college recommendations and such) and teachers whose recommendation quality is luck of the draw and who may ration or refuse recommendations to begin with? The students at the school with dedicated college counselors are likely to apply to more varied sets of colleges based on the college counselors’ knowledge of the school’s history of college admissions, in contrast to where all of the good students applying to the same few colleges with less knowledge of what each college is looking for beyond academics.
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Controlled studies have suggested some secondary schools do seem to get higher rates of admissions to the most selective private colleges, even when you control for overall academic rating. The difference is apparently mostly a function of more kids with very high academic ratings also getting very high non-academic ratings.
This is sort of a blank spot for communities like ours. We can’t see recommendations at all, nor interview reports where relevant, and we usually don’t see essays either, and we don’t know how all that gets evaluated internally.
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Yes, I believe it’s as obvious as you’ve stated. And yet, on Chance Me’s, I don’t think we (global “we” here) take this into enough consideration. Many posters treat the GPA and SAT as gospel while these “intangibles” that are quite tangible from an admissions perspective likely have a bigger effect than we might otherwise note in these forums. For future Chance Me’s, perhaps this should be a bigger element of the discussion? I do note that many chancers often tell the posters that attend these elite schools to simply ask their college counselors for advice. This makes a ton of sense. And it also means that we should be taking into consideration the type of school the student attends when providing advice on lists and chances for acceptance.
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Problem is, from an outsider point of view, essay and (especially) recommendation quality are difficult or impossible to judge, so most posters tend to lean more heavily on stats (and they tend to lean more heavily on SAT/ACT scores than HS GPA due to variations in how GPA is calculated, reported, and inflated) and (what they see as) hooks. At the most selective colleges, top-end HS GPA in rigorous courses and SAT/ACT scores are best considered necessary, but not sufficient, for admission, and that once these stats are high enough, the more opaque stuff like recommendations, essays, and colleges’ institutional priorities determine admission or not.
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One factor (as it pertains to our school) is that we have a lot of really high achieving kids so the GPA difference between the #1 kid vs the #10 kid is not that much. The big takeaway for us is that the top schools really dont care about class rank and they also dont care about the PSAT/NMF. The last 3 kids who were admitted to Yale/Stanford didnt make the NMSF PSAT cut off.
National Merit seems almost competely irrelevant, even as a data point at the very top schools.
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I agree that even though people were long aware this is an issue, the full scale of the possible effect has not necessarily been fully internalized by many, again including because we can’t even see the critical inputs.
I personally do try to post in Chance/Match Me conversations in a way that reflects this effect. When talking with younger kids significantly in advance of applying, or their parents, I also try to frame things appropriately.
But I feel like that sort of counsel is often just waived off. Again, the evidence is not transparent, it sort of goes against some other popular strategies, and I think it is just a bitter pill for those not in a position to choose such high schools.
However, I do feel like there are things kids could do to at least try to close the gap, if they accept it needs to be closed. But that sentiment just doesn’t seem to find much of an audience.
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Yeah, frankly, I rarely tell anyone more than that they seem academically competitive for the most selective colleges, so it is reasonable to apply.
Beyond that, I just can’t see what I would need to know to refine that analysis.
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I agree that the high school can be an important part of the equation. My impression is if the grades are high and the high school does not get top college results, students need scores to separate themselves.
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From my observations, the choices of ED, EA, REA, and RD can have a very significant impact on outcomes. I’ve known several applicants who applied ED to an Ivy League school, when their stats were not Ivy, only to find in RD they were rejected from most of the schools they applied to. These were fine applicants but Ivies were unrealistic in any round. I do think this idea that ED will magically improve your chances is misguided at most schools, except for those that fill a significant portion of their class with ED applicants. At those schools, I’ve seen students with stats significantly lower than RD applicants get accepted and strong RD applicants get rejected.
I’ve seen a similar phenomenon occur with students who REA to Georgetown and Notre Dame, which offer very little boost, get deferred, and have limited options in the RD round.
I do think ED is fair, but students should look at their school’s scattergrams, and be realistic. They also need to understand that if they shoot their shot at a highly rejective school, and they aren’t accepted, they might not get accepted at options 2, 3, or 4 since in RD a number of the seats have already been filled.
Congrats to your son! I’m sure he’ll love UNC!
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When I look at U-M, for example, who publishes their # admits by top high school list - our public high school gets four per year and my son’s private gets zero most years. We/CC do/does not have that info and this is just one example of data that may have meaning to a process.
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I sometimes like to point out that good public high schools are often very good at placing students in good public colleges! And then selective private high schools are often very good at placing students in selective private colleges.
To me these are like two different tracks, in fact. Some kids have been on the private track since kindergarten, or indeed even before. Other kids have been on the public track. And these tracks are really designed to smoothly take college-bound kids on to the next station on their respective tracks.
However, then at the high school to college transition, some kids/parents are interested in “jumping tracks”. Sometimes this means going from a selective private HS to a public of particular interest . . . in-state flagship, OOS of particular appeal, or so on. But often, at least in certain circles, it means going from public HS to selective private college.
And while of course that does happen, I think sometimes some people don’t fully understand why that can be challenging to pull off to their complete satisfaction. Like, they don’t quite understand all the things that have been happening in the private K (or before) through 12 system to prepare these kids to continue on to private colleges, which by extension also prepares them to be more competitive private college applicants.
Things which I do think you can make a specific effort to incorporate anyway, but it can be costly, not least in money, but also time and effort. And it still might not entirely close the gap, particularly if you start on this late.
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I think I have said more than enough at this point. My final 3 learnings were around appreciating the power of prestige when CC posters are trying to fight it, seeking varied opinions on matters that come up (certainly your college counselor, but definitely not only your college counselor), and that I am happy to share that my son and I were aligned for 90%+ of the process which was better than expected.
@skieurope feel free to close and thanks.
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Before you go, how did your son feel about the summer semester required after sophomore year? Just wondered how students feel about that. It’s also similar at schools like U of Florida where a summer semester is expected unless they have a way to be exempt from it. But I believe at Dartmouth it is expected/required of all sophomores. How did he feel about it?
ETA: I will PM you