You’re breaking your process - Chance Me - and I WILL PROVIDE DETAIL OF PROCESS AND RESULTS IN APRIL [93 GPA, 1530 SAT, business] !! It’s not April yet!!
But we know the ones he’ll get into - 14 down (well except maybe NU). It’s the first 13 we don’t know!!!
Congrats on McGill - I often wonder the rationale for a Canadian schools amidst the sea of American apps. But many choose Canadian schools, especially McGill.
Great city. Great school. Good distance. Car ride or 1 hr 15 min flight. The business school is solid. I am a hair less optimistic than you are, but we will happily take your confidence.
That’s sort of funny - since in most chance mes you are far more optimistic than the rest !!! Maybe it’s because it’s your kid vs. a stranger.
You always say the 3.7/3.8 vs. 4.0 isn’t a big deal whereas many others think differently.
My only hesitation is the numerical scale vs. 4 point - and that at some or all of the publics, EA was missed and that might impact.
or i know too much
We figured out his gpa to be a 3.86 unweighted after junior year.
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Hi – All the results are in, so it is time for me to meet my commitment. There have been numerous requests for parents/students to share their detailed situation and results on CC and I wanted to participate to encourage others to do the same. I have been reading an older post with a similar objective and think it is interesting.
As a first step, I should make minor clarifications and tweaks to my son’s profile. The goal was for others to have close to the same info we had, but he and I agreed that making himself 100% identifiable up-front might have been a bad idea, so I wanted to share more specifics now.
1. His school gives number grades, only, but there is a chart on the school profile that allows you to convert the #s to letters. He had a 92.7 average when he submitted applications and a 93.1 average once his mid-year grade report was sent. He never received a semester grade less than a 90, and 90-92 = A-, while 93-97= A. They offer A+s if you get a 98 or greater, but he never got one of those (less than 1 per course are given). He had a 3.81 unweighted and 4.09 weighted at time of submission and a 3.86 unweighted and a 4.17 at mid-year. Although this may seem low relative to the 4.8s we see on CC, this puts him top 10 in his class of 157.
2. A couple of you messaged me about his high school – think Brooks, Tabor, Lawrence. 1530 single sitting test score with an 800 math was accurate as were his courses/APs. His activities were also written accurately. They may have been slightly undersold, but I think it was consistent with how they read on the CommonApp with limited room to write.
3. My comment “100% regular decision” was not accurate. Sorry, but this allowed for some level of anonymity. He applied ED to U Penn/Wharton and EA to most every school that offers EA. Whether that was a good plan strategically is up for debate. He did it because it fit his timeline more than anything else.
4. He applied into business schools at every school that had one (besides CALS at Cornell). He did this with his eyes open that he might lose a few admits this way. Econ was his likely major of choice when there was no business offered.
5. Although we had no expectation we would receive merit money, he did fill out most applications and wrote the extra essays when requested for eligibility – same for most honors colleges. If there was more of a process to receive merit money, he took the process seriously.
6. There were some questions about his sport – think Soccer/Baseball. He got coach interest from small liberal arts schools and similar D3 programs (and could have likely committed early), but since that was not his preferred path, he went through the MIT recruiting process instead, which does not allow for commitment but likely increases admit rate odds.
7. One of the hardest parts about applying to 20+ schools was being able to show demonstrated interest at all of them. While it is positive to visit, I think we may be seeing evolution on the top end where the supplements need to be at least as strong as the main essay. If you are applying into the business schools (or other more competitive colleges), foregoing ED, applying EA when you passed on ED, or just applying RD; you need to give them a reason to take you. When people apply to more than even 10 schools, it gets much harder to do. Once you reach 20, It is nearly impossible.
@acurtis1120 @bass2022 @DadTwoGirls @Muu9 or others - would you like to change your guesses? @AustenNut @tsbna44 or anyone else who likes to predict - would you like to give it a try? Results coming within 48 hours.
Weighted GPA is generally not comparable across different weighting systems.
Yes, and these are a challenge with “chance me’s.” I think my son is probably the typical 4.0 UW and 4.5 weighted that we read about here.
I generally ignore weighted GPA except when it is specified to be calculated by the method used by an applicant’s target college.
Yeah, even unweighted GPAs are a nightmare to compare given the differences in grading systems and norms. The more selective colleges then often do a lot of work to put those in context as well.
High schools’ weightings are then basically just adding noise. Ranks might be somewhat informative (again understanding those will often be evaluated in context), but not the weighted GPAs as compared to weighted GPAs from another HS.
Besides the fair criticism of applying to too many schools, some have privately mentioned he has too many on the low end or on the high end. I think what they are saying is that Harvard is too competitive and Pitt is too safe. Obviously, that is not what we thought but I would be interested in hearing more on this.
I am sure you know that is a lot of reaches. Many of those are reaches are for every single person out there..
I don’t think you have too many likely or lower-end schools at all. I would have said the opposite except you have SO many schools and such a good record that it will all work out, but none of these are actually high acceptance rate schools, especially for this major.
McGill is the most numerically driven to my knowledge, so that and Pitt are probably safest in my mind, assuming you met the threshold.. My kids’ schools have tons of kids applying, and acceptance rate is sky high, as you can see what you need..
I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. But there is a sort of conditional logic. If we hypothetically knew an applicant was going to be admitted to Schools A and B, we might be getting pretty confident about Schools C and D, or at least one of C and D. But if the applicant strongly prefers both C and D to both A and B, this is looking inefficient. They can cut one, possibly both, of A and B and it will not practically change where they might actually go.
This is observable in practice. Some of the kids who apply to long lists might get rejected a lot of places because they were not actually realistically competitive. But others ARE competitive, and they collect lots of offers that there was never much chance they would actually take over other offers.
I sometimes ask high volume kids whether where they ended up going would have still have been on a shorter list. If they answer, it is almost always a yes. And that is explainable by this conditional effect.
Not disagreeing but as an fyi. More people here comment on the reaches and more people who are local comment on applying to schools that might be too safe. Obviously, he did what he wanted and I said ok, but I did not mind the top or bottom. I just find the concept of reach and safety interesting these days.
Do you have any sense for how his list (in both total apps and safety/reach split) compares to his classmates? How involved are the HS counselors at the HS?
I think there is a question of what people mean by “safe” too - like I am pretty sure this student will get into Wisconsin… like 75% sure, but not 90%? is that “safe” to some yes, to others, no… I would be very surprised if they didn’t get in, but “there must have been a mistake” surprised? maybe not. I feel like we all see weird things every year? Also I think a lot of people don’t factor in the business programs at many schools are so much harder than the overall school…like if your kid was applying for anthropology at Indiana vs. Kelley, night and day.
This is an interesting point.
I do think strong applicants who have knowledge of the current college admissions landscape are sending more apps on average. IMO it’s due to a combination of self-induced pressure from looking at the number of apps/admit rates, and pressure from parents, peers, and even counselors in some cases.
Results are relatively more unpredictable for strong unhooked students at the highly rejective schools…it is impossible to know in advance where one’s app is going to resonate (given competitive stats), and where it’s not.
I’m not saying it’s random or a crapshoot, because it’s not that either. But schools all have institutional priorities [unknown to applicants] that shift by year and round of admission (priorities are often different in RD than EA and/or ED.) And admissions readers all have biases, no matter how many rubrics they have to help them evaluate apps.
To start - I have still not fully bought into the 20% or less is a reach for everyone concept (maybe 10%). On the other hand, his college counselor leaned that way. She liked his list (didn’t comment on the length strangely) but also had it categorized as somewhat top heavy… which she seemed to be ok with as she never told him to change it or trim it down. She suggested a few others like Notre Dame and we liked her thinking and supportiveness. She even nominated him for Morehead Cain which we thought was a nice compliment and did not know about.
In the better publics and privates around Boston, smart money (if they can afford it) is still trying for ED, 1 and done strategies. For the people who are playing the long game 12-18 is about average in length. I think that is also too many.
When we did his list on own, I didn’t categorize schools by reach, safety - I literally wrote out admit, deny, waitlist - even deferral then deny or waitlist. I love the college process and I find predicting at that level to be a skill that takes courages and forces deeper thought. I mean, how helpful is it to call a college reach anyway.