Can you please comment my S’s chance for Yale REA or Princeton REA? Thank you!
Demographics
US domestic: US citizen
State/Location of residency: NY
Type of high school : highly competitive public high school
Other special factors: * ASIAN boy (seems most disadvantage group)
Intended Major(s)
Biology - Pre-med
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 98.6/100, Weighted HS GPA: 99.1/100
Class Rank: #1 or #2 out of around 350
SAT Scores: 1560
List your HS coursework
all 5s on AP Cal BC, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics C, AP Lang
4s on AP world history, AP US history.
to take AP Spanish. there are also a few other AP courses.
Awards
National Merit semifinalist
New York All-State violin
National Spanish Exam, gold metal
USA Fencing Association, All-Academic Team
USTA Sportsmanship award.
Harvard Book prize
Extracurriculars
Had a summer research experience at JHU
One state level science competition award.
Took multiple online bio/medical related courses on Coursela.
Violin: NY-All state. concert masters for a variety of orchestra (mostly regional)
Violin: won a small competition
Sport#1: competed for HS varsity team since 8th grade. #1 in the team.
HS Varsity team captain
Team MVP
3x All-county player
Sport#2 (2nd sport): competed for HS varsity team since 8th grade. #1 in the team.
HS Varsity team captain
Team MVP
3x All-county player
Schools
Originally thinking about ED Cornell, but son felt want to try REA Yale or Princeton, then RD Cornell.
Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
As you know…these schools are reaches for just about everyone who applies. Your son is a strong student. He can apply and see. As long as he understands that more than 90% of kids do not get accepted to Yale or Princeton…
He might get accepted and he might not.
In the meantime, I would strongly urge you to find two sure things for admission, and affordability that your son would be happy to attend. Find those now.
It’s easy to find those reach schools. It’s not so easy to find those sure things.
These are excellent. Your son’s ECs are also, in my opinion, excellent. This makes it likely that your son will be a competitive applicant for top universities such as Yale and Princeton.
The problem is that something like 80% of applicants are competitive, these schools accept more like 4% of applicants, and being Asian does not help his chances.
There really are a huge number of very good universities in the US. There are hundreds of universities that are very good for premed students. It really is possible to attend a university for example ranked somewhere around about 100 to 150, and then get into very strong medical schools.
Also, you need to budget for a full 8 years of university. It would be possible to spend $800,000 or more before your son is called “Doctor”. Your son does not want to borrow even half of this, and it is not necessary to spend this much to get a very good education.
You should be planning for 8 years of university, and for now should be looking for at least one and preferably two safeties to apply to.
By the way, other than me, the rest of my family does have quite a bit of success attending affordable safety schools for a bachelor’s degree (in two cases ranked in the 100-150 range) and then attending a highly ranked university for some form of medical-related graduate degree. This is possible, and they have all reported that the other students in the same graduate programs came from a huge range of undergraduate schools. Two doctors I know have told me the same thing.
He has a decent of a shot as any unhooked applicant.
Pluses: highly ranked in a competitive HS with a lot of rigor (how have similarly ranked students with these scores done in the past from your school?); IMO having high level EC accomplishments in sports and music is a plus. FWIW, most of my S’s friends at Yale were accomplished in many areas.
Negatives: comes from an overrepresented region and looking at an area of study (bio/pre-med) which is going to have a very competitive set. Race is not supposed to be a factor any more, but expectations for applicants from well off highly educated parents will be higher relative to less advantaged applicants.
I agree that unless money is not a factor for your family given income/wealth/other children, you need to plan for 8 years of education. On the other hand, if you qualify for financial aid, these 2 schools are a couple of the most generous (at this time – but all bets are off if the 21% endowment tax is passed).
I think this is a competitive profile for Yale or Princeton, and I don’t think EDing to a place like Cornell is going to materially change their chances at such a college, so I see no harm in just REAing to their favorite.
That said, I think it is very much true that colleges like Yale and Princeton see way more profiles roughly equivalent to this than they are going to accept. And I think the best chance of getting an offer really depends on how they are seen as a person–their strength of character, role in their community, and so on.
Indeed, in this classic advice by MIT, this was emphasized as being just as important as academics and activities, and I think the Harvard litigation data supported the same conclusion:
Relevant quotes:
Be nice. This cannot be overstated. Don’t be wanton or careless or cruel. Treat those around you with kindness. Help people. Contribute to your community.
. . . If you are nice, then your letters of recommendation will convince us that MIT would be a wildly better place with you on campus.
As suggested there, part of what is difficult about this factor when predicting chances is the applicant cannot see their teacher recommendations, and those might be really critical. Similarly if they get interviewed evaluatively.
But I am raising all this because you can control what goes into your essays, how you write up your activities, and so on. And I think some applicants to places like Yale or Princeton tend to overemphasize ways in which they can come across as intelligent, hard-working, ambitious, focused, and so on, and de facto underemphasize the ways in which they have been nice, and kind, and helpful, and so on, even when they got no special recognition for doing that. And usually those individual academic excellence attributes are already well-documented in their application anyway, it is distinguishing themselves as a person of exceptional character who will be very missed by their local community that may be less evident without help.
Your son is a super strong candidate - congrats! Ivies are still a reach for him and everyone else. I hope he gets in and I think he has as good a shot as anyone but the vast majority don’t get in.
Take your shot on those and get some targets and safeties he likes. For someone as accomplished as your son it’s totally understandable to aim high but definitely find some others that he would be happy with that are not in the category “reach for everyone”.
For example..Case Western, maybe? Strong pre-med, acceptance rate 25-30%. Should be a solid target for him with demonstrated interest.
BC and BU are other options but are still reachy for everyone because their overall acceptance rate is in the teens…but slightly more attainable than ivies.
Again I think he’s a very solid applicant at all his reach schools. You just have to have a back up plan because the ivies reject almost everyone, even really strong students like your son. Good luck!
I will briefly note I think not enough kids with track records like this make sure to seriously chase merit, at least in parallel to chasing highly selective college admissions.
In the end, if they get into a highly-desired Reach, and they can comfortably afford it, that may be their choice.
But even in that scenario, if they also get some great merit offers, that is really nice! If nothing else it feels good to know a great college wanted you that badly. And sometimes, on reflection a kid will in fact choose one of their great merit offers over a Reach offer anyway–not least if they are thinking premed. Like in my circles, lots of savvy premed kids will actually take a good merit offer from Case over an offer without merit from a college higher in the US News rankings.
And then if you don’t get into any of your desired Reaches? At that point, it can feel VERY good to have instead turned your stellar qualifications into some nice merit offers.
This is such a good point. My D24 got merit at a few target and safety schools and it definitely felt good. She wasn’t rejected anywhere because she pulled all her apps after getting in ED. She put SO MUCH work in to the other apps that she pulled so it still made her feel great to get merit offers from schools she had already gotten in to prior to ED acceptance.