<p>Himom, while I think that the application package of your son COULD be very competitive, you will have a LOT of work to do. I really believe you WILL have to develop unique angles to make you son’s application stand out, especially from the competition at your own high school. </p>
<p>From my vantage point, your old counselor is right on the money, the new one is too optimistic, and your doctor needs to check what he put in his pipe. </p>
<p>As far as general comments on ranking and very selective colleges, there are only a handful of schools from which a student can overcome a 5th decile ranking. For 99.5% of schools in the country, the direct or derived ranking is extremely important and everyone below the first TWO or THREE percent faces immonguous hurdles - let alone top 10 percent. </p>
<p>The reality is that, even at the most selective high schools in the country, there are students who graduate with perfect or close to perfect GPA. If the first decile is at 4.00 or above, the fifth at 3.4-3.5, chances are that the seventh decile is still at 3.00 and above. Being closer to the seventh decile than the first one is not a great position to be in. If more than 50% of the school scores above 1200-1300 (old norm) SAT, the chances for a mid of the pack student to generate much interest from a top school is remote. </p>
<p>However, the definition of a top school is all in the eye of the beholder. And here is where you are facing a lot of work: finding great matches for your son -to go along the necessary reaches/safeties. The matches should include schools that WILL value the accomplishments of your son in their correct context. It is also your job to seize EVERY opportunity to highlight the specific accomplishments in the application. You cannot afford to have your son’s application looking like the ones of the top two deciles. Simply stated if a top school receives 10-15 applications from your HS, why would they go to one of the lower ranked students? You cannot expect THEM to go look for a reason, it has to SCREAM at them. </p>
<p>Please do not consider my post as overly negative. Your son should find a great school. Since you mentioned Harvey Mudd as a reach, I would encourage you son to apply. With a relatively small number of applications, the admission officers at HM try to look at the entire application and it is one place where SAT scores and high scores in the core subjects are more important than rankings. </p>
<p>PS Regarding merit money, if you son end up being a NMS -one of about 70 NMS from HI- you could expect a lot of attention from schools pursuing NMS.</p>
<p>PPS Regarding schools in Hawaii:
School Current year Next year
Le Jardin Academy* $10,100 $10,760
Academy of the Pacific $11,700 $12,900**
Punahou School $12,800 $13,775
Maryknoll* $9,600 $10,100
Iolani School $11,500 $12,200
St. Andrew’s Priory* $9,885 $10,480
Saint Louis High School* $8,200 $8,610
Hawaii Prep. Academy* $14,500 $15,000*** </p>
<ul>
<li>At high school level ** Includes books and fees </li>
</ul>
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