I know at our HS, the applicant’s data and application type was basically vetted by the college counselors, but the results had to be reported by the applicant to the counselors, and in fact the students were the ones who entered it into SCOIR.
I could be wrong, but I am not sure it would actually be possible for results to NOT be self reported, as to my knowledge those typically only go to the applicant.
At our HS (BS), the CC did the inputs. I only learned here that at some schools the students did it.
Our CCs felt that for the tool to be iseful to them, and by extension to the students, it had to be completely standard and accurate. The students who were very community minded bought
I’m guessing that the one place it fell apart was offers of admission from the WL that were declined, especially after graduation.
This is another way this tool can be less than completely helpful!
If the school is D1 (or some D3s) it wouldn’t matter. An athlete of the caliber that @NemesisLead mentions would be dictating the process and admissions would just be along for the ride as long as the student was within admissions bounds. A girl at my daughters school had 40+ offers across levels. It wasn’t a “recruitment” process as much as a “we’re tossing our hat in the ring” and maybe you’ll pick us process.
The lowest admit on GPA and Test score didn’t apply ED or some version of it?
Looks like they did not.
(Just a clarification, while Caltech was test blind for a bit, it flipped back to test required)
I think this is why no amount of college admissions analysis/astrology will ever unlock what it is it that will surely get a kid to Harvard or any of these types of schools for that matter. (Ok, maybe donating a building will 100% get you into a school…)
Even my own kid’s acceptances/WL’s were a head scratcher. He was waitlisted to a number of institutions that had a higher acceptance rate than the schools he was accepted at.
Like someone posted above, probably a D1 situation. I guess with Ivy League admissions, it’s technically not early decision. The Likely Letter isn’t even the binding instrument, so I guess the person could walk away after getting a likely.
In the NESCAC, if you want coach support, you have to commit to ED. It’s quid pro quo for the support. Clearly this wasn’t a D3, or at least not a NESCAC D3.
it’s almost like trying to figure out why some people are tapped for Skull & Bones and others are not.
the extreme outliers on both sides - clear accepts and rejects - are discernible. Everyone else, it’s a function of fallible human beings expressing their subjective preferences.
means the school practices holistic admissions, which as a private, is to be expected.
I’ve given this one a lot of thought as I begin to advise my D and SIL about where to send our grandkids. while I bias in favor of academic seriousness and rigor and know how powerful one’s peer group is for personal and academic growth, it’s not as if there is nothing to be said for the “typical” HS experience. if you can pull it off at a “regular high school” and still get into and do well at a selective college, that is the best of both worlds for me.
We spent some time in Exeter a couple of years ago. Very nice, very beautiful, very bucolic, I’m sure an education that is second to none. But not for me … not back then. It appeals to me now as a middle aged man, but at 16, 17 and 18? At that age I would have gone crazy. Part of that would have involved feeling like I was playing WAY down in competition athletically, and I would have been. That would have bummed me out. I also would not have appreciated the beauty and the privilege at that age. Would have been lost on me. Unless the social scene would have been robust, I would have found the little town confining and suffocating. But the level of sports would have been a problem. I would have missed the competition I had, which was gloriously fun and which made me a better athlete.
I think the more accurate statement is: “means the school practices holistic admissions, which as a selective school, is to be expected”.
It’s not about being private or public (although this seems to be a common assumption) - it’s about whether the school is selective or not.
There are plenty of private schools that admit the majority of their applicants, and they don’t rely much (if at all) on holistic measures.
Similarly, all the selective public schools also practice holistic admissions.
That’s fair, but the OP asked what we/I thought (“think”), and I posted what I thought. Not what others’ think.
There are highly selective magnet science public schools as well where you need certain scores to be accepted. I think they are very comparable with those selective privates.
Majority of private schools across the country aren’t anything like Exeter.
And also the problem is these sorts of highly selective private schools are not accessible geographically and/or financially to most students. While admissions can clearly see scores for SATs, APs, many outside selective courses (AoPS math for example) or math camps and such for those in “normal” schools, they still continue to prefer kids coming from handful of institutions even if their scores aren’t better.
I see a butterfly. Oh, not that kind of test.
Assuming you mean highly selective public schools (as opposed to moderately selective ones like Arizona and Iowa public schools), there are some exceptions. For example, CPSLO uses a non-holistic point formula, although they are not transparent about the exact formula (though an earlier version has been reverse engineered) and do not reveal the prior year’s thresholds, so there is still an air of mystery around its admissions that feels somewhat similar to the air of mystery around actual holistic admission colleges.
As the CPSLO example indicates, non-holistic admission can be just as mysterious to the outsider if there is no transparency about the method and prior thresholds.
Even though I was “sorta” joking before I never found these plots that helpful. I discovered a long time ago the CDS (Common Data sets) for the schools of interest. These were usually also up to date which the plot grams weren’t mostly.
It also seemed that any scattergram I looked at my kid was in the darkest area where people get accepted. As we all know that doesn’t equate to acceptances. Sorta like false hope. If this upcoming football game isn’t good I will have to actually read the thread. Good luck to your student.
My story in a nutshell.
I went to a very tough LPS instead, and I have felt extremely prepared for college.
It‘s only as good as the data input. One school used Naviance and data was missing or not updated; another school used Maia, and information was complete, up to date and incredibly helpful in predicting admission potential. My understanding is some high schools turn off access to the scattergrams, because it is too easy to identify the students.
These scatter plots are very blunt instruments. You don’t know if test scores were submitted. And a single GPA number tells very little. At highly selective schools they look at the complete HS transcript for context. Maybe the really high GPA took no AP classes. Rigor matters a lot. Maybe the lower GPA was brought down by one bad class from freshman year having nothing to do with intended major. Colleges recalculate their own GPA using their own formulas.