I didn’t print below 550 because Brown doesn’t provide data for the 500-540 range. Instead they combine scores of 200 to 540 in one big group, which distorts the trend admit rate. That 200 to 540 group had a 2.6% acceptance rate. I expect some of the things that contributed to me being accepted to selective schools such as Brown, Stanford, and MIT are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>When I ran out of advanced classes at my basic HS, I took classes at nearby universities and maintained a 4.0 GPA in those classes. My choice in classes showed that I was taking classes out of a genuine interest in learning beyond what was available to me in HS, rather than just continuing course sequences or trying to meet degree requirements. This level of advanced classes probably is not a big deal for a TJ student, but it was for students at my basic HS. I likely graduated with more college credits than anyone in the history of my HS (at that time). This also showed the type of initiative, drive and personality that many schools are looking for. It suggested I would thrive if offered the many opportunities Brown (or similar) provides, as well as that I could handle college level classes.</p></li>
<li><p>I scored 800 on math and math II SAT and near 800 in chem (don’t recall exact score). This type of score was quite rare for my basic high school. In addition to the rarity, it suggested that I was talented in my desired field of engineering and would likely excel in such a field at their school. I’d expect holistic schools to focus more on the math scores for engineering majors and more on the verbal scores for english majors. Seeing that I only took the test once might have also given the scores more weight. </p></li>
<li><p>I expect my LORs and GC comments all stood out. I don’t know what was said, but I’m sure they did not include generic comments similar to their other recommendations. I also included a professor from my university classes for one of my LORs, which was likely rare.</p></li>
<li><p>I do not think my essays were weak, in spite of my verbal score. Instead I expect that they were impressed with my personality and values displayed in the essays, rather than my vocabulary or eloquence of writing. Stanford quoted my essay in their acceptance letter (it related to risk taking), suggesting it was an influential factor.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>That makes sense, then. Surprised you did get so low on the verbal but that didn’t matter to the schools and that’s all that counts. Congratulations.</p>
<p>My point is that adcoms are human like the rest of us and not all of them necessarily share your values and for you to project your values to the point of assuming that they all/most do is very blinkered/problematic. </p>
<p>Moreover, it falls into a fallacy my social science/IR scholar friends would call “Just World theory/syndrome” where people cannot conceive of those in elite/politically powerful positions not sharing the same values or notions of what’s good/just. </p>
<p>A cursory glance at history…especially in areas of political/geopolitics/international relations would show such a blinkered view is often far more optimistic/naive than the actual reality. </p>
<p>That’s not to say that the Thornton Chillington Wadsworth IV’s necessarily dominate adcoms or elite positions in society…but one cannot totally dismiss their existence altogether as you seem to be doing…however greatly thinned their ranks are compared with 4-5 decades ago.</p>
<p>Yes, actually, I pretty much can dismiss the Thornton Chillington Wadsworth IVs as irrelevant to my existence and to my children’s existence and chances of future success. They don’t dominate, own or run much of anything these days.</p>
<p>No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so because as best I can tell they just don’t admit very many kids from out-of-the-way places and high schools that have never sent a kid to an Ivy before. Unless they’re URMs, then it may be different.</p>
<p>We’re all at a disadvantage here in not having enough data–and we don’t have more because the colleges don’t want us all over their business any more than we already are. But we do have some. In its 2012 freshman class, Princeton enrolled 0 kids from North Dakota, 2 from South Dakota, 2 from Nebraska, 3 from Iowa, 1 from Wyoming, 2 from Montana, 3 from Idaho, 0 from Utah, 2 from New Mexico. What do these states have in common? Small population, you say, and yes that’s true, but they are also states without major population centers, no fancy private schools, and no fancy suburban school districts. Everyone who applies from those states is from an out-of-the-way place, and likely from a school that has never, or almost never, sent someone to an Ivy.</p>
<p>Kansas, with a population slightly smaller than Iowa’s, sent 8. What’s the difference? Well, a large part of the population of Kansas is in suburban Kansas City, including some high-end suburban schools. Minnesota, with a population only 70% larger than that of Iowa, sent 12 (or 4 times as many as Iowa), and I’d be willing to bet at least 10 of the 12 Minnesotans came from the Twin Cities metro, some from elite private and some from elite suburban public schools. The number who came from Minneapolis or Saint Paul urban public schools, or working class suburban public schools, or schools in “greater Minnesota” (outside the Twin cities metro) was, I am quite confident, minuscule.</p>
<p>Illinois, with a population roughly 4 times that of Iowa, sent 38, or almost 13 times as many. And we know where they came from; I’d be willing to bet at least 80 or 90% of them came from suburban Chicago, primarily from high-end public or private schools.</p>
<p>I’m not saying the admissions committees don’t pluck the occasional stellar student out of obscurity and make her wildest dreams come true. But that’s at best an afterthought in their admissions process, and it produces quite small numbers of matriculants. And yes, they like to boast about geographic diversity, which in this context translates to numbers of states represented; but they can get there by admitting 2 from each state, of whom they can be reasonably confident at least 1 will accept (though they occasionally strike out, as in the case of North Dakota and Utah in 2012). It certainly doesn’t result in a systematic admissions advantage for applicants from “underrepresented states” as is often claimed on CC. </p>
<p>I’ve actually looked at this quite closely. You can compare the number of matriculants at Princeton from each state with the number of high school seniors from each state sending SAT score reports to Princeton. These aren’t ideal figures because for a variety of reasons yield rates might vary from one part of the country to another, and because SAT score reports aren’t a perfect proxy for completed applications–although Princeton does require all applicants to submit SAT Subject Test scores, so the number of seniors sending score reports should represent an upper bound on the number of applicants from that state, and there’s no particular reason to think the fall-off rate to actual applications should vary much by state or region. In general, the ratio of score reports sent to freshman matriculants is actually higher in so-called “underrepresented” states than in the “usual suspect” states.</p>
<p>Yes, part of the reason for small numbers of matriculants in these states is that not many students there know about, or care about, the Ivy League. But I don’t think the elite colleges care, either. They can easily find their quota of Midwesterners in suburban Chicago and suburban Minneapolis-Saint Paul. They’ll get plenty of Westerners in metro Denver, coastal California, metro Phoenix, and metro Seattle. And they’ll call it geographic diversity, even though as affluent suburbanites those kids will have more in common with each other than they will have with people in the less affluent and more rural parts of their own states–or even with people in the less affluent parts of their own metropolitan areas.</p>
<p>Our daughters had no hooks, and poor-to-middling suburban school describes our high school exactly. Yet both got into Ivy colleges. D1 was Sal with a 2310. D2 was Val with a 2210. Their test scores were not tippy-top, but they were pretty good. I think they helped. </p>
<p>I realize that N=2 is not a statistically significant sample size, but when anyone asserts that it’s impossible or nearly impossible for a kid to get in without a hook or without coming from a blue-blood east coast family, I’m not convinced. That certainly hasn’t been our experience.</p>
<p>The list of elites goes on and on. I think you will have to exclude New Mexico, as at least its leading city has a leading, elite school that performs as well as any leading elite school within a Chicago or a Dallas or a New York, etc. etc. South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming population centers clearly do not support even one elite school.</p>
<p>@courier: I hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way, but I am curious to know if they got in HYP or other ivies. HYP seem a lot harder to get in than others.</p>
<p>^^One of each. D1 went to Harvard. D2 went to Dartmouth. </p>
<p>Like I said, when someone tells me how impossible it is for an unhooked, middle-class white kid, who went to a mediocre public high school and earned excellent grades and test scores, to get into top colleges, I have to say “au contraire.”</p>
<p>I don’t think the general gist is that it’s impossible. Just that the odds are much harder. Even if special hooks/talents are taken out of the equation, one aspect rarely discussed is the quality of the application essay in demonstrating why the applicant wants to attend that particular college, written communication skills, and what he/she may contribute to the campus community. </p>
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<p>2310/2400 is not tippy-top? For D2, I can understand that…but D1? 2310 is a top score in my book.</p>
<p>How much harder? Our family went two for two. And if we had a third kid who earned similar academic achievements, I bet we could have gone three for three. The Sal (another unhooked middle class white kid) from our HS in the year after D1 went to Princeton. And D2’s best friend, who had stats similar to hers, went to Stanford. </p>
<p>The numbers of are tough, but I just don’t understand the defeatist attitudes. (“It’s impossible for people like us to get in. The deck is stacked against us. It can’t be done.”) It can be done, people. </p>
<p>And lest anyone think we all must have had a geographic diversity hook, we live in suburban southern California, which is heavily represented, perhaps over-represented, at all the top schools.</p>
<p>And I agree about the essays, but subjective things like quality of essays can’t be quantified in an internet post. (And nearly every CC kid on the Chances threads thinks his/her essays are “amazing” to begin with.) So we are left to discuss and argue about the objective facts.</p>
<p>I agree that 2310 is an excellent score but it’s not going to stop Ivy adcoms in their tracks and induce them to read the rest of the app with awe and wonder. In my book 2350 or higher is tippy-top. 2400 is compelling.</p>
<p>The val in S2’s class had a 2400 from a diverse city public non magnet school. Didn’t get into first choice of MIT but he did get into an HYP school off the waitlist. Our school does have a kid occasionally go to an Ivy League school . But many of the top kids at our high school go to our state schools of UVa, William & Mary and Virginia Tech, depending on fit and what they plan to study.</p>
The stats says among every 100 applicants, many of whom are at least on paper just as strong as your D, 5 or 6 got in, so maybe 90+ your daughter like kids were “shot down”. That’s how hard it is.</p>
<p>^^That tells me how hard it is but it tells me nothing about how much harder it is, which is what I was asking. How much easier is it if you are from a remote, under-represented state? Or you are first generation? Or you are legacy? These stats are almost never published. Yet many are convinced you can’t succeed unless you are one of those things. </p>
<p>It sounds like a huge advantage if, as Stanford says, legacies are admitted at about twice the rate of non-legacies. But that means that 10 out of 100 legacies gets it instead of 5. Great, but it still means that 90% of legacies don’t get in either. How much harder it is for an applicant like my D is a difference that is discernible only when you look at a huge population. Stanford is not going to be noticeably populated with legacies. </p>
<p>This conviction on CC that smart, high-achieving regular kids can’t get in has led to all kinds of misguided assumptions about the composition of student body you actually see on campus. You see statements about how once all the URMs, rich kids, legacies, and athletes are admitted there is only a tiny handful of slots left for regular kids. Hence, it must be almost impossible to get in.</p>
<p>But that belies my Ds’ direct experience of the campuses. Of the 30-40 or so Harvard kids that I’ve met through D1, there was one URM, no recruited athletes, one legacy, none had famous parents or came from blue-blood families, one was a pro-level talented classical musician, and none that were discernibly rich. There was one kid over in another dorm whose father was rumored to be a billionaire, but I never met him. And she also knew one girl who had won the Miss Singapore beauty pageant or something, but I never met her either. So among her extended group of roommates and friends, perhaps 10-20% were known to have some kind of hook.</p>
<p>There were, however quite a few in that group who were very bright, very hard-working, very accomplished, and very articulate middle-class white and Asian kids. The campus is positively crawling with those sorts of students. </p>
<p>It can be done, people. If you are fortunate enough to have a kid with near-straight A grades in a rigorous HS curriculum, who takes standardized tests well, who is reasonably talented at two ECs, who will listen to and apply all the great knowledge and advice about the admissions process that you can get for free right here on CC, and who wants it enough to put in all the hard work necessary during the application season, you CAN get them into a very high-end school. You don’t need to hire a professional admissions counselor. You don’t need to spend money on an expensive SAT prep course. And you sure don’t need to have a hook. </p>
<p>She/he probably won’t get into them all. Both my daughters got rejections. But they don’t have to get into them all. They just need one really great school that’s a good fit for them.</p>
Or some of the states have too small numbers of students for statistically significant comparisons among one another. For example, over the 9 year span (1994,6,8,0,2,4,6,8,10) Princeton had an average of 3.0 per year from Kansas (less than half the 2012 numbers you listed), 3.7 per year from Iowa, and 9.6 from Minnesota. During this period Kansas had an average population of approximately 2.7M, Iowa 2.9M, and Minnesota 4.9M. So using Iowa as reference, we’d expect Kansas to have an average between 3 and 4 per year. Kansas’ rate of 3.0 is reasonable. And we’d expect Minnesota to have between 6 and 7. 9 is ~1 SD away from the mean… barely significant. </p>
<p>However, Illinois does have a more statistically significant difference over this period with a matriculation per capita ~2x Iowa’s rate. I’d expect most of this difference is due to the Chicago-metro area and a greater chance of students in this area applying to Princeton than students in less urban areas of the midwest.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that a kid who has no special hooks will have a hard time standing out in a crowd of 30,000 spplications for 2000 spots.</p>
<p>Yes, which is why it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the pools of talent are high in a lot of schools, not just HYP. Because those 28,000 high-talent but rejected kids go somewhere; they don’t just disappear.</p>
<p>“Yes, part of the reason for small numbers of matriculants in these states is that not many students there know about, or care about, the Ivy League. But I don’t think the elite colleges care, either. They can easily find their quota of Midwesterners in suburban Chicago and suburban Minneapolis-Saint Paul. They’ll get plenty of Westerners in metro Denver, coastal California, metro Phoenix, and metro Seattle. And they’ll call it geographic diversity, even though as affluent suburbanites those kids will have more in common with each other than they will have with people in the less affluent and more rural parts of their own states–or even with people in the less affluent parts of their own metropolitan areas”</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be quite as absolute as you’re being, but I think there’s a good deal of merit here. I suspect this problem is exacerbated with top LACs, who have even less knowledge outside their immediate area, and fewer resources to penetrate rural areas.</p>
<p>I still think that one reason some schools rarely, if ever, send anybody to a highly selective school is that they rarely, if ever, have anybody with scores that are high enough. Which is why I think that if somebody appears with really high scores at a rural or inner-city or otherwise unexpected school, adcoms may take special notice.
Look at this chart: <a href=“http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-Composite-CR-M-W-2012.pdf[/url]”>http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-Composite-CR-M-W-2012.pdf</a>
How many unique high school graduates are there with SAT scores high enough to get into super-selective schools (yes, there is the ACT as well)? There aren’t 30,000. So that means that many, many high schools will not have one single person with the scores necessary to get into a super-selective school.</p>
<p>Edited to add: maybe there are 30,000, depending on where you draw the line, and if you add in ACT. But many of those kids won’t have the grades, or won’t apply to super-selective schools for some other reason. My point is that getting a really high SAT score may be enough to get you a second look if you come from an unknown high school, because there probably just aren’t that many such applicants.</p>
<p>I was an alumna interviewer while living in “flyover country” (Not Chicago or another major metropolitan area) and had a portfolio which encompassed parts of three states. I can count the number of truly high stat kids I interviewed on two hands (not just Val, since every HS has one or three or six). And only one “off the charts”, outstanding candidate who was first Gen college, rural area, tiny HS with few resources. This was before the internet- he had received a postcard and viewbook of Brown, unsolicited, based on his PSAT scores and had decided to apply “just because” (had never heard of Brown.) His teachers and GC had told him he was a shoe-in at the local state college and he had planned to become a Pharm Tech which was a huge and prestigious step up for his family from a SES perspective.</p>
<p>I can assure you nobody on the admissions committee worried about him “fitting in”. He was one generation away from Share-cropper and was both high stat, humble, kind, and truly intellectual. (i.e. knowledge for knowledge’s sake, not endlessly prepping for a standardized test.) These kids are highly prized at selective colleges and the fact that he hadn’t taken any AP’s (his HS didn’t have any) or didn’t know what a Service Trip was most assuredly did not prevent him from being admitted.</p>
<p>Pizza, the much maligned “mailing” which everyone on CC loves to hate, is still a useful tool for colleges which do not have the manpower to send an Adcom to every HS in Appalachia or the Smokey Mountains or even to the South Bronx or South Side Chicago. But you don’t need detailed knowledge about an unknown HS to quickly ascertain if a kid is “elite college material” or not. Yes, high scores. Yes, top grades, just like every other applicant. When an English teacher writes, “Johnny has read every Tragedy written by Shakespeare after our class performed two scenes from Macbeth and has gone on to devour the Sonnets. I helped him check out the variorum edition of King Lear from my college’s library when we couldn’t find a copy in any library in our state.” and this kid is first Gen college from a poor coal town- you don’t need to read the HS profile to know you’ve struck gold.</p>
<p>But the complaining from Horace Greeley and Belmont HS and New Trier that someone has snuck ahead of them in the college queue will continue…</p>