<p>Nowadays, you see tens of thousands applicants to some of the nation’s best universities. The admission rate is getting lower and lower. </p>
<p>I often wonder, how many of these applications really has a decent chance? I saw a thread where many of the ~3.6 GPA students will throw in at least a couple T20 applications. I would not be surprised to the same from students with <3.5 GPA. </p>
<p>In other words, for strong applicants with 3.9 or higher unweight GPA, should he/she be discouraged by the sub 20% AR of certain school?</p>
<p>Admissions officers are famous for saying that over 80% of applications come from students who have the stats and resumes to be accepted–and an unknown other percentage come from students who are bright enough to do the work but may be a notch lower in terms of test scores, grades (often for legit reasons such as illness) or extracurriculars (again, many have more limited activities due to economic or family responsibilities).</p>
<p>If you insist on applying to Ivies then you have to be prepared for rejection and that gets hammered home here more often than not–you have been around this board for a long time and if you choose to ignore reality and don’t want to hear that your kid should choose a range of schools then I don’t know what to say, other than I see the other thread you started about starting this “difficult” process and I have to say it is difficult for you because you are so hard on your kids and have such unrealistic expectations. </p>
<p>By all means apply to those schools and if you defy the odds and your child gets in then wonderful–but to be disappointed if your child does not is unrealistic and unfair to your kids. </p>
<p>Have a realistic plan for schools that accept a higher percentage of applicants and you will find that this process is far less difficult.</p>
<p>I think I read somewhere (probably on CC) that 10% of the applications that come across the desk of the most selective universities have no chance and are weeded out immediately. That leaves 90% of the applications still to be considered by the adcoms.</p>
<p>Should strong candidates be discouraged to apply by the below 20% acceptance rate of many schools? I say no–those applicants have the best chance of getting into a super-selective school compared to those kids with GPAs less than 3.6. </p>
<p>However, strong candidates should be REALISTIC about their chances of getting into such a school. Out of 5 applicants who most likely have similar if not higher profiles than you, 4 will be rejected. All the more reason to have safety and match schools that will fit your bill.</p>
<p>Keep another statistics in mind, not all 4.0 uw apply to top 20. I would not question anything, I told my D. apply where you want and see what happen. We will use the same approach for Grad. school application.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that Harvard has said that about 90% of their applicants are capable of doing the work in the classroom. So, in keeping with what mombot has said above - the majority of those applicants at top 20 and similar schools will indeed be “legitimate” insofar as they would be fully capable of managing the classroom work. Of course, the top 20 schools want not just people who can do the classroom work, but people who are interesting, diverse, different, leaders and will add to the overall campus life they want to create.</p>
<p>The process needs only be “difficult” for a 3.9 GPA kid if his parents have unrealistic expectations that he is guaranteed to get into a top 20 school or that top 20 schools are the only places that offer an excellent education.</p>
<p>Hopefully you’ve learned from your previous experience and will do things differently next time. I am sure you are going well below top 20, investigating liberal arts colleges that you might not have heard of, looking for places where Asian males aren’t a dime a dozen, to take the pressure off the process. I am sure you are also now aware that the naive thing to do is chase after the top 20’s; that the truly elite thing to do is look at places that are off the beaten track but still excellent.</p>
<p>Remember that there is a difference between counting the number of applications received and counting the number of completed application files. For many reasons (even if its a prestigious school) students will not send in recommendations, test scores, etc. They’ve changed their mind, gotten in elsewhere, can’t afford it, etc. All of these reasons will result in an incomplete/unreviewed file. </p>
<p>I suspect that the huge number of reported applications includes the incomplete files as well. The number of actual completed application files is probably less, although still a significant, highly competitive amount.</p>
<p>Colleges often report their numbers this way to maximize their selectivity.</p>
<p>I would never support lobbing in applications for the sport (like any well adjusted kid would have the time or interest in that) or lobbing in applications because they hadn’t taken the time to do the research and hone a well thought list…conversely I would never discourage an application to a school for which a young person has genuine interest.</p>
<p>I’d guess that almost all of the applications to top schools are legitimate in once sense or another.</p>
<p>There is a live thread of students applying to top-20 schools with 3.6 gpas; a bit low for some of the schools, but perhaps made up for by stellar test scores or extra curriculars.</p>
<p>Then there are the kids with stellar gpas and extra curriculars who are poor test takers.</p>
<p>The kids who are in-range-but -lower in range who are legacies or targeted student groups (low socio-economic, urms, athletes etc)</p>
<p>And of course the applicants who are stellar on all accounts.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. Some (like U Cicago, Swarthmore, Reed, St. Johns, CalTech ) are pretty self-selective. Others (like HYPS, and Ivies in general) are appealing to everybody because of their prestige, and relatively easy applications.</p>
<p>A GPA should not make or break an applicant in my opinion. True, getting 4.0 UW is much more impressive than a person with 3.5 UW but think realistically. How many schools across the nation inflate their grades? How many don’t? How can you compare the difficulty of the class? AP and IB and Honour classes give some indication, but how can you check their curriculum or how the teacher marks? One physics teacher might scale the classes marks. Another might not. You can’t always judge a person’s intelligence by looking at numbers. There are definitely other huge factors determining the GPA. </p>
<p>That being said, I’m all for people with <3.6 GPA applying. There are guaranteed thousands of students who are hard working, and very intelligent and devoted, who work in a much more difficult class and whose teacher’s philosophy of grades differ greatly.</p>
<p>One of what I think is one of the best pieces of advice I can give the parents of high-achieving student is: don’t look at how qualified your D or S is. Look at the credentials of those who are rejected by your target institution. It will be sobering. </p>
<p>I suppose some parents will come out with the “But my kid is special because <insert 25=”" words=“” or=“” more=“”>…" but in 99-44/100 percent of the cases, such speeches may be safely ignored.</insert></p>
<p>There are also a lot of “well lopsided” kids. You might have a kid with a 3.6 overall who has straight As in AP math and science courses, but who struggles in one or more other areas. Or a kid who is a fantastic writer who struggles with math. </p>
<p>If the kid is genuinely outstanding in one area, (s)he may be admitted to a top school despite a weakness in other area(s).</p>
<p>@Raddd - college adcoms are very aware of most HS’s curriculum, especially the ones that consistently send students there. Many HS include their school profile with each student’s transcript, so when adcoms are looking at a transcript they know exactly what they are looking at and how to compare it with other transcripts. More proactive HS would even have their college counselors meet with adcoms regularly to go over the school’s curriculum. At top colleges they want students to get good grades taking the most rigorous courses.</p>
<p>At the Harvard info session we attended last month, the representative from the admissions office told us that Harvard had done a study on this very issue. They concluded that 60% of applicants could handle the academics at Harvard. She said that weeding out that 40% was fairly easy but getting it down to the roughly 2000 acceptance letters they sent out for approx 1600 freshman was not.</p>
<p>She described a five to six week period of time when the 37 member admissions committee meets five days a week, sometimes for 12 hours a day and votes on who to accept. She said that sometimes there were tears, arguements and that every year there are students they desperately want to offer admission to but there is simpy not room.</p>
<p>She concluded that portion of the info session by telling the students that if they wonder what rejection letter from Harvard means, it means they have 1600 beds. I thought that was a very nice way to put it.</p>
<p>Are we saying that applicants are illegitmate? And would seem that some prefectly “legit” applicants get rejected straight away if say, they had a rocky freshman year and just couldn’t get the GPA up enough. </p>
<p>“legit” seems on odd way of putting it, as somehow, really smart motiviated, imperfect kids aren’t legitmate people.</p>
<p>Wow. First of all who cares? The only application the student needs to worry about is their own. Make it the best one possible.
Second I have two in college and didn’t find the process difficult in either case. For me or for them.<br>
Sometimes these threads are just too obsessive for me.</p>
<p>I do think there’s a difference between students who “can do the work” and those who have a decent shot at admission, even just based on stats alone. Schools like HYP will probably get more of the trophy seeking, “why not give it a shot” type applications as compared to places that are less well known universally(and internationally) but are quite self-selecting, such as the ones nngmm mentioned and others.</p>
<p>Students with really high high school GPAs in challenging courses and really high test scores have a better than 20% chance of getting in anywhere. Nothing like 100% at the most competitive schools, but probably at least 20%+. Students with slightly lower grades and slightly lower test scores have a much lower chance of admission, but still >0% (even after factoring out athletes, etc.).</p>
<p>Something like 20,000 unique students will get accepted at the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, and Cal Tech; adding additional colleges will add at least 1,000 per school for Duke, Chicago, etc., and probably about 500 for top LACs. So there is a fair amount of room at the inn. Not all of those slots go to top academic performers, of course, but at least half do (and probably more than that). </p>
<p>Looking at it from the other direction, there are probably something like 50,000 students with 2250 SATs (superscored) or the ACT equivalent, not all of whom have top grades, and not all of whom have any interest in applying to Harvard. Realistically (and really making up the numbers now), there are probably something like 20,000 kids chasing 15,000 “academic” slots at top universities and LACs, which really isn’t so daunting, and then a much greater number of kids seeking admission to a slightly lower number of slots on the basis of good-enough academics and some other qualities. That’s the odds that are really daunting unles a kid feels very confident, but it is those kids who provide a lot of leadership and make the elite college experience what it is.</p>
<p>I think all of the ivies and peers get at least 30% that are not in the running. Just reading the boards here tells me that there are a very significant number who feel they should just throw in the application because they interpret holistic review as meaning stats don’t matter much.</p>