<p>" If so, my question remains what factors affect on decision for these “around mean” scorers."</p>
<p>ECs, interview, essays, recommendations, character, region of the country, high school, religion, possible major (A person indicating they’ll be a classics major – and has the background and ECs indicating that they are telling the truth — has an advantage over the overabundance of HYP applicants planning to major in biochemistry or otherwise be premed), and what admissions officer gets assigned their application.</p>
<p>codor30, Northstarmom, thank you for inputs.
As I read application instructions of most of colleges, I come to think EC, essays and interview (when available) would matter much. Maybe hard work can make teachers in senior classes to write better recs. Other factors Northstarmom mentions are mostly what we cannot change in 6 months. Aren’t they?
The last point, intention of major. Northstarmom, are you saying that intention of major as long as it is consistent with the whole application matching to demand of the school make difference? So if one has intention to take a relatively-not-so-popular major in the college, what magnitude does it matter to admission decision? I thought most of colleges do not allocate number of admittance for each major. Or do they do it in some vague way - make number of accepted students with intention of specific major match to capacity of that major within some range? I am sorry to ask this non music EC question.</p>
<p>You have to try to think a bit like an admissions officer. Let’s assume they have their pick of any kid in the country. They want to put together a class that makes their own institution happy. If Harvard can’t find enough undergrads to keep professors of Classics and Art History happy, then Harvard won’t be able to have a great undergrad Classics or Art History experience available for long. That’s just one of the many constituencies that have to be considered. There’s also the football team, the development office, the orchestra, etc. Lots of constituencies. Also, taking a class in high school in some outside-the-box subject in your senior year is not really an adequate indication that you would be a likely major in that subject in college. </p>
<p>In general, FiddlinEcon, you are spending too many brain cycles trying to game the system. The Ivies are great schools. There are another 30-40 great schools out there. Maybe more. Just about every kid with a stellar academic record from an American high school is going to be able to find a spot at a great school. (Paying for it is another matter).</p>
<p>One more thing: at the Ivies, I don’t think alumni interviews in general matter all that much.</p>
<p>It depends on the school. Some (like Berkley) admit students into the major, and some majors are much more competitive than others. Some (like Stanford) admit you into the university, and you have 2 years before you have to declare your major. They still ask about your intended major, and having an unusual interest may be still helpful, as they are trying to assemble a class that is balanced (not all engineers or premeds).
The bottom line though is that there is no point to try to game the system wrt intended major. If what you put is inconsistent with the rest of your application, it will not help, and can hurt your chances.</p>
<p>“One more thing: at the Ivies, I don’t think alumni interviews in general matter all that much.”</p>
<p>Alum interviews at Harvard matter enough that I’ve been called and e-mailed by admissions officers who had specific questions about students I’d interviewed.</p>
<p>I think it’s easier for a very bad interview to tip an applicant out than for an excellent interview to tip an applicant in. </p>
<p>“The bottom line though is that there is no point to try to game the system wrt intended major. If what you put is inconsistent with the rest of your application, it will not help, and can hurt your chances.”</p>
<p>True. If a student indicates they plan to major in some obscure subject that there’s no real indication that they’re that interested in, the admissions officers likely will think the student is trying to game the system and will question the veracity of the rest of the application. That likely will cause the student to be rejected because places like Ivies have an overabundance of strong applicants whose applications appear to be truthful.</p>
<p>For instance, I know that prospective humanities majors are in relatively short supply at Harvard, which gets an overabundance of students who are planning in majoring in biochem or similar fields as prep for med school. I would bet money that a student whom I interviewed who got into Harvard stood out because he appeared to be a prospective classics major. He was the #1 Latin student in the country, Junior Classical League was his primary EC, and he was also studying Greek for fun on the side. It was clear that he wasn’t faking a passion for a major that’s not that popular at Harvard.</p>
<p>Next you have to consider the things they want outside of the group with certain hooks. Geographical diversity is big, so a kid from Alaska or South Dakota may have lower scores.</p>
<p>But the chance of an unhooked white or Asian student from NY, Boston, LA or other well represented places not being close to the 75th percentile? Unlikely is my guess.</p>
<p>At HYPS we are talking over a quarter of the class having near perfect scores in each section (790 plus!). That’s what it will take for kids from overrepresented groups and places most of the time. </p>
<p>I do believe essays are very important once you have the stats to be a contender in your pool. That’s what separates the scores of kids who look so similar on paper. So if we take a WASP from NYC with a 2320 applying to HYP, and they have 400 such applicants to choose from in this pool and they want 5 after they have accepted the hooked, it’s my belief the essay and whole positioning contained in the application will largely be the factor that pushes the 5 in.</p>
<p>We’ve debated this at length here, but I’ll just say that this is where private counselors make the big bucks–helping the fully qualified kid figure out a differentiating positioning. IMO, for people who successfully ‘game’ the system, that was the approach. And I for one have no problem with trying to game the system, beccause as I’ve written here many times, thhe whole process is a game. It’s a game most don’t understand and send in their money having zero chance because the colleges mislead. It’s far from a level playing field, so everyone should feel free to play any card they come up with.</p>
<p>NSM - I agree with your analysis of ECs and majors. I know that students generally do not have to commit to a major when they apply to colleges, but I think that if they indicate an interest in a major and have the ECs/studies to back that up it can be a factor in admission (if its an unusual major). My son’s listed major at most colleges was linguistics (a dual major with music performance being his ideal). He had six years of Spanish, four years of Latin, and had self-studied Esperanto and Irish Gaelic. He had also listened to a Linguistics course from The Teaching Company and had written his IB paper on IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). I don’t know if Harvard passes this information on to the appropriate department for review to see if the student’s interest appears legitimate or if the admissions department makes that determination. Obviously these are not the kind of things that a student can take up their senior year with any credibility.</p>
<p>"We’ve debated this at length here, but I’ll just say that this is where private counselors make the big bucks–helping the fully qualified kid figure out a differentiating positioning. "</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with people doing that, assuming they’re simply helping a kid follow and highlight their natural interests. For instance, I’ve seen a couple of Asian males who had been interested in sports like football and interests like art and creative writing, but their parents had forced them into involvement in classical music, tennis, and Mu Alpha Theta. Such students would have had far more success in applying to top colleges if they’d demonstrated interests and talents that differed from the bulk of applicants to places like Ivies, and a good college counselor would have told them that.</p>
<p>I don’t think that college counselors can package students into appearing to be something they are not, but good college counselors can help students demonstrate and run with their interests and talents so they stand out in the applications field. I don’t consider this gaming the system. I think this is helping students develop their talents and interests, something that some students do naturally because their parents encourage them to and/or because the students just naturally recognize and run with their passions. Most people, however, don’t have parents like that or those kind of personality characteristics.</p>
<p>Even if students who’ve run with and developed their passions don’t get into top schools, they still are ahead in life because they’re more likely than others to find careers and hobbies that fulfill them financially and emotionally.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with gaming the system, if you can do it. I don’t think it’s wise or effective to spend a lot of time in senior year suddenly creating a persona. Spending time nailing down who you (as an applicant) are and figuring out how to best showcase that in an application, on the other hand, seems worthwhile to me (even if you don’t end up at an Ivy). </p>
<p>At the end of the day, if you have perfect scores (2350+ on SAT’s, 2300+ on SAT II’s), great GPA/courseload from a competitive school, great recommendations, great essay, have some credible EC involvement but are otherwise unhooked, then you have a much better than 7% chance of admissions to HYP. I don’t know exactly how strong…maybe some of our statistically inclined posters can estimate. But you certainly don’t have a 70% chance of admissions. So if your child is that kind of kid, I believe it makes sense to apply to as many of the Ivies as s/he would be happy to attend (for mine, that number was 3), and to be sure to pay close attention to your non-Ivy schools and applications. You’ll get in someplace great.</p>
<p>It seems that the biggest challenge in answering the question posed by OP is that none of us knows how well the kid plays the instrument. </p>
<p>Maybe Collegeboard should look into a “standardized test” for music supplements. You make your 10 min CD, send it to them with a $75 fee, and they give it a standardized score from 200 to 800. </p>
<p>So interesting…yes, better than 7% but probably under 15%. What few understand unless they have kids at the super competitive, top high schools is that the numbers getting into top colleges have far more to do with legacy, recruited athletes, top URMs and development than the school giving you a boost. If fact, at many top high schools your chances for top colleges are very compromised by the connected.</p>
<p>Truth be told, you have a much better chance at HYPS being a low income student from an unheard of public high school than an unhooked student at a great private high school.</p>
<p>Memake, thank you for your concern. Well, I know there are many great schools other than so-called ivy and equivalents and many of those have been certainly on my S’s list already. What I am doing now is norrowing his list to 15. We will narrow it to 8 afterwards in fall. As I wrote in #37, he has MIT as his first choice reach on his current list. I was wondering in what magnitude his music EC could help. He and I are no HPY mania. I think he will definitely choose substantial studying opportunities than “names”.
I learned a lot from this thread. Some of small LACs like Williams weigh on music EC, which level of recordings could be effective to each type of and individual colleges, and so on. My view if I were a adcom officer is my equation. Maybe I should add some sequential process in it but it’s all conceptual.</p>
<p>Fiddlin, I would add and this is my observation only, not a statistical fact that I believe that many rural and/or Midwestern LACs like Williams, Hamilton, Bowdoin, Kenyon, Carleton, Grinnell, will consider Asians URMs. Most Asians and other high achieving non-White students prefer larger colleges or urban colleges where they will find a critical mass of other non-Whites. Thats why I think that these LACs would react favorably to your sons profile as opposed to the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, or even Swarthmore or Pomona for that matter, where they get a lot of musically inclined Asian applicants.</p>
<p>momrath, thank you. Actually we did not see any midwestern LACs just because we have never been there. Maybe we should extend search location and gather info.</p>
<p>vicariousparent, I was thinking about it too. I agree that white noise factor which represents large randomness should be added at the end of the equation regarding reallity of admission process.
But I basically think people would better not see admission process in the sense of “probability”. There are often determining factors and their functions behind apparent randomness.</p>
<p>The randomness factor for some pools takes on reality when you begin the application and realize how little you write.</p>
<p>The process is really not random for many. It’s much less random if you are or of the 40% plus with a hook or if you’re from an underrepresented state or country.</p>
<p>It’s most random for the overrepresented groups from overrepresented places.</p>
<p>hmom5, OK, your “almost half the class” (#105) should be added “kids from Alaska …”. But what %? If it is 5%, I will revise my statement to “the lowest score of un-hooked urban origin accepted students is below 55% tile.”
But I accept that NYC asian and white kids in private high schools have big disadvantage in admission of top schools. My friend asian parent whose kid was in the top public school in Long Island repeated about asian students’ disadvantage many times when her kid was about to apply to colleges but she always added that the situation of private schools is different. So you are saying it is different but worse than being in public. I have never heard of that from other asian parents in school. They may have hooks and your observation may be true.
I am in defence of URM but 17% recruited atheletes sounds to me a bit weird. Number of students of top schools (it may differ by your definition of top schools) is roughly 30,000, right? Among them, more than 5000 students are recruited atheletes? Wow! they are comparable in number to national merit finalisits.</p>