Improved Scores on SAT/ACT

cangel
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:56:41 +0000

Listen to Curmudgeon, we are being conservative with assessing chances, BUT, that is how you should be in advising your son, and how he should be in making his list.

I actually think that based on scores alone, Vandy is a match for your son. Keep in mind, though, that a match only means that his chances are 50-50 or at best 60-40/70-30, it is not a safety.
You may ask why be so negative, that’s not what the published score ranges say - we don’t know what his grades are, what courses he has taken, where he is from, class rank, goals of other students in his class, on and on. There are just too many variables for anyone to predict for certain.

That’s why you will read posters here pounding home the theme of “Love thy safety, love thy safety”, and the notion of rolling admission. Having an early acceptance to a rolling admission school that the student would be happy to attend,and can afford to attend, is freeing and empowering. Now he can take a lot more risk in his application list, because he knows he is going to a school that he is happy to attend.
One of the advantages of the South is that only a minority of schools actually follow the uniform acceptance date of April 1. A good student here, who doesn’t have very specific requirements of major or program, can have a couple of good safety acceptances in hand by Nov at the latest, which makes for a very different attitude toward matches and reaches, than the poor kid in NY who might have to wait until the spring to hear from any school.