This is particularly the case if the applicant appears “overqualified” relative to the college’s admit class. If the college’s common data set is up to date, then the “level of applicant’s interest” consideration in section C7 can provide a clue about whether “overqualified” applicants are subject to “yield protection” rejections or waitlists. The highest possible expression of interest would be applying binding early decision, although that may be too high an expression of interest if the applicant is looking for merit scholarships.
2 Likes
IMO, the worst thing a family can do is to have an imbalanced list. There is absolutely no harm in making sure there area a couple of truly safe, affordable, and exciting schools on the list. It ensures choices if the reaches don’t pan out. Throw an app to a school like Pitt that has rolling admission so you know early to take some stress off.
Being overly optimistic can lead to heart break in the Spring.
Our experience was the data from my D’s private HS was wildly off for her graduating class, including for the valedictorian with a 36 ACT and 1600 SAT who was wait listed at two schools that you have in the 4 and a 3.5 category. And that was 6 cycles ago. It’s even more unpredictable now.
And my experience as a Cornell interviewer is the same as Blossom and Mwfan1921.
11 Likes
Yes, everyone will draw their own conclusions, and no one knows for sure what results are in your student’s future. Students can be accepted to reaches, and your student is within range at these schools. Results are simply not predictable, so a list like this has more risk than many people are comfortable with; that’s the concern. But you have already drawn your own conclusions based on the scattergrams, so I think the best we can all do is wish you luck! 
Here’s hoping you will come back next year with a listing of wonderful acceptances for your student. 
12 Likes
most top students at our high school haven’t applied to many of these colleges. This may be one of the possible reason, not to expose to unnecessary yield protection.
One more Scoir caution….you can’t tell whether an applicant applied with or without a test score for the test optional schools.
2 Likes
In post #95, your image of college scatterplots includes that of American University, which has quite a reputation of waitlisting or rejecting “overqualified” applicants, probably those whom it sees as using American University as a “backup” behind Georgetown University and/or George Washington University. Its common data set at https://www.american.edu/provost/oira/upload/cds_2024-2025_american-university_final.pdf , section C7, shows that level of applicant’s interest is very important there (rigor and GPA are the only other very important application factors that they list as very important).
6 Likes
That’s great the counselors grab that info…as always it’s only as accurate as the students reporting what they did.
The Scoir data is but one data point. Just make sure to keep the data in context and recognize and appreciate the shortcomings of these data (can’t see the whole app including essays and LoRs, don’t know which applicants are hooked, the yield issue, the demonstrated interest issue, etc.)
The posters here have seen a lot over the years and know there is so very much out of the applicant’s control, including institutional priorities at each school that can vary from year to year. Good luck.
7 Likes
Thank you for pointing this out. We will check the schools in our list for C7. Very appreciated.
2 Likes
I concur. The concept seems too obvious to support with analysis here, however. Nonetheless, I might raise the cut-off for a potential match to 25%.
I note when there is a college with a sub-25% acceptance rate, but the kid’s numbers are good, our HS’s track record is good, and the counselors verify it is a good match, we might in fact treat it as in between a normal Reach and normal Target. Those are great schools to have on a list, but we still try to have at least 2-3 conventional Targets as well.
3 Likes
If the particular student is estimated to have a 25% chance of admission (or the scholarship needed to afford, if that is applicable), then that is closer to a reach than a match or target. There have been sad threads in the past where students were shut out of all of their “matches” or “targets” where they had a 50% or less estimated chance of admission.
1 Like
I’m sure you are familiar with the concept of a “feeder school”. A HS which regularly sends a number of kids to a handful of colleges.
That’s why your belief in a pattern that may be similar nationwide may not- in fact- be accurate. I don’t know if your HS is considered a “feeder” to Columbia, for example. If so, since it’s on your kid’s list-- FANTASTIC.
However-- a reality check for you. My kid’s HS wasn’t really a “feeder” school per se, but every year since people started keeping track, it sent three kids to Harvard, three kids to Yale, and two kids to Princeton. Now- during that time, there were ZERO admits to Cal Tech (one or two every year to MIT), ZERO admits to Dartmouth, etc. So not consistently fabulous results across the board- and frequently a kid would get into Princeton and get rejected from Cornell, or get into Yale and get rejected from Northwestern-- so for sure-- some idiosyncracies there.
One year the seniors were agitated because they figured out that among the “cannon fodder” applying to Harvard, four absolutely stellar seniors were applying early, each a superstar in their own way. But Harvard only takes 3, so unfair, kids so deserving. So Harvard accepts all four of the stellar superstars- Hooray! The system works! And the next year- zero. And that next year- Yale, also zero. And Dartmouth- one. One kid after a decade of zero kids getting in? And what’s up with Harvard and Yale?
My point of all of this? YOU CANNOT PROJECT OFF A SMALL DATASET. You think your HS reflects a nationwide pattern? No. The adcom’s take who they take. They shape the class they want to admit. As wonderful as Stuyvesant or Horace Mann or Dalton is, no Adcom wants an entire freshman class made up of kids from intense HS’s (whether public/magnet or private) from NYC. Princeton could populate its entire class from suburban NJ plus three close-in Philadelphia suburbs. But they don’t, do they?
One year every affluent kid is suddenly a competitive fencer. But colleges still need kids who will join the salsa dancing club and row crew and edit the campus newspapers. So one year it seems that every kid applying to a mega competitive college is a fencer-- and that next year? The kids are on to something new.
So you can either ignore most of us (go with blessings!) or take heart in knowing that as long as your kid is authentic and has a rock solid safety he’s happy with- it’s all good. But predicting a nationwide pattern off of one HS’s results- no.
5 Likes
It also doesn’t show whether the applicants are accepted to their first choice school/program within a particular college (second choice major/school/spring admit etc). This might matter more for some people/majors than others.
2 Likes
I think you are putting too many eggs in one basket. I suggest adding another safety and/or target.
We are from the same general area, also from a very competitive HS. This is a big country filled with exceptional kids. It’s hard to imagine until you are out of your HS bubble.
4 Likes
I think this this is actually the poster’s point - though correct me if I am wrong @cloudymind Many here look at the overall acceptance rate of a school and if the acceptance rate is 20% (or maybe 25% as @merc81 suggested), they suggest that this can not be a target. However, students have very different profiles. What is a target for one student may be a reach for another. This student has a very strong profile. I don’t know if the poster’s rating system is accurate. Some have suggested it may not be and that’s a valid criticism. However, saying that this student with a strong profile has the same chance as everyone else when a school has a range of applicants is a bit off too. While there may not be a ton of underqualified applicants there are some. I have heard some ad-com say that over 75% of students are academically qualified. That then leaves perhaps 1 in 5 which may not be. This means that the real acceptance rate is actually higher since there are some unqualified applicants. The odds would still be very low but the difference here is that some applicants - perhaps as many as 20% have effectively 0% chance.
As for the remaining students, again not all of them have the same chance. Some profiles are stronger than others. If you look at the two Brown kids, they both had SAT scores of 1600. Just looking at that small snippet, one might erroneously conclude that there is a very high chance of getting into Brown if one scores a 1600 but that’s not true of course. However, does the 1600 usually have a higher chance than a student who is applying with a 1450? Often yes though not necessarily. Everything else being equal - probably yes. However, the 1450 student might have done something extraordinary or have parents with extraordinary money. Still profiles do matter. The odds of getting into a school are raised for students with strong profiles which include EC’s, grades, scores, letters of rec and essays. That’s why this wording is important:
If the particular student is estimated to have a 25% chance of admission
The problem is that we don’t know what this particular student’s estimated chance of admission is. Many seem to think that every candidate applying has basically the same chance and it’s just a roll of the dice. It’s not. This student probably has a higher chance than the standard admission rate for those schools with a 20-25% acceptance rate though I don’t think anyone knows what the actual chance of admission is for this student. This is why it would be best for this student to talk to his school counselor as they are far more likely to assess the real admission rate for this particular student.
Another issue though is that schools do not like being used as backups so some will wait list kids with profiles that are stronger than the norm for the school. Sounds like that may be what happened to the valedictorian with a 1600 though no one knows. One way to get around this is for the student to demonstrate interest. It’s also good to be cautious and see the possibility of things not going as expected and plan for those contingencies. If things did not come together, would a student prefer to have more than one choice? Most would so why not add in a few schools as insurance even if in the end, in such a situation the student would choose Rutgers. Some kids may order the same thing ie. vanilla ice cream but still want to peruse the menu to see their options. Some of these kids would actually be unhappy if the only option is vanilla ice cream.
1 Like
@cloudymind you have a very strong student. If they do…or don’t get accepted at any college, you will never know why. Colleges are building a class. Many of the schools you suggested have many strong applicants, and not enough spaces for all of them.
I do think Rutgers is a very fine university, and your student will do well there. But this student is going to do well wherever they attend college.
I’m a strong believer in having choices, which is why I (and I guess others) are glad to see at least one additional likely college added to this application list.
6 Likes
Thank you for your insightful suggestions. It would be very helpful if you could provide some data to support this, rather than just a few admitted or rejected cases from your high school or general opinions about nationwide trends without any data or links.
My original question was whether my child’s current stats fall within the typical range, and I believe most would agree that they do. Let’s assume the “ballpark” for schools like Brown, Columbia, Penn, and Princeton is a GPA of 4.5+ and SAT 1500/ACT 34. From our high school, at least 50% of applicants do not meet these benchmarks.
I would really appreciate seeing data from other districts or nationwide to gain a broader perspective. I’ve tried asking ChatGPT about this, but it only provided general answers without real data sources. Unfortunately, my version is limited, so I can’t request further data. However, the information I did receive seems to support my view about the large number of applicants who fall outside this range.
My school is not a feeder school for these highly selective universities, although it may be a little better than nationwide rate. I’m not sure how relevant this is to your inference. Perhaps you meant that feeder schools may skew the data?
The “ballpark” GPA is usually given in unweighted terms.
The “ballpark” standardized test scores are easier because they give the middle 50s. For example
Columbia SAT 1520-1560, ACT 34-36
Penn SAT 1510-1560, ACT 34-36
Brown SAT 1520-1570, ACT 34-36
Princeton they don’t give composite SAT: Math 770-800, ERW 740-780, ACT 34-35
We can draw different conclusions about whether scores at or below the 25th percentile count as “in the ballpark”, but as mentioned repeatedly it depends on the rest of the application. My daughter got into NYU with lower test scores and GPA (both uw and w) than one of her classmates who got rejected. Your scatter plots are only telling you one part of the story.
By the way, you do know that ChatGPT has been known to make up stuff when it doesn’t know the answer, right?
6 Likes
ChatGPT screenshots aren’t a source of information… and it’s a good thing it didn’t provide you with data sources, because usually those are fictional.
Honestly, where is this conversation even going? @cloudymind, you have a strong student. Your student has a reasonable chance of admission at the schools on their list, and at least one very likely school. So, you and your student have a plan. Others here have tried to help you with that plan, however you seem pretty set with it now, so… go for it!
You truly don’t have to put energy into trying to prove to a bunch of strangers on the internet that your student is going to get into these colleges.
12 Likes