Is he aiming too high?

DunninLA
Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:23:45 +0000

jsmom – I tend to side with the posters advising caution. Look, in a separate thread yesterday I did some math and concluded that there are about 65,000 Vals and Sals exiting high schools in the US this year (assuming about 25% of HS have multiple Val/Sal.).

There are probably about 20,000 slots at Top 10 universities… you do that math! About 70% of the Sals/Vals will not be attending a top 10 school this August/September.

Bennie – I also have a number of Top 10 college beneficiaries in my extended family… most of us could not come CLOSE to getting in to the schools we did 15-25-35 years ago today. Applications are up over 70% compared to mid 70s, and the quality of the applications is much, much stronger than in “those normal times”. did you know Stanford accepted about 70% of its applicants back in the 1950s?

I’m suggesting that TODAY, a student with lots of Bs in core academic classes would have a less than 1% chance of admittance to a Top 10 school.s… even with 4000 SATs that chance would be under 5%.