And yet…most kids DON’T understand what Bowdoin or Harvard or any other super selective school seeks. They THINK they are “bright and engaged, inside and outside the classroom.” They think the things they do both in and out of the classroom show this, but again, they have to “get it.” I think when you are seeing student apps by the truck-full, @lookingforward , it is probably obvious when you see the kid who gets it.
Or the parents think their average excellent kid is well above average and excellent. I’m working with a helicopter mom right now who truly thinks her child is spectacular and is incensed that her kid didn’t get into a tippy top school ED and was deferred. I’ve sent her links to articles and posts here on CC and elsewhere. She doesn’t want to believe it. So now she (more so than her kid) is trying to make her kid get more letters of rec, write LOCI’s, etc…and her child seems to be frantically doing whatever possible to be more, better, extra, and it’s really sad.
I tried and tried to convince this student to apply ED2 to a fantastic LAC which would probably have been perfect, but on the next to nothing chance of getting into tippy top RD, the student wouldn’t consider it. Or maybe the mom wouldn’t. The stats aren’t quite there for RD at this LAC, but we will see. I suspect the student is going to end up at the safety, already labeled as “I don’t like it.”
I freely confess that in the beginning of the process, I thought my eldest (now a senior in college) was exceptional. And of course she is, to me. I’m glad I eventually realized the truth. She’s at a great college and is very happy. She admitted to me recently that she knew she wasn’t “interesting enough” back then, but she is almost a different person now to the shy 17 year old she was when she started college. She’s super involved in campus life, has a firm post-grad job offer, and is pursuing many other opportunities. She bloomed where she was planted.
This represents a desirable image, but if an athlete gets in with a 3.3 GPA / 1120 SAT (to take a profile out of U.S. News from a few years ago), it seems that special ability may predominate over other aspects at this school in at least some cases.
By the time a HS student is taking ACT/SAT, it’s too late to work on other hobbies, talents, and skills (working on the essay is a good idea, though). These things can’t be one-offs that the kid does junior/senior year.
This is where the CDS is useful. Use it. Top 25% or very top of the mid 50%.
Your daughter (and you) have the right mindset. I keep telling people that they do not have to play this game, which is almost exclusively played by the very people who do not need to gain entry to an Ivy or Ivy-equivalent (this is an obsession almost exclusively limited to affluent families). A student might not get into Harvard, but she might end up at–gasp!–Colgate, a school that by anyone’s definition is exclusive and elite (if status/label is important). Or one might end up with a full ride (plus honors college) at the state flagship. Or one might receive juicy merit at a school that’s a step or two down in terms of selectivity (not in terms of academic quality, something that few people truly care about anyway).
This is why I mostly shrug my shoulders at the panic about unhooked students and their chances of admission at “elite” schools. These students have typically already won life’s lottery. Even if they don’t come from well-off families, they’ll still be fine wherever they attend. The Krueger/Dale study shows this, as does a recent “white paper” published by Stanford.
But @merc81 , that Bowdoin athlete will be very engaged on the football field and is taking as huge intellectual risk every time he sets foot in a classroom at Bowdoin with those stats! (I know, not what they meant, but I couldn’t resist. )
“This is why I mostly shrug my shoulders at the panic about unhooked students and their chances of admission at “elite” schools.“
While I understand entirely why you make this statement (and in some ways I agree), some families are well-aware that selective schools give wayyy better financial aid than their lower-ranked counterparts, often bringing COA to less than the schools that give large merit awards.
That is one reason why my family will, if any are a good fit, include some selective meets-need schools on a well-rounded application list. We will also encourage our daughter to love her match/safeties with the realistic view that they may afford her a better experience/outcome.
It’s not necessarily about affluence. You’d be surprised how many rich kids don’t get it. I’d hope, by now, (most of us posting here have been around a while,) we realize how many kids spend more time on dream schools and which meet what the student wants and less on what the colleges want. The issue here is that it’s the colleges that do the admit picking. You do want a sense of what they “look for.” Again, best place to start is with what the colleges say and show. Worst place is, “My friends say” or “I heard of someone who…” Or relying primarily on pro blogs.
That Bowdoin bit is just one example. See if you can find the “more” about what your target colleges want to find.
T40 is a broad group. At the very top(ex. Harvard), my estimate is about 75% of the class falls into one or more of the following groups: athletic rating of two or higher, legacies, donors, children of faculty and staff, URMs, international, or SES disadvantaged. There also seems to be a substantial tip to applying EA/ED. The unhooked RD domestic bucket is a small percentage of the total slots.
And to add to Roethlisburger’s fine point- Harvard is not CMU is not Vanderbilt is not Chicago. These colleges are not interchangeable. A kid with almost no chance of getting into Harvard might be a very strong/solid candidate for another “T40” school. That’s what Lookingforward and others are talking about.
When I interviewed for Brown, every year I’d have a couple of kids who were convinced they were a match because they were so artsy and Brown loves artsy. Yes- by virtue of its proximity to and programs with RISD down the street, Brown indeed has a strong arts culture. But it has the PICK of kids who want to create some sort of interdisciplinary program combining the fine arts and some other field. The admissions pipeline is chock-a-block with these kids. It’s like telling Julliard they should accept you because you love to play the cello.
These were usually kids with marginal academics (for Brown) who had been told- or who thought- that their love of the fine arts was going to tip them in. And it made me sad- these were kids who were really strong candidates for Bard or Sarah Lawrence or Conn College or Skidmore-- and all that energy and time wasted on pining away for a college that was truly at the upper reaches of a reach. Not because they weren’t talented- but because being “good at art” doesn’t get the job done when your SAT’s are way below the 25% range, and your GPA puts you at about the second quartile of your HS class.
Brown is not primarily an immersive experience in the fine arts and graphic design. It is primarily a research university with a modestly more “funky” culture and ethos than the rest of its academic peers. But without the academic chops, your love of photography is not a hook.
Who would I encourage to look at Brown- whether or not they think they can afford it? First Gen kids. The university (under the previous president- who was Af-Am and first Gen herself, and the current president) has made a serious and concerted effort to identify, admit, fund and support (practical, financial, emotional, social) talented first Gen kids who do not have any T-40 type schools on their radar. Read any issue of the alumni magazine over the last few years and you cannot miss it. Profiles of kids who grew up in housing projects who have now graduated, have become physicians, and have set up mobile clinics to serve the residents of housing projects who use ER’s for their primary care (expensive for us as a society, and sub-par medically). Profiles of students who are using their education to find “fixes” for issues that the non-affluent have to deal with. Profiles of faculty members (themselves the first to go to college) who run programs to support students who show up on campus and feel overwhelmed.
Is there any T-40 college that does not have its alumni publications online and available? Read what they write about. And if issue after issue is consumed with sports competitions and fraternity shenanigans- that’s telling. If issue after issue writes about the massive investments in Life Science and Bio Tech- that’s telling. If issue after issue highlights the collaboration with the State Department on strategic language fluency- that tells you something.
@Lindagaf interestingly the student referenced in the USA article enrolled at Yale even tho they got into Stanford
For my DD19 experience (4.0, 1510). She applied to 12 T40 schools with these results:
5 rejections (including legacy status at 1 T10)
4 waitlists
3 acceptances
@UGG2023 , the student had an amazingly impressive resume. I don’t know where else he applied, and his famous supplement for Stanford is probably not what got him in as much as what he achieved. I don’t see Yale as less desirable than Stanford.
For those who didn’t read the linked article, Ziad Ahmed was clearly as applicant most colleges would fight over.
-Activist in Black Lives Matter movement
-campaigner for Hilary Clinton as Muslim outreach director
-interned at State Dept.
-Founded advocacy org Redefy, serves as President
-Visionary officer and founder of JUV consulting
-organized conference at Princeton with 200 attendees
-several TED talks
-named by Business Insider and MTV News as a world-changing teen
-honored by former President Obama
-etc…
I wasn’t able to find exactly what his grades and scores were, but he graduated from a private school cum laude and apparently had “high” test scores. He wasn’t a slacker, lol.
Anyway, it’s fair to say the there aren’t many kids doing all that while getting high grades and test scores. Colleges do admit plenty of “regular” kids who are impressive in other ways, maybe not so publicly. So yes, it can be worth it for a student with great grades and scores to apply to top colleges, but they may not have colleges fighting over them in quite the same way as the Ziad Ahmeds of the world.
I think it’s super important to keep some perspective. Most students will end up at the right place for them. It’s up to each kid to make the most of their college experience and take advantage of whatever opportunities come their way. My own D applied to two Top 40 colleges and was rejected at both. She ended up at a wonderful LAC where she has had so many amazing opportunities, held several campus jobs, received a couple of awards, and already has a great job lined up post-grad. She’s had the best time and has wonderful friends. In retrospect, I’m actually not sure she would have had such a great time if she had gotten into those tippy tops. The small fish/big pond thing wouldn’t have been good for her I think.
We do overemphasize the hyper competitive schools here. I was as guilty of it as many other people using this site. We as parents should care much more about our kids finding the best school for them.
FWIW, here is a list of the 12 kids in DS 19’s class who are attending T40 schools (according to Forbes) with and without hooks. This is a small (140 students in a class) public suburban HS. Note that some of these kids got into more than one T40 school and there are a couple of kids in the class who got into T40 schools but decided to attend a school outside the T40.
So yes, it is possible for high stat unhooked kids to get into T40 schools. That said, having a hook definitely helps since half the kids who did get in had a hook.
Consider schools in the UK and Canada. My kids got into their top choices, but loved the transparent, straightforward websites and admissions process of foreign schools so much more. It was so clear, easy and rational, a true delight.
At Ivies, the sorts blossom refers to are doing amazing things now. With community health or advocacy, city management opps, etc. Much more than kids who brag about a fundraiser party or working with 10 year olds, or painting park benches or who list every version of NHS. They already have vision and are activated. And grades and rigor, solid LoRs. It’s a mistake to stereotype them. Or assume economic challenges kill energy and drive.
I disagree - unhooked domestic bucket is the largest single bucket. About 45% of the accepted students belong to this bucket (non-ALDC White and Asian students), based on the data published by Arcidiacono et al (2019).
This is probably the case for many, but not all, of the “elites” (some have much stronger legacy and athletic advantages).
However, unhooked RD domestic applicants outnumber the rest about 3.5 to 1, so acceptance rates for this group are the lowest.
You’re forgetting that disadvantaged is a hook/tip. You can argue this either way, but my opinion is an athletic rating of two can be a hook/tip even if the student isn’t a recruited athlete. Then, as colleges fill a larger percentage of their classes with EA/ED, fewer slots are available in the RD round.
Based on the class of 2023, about 7% are low income (20% had income below $65,000, so about 7% having income below $40,000 is about right). About 17% are first-gen, and of those 43% are low income, which is 7.3%. So almost all of the low income students are first-gen.
First gen white students were about 5% of the class of 2023, and 43% of this would be 2.4% of the class. So low income and White isn’t a large proportion of the White non-ALDC.
As for an athletic rank of 2, it is far weaker than an academic rank of 1 or 2, which is how we describe “smart unhooked kids”. Based on the data that the article presents, about 30% of the incoming classes are made up of unhooked applicants with academic ratings of 1, and another about 10% are unhooked applicants with academic ratings of 2.
Let’s not forget that being low-income can also be a detriment in admissions at any need-aware school. If two applicants are similar enough, the full pay applicant will often get the nod. Under that formula, being full pay is the hook for some schools.
Now, you’re mixing data from different sources and different years. The lawsuit and Arcidiacono data don’t include the year 2023. What data source says SES disadvantaged whites were 5% of the class? Is that an official number from Harvard or based on a Crimson survey? You can’t multiple the 5% and 43% either unless you can prove those variables are uncorrelated. Using only white students is an error if you don’t take into account Asians.
This is incorrect. The 2019 Arcidiacano article shows about 3.7% of admitted domestic students were non-ALDCs with an academic rating of 1. Some of those 3.7% could have been SES disadvantaged or URMs.