<p>Keemun, don’t misquote me. I never said that nobody should bother with the most selective colleges. My own son is at MIT and is deliriously happy and it’s a great fit for him. We consider him very lucky.</p>
<p>However, his backups were not Penn, Princeton, etc. (both of which have superb, rigorous engineering programs…and to use your language, lottery ticket admissions) but were equally fine places like Rutgers, U Missouri at Rolla, Penn State, one or two of the SUNY’s, etc. where they admit by the numbers and he was virtually an auto-admit. None of these are our state U. by the way, which has a barely adequate engineering school. His match schools were places like Rochester and BU. So-- when I hear about kids with stats lower than his in our area who are applying to MIT “as a reach” and think Cornell Engineering is a match and won’t bother with a safety unless it’s State U which doesn’t have the department that they want… you gotta wonder what’s going on in somebodies head. Especially when the kid’s main EC is designing webpages or working as a computer trouble-shooter for a local company which by the way, 80% or MIT applicants probably do as a matter of routine and don’t bother putting it on the application!</p>
<p>Anybody can fall in love with Harvard; the hard part is identifying schools that have the elements that your kid loves about Harvard but where your chances are substantially (not marginally) greater of being admitted. </p>
<p>Your kid should shoot for the moon and best of luck to all of you.</p>
<p>Blossom, just a comment on the computer programming thing. I’ve been around this kind of board long enough to recall (7-8 years ago) when kids and parents would post “what’re my chances” threads in which their main “hook” was that they had designed their own webpages. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now (in its more sophisticated guise).</p>
<p>Blossom, that is a great post. Ever so right. No problem shooting for the moon. I always like to say that EVERY kid who wants to apply to HPY should go right on ahead and do so. But after cherry picking schools off the top of the tree, the tough part comes in picking equally good matches in what the kid wants and needs among less selective school.s. It is a problem to just tack on State U or Safety College just so you can check off the safety school box on the check list. The tough part about putting together the college list is picking the less selective, less known school that can give your kid a good education and provide an enjoyable environment for him to grow up a little bit. It worries me too when I see kids using Rochester and BU as backups. They are NOT safety schools. A match maybe but a match does not an admit make.</p>
<p>Keemum says: For a small percentage of applicants, though, the most selective colleges may be the best matches. </p>
<p>Forgive me if I’m being hypersensitive or hypercritical but this leaves me with a vague sense of unease. While I’m not suggesting that the most selective schools are the only or even best matches for a wide array of kids, I do think there are many kids, with a broad spectrum of interests, who would thrive at these places. What distinguishes this small percentage?</p>
<p>Blossom and Jamimom, I agree wholeheartedly. I think the hardest part of the college search process is sifting through all the wonderful, lesser known schools out there (becoming increasingly rare all the time) and finding the ones that suit our kids best while still allowing a reasonable chance of admission. At my daughter’s high school, the student (and parent) population doesn’t see beyond a limited universe of 5 or 6 schools. Each and every one of these kids believes s/he is one of the few whose true match is one of those elite schools.</p>
<p>The single most important thing I learned from the process this year is that when you have a highly academically inclined kid who is encouraged to apply for HPYSM - absolutely go ahead and do it. And if your kid gets accepted, hoo yah. Not for the prestige or future dollars but because they will be in the company of the absolutely highest possible percentage of other kids who are also highly academically inclined as well the highest possible percentage of ridiculously brilliant faculty. It is a wonderful opportunity. </p>
<p>If your kid is not accepted, life will be just fine as long as you pay close attention to the other schools your kid applies to. Brilliant kids and faculty are NOT limited to the top 5-10-20 schools. However, MAKE SURE sure that these other schools are places that echo exactly what your kid liked about his or her favorite HPYSM, rather than simply applying to the next most selective school on the USNews rankings or the default honors program at your state school. </p>
<p>In our case, my D liked Princeton and Columbia most of all. Berkeley, which we in our ignorance used as her safety, isn’t a bit like Princeton and only slightly if you squint your eyes resembles Columbia. She would have been better off applying to UChicago and Rice and Emory as her match schools and some places we never even thought of as her safeties. We were just lucky the powers that be forgave dumb parents that day.</p>
<p>Alumother, I agree with the lesson you learned this year. I think students who are highly academically inclined should “go for it,” but the trick is to keep from getting too hung up on getting into one or two schools in particular so that anything else looks like a failure.</p>
<p>Finding a small basketfull of schools that are a good fit and appealing in many ways, but up and down the “degree of difficulty of admissions” scale, is the best approach even for the highly academically inclined.</p>
There’s a general consensus that applicants should concentrate their energies on match schools and not reaches. I agree with this consensus. All I was saying was this: for a small percentage of students, their reaches may also be their match schools. If your stats do not match those for the most selective schools, then it would be safe to say they are not your best matches.</p>
<p>Edit: And if your stats do match, that does not imply they are your best matches.</p>
<p>I wish we could collectively come up with a term for schools where the applicant is in the top quartile of the assorted ‘stats’, but is not assured of admission because there are so many qualified applicants for each seat. Crapshoot is so undignified!</p>
<p>I doubt (based on the limited information schools have been willing to publish) that there is a major school in the country that does not have an over-25% admit rate for students who do not require financial aid. (exceptions might include the military academies, Cooper Union, Deep Springs, etc.)</p>
<p>(i.e. if you’ve won the lottery, there are no longer any lottery schools. LOL!)</p>
<p>Which schools are the lottery schools? Let’s say for a kid with SATs in the 1450-1600 range, GPA UW of 3.8-4.0, has taken all possible honors and APs their school offers, at least two notable ECs not at national level but say an unrecruited but high school varsity level athlete who also is the editor of the school paper, all good rec’s…And if we make that SAT range be 1550-1600 does the lottery set change? If the GPA is a straight 4.0?</p>
<p>Do one set for fin aid and one for no fin aid. Is it really true that if you can pay you have a 25% of getting into any school in the country? That’s not what they told us in the GC office…</p>
<p>“Is it really true that if you can pay you have a 25% of getting into any school in the country?”</p>
<p>No - that’s obviously not true. What is true is that AMONG CURRENT APPLICANTS to those schools, 25% or more of applicants who apply and who do not require financial aid are admitted. (And there are lots of things that are likely to make such applicants - as a group - more desirable, ranging from developmental or legacy status, ongoing GC contact and feeder school status, different types of ECs and summer programs and internships, the “right” sports (squash, equestrian, crew, lacrosse), foreign language abilities, all the way to the more mundane ones, like SAT prep.)</p>