do you have a reference?
My Caltech- and MIT-admitted DS20 was waitlisted at Rice.
This system is just plain nuts. So, SO glad to be done with this part of our livesâŠ
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Perhaps they should be safeties for all in-state high stats kids. Iâm less concerned about the tippy top schools and more concerned with the idea that in state flagship should be a safety net for high achieving in state students. Top 10% of each in state high school for example. Whatâs difficult is implementing that where schools have done away with rank so itâs unclear even to kids where they stand. Or they see they are a 4.0, but donât realize 50 other kids in their class are also 4.0.
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Iâve recently received the data for the past three complete admissions cycles for one of the most elite boarding schools. Thereâs no discernible advantage for admissions to the Ivies, MIT, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Duke, Northwestern, Duke, etc., all of which reject 90%-plus of this schoolâs applicants with A to A+ GPAs and SAT scores in the 1500s.
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Right, but that poster said that people getting multiple acceptances will be essentially âtaking spotsâ from other applicants. It doesnât work that way.
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Wow. Thanks for sharing. And those kids are so well prepared.
Our state flagship is essentially a safety for everyone, with its 95% admit rate.
The problem is, itâs not an academic match for the very top students.
And DS24, an MIT admit, was deferred at GTech EA. And it wasnât even an impacted major like CS. It was math. And he is demonstrably one of the few very top math kids in the nation.
DS20 before him was admitted to CS and was a Stamps semifinalist. And DS24âs profile is eminently more distinguished. Perhaps they figured he wouldnât be enrolling anyway. Perhaps they even remembered that his brother didnât. But it would have been nice of them to ask.
Itâs a brutal, brutal system, precisely because of how unpredictable it is.
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There is a lot to be said for such a system. It may not result in the smartest students admitted, but it has great advantages of transparency and predictablity, and the students are likely good enough. Knowing by end of junior year ( for most, earlier) which if any Texas state school will admit one is priceless.
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Correct. The spots would still be there. But the selection process becomes more chaotic when âtop tierâ applicants have no choice but to apply to the âlowerâ tiers, making this process extremely chaotic for all involved.
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(Bold mine)
College admission isnât about niceness. Or every qualified student getting a yes at every school they apply to. The doesnât mean the system is broken.
Both of your children sound absolutely brilliant. Iâm sure MIT is happy they admitted them, and I hope S24 has as good an experience there as S20 did.
No one should feel entitled to be accepted at all the schools they apply to. Schools are looking for matches with the students they accept. Not just academically - but socially, financially, etc etc etcâŠup to and including (at some schools) whether the student is more or less likely to actually accept.
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Yeah, that is how a lot of discrimination is justified-not a social match.
Students arent entitled to private admission, but they should be to a high quality state u of their residence if they are in the top 10% of their class or meet gpa/sat cutoffs.
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Not entitled, of course. Just demonstrating on our specific example how messy the system is and why one might have no choice but to apply very broadly if EA doesnât pan out.
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The class rank thing is a trip in and of itself. My kids go to school in a state where class ranking is required by law, but kids donât learn their class rank until toward the end of junior year.
We always knew C24 wasnât likely to be top of their class, but it was a little surprising to learn that their 4.2 weighted GPA just barely cracked the top half of the class. It was a good wake-up call for when they started making their college list, because they have always known that theyâre likely not in the running at the very competitive schools.
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That is a little surprising to hear. The local BS (one of the tops in the nation) sends about 1/3 of their class to T20s - of course many (if not most) of those kids are hooked in some way (recruited athletes, legacies, big donors etc) but it is still a big number.
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Yes, and this is also what would happen if they did âtop X%â from each high school as the academic range of students would be very wide.
Many states (CA, IL, MD, VA, NC, GT, MI as examples) have top tier flagships that are not easy admits even for in-state and have many other public schools that are much easier to get into. I prefer that to what youâre suggesting.
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This might seem like semantics to someâŠbut not liking the choices available doesnât mean someone has âno choice but to apply very broadly if EA doesnât pan outâ.
Students and families have lots of agency when it comes to the decisions surrounding how they approach college admission. Not liking the options doesnât mean they didnât exist.
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Candidly, the high school did you a disservice. He might have spent years thinking/ planning/ visiting schools he had zero chance at if he knew his true rank.
Might be painful to some, but Texas publics provide rank quarterly.
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Well⊠yeah, I guess it might seem like semantics. And English is not my first language:)
But letâs assume for the purposes of this conversation that the goal is not to only just get in somewhere, anywhere, but to find an actual, bona fide academic match with challenging academic environment and stimulating peer group.
And this, of course, will be a different set of places for different kids.
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AFAIK, the only time a school is likely to ask if you will attend if offered a spot is if you are on the waitlist. Otherwise, the schools, especially the privates and those with limited spots for OOS students, can craft a class or defer/WL a student the think is unlikely to attend.
Well, yeah, it was a figure of speech. I do wish I could hear those committee conversations though. 
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