@johnqian - I’ve been following this thread for months and it’s been a very thoughtful and supportive group.
@itsgettingreal17 “fee waivers that are offered by the college but not requested are often a good sign for admissions potential.”
Is there any information regarding this statement you posted (#4214)? Last week my son received an email that said they would like him to apply, fee would be waived and asking him to contact the school to come interview in June or July. I didn’t give it much attention because it was a school he is not interested in. He received two letters inviting him to come visit schools for overnight visits in September and both saying that if he could not visit for financial reasons he could contact them to discuss having his travel expenses paid. He hasn’t applied anywhere yet and hasn’t requested any fee waivers. He wouldn’t qualify for fee waivers or to have his expenses paid. Is this a sign of admission potential as you mentioned in your earliest post or just the next phase of the mailings we’ve all been receiving?
All I’m saying is that just because different states have different cutoffs is probably not a reason schools don’t offer more scholarships for NMF. Schools already have relative score expectations depending on the location of a student. A kid from Westchester, Lower Merion, Fairfax, etc is expected to have a higher standardized test score than a kid from Holmes County, MS or like.
@paveyour that has been my experience. not guaranteed admission but the school is showing very strong interest. Pursue if your son is interested back.
@Dolemite that could be true for state schools but a kid would most likely need to have a serious hook (or be a legacy kid) to be able to offset something below the bottom quarter of SAT scores accepted at, say HYP, MIT, Stanford or equivalent. Not saying kids don’t get into those schools with relatively poor test scores - UChicago admitted someone with a 22 ACT last year, for instance. But it’s beyond difficult to get in with a score like that under the normal (or even large majority of) circumstances. Sports can account for some lower scores but those kids tend not to be from disadvantaged areas. Yes, guessing that all else equal your geographic area can help at the margin but that might a lot more to do with trying to recruit very talented and high performing kids from less representative areas than it does just trying to be geographically diverse for the sake of diversity (and adjusting scores accordingly). Truth is, at those schools you still have to hit a minimum test score or 99.9% chance your application is simply not considered. Despite their claims of holistic application review, etc. the adcoms at the most selective places will toss a great many applications simply due to insufficiently low test scores. They definitely believe there is a strong correlation between test scores and academic success at that institution.
Been away for a while but glad to see this thread still going. @Mamelot 4524. Absolutely agree. Not sure if there’s an unofficial SAT cutoff for HYPS adcoms for unhooked applicants but I suspect it’s 2200. For the other Ivies and elite schools, it’s probably 2100 or maybe 2150. The problem adcoms face, I think, is that they always admit URMs, legacies, recruits, 1st gens etc. (some of whom but not all will have significantly lower SATs/ACTs than the median,) and so they need those kids with very high scores to balance those lower scoring admits to keep their USWNR rankings competitive. If you knew exactly how many low scorers they admit (bottom quartile or lower), which could be a significant percentage of an incoming class, you could probably guess what score you will need if you don’t fit into one of those special boxes.
Still that doesn’t equate why they don’t offer large scholarships to NMF. The main reason is they either don’t offer merit aid or very little. It’s not because different states have different cutoffs.
I disagree @Dolemite. There are many schools that offer merit but don’t want to do NMS. Lets face it, if you do really well on the PSAT in the fall of your junior year, and meet your state cutoff, you have a 90% chance of winning NMS. So basically, its a contest predominantly based on 1 test. Many colleges prefer to give Merit in a ‘holistic’ way - rewarding high GPA, high SAT/ACT, etc… Sometimes they want to give merit to students who excel in particular academic areas (say History or Art).
NMSF is 1 test but getting NMF is high SAT and GPA and not being in trouble. Anyhoo I still don’t see what it has to do with different cutoffs in different states. That is just relative comparison of peers which colleges say they do all the time.
Last year you could get a 202 in Wyoming PSAT to get NMS. In order to get it in NJ or DC, you’d have to have a 225. I don’t think that is a relative comparison of peers. Yes, its one test… but that is the foundation of this contest- this one test.
Anyway, those are the rules and it is what it is. Many colleges don’t like the format of this contest, so choose to give merit based on their own merit formats.
Is it better to have a 1400 CR/M from Wyoming or a 1500 from NJ to get into a highly selective school all other things being equal?
@Pickmen at #4525 that makes sense. Let’s do some simple math to highlight the issue:
30,000 apply and 3,000 are accepted (10% acceptance rate overall). That’s a pretty low rate already, but when you consider that, say, 750 are “special box” admits (in our example), that leaves 29,250 kids vying for 2,250 slots. That’s an effective rate of 7.8%, not 10%, for most of our kids. Furthermore, let’s say that the special box group has an average SAT-equivalent of 2100, but the overall median that the school reports is around 2250 (not unusual at all when you consider that several elite schools report perfect scores for the top quartile!). That means, folks, that the remaining 2,250 admits will have submitted SAT scores at or near 2300, on average. Obviously some are going to be higher, and some lower. As long at it average out to 2300.
@Dolemite at #4530, it’s better to have a 1500 from Wyo. than from NJ, all other things being equal. And it’s better to have a 1500 than a 1400 regardless of your state. And if you are a 1400 it might just be better to be from NJ where your school is better known to said college, than from Wyo. Obviously those are generalities but they are also generally accurate.
@Mamelot – a bit related but a bit off topic…the Wash Post ran an article today about how many of the kids who are poor/perhaps first generation admit, and get full rides to top schools are struggling financially. They have problems affording books, food, etc.
Also, I would argue that a kid from Wyo will have a better time getting admitted anywhere if everything else is equal. Those admission overview slides often show that the school has kids attending from every state.
Sure they are attending from every state, @thinmints. And their stats probably ARE competitive with their peer group on a national basis. There are college prep programs in Wyoming and there are smart kids in Wyo. The low number of NMF’s is due to population, and the low cut-off reflects socio-economic and infrastructure differences between Wyo and, say, NJ or MA. Where you see lots of universities, research parks, large urban centers with a heavy concentration in service sector jobs, you are obviously going to see higher cut-offs.
30-40 years ago, being a high performing kid from a “more modest cut-off” state used to be a disadvantage in terms of elite college applications simply because there was a strong possibility Harvard had never heard of the local public high school. A lot of that has changed over the years as high schools have adapted best practices nation wide, income has increased dramatically across the country and parents who are themselves college graduates are more aware of the college prep process (and more demanding of their schools, particularly in areas such as middle and upper-middle income suburbia). These are national trends, not region-specific ones. Also, resources like the internet and parent forums on CC simply didn’t exist back then - ease of information sharing today vs. when we were all applying to college simply can’t be emphasized enough. Finally, schools - even state flagships - are competing for kids on a nationwide basis rather than drawing predominantly from a specific region of the country. As selectivity has increased, so have recruitment strategies and efforts to identify kids who will be a good fit, regardless of where they live. These are general trends, of course but they explain why someone from, say, Wyo might have a much better chance attending an elite college today than a few decades ago.
Thanks for the tip from the Washington Post. I’ll have to read it!
My son just got his sat back and got a 1500 on his SAT so I am guessing he didn’t do as well as his PSAT How do you compare? He had a 37 reading 36 writing 38.5 math. I know the scores are inflated so how does it compare to last years scores
His PSAT was a 1490 222
I guess I thought he would of improved some since October
He had trouble with the essay. Any tips for doing better on that.
1500 is a great score. Did he take the ACT? Are you focused on schools that offer National Merit? With a 222 in Maine, you will be finalist (assuming his essay is good and his grades are good), so if you are focused on National Merit schools, I think he’s done.