Parents of the HS Class of 2013

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
4101

<p>Wow! Congrats to those with great scores and, better yet, to those who don’t have to go through it again! </p>

<p>D took her ACT last weekend, and has no idea how she did. Her practice tests were giving her 27s and 28s, with a 20 and 21 in math. She put in alot of hours on a math study prep, but I am not sure it will make a difference. She just does not have a math brain. We went ahead and signed her up for the March SAT, I think we may see which one she does better on and go from there if she needs to retest.</p>

<p>I have been a little bit bummed because D will only be at a 3.4 gpa after this semester, I thought she was closer to a 3.5. She does have valid reasons for her grades, and there is definitely an upward trend, but it makes me want her to do that much better on the ACT/SAT to compensate. I keep this to myself, and feel terribly guilty because she is working hard…sigh. I <em>think</em> Carleton is dropping off of her list due to the gen ed requirements, but she is still totally in love with Smith. </p>

<p>On a brighter note, conferences were this week and D’s teachers gave her glowing reviews. Lots of positive comments, which is always great to hear, in my mind I was keeping track of who would be good for recommendations. </p>

<p>DD did attend a reception in our area for Earlham, she enjoyed it very much. Only public school kid there, though, which makes me wonder who she will be up against at admissions time. We were planning on visiting Earlham, Denison, Oberlin, and Kalamazoo over this long break, but I have been sick so that didn’t happen. Now to try to sqeeze those in somewhere else!</p>

4102

<p>I hear you about your daughter not having a math brain. I definitely don’t, in part, I think, because my mother has math anxiety and didn’t encourage me in math. I made such an effort to encourage my own daughter and sought out the best school options I could afford and she has done much better than I ever did, but she is still my child. My D13 got back her Jan SAT scores and found that her math score had actually gone down. In fall 2010 she hit a 800 CR and this Jan she hit 790 on writing but she hasn’t scored higher than 650 in math since fall 2008. She says she’s done. I’ve been wishing I had gotten her tutoring or done something else but I just need to get over it. She wants to study social sciences and languages. Hopefully she’ll get in somewhere amazing that we can afford regardless of her lower math score.</p>

4103

<p>Gosh, Apollo, I hope so. It’s not like 650 is “bad”; it’s just not as super-duper as that 790 and 800! If she were studying engineering I could see it being a handicap, but if her future lies in the humanities, then I hope that it won’t be detrimental.</p>

<p>Ds2 spent some time today on Naviance relooking at his list with the new SAT score in mind. He’s decided that he has four reaches, four matches and two safeties. I can live with that! It’s a little tricky for him because some of his matches have kind of low acceptance rates (17-22% acceptance rates), but his SAT is in the top 25% at those schools, so I told him to count them as matches. :eek:</p>

4104

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<p>I’d be a little more cautious than that in rating schools with low acceptance rates. Any school with an acceptance rate below 25% automatically goes down as a “reach” in our household. If the applicant is in the top quartile in each of the major statistical categories (SAT CR, SAT M, and unweighted GPA) then it might be a “low reach,” especially if the acceptance rate is toward the high end of that under-25% range. But I don’t want my daughters to develop unrealistic expectations only to have them dashed by rejection letters from schools they counted as “matches,” when the sheer numbers say their odds of admission are pretty iffy. </p>

<p>Look at Brown’s admissions profile:</p>

<p>[Admission</a> Facts | Undergraduate Admission](<a href=“Undergraduate Admission | Brown University”>Undergraduate Admission | Brown University)</p>

<p>They reject 81% of HS valedictorians, 80% of those scoring 800 on SAT CR, and 83% of those scoring 800 on SAT M. Now Brown is way at the selective end (9% acceptance rate), but I figure if it’s that brutal at Brown, there must be a lot of kids with really good stats getting rejected from places like Middlebury (17% acceptance rate) and Bowdoin (20% acceptance rate), too.</p>

4105

<p>Apollo, your daughter has 2240, that is very good score.
YDS, how do you figure reach, match, and safety? I used the combination of GPA/SAT and found the number of kids were rejected from specific college. If it’s more than 50% acceptance on naviance then it’s a reach(like MIT for example, 3 ouf of 6/7 kids), if everybody was accepted with such combination then it’s a match/safety. However, I have a problem distinguishing between match and safety and there are too many in the list. For example, with her combination UCLA is a safety, nobody has been rejected with such combination. However, for UCB it’s a match because one kid was rejected out of maybe 10 kids that were accepted.</p>

4106

<p>Yep. For ds1, we put anything with an AR less than 20% in the reach category, yet he was accepted into several of his reaches. I figured with ds2 I’d loosen that up a bit. I mean, moving them into the match group doesn’t mean a definite yes; it means that he’s in the range and has a better than 50-50 chance of getting in, in our minds. And I think that’s the case for him. </p>

<p>For instance, one school on his list is Johns Hopkins. It has a 22% acceptance rate, but he’s well into the top 25% of the SAT scores and, according to Naviance, he shouldn’t have a problem. So I’m OK putting that one in the match category, even with the 22% acceptance rate. But YMMV. You have to do what you’re comfortable with. Having been done this road once, I’m OK with taking a couple of risks.</p>

4107

<p>DrG, I didn’t even look at GPA. We used acceptance rates, SAT scores and then a little bit of judgment.</p>

<p>For ds1, anything with a less than 20% AR was a reach, regardless of where he fell SAT-wise. Anything with a 70% or more AP was a safety, regardless of where he fell SAT-wise. That was the “science” part. Everything else was a match, unless there was a compelling or nuanced reason for moving it into another category, which was the “art” part. For instance, there were several schools with ARs in the 40s, but his SAT scores were well above their average and I gave him points for both ethnic diversity (we’re URMs) and geographic diversity (three of the schools were OOS). Additionally, faraway LACs looking for males often got moved into a lower category. A couple of them we called matches, but we knew they were really safeties, for all intents and purposes. He got into all of them. He got into schools with ARs ranging from 19% to 94%. His only rejection was from a school with a 9% AR (we never visited, got a free app so he applied) and then a WL from a school with a 23% AR.</p>

<p>Does that make sense?</p>

4108

<p>Yes, I’m still digesting all the information, make sure it all sink in. I will borrow your ideas for your son and fine tune to D2. Her hook maybe is that she is female with math and science interest, possibly engineering.She will not be interest in LACs which favor male.</p>

4109

<p>Anyone can tell me what courses should be selected for Gr 12? Someone told me that most colleges request two science courses. My S is in IB and the only science he got is Physics. There was no Chemistry for IB first year. He may choose majors of business or math related. Do you think he really needs another science course? Please help.</p>

4110

<p>Pigmom: Yes definitely another science, honestly most want 3 with 2 of those being a lab course. He did not take biology?</p>

4111

<p>Pigmom: I think most schools want at least 2 years of science, although I want to make sure that you’re not asking if he should take 2 sciences in one year (which isn’t necessary for anyone.) D2 will end up with 4 years of science (our district requires that for the honors diploma option.)</p>

<p>Realized last night why D2 would never be on CC herself. At about 10pm she looked at me and said “hey don’t SAT scores come out soon?” Yup, yesterday. “Oh, did you look? How’d I do? Guess I’ll check, what’s my login?” Definitely isn’t one of the kids who are waiting up to see their scores ;)</p>

4112

<p>pigmom, take at least the trio of science: bio, chem, physics.</p>

4113

<p>Hey, all. I got a PM from a lurker on our thread (I think) asking about Naviance. I wrote something up about how if you don’t have access to it, you can still get the info you need to make reasonable assumptions about making a reach/match/safety list. I thought I’d share here in case others don’t know about the Common Data Set. Here’s my PM …</p>

<p>"Usually, Naviance is purchased by schools or school districts to help counselors and parents with the college app process. Different schools set it up differently. Some schools may only allow for counselor access, but, IMO, that would be a shame because it’s a really helpful tool for families to get some skin in the game. Some schools only allow upperclassmen and their families to have access. Some schools, like ours, let all kids have access but then only open certain features to upperclassmen.</p>

<p>"If your school doesn’t have it, then Google “Naviance guest access” and you’ll find lots of schools that will allow you to log on as a guest and get some level of information. However, you have to take that data with a grain of salt because it’s specific to THAT school. If you’re in Missouri and you’re looking at Naviance for a school in Massachusetts, it’s a bit of apples and oranges.</p>

<p>"But you can still get a lot of this data – enough to set a reasonably informed reach/match/safetly list – without Naviance. For instance you can Google “School name” and “Common data set.” The CDS is something every college that receives federal aid is required to submit to the govt (I think I’m right about that). The section you want to check out is section C. LOTS of great info there, the same stuff found on Naviance and even more. Naviance is just more convenient. Here’s an example: <a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/2...0Admission.pdf[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/2...0Admission.pdf&lt;/a&gt; This is section C of the Amherst CDS for 2010-2011. Spend some time looking at it. You’ll find the middle 50% range for SAT and ACT (page 4) and what admissions considers most important when applying (page 2). You can even pull out the old calculator and discover that the admit rate for boys is higher (17%) vs girls (14%) from info on page 1. On page 5, you can see that they don’t even track GPA, what DrGoogle was talking about on the 2013/2017 thread. But you’ll note that 100% of their students were in the top half of their class. But also note that only 52% even reported a class rank! (pigmom, note that Amherst recommends three years of science, one of them a lab; that’s on pages 1 and 2).</p>

<p>"I hope this helps. If your school has Naviance and just doesn’t let parents use it, I’d ask why not. Know that it’s sold at varying levels, so maybe your school thinks the parent portion is cost prohibitive? Anyway, like I said, you don’t NEED it, but it is quite helpful and convenient.</p>

<p>“Oh, and a lot of this info can be found through cc. For instance, go to the Amherst page and click on the “School Info” link and it’ll take you to College View and you’ll get a lot of this same stuff: <a href=“http://www.collegeview.com/schools/a...ege/testscores[/url]”>http://www.collegeview.com/schools/a...ege/testscores&lt;/a&gt; .”</p>

<p>Anyway, there’s lots of other good stuff in the CDS. Note that rigor and GPA is more important than rank to them. Sometimes, it’s difficult to find the CDS on a school’s website, but there are websites out there that compile the info for you, like this one: [Links</a> to the Common Data Sets Posted by Colleges – College Confidential College Planning Mom](<a href=“http://collegeplanningmom.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2010/03/08/links-to-the-common-data-sets-posted-by-colleges-college-confidential/]Links”>http://collegeplanningmom.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2010/03/08/links-to-the-common-data-sets-posted-by-colleges-college-confidential/) I can’t personally vouch for this one; it’s just the first one I saw so c&p’ed the URL.</p>

<p>And in personal news, ds2’s team is 6-0 through the first half of the season! Woohoo!</p>

<p>ETA: Boy, that was long!! :)</p>

4114

<p>Clarification. I mentioned GPA/SAT in reference to our high school’s Naviance for accepted students to a certain college, and NOT in the Common Data Set.</p>

4115

<p>Gotcha. Yeah, I think I’m just too lazy to even think about GPA, in Naviance or the CDS. ;)</p>

<p>I do love a good CDS, though. Ds and I leave tomorrow to look at couple of schools, and it occurred to me that I should look up the CDS for those schools.</p>

4116

<p>For those of you who don’t have Naviance (like us!) you may want to look into Cappex: [College</a> Search and Reviews, Scholarships, College Admissions Chances - Cappex](<a href=“http://www.■■■■■■■■■■/]College”>http://www.■■■■■■■■■■/) </p>

<p>Obviously it’s not giving you odds/examples from your school, but at least it gives you a sense of where your childs test scores & GPA place them in a schools admission pool. Everytime I’ve looked it’s confirmed what my gut feeling says about chances at a school, but of course YMMV.</p>

4117

<p>Thanks, Rob. I haven’t even looked there. I guess because we have Naviance. I wonder if there’s any interesting tidbits on cappex that aren’t on Naviance?</p>

4118

<p>I don’t know YDS. It has a college match feature & you can plug your stats in and for each of the schools on your list it gives you a scattergram showing where you fall. It seems fairly accurate, to the extent that anything can be especially for the very selective schools. There’s also a college visit planner that looks pretty handy.</p>

4119

<p>I’ve discovered the college match feature is useful. The Supermatch feature has all the Ivy leagues. Not sure that’s very helpful.</p>

4120

<p>I log into Naviance with my S’ user/pass. Oops?</p>

<p>I loved the scattergrams, very helpful info specific to accepts from our HS.</p>