@thermom–your comment about Tufts prompted me to pull up their enrollment figures along with G-town’s. Even though I visited Tufts, I had forgotten how many grad students were there. Not in ANY way trying to change your D’s opinion, b/c I have learned to just go with those gut feelings, but Tufts has never struck me as university-like. Perhaps due to its presence in the NESCAC, which I do not understand since it is that much larger than the other NESCAC members. I do think of G-town as larger, but haven’t visited there. Just the perception from my own days in HS, and many of my perceptions were wrong and/or the schools changed dramatically.
I agree with you 100% though that knowing what you do not like is at least, if not more, important than what you do like. Older son could never rule out anything; they were all ‘fine’, whereas younger son has had those gut reactions, and I am just going with him.
No real point to my post…just rambling.
Oh, and Tufts and demonstrating interest…but they do not offer interviews and my son will not be applying ED I or ED II, so there goes that.
Looking at Naviance, 2/3 of the students who applied ED were admitted but only 20% of those who applied RD. Even though they are in the NESCAC and our HS sends many recruited athletes to NESCAC schools, I don’t recall any going to Tufts, so those are academic admits.
I think to really thrive a bigger school you need to be able to put yourself out there a little more. Not be afraid to speak up in a large class, and so on. It’s not for everyone.
Regarding interviews: I think D17 will go after as many as she can. As a mock interview, she is meeting with a friend of mine who is an alum from the school she is interviewing with in a couple of weeks.
Update on my eye roller. @eandesmom you were right, she apologized. She said she needs me to nag to keep her on track. I feel better but I hate nagging! Now her CA essay is done but to use it for the one school on the COA it needs to be 200 words shorter. I hate the coalition app!
@thermom Do I remember correctly that your daughter might want to pursue Chem E? If so, as I’m sure you know, LACs that offer engineering are not super abundant.
FWIW, my shy, “crowds, noooooooooo” daughter liked Tufts when we visited. If engineering is still in play, I wouldn’t cross off the 5-7K undergrad places just yet. Case Western is also worth considering because you can move in or out of engineering from Arts & Sciences without having to apply to switch colleges.
If she’s not thinking of engineering, then there are many LACs that would love to have a young woman with stats like your daughter, and would probably offer some merit aid too.
@greeny8 that is classic! Absolutely something my son would say. Tonight out of the blue he told me he hadn’t started on his activities list yet, that he’s been too busy. To which I simply replied, I know. Not in an I know you haven’t done it way, but I know you’ve been busy way.
He then got defensive, and I mentioned I hadn’t asked him about it. He got more defensive saying that he knew it was on his to do list and he “just thought I should know”.
Picking a fight about something he hasn’t done yet that I had not asked about and quite frankly wasn’t expecting until Sunday at the earliest. Oooooo kayyyy.
But hey he knows he needs to do it and has self imposed guilt so maybe that’s not all bad. Welcome to the fun house!
I suspect that survey gave CB and ACT heart failure. When over 70% of adcoms respond agree/strongly agree that a more schools are going to go test optional and only 6% disagree/strongly disagree, that does not bode well for the testing industry.
My D finally got her ACT scores this morning and got a 36! She’s super excited and speaking of sibling rivalries her little bro will probably hear about it for quite a long time. He’s only 11 and he kept throwing his perfect PSSAs in her face forever, so now she can exact a bit of revenge. She had a nice superscored SAT but this will be ‘cleaner’ as it’s her 1 and only ACT sitting. Hopefully the Writing won’t be some outlier.
Congrats @Dolemite to your D!! That’s fabulous news. My DS18 took it for the first time - still waiting on his score - not expecting he’ll be close to done though.
wow @Dolemite. That is a great score and an amazing outcome, especially in a single sitting. I’m really impressed with a lot of the kids on this thread and their amazing test scores. I personally don’t know too many kids who have scored the tip top scores. We know some kids that got 34’s, but I have not heard of kids getting 35/36 or 1600 on SAT’s around here. Most of my son’s friends are not getting the results they want, stuck below 30, and they really want to go to some schools where those scores may hold them back.
Question about Naviance acceptance graphs:
How confident are you when you look at your schools Naviance graph and find your child sits on the upper right quadrant of acceptances? For example, if I look at a school like Northeastern, it shows most kids that have been accepted have had scores of 30 plus ACT and GPA of 4.2W and above. I understand how competitive it is to get in there nowadays, and now my son’s scores and GPA sit well in that “good zone”. No kid in our school has been denied in the “good zone”. And there have been plenty of kids accepted with scores and gpa lower. Lots of kids accepted early action. So I wonder how realistic my son should be if he applies there? Until he got the scores back from his last ACT I considered several schools he was possibly interested in as reaches, as he was stuck in the under 30 ACT category. Now I think he may have a better shot, but I still think it’s super competitive at some of those schools where they are looking for the ultimate stats? But then why so many kids from our school getting accepted with lesser stats? It is interesting. ( please note: not a humble brag question. I’m truly curious. I’m also super envious of your awesome kids and their superior scores )
I think you can rely on Naviance in this instance…sounds like you’ve got lots of data points. Obviously, no guarantees…thus the mantra: “find and love thy safety”
Find just a few more schools that fit the “I can be happy and afford here” with similar Naviance line-up and you and child should be sittin’ pretty!
@RightCoaster — my concern with Naviance and a school like Northeastern is that your Naviance may include six years of admission history and NE has become increasingly selective during that timeframe, more so than many schools. As in, most schools have become more selective, but NE has tweaked things: lowering the amount of $$ for NMF, adding ED to what had historically only been EA option. I have not been following NE so cannot provide more concrete data than those two points, but I would be more cautious with NE than with some other school that has not been rising in selectivity.
I just tried to log into Naviance to give you data from our school, but Naviance is down at the moment.
Will your S be applying ED or EA? Does your Naviance break out the Early vs Regular admit stats? Our scattergrams do not, but the School Data section does, so sometimes that can help also by seeing the avg admit GPA & SAT of ED vs RD plus percentage admitted in each category.
Can your GC provide stats of admits from last year or two? I know my guidance would not but no harm in asking.
S17 thankfully doesn’t have to do any interviews. It would not be a strength of his.
@RightCoaster One of the things schools look at is “Rigor of School”. Some H.S. (the one my son is at as well) are known as being very rigorous & that their students do well at their university. This perceived difficulty will affect the college acceptance rate in the GPA range. This can affect acceptances & may be way all the student in that range are accepted from your school. I an counting a bit on this for my S17, where he looks good for most of his schools on Naviance but if you go by global calculators he’s more on the iffy side. I’m going by Naviance numbers, although I find it can be hard to interpret particularly for U of California schools.
@RightCoaster - If there are lots of green dots that sit under my DD’s stats, it make me very comfortable about her admission chances. At my DDs school this phenomenon is generally explained by the counseling office having a very good relationship with the regional AD for the respective college. Then there are schools (not HYPSM) where everyone seems to be denied and you wonder if something happened in the past like a student reneging on an ED acceptance.
I’m just using Northeaster as an expample, because it has gotten so popular and harder to get into. My son liked it there, but I really thought he had a small chance of getting in with his old scores. Now with the new scores he stands a bit better chance, I think.
On our Naviance the mean accepted was like 4.3 and 30 ACT. And most if not all the acceptances were EA results. There are acceptances lower than the mean, such as 4.2 and 29, which is why I thought he still had a small chance of getting in with old scores. He is going to apply EA and he will be full pay so I guess that can’t hurt. I think our school had around 45 apply and around 25 got in last year, with a handful choosing to attend. The graph does show a decent number of kids with 4.5 and up and 34’s getting in.
One thing I noticed is that there are not as many dots shown on the graph as the number of applicants. I think our school only inputs the last 5 years of data into the graphs, if I remember right.
My son is an interesting case study. Unlike some of the kids in here he is fairly normal student for his grade ( lots of accomplished kids in here) . He has decent test scores and a decent GPA, but is nowhere near the top of his class. He has OK EC’s. But he is just another suburban boy from New England without much that stands out. It will be interesting to see how fares in the admissions process.
I think the rigor of the school does come into play at son’s school. Lots of well educated parents and students. Top 150 Public school in nation. There are tons of high performing students. My kid is in the mix, but not like some of the super stats kids with 12 AP’s 4.6 gpa 35 ACT. That’s why he is not anywhere near the top of his class. But compared to other kids nationally I think he is fairly respected.
@RightCoaster I agree with @Testingearly. For example, I see our Naviance for UMD-CP, all green dots above average test score and GPAs, and there are many many of those dots on the graph. I feel that I can trust this graph
I finally broke down and emailed the CC at D’s HS. She is brand new this year and is responsible for college and career counselling for all 400+ seniors. (new position this year). I am sure she has no idea who my D is, and I have no idea if she is knowledgeble. However I have been impressed with the communication from her in the last (weekly emails with links, reminders, and suggestions - near daily reminder texts - etc) I have seen more info from her about the college app process in the past 4 weeks than I have in the past 3.5 yrs.
SO - I am still worried that D’s list is too reach heavy (got safeties…just missing the matches) especially since her ACT didn’t improve. I realized I was just assuming the new CC is useless and not giving her a fair shake. Last night I sent her a nice email asking for suggestions/recommendations on Ds list.
She replied promptly saying she would be out today but will spend some time next week with it and get back to me. Fingers crossed she has some good insight…
)