OK - though I stand by my post, I do want to clarify a bit.
The first kid I mentioned - rower at Brown. He may have had the stats - or at least decent ones. This is the nephew of a friend I was talking to whose daughter was accepted ED to one of the tippy top LACs, and he said that, while she had average stats for that school, the swimming definitely put her over the top. She knew she was getting in before she sent in her ED application. They had no backup plan. But anyway, I don’t mean to suggest that the nephew didn’t have the grades to be competitive at Brown. It may have also been the case that the rowing was what put him over the edge. I don’t know.
This other kid - hey I love her, I love her family, and I love my hometown and my alma mater. I got a great education there. All I’m saying is I know this child’s background and I’m pretty confident in stating that she doesn’t have ivy league academic credentials. Would she have ultimately gotten the green light from the admissions office? I don’t know - sure sounds like it, but I’m getting the whole story about recruitment second hand.
As far as allegations of borderline racism - WTH?!
The reality again is that, for some high schools with some colleges, they are only going to take so many students. If a legacy and an athlete are already going to Princeton after ED from our school, no one else is getting in. I don’t know why a discussion like this is “ugly”. I don’t know that it’s true that those kids took someone’s spot. That’s assuming that the non-athlete or legacy would have gotten in if those two weren’t accepted first. And no one would ever know if that would have happened.
Vanderbilt has taken the same number of kids from our school for a while now. Not sure it’s coincidence. I’m sure there’s no exact number but maybea range. S19 and three of his track friends all applied. Their rigor, scores, grades and even a lot of their ECs overlap. And of course they are not the only ones from our school who applied RD. That decision will be interesting.
On a side note, the only two who got into Vandy ED are legacies!
@wisteria100 if you ever want a good chuckle, you can google a lot of the private schools in the North East and search for last years matriculation. Most private schools post up online where last year’s class enrolled, some by the kid’s name! Crazy! I think they try to outdo one another, it’s a huge gloat fest.
As an example, I know several kids that have attended here through the years:
The amount of info floating around out there is crazy to me- as homeschoolers we are just guessing in the dark if a school will look favorably on my kids’ records or not. I have read that at D19’s college (Haverford) that athletes really don’t get an admissions bump. I have no clue if that’s true. She’s a serious athlete but not at a recruitable level and not one that they offer anyway. I do sometimes wonder how she got in with a composite score near/below their 25% considering their need aware and we are full need. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, right?
Gosh I don’t know about the ACT 19 kid and his GPA. Of course he doesn’t have a super high one. Not sure what’s up there. I suppose he could be lying for effect and saying his ACT is lower than it really was. He’s the kind of kid who bullies smart kids so maybe he thinks it’s funny to say he got a 19. But his classs and his rigor were for sure on the lower end.
I think that for some of the selective LACs the applicant pool overall is pretty strong. I think there’s more of the I’ll just apply for the heck of it thing going on at Ivy’s or schools like Duke, UCLA etc. So at a LAC, you’ve got a strong pool where most of the kids are really super qualified and then some of these schools accept only around 1,000 kids. The math is just really tough at these schools, and even though the accept rate at some of these schools may be higher than at certain Ivy’s, I think it is harder to get in for an unhooked kid at these types of schools.
Oh for crying out loud @carolinamom2boys - I’m not saying somebody took my kid’s slot. There’s no entitlement mentality here. My kid applied to Brown because he liked it and it is his reach school. One of only two. He spent time there last summer, he’s familiar with the campus, felt comfortable there, he liked the city and the fact that it’s the home to a number of social enterprises. He liked the diversity of the student body, and he thought the open curriculum would be great for him. I’d like for him to get in because I think he would be very happy there, and I like to see my kid happy. Is it the end of the world if he doesn’t get in? No. End of story.
I will point out that if there’s a kid with a 19 ACT but also a 3.9 GPA (assuming evidence from, say, class rank that a 3.9 means what one would expect a 3.9 to mean), then that’s pretty good evidence that the high-stakes standardized test isn’t really good evidence of ability or potential.
High school GPA is still the single best predictor of college success. Standardized test scores are predictive, yes, but they’re a very weak predictor. (My favorite stat along these lines: A student who scores an 18 ACT but earns a 3.5 high school GPA is nearly 20 percentage points—not 20%, 20 percentage points!—more likely to graduate from college than a student with a 24 ACT and a 2.5 or lower high school GPA.)
@RightCoaster my best guess is that she just won them over otherwise. She had a great interview, impressed their professor, has great ECs and a perfect gpa… but she just didn’t hit that test score mark and she didn’t take any other tests (APs or SAT 2s)- and she is homeschooled. I think that the fact that none of her grades were given by me helped tremendously though and I’m fairly terrified for younger D who didn’t go the CC for high school route.
@Trixy34 I don’t see where @carolinamom2boys is calling you out personally. There are plenty of threads on CC where this mentality of “taking my spot” is discussed especially in light of the current admissions scandal.
@milgymfam aren’t you guys Questbridge? I think that can help. Schools like to have a certain number of Questbridge kids. I know some kids don’t get matched so it doesn’t work for everyone but yours did and that’s great!
We’ve had some in our house. The couple of Ivy athletes we know are good GPA students with high rigor, although they are not the highest GPA or most rigor students in the grade. And the highest GPA and highest rigor students we know were deferred from the highly selective schools they applied to (aside from my d, who as far as we know was the only ED applicant and it’s a College our school does regularly send kids to). So, I have no doubt they can and will do well in the future. I tend to have some mixed feelings on it all as someone who isn’t into athletics and all and had kids with very little hand eye coordination, but it is what it is and we choose not to care more than a shrug of the shoulders over the hook it gives.
As far as naviance, ours was fairly helpful but our daughter was applying to schools lore known to us (lots of data points) and I knew some of the accepted kids in the last couple of years (through fb, not through counselors) and roughly what type of students they were, so it helped figuring out some of the fit and qualities valued by the schools. My daughter’s friends who all received a series of rejections last week from schools ours rarely/never get accepted to were apparently saying “Naviance doesn’t lie!” But I can see it being a your mileage may vary issue.
As far as assuming abilities and standardized scores… it makes me very uncomfortable. My daughter was very annoyed last week when her friends (in the midst of their venting, so she’s let it go) were speculating about how low they think some other kids probably scored on the SAT and how they shouldn’t get into XYZ college. D tried mentioning that most colleges are looking at more than just a score, as long as the score hits a minimum. But they weren’t in the mood. She was just glad she never shared hers with anyone at school.
As far as making assumptions about others getting into colleges and it probably being because of a hook, that’s actually something we have talked about. My daughter was accepted to engineering and will probably face hearing that she got in because she is a female in engineering. Just like some kids will hear they got in because of minority status or because they are first generation or because they are full pay or because because because. If someone is looking for reasons another kid is unworthy, they can probably find one they think justifies their belief. Worrying about those people is pointless, and gives them power they don’t deserve.
I will chime in about my family’s personal experience so far. D17 was a strong student but we knew applying to Duke ED (legacy) was a reach. She was denied ED. One other kid was accepted ED. He was a very strong applicant. Another student got in off of the WL. She applied RD and was a legacy. Very high stats and a great kid (I taught her back in ES).
D17 ended up at UVA (legacy). She was certainly a strong applicant, but there were those from our HS with higher gpas (but I don’t think their ECs were as strong). So perhaps the legacy “hook” helped her, but she was also accepted at Michigan, UCB and UCLA. Also, lots of kids apply to UVA from our school, but of the admitted kids–legacies are the ones that end up going. That’s just the way it is.
My son is now awaiting his decision from UVA and I’m just sick at the thought that he won’t get in. Higher ACT than his sister and almost the same wgpa (a little bit harder courseload, but a few Bs first semester freshman year kept his unweighted gpa lower than hers). But, it’s two years later and who knows?
Duke and UVA are not the Ivy League or an LAC. Anecdotally, our school does send kids to those. Many are athletes, legacies and URMs. Many are not. Daughter’s year we had kids get in and go to Cornell, Penn, ND, and Amherst (athlete).
So far, this year, I know a high stats legacy applied ED to Penn and was rejected. The sole (so far) Harvard admit is an athlete. We had 2 kids accepted ED to Princeton (URM) All of these kids are exceptional in some way and I hope all of our kids end up at great schools for them.