Just looked up D’s high school Naviance for 2019 and it’s very sobering (accept %, number acceptances):
UCLA 13% (17 of 132)
USC 13% (15 of 116)
UC Irvine 14% (11 of 80)
UCSD 17% (17 of 101)
UC Berkeley 18% (18 of 98)
UCSB 23% (31 of 142)
UC Davis 27% (19 of 71)
Cal Poly SLO 28% (27 of 95)
Tulane 10% (4 of 40)
Vanderbilt 4% (1 of 25)
Duke 0% (0 of 23)
I feel a bloodbath coming for my D’s Class of 2020…
Wow, @socaldad2002 that’s pretty rough. ?
@socaldad2002 They haven’t posted 2019 data yet but have you looked up your HS stats here? https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/admissions-source-school
Or is it the class of 2019 was unrealistic in where they applied?
Not in CA, so our naviance data not comparable, but I checked for 3 of those schools in 2018:
Duke, 2 of 9
Vanderbilt, 3 of 15
Tulane, 3 of 9
Also, I would say that at least 2-3 of the applicants were not in range, score-wise, for each of those schools.
I have noticed that for certain slices of schools (e.g. Ivy, NESCAC) kids from our HS tend to do better than the overall published stats. (With the exception of one ivy which mysteriously has accepted zero in the past five years).
Ours is a medium, public, very diverse, competitive (???) HS. Our demographic includes a ton of high stats URMs, so I think that is why so many strong colleges visit our school and know the GCs well. We also have a 10 app limit. That forces each kid to build lists fairly carefully, and for GCs to help kids with that, but also signals to colleges that most apps are serious ones. Could be wrong on that last point. I know my S20’s GC spent hours with him (and me and dad, too) whittling down the list. And they have a very ‘anti-spit-balling’ attitude in the dept. My kid was not encouraged to ‘throw an application in.’ They treated each app as a sort of precious thing. Maybe because the list building is so careful, it explains why most kids I know only apply to five or six schools. Of the 19 seniors on my son’s two teams this past year, only one applied to a lot (10) and that was probably because he was having choice-of-major angst. He was accepted at 8, by the way, and still has choice of major angst as he heads off to UVA.
While there are always a few kids who are tortured by an ED deferment every year, we have not seen the kinds of disastrous years talked about on CC. The top 10 or so kids all land as hoped. There are one or two schools which seem to baffle the GCs each year (and which schools those are seems to randomly change). Last year it was Georgetown, previous year U of M.
Of course I am talking about the high stats kids in our HS (about 50 each year). They receive a ridiculously fantastic amount of help from the GCs and teachers, given ours is a public HS. Sometimes I think my son’s GC cares more about where my son get accepted than my son does. He has been the GC for all 3 of my kids and knows them very well, and only my third was a high stats kid. He has certainly been a bright spot in this process.
Fingers crossed that my son’s first choice isn’t the one school which suddenly ices our HS this admissions year!
Wow, @cypresspat, your S’s HS sounds a lot like my D18’s school. I hope he’s enjoyed his time there. Wishing him the best senior year!
Wow @socaldad2002 that is pretty rough! It is amazing to me how much these stats can just keep going up at such a rate every year. How if I google SAT averages and it shows up from 2016, those numbers are so much lower than what is expected now. Reminds me of housing prices in 2008!
The acceptance/enrollment stats on our Naviance are self reported so aren’t the most accurate.
Possibly but when I compare the acceptances of the 2017, the numbers of acceptances to colleges such as the UCs has dropped considerably. For example, UC Berkeley was 25% last year and in 2019, 19%. I think the same group of high stat kids each year out of 400 apply broadly to 5 or 6 of the “top” UCs just to make sure they get in to at least 1 or 2 even though many will choose out of state public’s or private colleges.
On a positive note, we did have 2 accepted to Stanford, 2 to Brown, and 1 to Princeton. Most of those were recruited athletes however.
Going to be a interesting ride the next 6 - 9 months months. Fingers crossed for all of your 2020 kids!
For our school where Naviance acceptance data is student reported, the UC info in #6942 shows approximately 30% more kids applied to each UC than is reported on Naviance. The admitted stats on Naviance look a little low compared to UC stats but the enrolled numbers between the two are pretty close.
I think kids are happy to report where they are going but leave out a lot of the other schools they applied to, especially if they didn’t get in. This can throw off people like us who are looking at admission percentages and trends.
Yes, the system is only as good as the data. At our school, some info is self-reported by the students but other info is entered by the school.
I noticed at some point during my D17’s senior year that the ACT score showing up on her Naviance was incorrect - it was from her first sitting and did not reflect the higher score from her most recent test. I mentioned it to her counselor who said it didn’t matter so I let it go.
In hindsight, I should have pushed for it to be corrected, as it is misleading for future students like my S20, as it would make it appear that she was accepted into the college she is attending with significantly lower test scores - it is a school with a single digit acceptance rate and it totally matters as kids are making decisions on where to apply based on the Naviance data. As a result, S20 isn’t going to depend too much on that Naviance data when he is assessing his odds of acceptance.
Question about the Common App. Honors are listed under academics. Would one put community service honors/awards (ex. Eagle Scout or Girl Scout Gold) in that section or under activities?
@lkg4answers I would put that type of information under Activities. In the section saying: “Please describe this activity, including what you accomplished and any recognition you received, etc.” I would enter the Eagle Scout, etc. honor. Same thing for kids who hold jobs and get increased levels of responsibility, or who become captain of their sports team in HS. That’s where my D20 is putting hers, anyway.
DS was accepted to Huntsville. That’s 2 in his back pocket now.
PSA: D20 and I were reviewing her Common App prior to submission to one of her schools, and the “Testing” section says: “There are no test scores to report.”, even though she has her December SAT scores entered. She contacted CA to ask them what is going on.
@bigmacbeth what about an award for research that wasn’t through your school? It is academic but is an outside activity. Would that be under academic honors or activities?
@lkg4answers There are no hard and fast rules. That sounds more ‘academic’ than Eagle Scout, so it could go in either place. These are just my opinions though. You could always put the award under Honors, and the research under Activities. I think, for the schools that care, they read the whole application. I would try not to put very many in both places because it looks like you’re padding the section.
Again, no rules. This is just how we approached it with D17.
Congrats x2 @cshell2. That’s got to feel good. DS hasn’t really been working on his apps in earnest. He’s agreed to get one done this month. For most of his schools he’ll be submitting an arts supplement so he’ll wait to closer to the deadline to get more practicing in before recording.
Hi 2020 parents I am really appreciating the updates…hard to talk about this IRL in our ( high achieving) town. Child20 has finished two apps… one safety and one match. Those are my definitions because the schools are safety but the major, architectural studies, is limited in how many they can accept. We asked kid to complete these now before school for a couple reasons… learning the process on a schools own application before committing to the common app, ripping the bandaid to prevent bigger anxiety once school starts and hopefully getting at least one win this fall… I’ll let you know how it shakes out…
@SoccaMomma Good luck on the recordings. We did that with D17, and it was a lot of work just getting time to set up and record. We ended up doing our recording in a church, which was pretty cool, but took forever when she did 4 pieces (on piano) without having any mistakes. Each piece was 3-5 minutes or more. Probably 6 attempts at each piece, on average, before she was happy. Yeesh! And, in the end, nothing came of it. Competition is tough!