you seem like a strong applicant as is evidenced by the acceptances you achieved. I do not see you getting into ivies and am not sure what a top 20 has become these days given the US News shifting (in a way that does not reflect admissions difficulty) over the years. I believe you can get into an institution slightly more difficult than the ones you have already.
I hope this is helpful.
You are an amazing candidate.
I think you should apply to truly need blind schools.
I hope you apply to Georgetown (maybe CAS, not SFS).
And see if thereās an ED2 school you love.
I would very seriously consider ED2 to Vassar or Wesleyan; and break the commitment if the financial aid is not enough. Wesleyan in particular cares a lot less about rank in class than most of the T50, and looks more at rigor and talent. They also have great academics in your areas of interest. I think the class rank will be a statistical problem for many of the others as someone pointed out above.
You are correct, not all of the possible NMSFs get the Fordham full tuition award. In years past, their website said that ~70% of them did, but rumor is that they are reducing the frequency of this awardāno proof, just a rumor.
Fordham does not require students to be NMFs, just NMSFs, in order to be eligible for consideration.
I have a hunch (again no proof) that Fordham may be more likely to grant the award to students from geographic locations they are targeting and to students who have demonstrated interest. Also perhaps males (Fordham skews female.) I think all of these factors are what led to S22 being lucky rather than unlucky.
I have heard of one case where Fordham really was a studentās top choice. When luck didnāt go her way, she contacted the school and made her case, and they ended up granting it to her. That was a few years ago thoughā¦
I would second the vote for trying Cornell. Hereās a link to an article on their new public policy major.
It is being co-administered through the College of Human Ecology what has an acceptance rate double that of the Arts and Science College, so would definitely try that.
GPA seems a little low for Georgetown, even if score is solid and counts a lot there. No downside on RD though, agree re affinity.
Donāt be. Your Common App and Supplements might very well the objectively best representation of you as an applicant. Likely, you were not not-chosen because anything was lacking, but because whatever other combinations other people brought to the table, vs. whatever āsegmentā Brown was still trying to fill this year.
Donāt overthink it!
ā¦ during RD are about 5%. That is the primary problem, not your application.
If āanyā Ivy is what you pursuing, you are likely to fail. If thereās one or the other that you feel would be a great fit for you personally, then itās perfectly okay to throw your hat in the ring, along with 100,000 others ā but as a strategy, itās 95% certain to fail.
This was my concern. The Ivies are very different from one another in just about every way (location, major strength, overall vibe, etc). Someone who just wants āany Ivyā likely hasnāt thought out their college list very well and definitely hasnāt thought about their specific fit to various schools. This is generally not a winning strategy. A more targeted approach tends to be more successful than shotgunning prestige.
Interested to know more about this statement. Wesās CDS says rank is one of seven āimportantā factors (formerly eight, including racial/ethnic status, which I assume is now ānot consideredā); only rigor is āvery important.ā
Simply as a statistical observation, Wesleyan reports that 78.8% of its recent first-year students graduated in the top 10% their HS classes (to the extent that information for this statistic is available). Compared to most highly selective colleges, this is ālow.ā Nonetheless, Wesleyan may indeed, without contradiction, value class rank as āimportant,ā in that the higher academic performers among its accepted students may disproportionately choose to attend college elsewhere. In any case, this has been an improving statistic for Wesleyan over recent years.
Rank is truly tough to fully explain as so many donāt rankā¦.so who knows how complete the stats truly are.
Although your question appears rhetorical, note that statistical models (e.g., those that consider category consistency or historical consistency) can be applied to extract meaningful information from incomplete data. In very recent years, however, this has become more challenging with respect to class rank.
Yes Iām just saying and I donāt know the % that provide rank. Perhaps some do privately to the colleges that donāt publicly.
Obviously the schools are able to identify top students in most cases regardless.
Iād like to see some data that supports this statement.
Class rank is usually on the transcript IF a high school provides class rank to the colleges. Iāve never seen any evidence or heard of any that high schools secretly slip in class rank privately.
Our HS says that it does not rank and instructs students not to report rank on their college applicationsā¦but the school system requires the inclusion of rank on the transcript.
No idea how common this (truly absurd) situation is, but it certainly is an example of the murkiness around rank and whether or not it is reported.
Some counselors from schools that donāt rank will write in their LoR that a student is in the top 5 or top 5% of the class, something like that. Still others will divulge rank if an AO calls and askā¦this is what my kidsā counselors did at our HS that doesnāt rank.
As for Wesleyan, the 2022-23 CDS section C10 shows that 78.8% of the class was in the top 10% of their HS class as Merc81 reported, but only 24.1% of the studentsā ranks were reported. Are either one of those data points meaningful? Not really. https://www.wesleyan.edu/ir/data-sets/CDS_2022-2023.pdf
It may also be that rigor is a surrogate marker for kids who rank highly; or it at least correlates highly with kids in the top 10% of their class. There will be exceptions, of course.
Yes, but I doubt they are āprivatelyā doing thisā¦and will tell the student if asked.
I have no idea whether counselors that report rank in an LoR, or share rank if an AO calls, tend to tell the student that happened or notā¦which I think tsbna was talking about.
I do agree that if a student asks the counselor what their rank is the counselor will shareā¦thatās how we get some students from non-ranking schools self reporting rank on their apps.
Our school doesnāt rank, 2 of my kids were told their rank only because they had a county athlete/academic dinner and all of their stats were read at the dinner. Sometimes some kids get a peek and pass the information to their friends.