<p>People should definitely look at where others from their school are applying, especially for schools at the match level. It’s a much bigger factor than most people think. For example, one of my top choices was Haverford, which I lavished attention on by visiting three times. I was qualified academically (1530 SAT, 3.9 uw GPA), had good recs, etc. However, there were probably at least 15 people from my class applying there (for a freshman class of only 320 or so!)…and I was rejected. I was also waitlisted at Vassar (and I’m male as well!) and Wesleyan…similar deal. However, I managed to get into U of Chicago, Reed, Carleton (which I applied to on a whim because of the lack of supplement), and a variety of other, further from home places to which fewer people were applying from my school. Schools love geographic diversity, so keep that in mind when attempting to predict your chances.</p>
<p>Not to detract from the seriousness of this topic, but is anyone other than me wondering whether if we aren’t careful of what we say, our discussions might soon result in an excess of high school oboe players, some being ice hockey goalies on the side, all trying to get into the top colleges with this “hook”?</p>
<p>Mini: by the time you had finished that cheer, the play would have been over.</p>
<p>Well, “retaining it” was about all that could be hoped for. Forget about scoring. ;)</p>
<p>My h’s favorite Columbia cheer:
“Three to the x, the x, the x. Three to the x, the x.
Sine, cosine, cosine, sine.
3 point one four one five nine.”</p>
<p>(Nothing to do with football, of course, but then what the team was doing on the field also had nothing to do with football.)</p>
<p>that “columbia” cheer is ripped off the MIT official cheer. i dont feel like posting it here but it’s easy to look up.</p>
<p>Considering that MIT didn’t field a football team from 1901 to 1978, I think Georgia Tech’s cheer maybe older:</p>
<p>Georgia Tech is gonna wreck,
Georgia, Georgia
Georgia Tech is gonna wreck,
Georgia, Georgia
Hit 'em Tech!
Wreck 'em Tech!
Hit 'em, wreck 'em!
Georgia Tech!
Ray rah Wreck 'em Tech!
Yae-e-e-e-e Tech! </p>
<p>E to the X dy dx,
E to the X dx,
Tangent Secant Cosine Sine,
3.14159,
Square roots, cube roots, Poisson brackets,
Disintegrate 'em Yellow Jackets!</p>
<p>They also have one that is kind of humerous:</p>
<p>Don’t send my boy to MIT
The dying mother said,
Don’t send my boy to Emory
I’d rather see him dead,
But send my boy to Georgia Tech
'Tis better than Cornell.
And as for the University of Georgia
I’d rather see him in hell!</p>
<p>This thread is actually quite discouraging for even the best applicants before they even start the process. Can those of you with kids who did get accepted to their dream schools make some positive suggestions about it?</p>
<p>Echo:</p>
<p>Suggestion number 1–make sure your child’s dream school isn’t the same dream school of everyone in the country who scored over 1500.</p>
<p>OK, I’ll be encouraging. 
My son was accepted at his dream school, MIT, and will be attending in the fall. He applied EA in Oct., and then we promptly <em>forgot about it</em>. Seriously. It just didn’t appear on our radar any more, and when people asked him late in 2004 where he was looking to attend college, his answer was, “Possibly Berkeley or Harvey Mudd, and I’m applying a few other places, too.” MIT did not even appear in the verbal lists he gave people.</p>
<p>He received his EA acceptance in mid-Dec. and we were stunned. I cried. I’m really sure he sent it in and then decided not to hope too much. He did wait for his other RD acceptances and had a hard decision after being admitted to one other super-reach-forget-about-it amazing school. Perhaps we avoided the OP dilemma by just ignoring the MIT application totally, and making mental plans for all of the other schools he’d applied to.</p>
<p>(PS: To mathisfun, who claims that it matters how many students from your school apply? It depends heavily on what college you’re talking about. For some colleges it does not matter <em>at all</em>. In our particular experience with MIT, 13 students from my son’s class of 123 were accepted, out of a much larger applicant pool from our school. This is not something a rising senior should worry about, I don’t think.)</p>
<p>Echosensei: if you haven’t yet done it, read the saga of Berurah’s son and his acceptance to his dream school (it does take a while).</p>
<p>Our situation may be more common. If our S had a dream school, he wasn’t letting on, as far as I could tell. He was keeping his thinking close to the vest (not unusual in our family) and wasn’t especially receptive to our suggestions of talking to people who had attended the schools to which he had applied.</p>
<p>Came the acceptances, and we had to choose among three smaller universities and some large UCs. I laid out the costs, we discussed pro and cons, kicked one small university off the list because of cost (no merit aid as opposed to two others, and the difference in education was not that great in our opinion). He made a number of phone calls, talked with some people, thought for a while, and by the end of the month was happy with his decision.</p>
<p>He is just finishing up his freshman year (at Brandeis) and cannot picture himself anywhere else (though he’ll have to leave eventually, of course). So what was one of several choices became his dream school, IMHO.</p>
<p>Jamimom is exactly right. It’s all about supply and demand. The best high school debaters, musicians and actors apply to HYP and other Ivies. With the exception of a few sports–fencing, squash, maybe a few others–the best athletes do not. So, it takes more talent in any of the former to stand out in the HYP applicant pool than it does to stand out as an athlete. This is particularly true in sports which yield revenue for OTHER colleges–the Ivy sports teams don’t generate income, except perhaps alumni donations. </p>
<p>Why would a kid who can play football well enough to be recruited by Stanford, UMich or Notre Dame, all of which give athletic scholarships, choose to go to HYP or another Ivy at which a) he will not get an athletic scholarship; b) he will not have the chance to be seen on TV; c) he will not have the same facilities–ever see the Yale Bowl? d) he will usually play with a small fraction of the # of people watching compared to the schools in the former group–even though Ivy students can go to football games for free many go through college without ever attending a game; e) he will have FAR less chance of making it to the pros; f) he will not get to play in post season games --there isn’t even an Ivy championship football game; g) he will get fewer hours of training–the Ivies restrict the number of hours sports teams can train, in order to make sure the athletes have enough time to study; this is a major consideration for kids dreaming of the pros or aiming for the Olympics; h) he will not get special sports team housing with special food and other facilities, but will live in a freshman dorm like everyone else, i) more important than you might think,he will NOT be a “big man on campus” and will not be the guy who can date any female he chooses just because he’s the quarterback. </p>
<p>Stanford, academically the equal of the Ivies, has few all-state musicians in its applicant pool. Therefore, it takes a lot less to stand out in its pool as a musician --or for that matter, as an actor–than it does at an Ivy. The kind of musical skill that wouldn’t make you one of the top 200 musicians applying to Yale or Harvard in a given year might put you in the top dozen at Stanford–and get you in. (It will take a lot more to get in as an athlete.) Is the fact that this musician gets into Stanford, though not to Yale or Harvard proof Stanford values musicians more than Harvard and Yale? Of course not!</p>
<p>It’s proof of the fact that too many kids who are very talented but not the very, very best in what they do–whether it’s an academic subject or an EC–apply to the very best places to do it. All the mathematicians apply to Princeton, Harvard, MIT. The wannabe economists apply to MIT, UChicago, Wharton (Penn.) The wannabe philosopher applies to Princeton. When they look for matches and safeties, they make the same mistake. The philosopher whose reach is Princeton uses NYU for his match. The musician applies to Yale and Oberlin. The artist chooses Bard . The creative writer uses Sarah Lawrence . The actor chooses Vassar. The squash player chooses Trinity College. A lot of the other kids with the same interests do exactly the same thing. Not surprisingly, the results of this sort of strategy are often disappointing. </p>
<p>Apply to a few schools which are not THE best in what you or your kid wants to do. A mathematician who isn’t USAMO level, but is very good should apply to Stanford and Yale, not just Princeton, MIT, and Harvard. The actor shouldn’t just choose Yale, Harvard, Brown and Northwestern as his reaches, but throw in Stanford too. The swimmer who isn’t good enough to swim for Stanford may well be a major “catch” for Dartmouth–which does so poorly in Ivy competition, that it tried to drop the team–unsucessfully. If he wants to go to a LAC, the actor shouldn’t just apply to Williams as a reach with Vassar as a match–throw in a Carleton. You can act there too. </p>
<p>The point is to take supply and demand into account in choosing your colleges and apply to a few schools where there won’t be 1,000s of kids who do what you do well too applying. That’s why athletes applying to the Ivies get in.</p>
<p>Where on this site would I find this story?</p>
<p>I think it is precisely the concept of the “dream school” concept mentioned in the above posts that is the problem in an era of incredible competion. Harvard and Yale both have admission rates that have dropped below 10% this year. The problem is we live in a winner take all society where being number one is the only thing that counts. A few years ago the Stanford Daily featured an article interviewing students who had applied to both Harvard and Stanford. Many of the Stanford students who were rejected by Harvard were devastated! One girl lamented the fact that her younger sister had gotten into Harvard and wondered “what may have been” if only she herself had gotten in. It is a true sadness that kids at Stanford and Yale who didn’t get into Harvard can feel such extreme remorse.</p>
<p>A winner take all culture also brings on a certain degree of schadenfreude. Especially, when things that are seemingly unfair occur, e.g. the admission of so many ‘less qualified’ athletes, special interests, legacies, donors, URM, etc.</p>
<p>I’m afraid things may eventually change out of necessity. When 85% of applicants were admitted to Stanford in 1951 (source: Jean Fetter’s Questions and Admissions: Reflection on 100,000 Admission Decisions at Stanford) and in the 1960’s when the median SAT scores for students who were admitted to the Ivy League colleges were in the combined 1100 range (source: Greene’s Guides: Inside the Top Colleges), one could pick and choose their “dream school.” Now admission rates to any particular top school are approaching the admission rates to ANY specific medical school. Students applying to medical school have long ago made realistic assessments of getting into med school and don’t need to get into their “dream med school.” They just want to get in anywhere somewhere to become a doctor, and are very happy when they do. I’m afraid this may become the same for getting into top universities where kids will eventually be delighted in getting into any top school so they can become an educated person with a pedigree. The difference? They can become an educated person at just about any college in the United States, whereas not becoming a doctor can truely bring a lifelong sadness.</p>
<p>The good news is as the great students filter down to ‘lower tier’ institutions out of necessity, those schools magically get elevated (ex. Wash U, just as Stanford in the 60’s and Duke in the 70’s). It is unfortunately painful to see that the same thing that makes America great (competition and the drive to be a winner) is also what leads to so much sadness when one doesn’t get to be #1 or get into their “dream school.”</p>
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<p>D got into her dream school (MIT) but by then the dream had changed. She always wanted MIT, but after the Grand East Coast College Tour, MIT ranked no higher than third, with Yale #1 and Harvard #1A. She got rejected by Yale EA, but in RD she got accepted by both MIT and Harvard (and Stanford to boot) and had a tough choice to make.</p>
<p>So to be positive about it, I’m here to tell you it CAN be done. You don’t need to hire an expensive consultant to “package” your kid. You can find out all you need to know by reading CC. What need to have is a great kid with great grades who is willing to work hard on the app. One by one your kid needs to jump over the hurdles: PSAT, APs, NMSF, ECs, EC awards, SAT, SAT IIs, more APs, Essays, Apps, Recs, & Follow-up with schools to make sure they got everything. Add a stiff dose of good luck and sit back and hope for the best. It sure wasn’t all smooth sailing, but sometimes it all works out in the end. My D’s dreams came true. She loves it at Harvard.</p>
<p>One more thing - FIND A SAFETY YOUR KID CAN LIKE.</p>
<p>Coureur - I think I’ll nominate you on the other thread for “Succinct Admissions Post.” And if I might add to your last sentence - Find a Safety Your Kid Can Like and Afford.</p>
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<p>That is indeed the problem. How does a high school-age would-be mathematician stand out? He has to do MUCH more than score an 800 on the SAT I (thousands do that) or even on the SAT II Math II C (thousands of kids do that too). </p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools; </p>
<p>When most high school level credentials applicants can have are more numerous than the number of spaces in the entering classes of the highly desired colleges, applicants to those colleges have to have credentials that go beyond high school level.</p>
<p>Mathematicians ought to apply to Chicago, Harvey Mudd, Cornell, Yale, Duke, Williams,Colby, Carleton, UMichigan, UIUC, UWisc-Madison, Berkeley, Penn State and some more I may have overloooked. The list is not so limited.
But I agree with Jonri’s general point.</p>
<p>Coureur- I’m sure the parents, such as Andi, did the right things when trying to package their kids. The problem is, as other posters have noted, one of supply and demand. Getting into a top college today is such a crap shoot that kids are not appying to enough schools and some get burned. What will happen is what has already happened to med schools; where kids will apply to twenty some odd schools to secure a place. Eventually, and what the supply/demand posters have eluded to, everyone will start to blanket all the top schools to secure a place. They won’t limit themselves to Harvard, Princeton and MIT as a mathematician, they will apply to all the Ivy League schools and Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Chicago, Wash U and the LACs. Kids/parents will get less picky and will be happy to get into any top tier school.</p>
<p>jonri- thanks for explaining things in that way. It makes a lot of sense in our situation. I guess we did just about everything backward :(</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Its perhaps a small point, but stuff like this makes me mildly furious. It is a myth. Take a look at the Yale site which chronicles its history.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.yale.edu/oir/book_numbers_original/b.pdf[/url]”>http://www.yale.edu/oir/book_numbers_original/b.pdf</a></p>
<p>go to page 38 to see that the median score for the class admitted in 1966 was 697V (760 recentered) and 711M (700 recentered) . The upper quartile was about 1540. The bottom quartile was 1350. I admit its Yale, but H and P were about the same, and even Cornell and Penn weren’t that low back then. Its always been competitive. The jokers selling courses and books are the ones who would have you believe it was a bunch of dumb rich kids. Who is this greene guy who wrote the guide? :rolleyes:</p>