<p>Hunt - The real steaming is not about what is mentioned. It is always the memories of other GF you went out with that trigger the fights! :p</p>
<p>If the kid was on waitlist until July for two of the schools in question, I would nt say it is all these months later. </p>
<p>Iam wondering if I should post my Ivy predicted disappointment thread now and get it over with before my kid even apples. That way it won’t get too old! :D</p>
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Maybe true. But when I look at mine, my first thought is always the startling resemblance she bears to our old poolboy. ;)</p>
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You are right–but it does get mentioned.</p>
<p>I can understand a double-legacy with top grades and scores having a high expectation of admission, but I don’t see the reason or logic in a non-legacy unhooked kid and his/her parents assuming that s/he will get in, especially if they have done a modicum of research into the process and chances.</p>
<p>Mathmom- I can look at my cute little babies and hope for lots of nice things in their future. But I do think it’s unreasonable to focus on admission to a particular college or set of colleges as one of those things. Especially if you end up living in one of the towns or suburbs or cities which have zillions of applicants to those same schools; and especially if your work as a social worker married to a HS teacher (or pediatrician married to an immigration attorney) means that you aren’t endowing a nanotechnology lab any time soon.</p>
<p>The college fever is in full force in my neighborhood (and workplace for those who still have HS kids) and for me, it underscores how innumerate most people are. Do they not understand what 20,000 applicants vs. 1,200 admits really means? Do they not understand how many HS valedictorians there are in America (even if you discount the schools that have 12?) Can they not grasp that astronomical odds apply to them, even if their kids have already won life’s lottery by being born to a parent or parents who can afford to get them braces or math tutoring or medication for ADD or ice skating lessons?</p>
<p>Someone in my office really believes that “a very high percentage” of applications to HYP are from kids who are fundamentally not qualified- C students with average scores. She cannot wrap her mind around the fact that thousands and thousands of kids who apply to Princeton every year are virtually indistinguishable from her son (who is a very nice kid I might add.) “But he was identified as Gifted in the third grade” she protests. Yawn. So she grinds her teeth at the unfairness of it all. Do I think it’s unfair if her kid ends up at Middlebury instead? Doesn’t matter what I think… although a lot of people who have gone through the process have tried to gently tell her that he’ll have a great time and get a wonderful education at (fill in the blank. he’s a great, smart kid but if he gets into Princeton I’ll eat my shoes.)</p>
<p>I’m not sure I get what’s being discussed / argued in this thread, but I’ll contribute anyway. Is it significant that Pomona has a goat herder in its freshman class this year? The herd consists of 50 goats, and the goat herder is female. </p>
<p>I think any legacy goat herders out there should feel pretty good about their chances.</p>
<p>My two cents knowing I will get corrected all over the place on this thread.</p>
<p>Usually the expectation is tied to the school you attend and not what is happening with vast universe out there. In a lot of cases, how Ivies/top colleges pick overall does nt always work the same way as to what happens within your own school and how a particular Ivy has treated your school in the past. However, some of the colleges change course one year because something changed in their college process.</p>
<p>Let me talk about Hunt’s almamater as a reference.</p>
<p>They pick exactly 2-3 kids each year from my kid’s public school. It does nt seem to be different whether the graduating class is exceptional or in a given year, not so exceptional. They do about 7-9 each year from one of our top private schools in town. A special relationship perhaps since other Ivies don’t seem to pick more than 3-4 each year from that school. Last year, one of the kids asked this freshly graduated adcom why they give so many seats each year to the specific local private school. His answer was that he is aware the private school does provide a lot of help with the packaging and he will be more tough with their applications. End Result - 9 admissions for the private school, three for my kid’s school.</p>
<p>Things are changing and it is possible with more applicants at each of these colleges, they will spread the seats more. However, you get the feel that if your school had 15 accepts from Ivies, and 8 were pure merit from top ten in the class and your kid is number 2 on the merit list, the pain never goes away about what went wrong.</p>
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<p>It did move up this year. Having looked at the methodology for a number of years, it was only a matter of time for USNews to run out of “tools” to avoid the ranking being an acronym of WASP. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the ranking of Harvey Mudd remains the perfect exhibit for the total idiocy of one of the elements of the rankings, namely the expected graduation rate based on the selectivity index of SIX years ago. This element does handicap the most selective schools and rewards schools with much lower selectivity. For a visual example, compare Harvey Mudd and Smith. </p>
<p>Rankings will always remain imperfect and subjective, and despite its obvious shortcomings, USN remains the best we have. Although they make it harder and harder to like them as they make the best value (organized data) more difficult to retrieve. The graphical interface is extremely annoying as they continue to move in the direction of pleasing the AOL/HuffPost type of crowd.</p>
<p>I think that kids from schools that rarely send students to the Ivies may also get a false impression–such a kid may be the most accomplished product of that school for a long time, and a lot of well-meaning adults may tell him, “With grades and scores like yours, you’ll get in everywhere!” One would hope that the Internet would make that kind of misunderstanding less common, but I think it’s still possible.</p>
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<p>Is this a hypothetical, or do you know whether this has ever actually happened?</p>
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<p>Texaspg, again, you will find out that it is impossible to define the “success” of one school over another in such clear terms. Start by defining the term packaging! What does it mean in terms of a high school packaging students? One private high school that might have been discussed here is known for producing an extensive package that contains the exact grade distribution for every class taken by a student. Add extensive LOR and you have a pretty nice looking stack of USEFUL information at the disposal of the adcom … in case he or she wants to look into the finer details of a school. </p>
<p>However, except for having PICKED its students carefully, there is little that a school can do to “re-package” its students in terms of wealth, legacies, athletic ability, and … race. In your analysis of private versus public, did you consider WHY those students ended up attending the pricey private over the more affordable public HS? If a selection took place in first, fifth, or ninth grade, why would it be different at the college level, especially at the pinnacle of selectivity? </p>
<p>This said, you might also consider that the overall statistics for the “top” schools indicate more balanced numbers in the distribution between private and public schools. Of course, one could also point out that there are MANY more students in public education than in private schools by a factor of 1 to 10, if not 1 to 20. </p>
<p>All in all, the bottom line is that statistics simply obscure the fact that all admissions are processess that are entirely dependent on the … individual. And, this individual is defined by a LOT more than its high school, or the capacity of the school to “package.”</p>
<p>PS Fwiw, it is also impossible to define pure merit on a universally acceptable and objective basis.</p>
<p>While it’s not packaging, exactly, I suspect that students at some private schools get better advising, which can lead to better results in college applications. They’re less likely, for example, to be told that two or three reaches are enough.</p>
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<p>Having just (this morning!) sent off my own little double legacy with excellent grades and scores to a university where this year’s acceptance rate is 18% … no, I DON’T even understand thinking that double legacy gives you a high expectation of admission or feeling any sense other than “well, you never know, give it a shot.” Unless perhaps your last name is on a couple of the buildings.</p>
<p>The real value add for the private schools in my area-- at least according to the rumor mill/parent discussions, is that they try to proactively prevent “bunching”. If 20 kids in the class are interested in the same 3 schools, the college counselors work hard to find additional and similar but not identical schools. The parents resent it in the Fall and applaud it in April. I’m sure it must sting to have the counselor tell you that 19 of your classmates are also interested in Yale and guess what- 15 of them are stronger than you are, grand-dad’s legacy notwithstanding… but better to be focused on a realistic reach than grind your teeth over the message that “you’d be a shoe in at Yale if you lived in Tulsa but not coming from Chappaqua”. </p>
<p>Two or three realistic reaches are, in fact, enough. 10 or 12 unrealistic reaches are for sure not enough if you’re waiting for lightening to strike.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that the GCs at my kids’ public magnet do not take any steps to prevent bunching. The rumor mill does some of it (“X is applying early to Princeton–pass it on.”) Who knows if this really makes a difference–the colleges say that kids at any one school aren’t competing against each other, while observers see what appear to be fairly predictable patterns.</p>
<p>Re bunching, Ive said this before</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/918127-class-ranking-i-dont-get-2.html#post10334277[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/918127-class-ranking-i-dont-get-2.html#post10334277</a></p>
<p>"In ancient times, when I was of an age to apply to colleges, I played board war games. In one of them (based on the opening campaigns of World War One) the advice given to the German player was “Be where the French aren’t, and be there with everything you’ve got”</p>
<p>The answer to the magnet school kids - Be where your classmates aren’t, and be there with everything you’ve got. Find the colleges that know the value of your magnet, but don’t get nearly as many applicants from it as they’d like. And then hit them with as much interest and as much passion as you can. If you join the crowd at the schools almost EVERYONE at the magnet applies to, well the lake woebegon problem is gonna be hard to avoid. "</p>
<p>I think at least some GC’s at TJ were aware of this in counseling their charges, though there certainly was no schoolwide strategy.</p>
<p>Bay - it happens often. I know friends who told me these stories about their kids. In fact it happened to a kid in my example private school this year.</p>
<p>Xiggi - Packaging - I am still waiting for you to say YES to my request but I am running out of time!</p>
<p>The school in question (I am certain you know which one in my town) has parents sign waivers that they have no part in the application process and do not get to tell the school where their kids will be applying. Then they manage the entire application process through the school for the student. They ensure applications are evenly distributed to different schools etc., ensure the essays are well written, ECs are properly documented (they ensure people have the right ECs to make it too starting 9th!). </p>
<p>I am not knocking the school if that is your interpretation but only stating that a college and a school have certain standard acceptance rates which don’t usually change. Knowing that your school always sends about 25 kids each year to Ivies + Stanford and your kid did extremely well in that school and did nt get in, is usually the sorespot.</p>
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But you’d be playing into the hands of Grinnell!</p>
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<p>I don’t see how it can happen often. Every top 10 student would need to be applying to exactly the same schools and have no legacy, athletics, URM, low-income, special awards, donor-status, first-gen or fame for your theory to be true. You are essentially saying that all of them were identical. In which case, I must believe that there was a good reason why say, Harvard passed over #2 and took ##1 and 3 through 10. Why would they want to do that?</p>
<p>This school packaged their students very well and ensured their kids did nt step on each other. 20% of the school is going to Ivies + stanford (125 strength). This kid was considered one of the elite kids in the graduating group (top 5 in the class in many attrbutes - academics, NMF, 1 out 4 leaders of the school, editor, cross country runner and some more). </p>
<p>Let me throw in the firebomb here. Asian male interested in liberal arts. </p>
<p>Did get into Northwestern, waitlisted at Penn initially and going to another top 20 school at the moment.</p>