Hi NiVo intrigued by this scholarship - I presume it is not a UK gov scholarship even though it’s using a UK publication top 100? If it is details would be great as we have found nothing like that so far
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D24 has verified the relevant details to ensure she qualifies, the main requirements being citizenship, completion of high school years in country, admission to their qualified list of schools, and positive interview selection.
Thread will be updated with additional admittance.
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Sorry you see a train wreck, maybe that pertains to the thousands of applicants rejected by their ED school, which is probably the majority on the cc platform, or because you find her list has too many reach schools.
Maybe a different perspectives for foreigners, but we’re glad to have a peaceful life and be able to pursue academic endeavors, rather than much scarier situations.
Peace & Love, the journey continues… And may reach 3000 posts. 
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I’m so sorry to hear about ED. I think we have all been really hoping it would work. My daughter was rejected ED but then took a gap year and got coach pull the next year to the same Ivy. Sometimes it just takes longer…
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If you were genuinely seeking advice here, perhaps you could have let us know that schools beyond your referenced “Top 100 Times Higher Ed” ranking could qualify. Maybe Grinnell and Franklin and Marshall qualify, and have the added benefit of varsity swimming openings?
Many of us have been through apps and recruitment at schools you have targeted. We could have let you know that Brown ED unhooked is about a 5% acceptance rate when athletes and other institutional priorities are stripped out. For some reason, you pegged it at 20% - it is most certainly not.
With a family member a swim recruit at one of Tufts/Wesleyan, we could have given you some advice. Such as, Brown is far fetched, but Wesleyan, for example, gives a meaningful boost in ED. Add in some Wes coach support, it doesn’t even have to be a slot, and it would have been far better odds and a smarter choice than Brown ED. Now you are faced with ED2, and all bets are off.
But this thread isn’t about advice.
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There is basic illogic underpinning this thread.
The OP has gone from seeking coach support at selective schools to applying unhooked to super selective, sub 10% admit rate schools.
Eta, and applying as an international student, which further lowers chances of admission at these schools to below 5%.
As a strategy, it is unlikely to be successful.
That is all.
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Everyone has various expertise, but in the end D24 knows the best about the actual fit with various schools she’s visited, and the details of discussions with various coaches.
Even as parents, there are schools we really like such as Grinnell but she didn’t. And in the end, it is her journey. Many considerations are still very much in play, including swimming and home scholarship. We’re happy she likes every school on her list, obviously some more than others, and hope it plays out.
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I don’t necessarily disagree with anything you’ve said this whole thread. I also think it is very hard to be the 5th/6th best athlete in your cohort (which is what it sounds like with OP’s daughter). Close enough to train with the best at their current level; it can be hard to recalibrate your expectations for the future.
I always had a soft spot for swimmers who came up at the same time as Michael Phelps. Ditto gymnasts vying for the Olympics during the age of Simone Biles. I think it can be easy for some athletes in that position to think that they just need a lucky break and they, too, could shine. It is hard accepting your place in the pecking order, especially when you are very good…just not quite good enough.
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Very true, and applicable to when the OP’s daughter was going through recruiting. That is over now, and the OP is pursuing admission just like any other international student, swimming level now doesn’t matter (whether it is coaches’ assessment, or self assessment).
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Agree! Also think that might have informed a lot of decision making even through their second strategy. Again, OP’s daughter academically very strong…just not the strongest. Same issue, both times.
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As far as I can infer from posts in this topic, a potentially beneficial aspect of certain international T-100 rankings is that they include schools with reasonably accomodating acceptance rates for undergraduates (e.g., McGill, ~56%). This tends to contrast with the style of rankings popular in the U.S.
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In a different thread, you had done some back-of-the-envelope calculations with some interesting assumptions (including your own “guesstimate” that 50% of unhooked ED applicants were not “qualified to attend”) to determine that the “actual” ED acceptance rate at Brown for unhooked qualified applicants is actually around 20% (and given that Brown deferred slightly more ED applicants than it just accepted in this round, I suppose the claim would be that the odds for getting accepted or deferred was a combined 40+%).
Others have stated that given the amount of acceptances for hooked applicants in the ED round for Brown (included recruited athletes, legacies, URM, FGLI, etc.) the acceptance rate for unhooked ED international applicants is likely sub-5%, and also that the competitiveness of that applicant pool is stronger in the ED round.
One question is: in determining application choices and strategies, was she guided by your highly-optimistic estimates of odds, or those of more experienced voices?
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With respect to Brown, I’d consider that the overall acceptance rate for female applicants is 43% lower than that for males (using information from IPEDS).
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This article goes into depth on the subject:
“In the 2021-22 application cycle, 6.73% of male applicants were accepted to Brown, while only 4.06% of women were.
In 2021, Brown had the most female-dominated applicant pool in the Ivy League, boasting the greatest numerical difference between male and female applicants compared to peer institutions. To examine and understand the driving forces behind this difference, The Herald conducted a data analysis of the Common Data Sets of all eight Ivy League universities and spoke with experts on the subject.”
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While my original participation in this thread was to provide a perspective on athletic recruiting, it seems that athletic recruiting is no longer being considered and we are now merely discussing how an unhooked international student with only above average qualifications should navigate the college admissions process.
As “chance me” threads go, this is a long one, and it is worth noting that the OP is not really taking any advice (of which there has been some wonderfully experienced perspectives), but largely reporting on what he is directing his daughter to do, hoping that lightning will strike and he can tell all of us how wrong we all are. I wish him luck, but the statistics are on the side of the more experienced.
While the OP insists he is letting his daughter follow her instincts and dreams, I feel he is doing his daughter a tremendous disservice. What does a 17-year old really know about anything? Of course it would be wonderful to attend Brown, Stanford, Dartmouth, UVA, Williams, etc. however, the statistics of getting into these places with her stats and circumstances are at best remote and/or unrealistic. What a parent’s role should be is to manage their child’s expectations, and guide them to a path with a higher likelihood of success. The OP has painted his kid into a corner and while McGill may look acceptable on paper, it is nothing like the other schools on her list. In April the OP may have bigger problems than he has now.
In my opinion, everyone here has given good/experienced/reasonable advice, with both the athletic recruiting and the idea of applying as an unhooked international, yet the OP has been defiant for reasons that can only be explained that the advice is inconsistent with the outcome he wants.
The US college admissions process is highly competitive, and the current institutional priorities of elite universities do not include full pay/private school/students of Asian decent/whose parents come from elite schools. As I have mentioned in previous postings, I share all these attributes with the OP so I know how challenging the current application environment is. Without athletic recruiting this is a “low chance me” thread.
Like many here, I can’t look away and will feel little satisfaction when the laws of large numbers give the OP the outcome that current admission statistics suggest.
When it is all over, I hope the OP will have the humility to tell us what happened, what he learned, what mistakes were made and how he will do things differently for his younger daughter when she begins the process.
Happy Holidays to all.
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I think OP has learned a lot from his original position of using swimming as a hook, thinking his daughter could apply to a lot of very selective schools and get a handful of Likely Letters after applying ED to those schools. I don’t blame him for wanting to use swimming to get in because a lot of people do want to have all the hooks they can - athletics, legacy, geography. He quickly understood that Likely Letters are hard to come by, that D could only ED to one school, that a few schools allow the ED applicant to also apply to other schools that have scholarship deadline.
Really, I think this thread has been very helpful. Sometimes confusing, but helpful if the reader sticks with it. Not all the wandering was OP’s fault. People would miss that he was only interested in top ranked (academics) schools, and that if it came to a choice between swimming and ranking, ranking was going to win. IMO, it took OP a little while to realize that some schools were just not going to allow D on the swim team, even if she got admitted without a hook. Even some club teams cut swimmers as there just isn’t enough pool time for everyone.
I’m still excited for the final reveal
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We’re thankful for much of the advice re swimming, without which D24 wouldn’t have been able to confirm the recruiting interest at several schools. Visits and direct coach conversations gave her the color to define her journey and decisions so far, and she still very much intends to swim either varsity or club, and I think that her decisions/journey will make sense when final decisions come through.
Whilst many would have argued to take the recruit ED1 route, we supported her decision to take a shot at Brown because she very much liked that school in many ways. Now that’s behind her, she’s very focused on making an optimal decision, including academics/vibe/swimming factors.
Whilst there are very substantial differences been between her Canadian and US school lists, the fact that she does like the Canadian schools (which we understand may not be the general views of many cc posters), means that her US school list looks overly weighted towards reach schools, and one could argue only contains reach schools, except for maybe couple UCs added to her list.
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If Wesleyan remains under consideration, then you may want to note its placement in this site:
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Hope they were added before the deadline passed. Otherwise…it’s too late for the 2024-2025 admissions cycle.
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So well said, @superdomestique
And speaking of disservice, but not necessarily specific to OP: as a McGill alum, I can attest to how brutal the Winter and Spring can be in Montreal. The numerous Americans from New England are Ok with it - but those from warmer climates and the Far East are often in shock. It’s a different weather zone than Dartmouth, or even Middlebury, in terms of the combination of humidity/precipitation/temperature/wind/freezing rain/persistent slush. It’s a big contrast to that of Toronto as well. There is a reason Montreal has a large underground network of walking tunnels and shopping centers.
I urge any prospective Internationals to visit between Nov-April to know what they are getting into. It’s not for everyone. Yes, anyone can survive, but not everyone is happy. On paper it looks like an amazing safety school, but there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. (Also grade deflation, bureaucracy, large classes, facilities lagging far behind in maintenance, weak housing).
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