This is great thanks! The process is much more challenging for my kids than it was for me.
Do you have any insight into the college admission consultancies out there? I can’t find a thread on that and I just got something in the mail from one in Cambridge MA.
A good thing that a consultant could do for you is individualize advice to fit your child’s situation. You may or may not find what the consultancy offers worth the price.
Any college advising consultancy is partly in the business of managing expectations. The most desired colleges get eleven or more times as many applicants as they can admit, so for every admitted applicant there are ten or more unhappy rejected applicants. Maybe you can figure out a good range of colleges from “safety” to “reach” by yourself, or maybe you need third-party advice.
But this also reminds me of a story I have related in other threads. I read this in a book–I would credit the book if I could remember which book I read the story in. Once upon a time a man had a college admission consulting business. He insinuated that he had an “in” with the admission committee at Brown University. He said to clients, “I can’t guarantee that every client I speak up for will get into Brown, but if your child doesn’t get into Brown, you’ll get your money back.” He asked for a payment of $3,000. Once the parents paid up, he proceeded to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. (In fact, he had no connection with the Brown admission committee at all.) Some of those applicants got into Brown, and he cashed their checks. Some others didn’t get into Brown, and he returned their checks. That’s a pretty good income for doing no actual work.
Good luck during application season.
Best advice I (MIT acceptee) can give
I got into MIT EA. Woo hoo!! Wanna know my secret? The end-all be-all tip that will guarantee your success on any college app ever? Here it is:
STOP and START
STOP playing the college game. Really, people! You can’t spend your high school years curled up with an SAT prep book and a private tutor hunched over your shoulder just trying to eek out a few more points. Furthermore, you can’t spend every waking hour studying for classes that you aren’t interested in and you took just because they would “look good.” Finally, and believe me, this is the killer, if someone asks you why you do an extra-curricular and your answer includes “it looks good for college” QUIT IT. Colleges see right through that. Oh, and definitely stop worrying about, obsessing over, and focusing on the absolute DRIVEL that is College Confidential. You will not be accepted to college based on anyone else’s test scores. It is on you.
START something. Anything. Find something (or two, or three, or seven things) your really love and do them because you love them. If you love the harmonica, play it. But don’t stop there. Form a club or a band or take lessons or write a book about it. Chase down your passions and make your life your own. High school is one the only times you will ever have where you can, say, start an Improv Comedy troupe in a week and build it into a lasting legacy or become the Drum Major of the marching band on a whim only to discover that waving your arms is a thrill. In school: take the hardest classes you can in the areas that interest you. School is about learning, not college, and you will not learn unless you want to. As simple as that sounds, I have seen people get destroyed by AP classes and PSEO that they took because it would “look good.” Don’t do it. Finally, get off the computer right now and go outside. Even if it is dark or cold or wet. Just go out and sit for a little while. Breath the air, look around and be happy. When there is so much beauty out there, getting into “HYPSM” doesn’t seem so important, does it?
-Jack W.
Link to this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/618248-best-advice-i-mit-acceptee-can-give.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/618248-best-advice-i-mit-acceptee-can-give.html</a>
Thanks much! This seems like such a game these days but my D really wants to get into an Ivy. I tell her there are many other good choices. (I went to UofM in Ann Arbor and turned out just fine. thank you!) These Elite people in Cambridge had a message that made me think hard about all this. Everyone wants the inside scoop from people in the know, but what is that really worth vs. trusting yourself like what Jack said. Congrats Jack!!
What part of the admissions process is most misunderstood?
With regard to what part of the admissions process is most misunderstood, Dean Jeff Brenzel of Yale University says, “It is not well understood that we are not aiming to pick out the best candidate in a particular school or from a particular area, as measured by some predetermined criteria. Rather, we are trying to assemble the most varied and most interesting class we can from an extremely diverse group of close to 25,000 outstanding applicants.”
(New York Times, 19 Dec 2008
[Q</a>. and A.: College Admissions - Questions/Answers Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Q. and A.: College Admissions - The New York Times”>Q. and A.: College Admissions - The New York Times) )
Quite intriguing, isn’t it?
Yes, that’s rather different from trying to gather up the “best” high school students in the applicant pool.
Thanks! That was great advice.
I have a question though. Many schools require 3 science credits. I personally despise any math or science course and have stacked up on my English and History courses. I’ve only taken two and a half years of science; Bio, Marine Studies and Physics. Will this hurt my chances of getting into schools?
SAJ, if colleges require 3 science credits, they’re required. Don’t bother to apply if you don’t have the necessary requirements. It’s like asking what would happen if you didn’t submit the required college essay along with your application.
My advice to high school seniors applying to colleges is to keep everything in perspective. The college you go to will not determine your future. What matters really is what you do in the college you choose to attend. Lots of people on this website do some really amazing things and have taken advantage of many wonderful opportunities, but we don’t hear gratefulness or really much of an acknowledgment that what they’re doing is wonderful. What you hear is, “How much will this help me get in to college? How much will I stand out?” My honest answer, which I tend not to give, because it will annoy some people, is, “Who cares? You’re giving so much of your time to volunteering. Aren’t you enjoying it, if you’re spending that much time on it? If you don’t like volunteering, you should probably do something else you enoy.”
The discomfort of this answer comes in the different goals I have for the senior and the ones that the high school senior asking this question have. The goal of the senior is to get into an excellent college. My goal is to get the senior to enjoy what he does. The senior’s actions rest on the false idea that it is possible to “look good” to colleges. The true idea is that if you do what you enjoy and pursue it (Does it really take people to tell high schoolers to have fun and do what they enjoy?), you will probably look good, or good enough. But even then I’m not satisfied, because that would mean that the senior is indeed trying to look good, but is doing it by doing what he enjoys. The solution: Try to completely forget about college applications and looking good to colleges. Be yourself. Do what you like, within certain limits, of course. Do well in school, not because colleges want to see A’s, but because you have a genuine interest in learning.
That is the true test of Intellect: a genuine interest in learning and a passion for the hard work it takes. Intellect isn’t found when seniors cram for a college-level exam by reading through study guides to make up for their refusal to read the textbook.
Will all this get you into an Ivy-league school? Maybe, and maybe not. But even if you do everything with the goal of getting into an Ivy-League school, your chances probably wouldn’t be any higher than if you were a genuine, authentic you.
The Ivy-League name isn’t what it used to be. It might help to open doors to jobs, but studies have suggested that the income of Ivy-league students isn’t necessarily any higher than that of college students who didn’t go to Ivy league schools.
The application process doesn’t have to be complicated either. And it really doesn’t have to be difficult. Just fill it in, as best as you can. The section for EC’s on the CommonApp is short because college admissions people probably don’t care that much about what awards you’ve won unless they’re truly spectacular. They’re looking for a general feel of what kind of person you are.
Once you get accepted into whatever schools you get in, you’ve got to choose one. I remember having a hard time choosing between Swarthmore and the University of Chicago. I was attracted to Chicago’s Core Curriculum (Swarthmore has distribution requirements) and it’s excellent location, and I felt that it might be more exciting to be in a school with a larger population than my high school’s. But Swarthmore appealed to me because I’ve visited Swarthmore before and liked it a lot, whereas I hadn’t visited Chicago, there seemed to be a closer-knit student body, and everyone there was just so nice and wonderful. I could go to Chicago for grad school later. And Swarthmore’s financial aid was so much better than Chicago’s. In the end, the financial aid package does matter. And so I picked Swarthmore, and I’m very happy here. But I would also be happy at Chicago, or Reed, or Carleton, or the Honors Program at the University of Washington, all of which I got into. The name really doesn’t matter. It’s the resources to achieve your goals, and what you do in college, that matters.
Remember to be a genuine you, not because this will help you get into college (even though it will), but because being genuine is a wonderful way to live, and that’s more important.
“The college you go to will not determine your future.”
I would say “The college you go to will not necessarily determine your future.”
For most students it won’t, but for some it can make a huge difference. E.g., for a physics major, going to the neighboring schools of CalTech or Pitzer is likely to determine your physics career.
Depending on the major and the student, such stark contrasts can be drawn.
This is a very informative post. I have a question about the Boston area colleges. A college financial advisor told me I’d never get any financial aid from BU or Lesley or Emerson (all places I’d love to go as a communicaion/journalism major. She actually discouraged me from applying and told me to look anywhere else but Boston. (I am a in the top 10% of my class and have taken 4 AP’s. I have community service cred. all the right things) Is there anyone out there that can add any insight or credibility to this statement or is this just the opinion of one person with sour grapes?
Don’t listen to someone who discourages you from applying. Yes, have a back-up plan, and if you have a limited budget of time and money for applying, make sure to apply first to your sure-bet “safety” college, but apply anywhere you are sincerely interested.
Terrific tips in this thread, thanks.
On safety schools, I would just say that identifying such schools is harder than we expected due to all the uncertainties about costs and what merit aid will be available.
We have an estimated EC somewhere in the 30s, depending on '09 income changes, but we won’t be able to devote anything remotely near that to our S (2010 HS grad) for college and are trying not to load him (or us!) up with 50K or more of undergrad debt.
I know the obvious choice is one’s state school, but as is the case elsewhere ours is likely to raise rates substantially and potentially price itself out, too. Big merit aid from some of the schools known for this is a good possibility, but trying to guess where it will come from and whether any of it will be enough for us seems unanswerable till the last minute.
Trying to steel S to the ‘hated’ possibility of CC for his first two years. But maybe Canada is a safety option – especially if they give merit aid of any note (does anyone know?).
Very help, thank you.
Thank you for details about college admission process!!
yes this is useful indeed.
I have a few questions:
- so about socioeconomic background. how much will it help me, as a low-income student? will it actually increase my chances?
- also, this question has been haunting me for months- do colleges take into account the competitiveness of your specific high school? for example, if my class is extremely competitive, will that mean it will be harder for me to get into a college? do colleges like to select about the same number of students from a high school each year?
thanks.
<ol>
<li>Being low-income can both help and hurt, even at the same school. It can help at schools that value socioeconomic diversity, giving your chances a boost. It can hurt at need-aware schools if their aid budget has been depleted and you’re on the cusp of acceptance.</li>
<li>This has to do with your GPA, rank (when given), and the rigor of your classes compared to what your school offers, but there is no simple answer. In general, the higher these three factors, the better your chances. But, e.g., if your WGPA were 4.0 and you took the most rigorous classes, not being in the top 10% of your class could conceivably hurt your chances at the most selective schools. For diversity’s sake, some private colleges may limit the number of students they accept from a single HS, but I haven’t heard of this being a factor at public colleges.</li>
</ol>
Also, colleges know about the kind of high school you went to, and they factor that in.
HOW do colleges know about the kind of high school you went to? And how is “kind of high school” defined in this context?