<p>Derisive laughter loses it’s effect over the internet, just so you know.</p>
<p>Calimami…if you you really are from Cali you definitely have something to be thankful for! wonderful city! so not sure what the derisive laughter is about…Sorry, K…advising you that your response may be offensive to others does not constitute a personal attack. You seem very smart and think about these issues a lot, but that doesn’t mean that everything you write will be applauded by readers. Reread and ask yourself if anyone has attacked you personally. I think you will see that several parents were concerned about the tone and content of your statement (but also of other students who spend fruitless hours wondering about the advantage of URM, particular ECs, etc.) but I also think I (and probably others) admire your willingness to put your thoughts out there in the public domain…read the feedback and really reflect whether there is something in the comments that has hit a bit of a nerve and why? Do you still think that your take on URM status is helpful for your URM friends? If so, feel secure that you considered the feedback without taking it too personally but haven’t changed your views.</p>
<p>OK, now that decisions have been made and deposits sent, I’d like to ask a few questions that are off the current URM discussion. As a parent who will be going through the apply-worry-pray-reject-curse-acceptance-openly weep cycle this coming year, (hopefully for the last time), I’d like to ask all of this year’s parents: </p>
<p>So what did you learn about the <3.6 application process? Was it what you expected? Better? Worse? Did all the input from CCers help or did it just add anxiety? </p>
<p>Please, not just PCP or manitori, but everyone…</p>
<p>I’d love to know, too. Right now the biggest question in our house is whether D would even want to be in the lower percentile at a “higher” school, rather than in the middle or even a star kid somewhere just as nice. It’s a very personal choice, and any and all perspectives would be very helpful.</p>
<p>I know this has been discussed at great length on the UMass/CalTech thread and the OSU/Swarthmore thread, philosophically, globally, and in reference to those schools in particular. I’m asking more like vince is - how was it for YOU? Would you do anything differently?</p>
<p>glad to be back on topic…it is worth going through some of the old threads but I was asked this same question yesterday at a soccer game by parents of rising seniors. Of course, start early…I kiss the feet and hands of our high school English department that, for all kids, whether they were planning on 4 year college or not, were required for summer assignment that to research a university, pick one of the admission essay questions and submit the essay first day of school…Teachers edited them and gave them a grade mainly based on timeliness (easy A). If your kid is going to do any of the schools using the common app, that is an obvious first choice for essay. They get easier after the first one and just breaking through the fear factor in the summer makes everything easier.</p>
<p>If your school doesn’t require this…make it your kid’s task to do by the first week of july. Threaten if you must (grounded until completed) but DO THIS! many of the 3.6/high scoring kids are procrastinators and sloppy about preparation. I didn’t realize until later how having one essay done would be such a help. If your kid is going to be sending in supplements (art, design, music or even applying for athletics) strongly consider a portfolio prep class for art/design/architecture, and get professional help for music audition tapes and athletic tapes/clips of kid playing. You don’t want to be messing with this in September.</p>
<p>Last…I did this for my kid…as he picked out possible college choices I started a filing system for him with a little checklist of deadlines and requirements (sat IIs, portfolio, transcripsts and recommendations) and a place to write Username/passwords. this last is ESSENTIAL…once a kid fills out an app they get a name and password, often the school then sends a new name/password for letting them check their status…one school had name/password for certain scholarship applications…total of 4 combinations for one school. I kid you not!! As you know the password requirements vary, sometimes the username is assigned not chosen…keep track of these or kid will be requesting new passwords everytime they check in on their application! </p>
<p>We kept the files in a box in his room near computer…also allowed me to intervene for some last minute checks and a place for us to stuff the overwhelming amount of mail from the 9 schools he applied to. VERY important when it came near the end with acceptances and housing apps and financial aid etc. We just chucked everything in recycling this weekend and saved the folders but it made me a little sad to see it go…</p>
<p>I think I posted upthread, but here is what we learned:</p>
<ol>
<li>Not all 3.6s are created equal. We knew of course that lower GPAs were okay from academic magnets and well-known prep schools, but weren’t sure how low would be too low from our school.</li>
<li>Being ranked in the top 6% probably helped a lot. (An unexpected advantage of a big comprehensive semi-urban high school.)</li>
<li>Colleges may have accepted schools unweighted GPA of 92 despite the fact that it included two orchestra classes every term. (Without those 99s and 100s in orchestra his unweighted GPA would have been 87.)</li>
<li>His GPA was mostly affected by poor Latin grades, he probably got a bit of a pass here.</li>
<li>At least one B+ was accompanied by a 5 on the AP for the course. (Teacher was a bit flaky.)</li>
<li>It didn’t hurt that he had 5’s on the three APs he’d taken.</li>
<li>He had some quirky activities in addition to more normal school ECs. (Made and sold origami earrings, did some archival work for the neighborhood association.)</li>
<li>Essays count. He wrote about both the activities mention in #7. The second essay in particular showed him thinking like a historian, but also showed his sense of humor.</li>
<li>He paid attention to the “Why __ college” question. His answers were neither detailed lists of courses and professors, nor love poems to the schools in question. His reason for loving Tufts was the fact that they use chalk on the side walks to advertise everything - including, to our amusement, the directions to the the accepted students open house. Everyone loves the Core Curriculum at Chicago, and the open curriculum at Brown, find something else to talk about.</li>
<li>Apply EA when you can. ED if you have a clear favorite and it will make a difference.</li>
<li>Girls look at the tech schools if appropriate. Boys look at schools with too many girls.</li>
</ol>
<p>Years of CC experience helped shape those essays and made me realize that you can really shape an application to make yourself look more attractive. My son had much happier results than many of his friends with higher GPAs and more ECs because he got the message that you need to stand out. He was not afraid to show his quirkiness and his sense of humor come through. He said most of his friends wrote very typical essays. He had a hard time critiquing them, because they were so boring.</p>
<p>The results were that he was rejected from the reachiest reaches - no surprise there, and the truth is those were also the applications that didn’t fit the schools as well either. He realized afterwards he should probably have sent his optional Tufts essay to other schools - it was very good. </p>
<p>So what was the ultimate decision? He decided against U of Chicago. He’s a nerd, but not a really intense hard working one, he thought he’d learn a lot, but was worried that he wouldn’t be happy there. Vassar just didn’t feel right, not enough density of bodies on campus, and academically it didn’t have the programs he wanted. American (safety not top 20) had the right feel, but he worried about not being challenged outside the honors program and the School of International Service. Tufts in the end felt right. A little more laid back, a little bit quirky, great reputation in International Relations, more “normal” kids. Don’t know whether it’s “top 20 equivalent” but it felt right to him.</p>
<p>^ and that’s the only thing that matters, because experience has shown that students thrive best, excel most, where they feel right.</p>
<p>adding to mathmom’s great post: girls, look at women’s colleges. Smith, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, have great programs and lots of young women won’t consider them.</p>
<p>Like to add to mathmom’s good post.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The amount of work required to turn in a good application was more than we had expected. A lot of research was required to complete an application with meaningful specificity and quality essays. This included figuring out how to prioritize and organize your list of EC’s and awards to accentuate your application for each of colleges on your list. Each college is DIFFERENT!</p>
<p>I learned that grades are more important to the Ivies than to many other elite schools. S1 did not have much luck with the Ivies he applied to even though he had good success early on with other top schools. If an Ivy is your target, don’t sacrifice grades for EC’s, even if your EC’s are at the state championship level.</p>
<p>You can give your kid a big leg up just by being his/her admin through this process. The amount of information our kids need to collect and digest and the number of threads they need to follow and sort through are enormous. It will take a tremendous load off their back, and give them a better chance to perform well (or in S1’s case, survive) in their all important first semester senior year.</p>
<p>Most CC comments were useful, particularly posts from earnest debates when both sides were championed by passionate and knowledgeable CCers who had worked through the issues. There will be some posts from naysayers with harsh words and some posts from supporters with irrational exuberance; parse them carefully and objectively.</p>
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</p>
<p>I put my thoughts on this a long time ago upthread. We want our children to grow and mature at a good pace through college. My personal feeling is that this goal is better served through schooling in a rigorous environment where not only they are challenged by the teachers, but also by their peers. This is especially true is your child is the type that rises and falls to the level of peers. </p>
<p>I want them to experience failures and learn how to pick themselves up. I’d like them to know and see for themselves that there are many other students who are better than them at many things. Rather than feeling inferior about themselves, let them figure out how to turn this disadvantage into a leverage to enhance their experience, socially and academically.</p>
<p>AGH! Lost a long, long post!!!</p>
<p>Here’s my answer to the question, “So what did you learn about the <3.6 application process? Was it what you expected? Better? Worse? Did all the input from CCers help or did it just add anxiety?” </p>
<p>In 2007, my first child was accepted at every school to which she applied, including Yale, Stanford, MIT, etc. My son’s story this year unfolded quite differently. His unweighted gpa was 3.46, and I did learn a few things going through this process with him. I never joined this thread early on, though, because my son never thought of himself as having this goal: “Applying Top 20.” Still, he did apply to several schools in that range, and so I ended up posting his results here in the spring.</p>
<p>Two things I learned from this thread:<br>
- The only students who seem to have successfully gained admission to “top 20” schools had two things: unweighted gpa above 3.5 and high SAT scores (somewhere around 98%). Sorry to be so reductive; that’s just my observation.
- Some of the posters here helped me to accept my son’s final decision…it might have been a more painful process, otherwise.</p>
<p>What I learned from the process, totally apart from cc:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Not every student who has a low gpa is unmotivated or a procrastinator. My son had a serious medical condition junior year (he has asthma but can’t handle medications in the inhaler) that hurt his grades. I did believe that colleges might overlook this, and some did, but most did not. What I’m trying to say, is that I believe my son has just as much talent and motivation as his sister, who’s now at MIT. For this reason, we did encourage him to apply to some top schools, though in hindsight, we were too optimistic about his chances. </p></li>
<li><p>A student like my son (low gpa, high sat scores, with a GOOD REASON for the gpa in a very rigorous course load) can still win very large merit offers, and the better the fit with the school’s programs and mission, the better the offer. My son wanted to double major in Japanese and English. Willamette University in Oregon has a special relationship with Tokyo International University, which sits right next door, and Willamette has a strong Japanese program. Willamette offered my son a good merit award initially, but after his mid-year senior grades came out (4.0!!), Willamette upped this offer, bringing it to about as high a merit offer as the school gives. </p></li>
<li><p>Fall in love with the school your son or daughter loves. For us in the end, this was Willamette. Not only for the good programs there, but because I think that my son came to feel that this was the one school that really believed in him. I’m a professor in a California liberal arts college, and I’ve known all sorts of young people who ended up at “safety schools” and graduated at or near the top of their class, then went on to have great careers. Our son’s college admission story had a happy ending, and we have great confidence in his future.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>CalAlum, congrats on Williamette and the merit award!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You must tell us how he turned his grades around!</p>
<p>^His grades turned around because he has been healthy his senior year.
He gave up using the inhaler when doctors finally figured out he could not handle the inhaler medications. He has extremely low blood pressure normally, and the medications drop it below safe levels. He gave up all running sports (he has exercise-induced asthma) and now controls his asthma with Cingulair. Sorry to sound like product placement, but that’s what happened. No more episodes of collapsing at school, vomiting, dizziness…no more months of undiagnosed problems.</p>
<p>It’s too late for this year’s batch of juniors, but I found it really helpful to visit lots of schools during junior spring break. HS spring break is typically different than college spring break, so you can see schools with students on campus.</p>
<p>For students with GPA below 3.6 and aiming for top schools, in order to have a decent shot their SAT/ACT scores had better be quite high, and they should have a challenging curriculum in a demanding school. Top 10% ranking also very helpful.</p>
<p>We got off very easy this year, since son applied ED and was accepted at a reasonable reach school. Would he have been accepted RD? We’ll never know, but I saw a lot of students with better grades/similar scores get waitlisted. Some other posters on this thread did very well EA. I think the overall EA/ED results on this thread were much better than the RD results for Top 20 schools.</p>
<p>Look at scattergrams from Naviance or other online sources to try to figure out which schools value high scores vs. which schools require high grades. I found very different patterns at some different Top 20 schools. </p>
<p>I thought CC was very useful to me in several areas: Consider schools in different geographies. Try taking the ACT, some students do better on it. SAT Subject Test selection - try to overlap with with AP courses if possible. How to define reach/match/safety schools. Some of the tradeoffs between mid-size Universities and LACs, and which mid-size Universities were most LAC-like. For my 2013 D, I also expect to suggest to her several schools I had never heard about pre-CC.</p>
<p>Mathmom, congrats on Tufts! We visited there over spring break and S really liked it (he’s an IR person as well).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My observation is that the Top 20 puts more emphasis on GPA than test scores. Well, to be exact, they want both but test scores don’t trump GPA, although a ‘hook’ might, if it’s interesting enough. I’m not sure that I believed this when we first started but I can see now looking back that it is true. (Son had a 3.2 UWA, 3.8 WA after junior year, 31 ACT.)</p>
<p>I think by the time you start applying, the essay is one of the few ‘variables’ you have left to set you apart from the pack and it probably counts for more than we give credit.</p>
<p>The process was more anxiety-ridden than I expected but once the applications were out the door and that first acceptance came in, the anxiety lessened a great deal. Now looking back, it seems like a lot of wasted anxiety but really, it is a process. Until you go through it, it’s hard to describe. I have zero regrets about how my son handled things and about the outcome. He’s got into a program that was always at the top of his list - what more can you ask for?</p>
<p>I thought the input from CCers helped immensely. There was a lot I didn’t understand and if I had to do it over (I don’t - only child here) I would have done several things differently. The problem is my son is very, very independent when it comes to these types of things and it was hard to get him to do things based upon my advice. He made his own decisions about where to apply and I’m proud that he had to guts to ‘go for it’ even though it was a long shot in many cases. Looking back, I don’t consider applying to those schools a waste of time and I think if I asked him, he would agree.</p>
<p>Totally agree on the password advice from Fineartsmajormom. Son didn’t think to record user names and passwords and we had to spend a considerable amount of time on the back end trying to retrieve those in order to get decisions and merit award information.</p>
<p>For the record, my son didn’t get into a top 20 - although he did get into Emory’s Oxford College (2 year bridge program to Emory). He ultimately decided that the honors college at our state flagship was a better fit. It’s program that a lot of students who got into Ivy league schools attend for financial reasons, so he will still be with a top-performing group of students. That was a concern of his as well as his counselor. He likes to to be ‘challenged’ intellectually. </p>
<p>The biggest lesson I learned is, at the end of the day, it’s really about fit, not whether the school is prestigious enough. Son has a few classmates whose only goal was to get into an Ivy or Top 20 and when they did, they were scrambling at the last minute trying to decide where to go. These weren’t always schools they ‘loved’. They were schools that had a ‘name’. Everyone is different but I’m glad son wasn’t in that position on April 29th. He got into one he loved and is happy about it. As you can see from this thread, a number of kids ending up turning higher ranked schools for those that were a better fit. That’s what’s most important, IMHO.</p>
<p>Seems to be the best place to ask this. I’ve seen the term “Humanities” S or D and that is what I have I guess: S is a JR and Stats are 780 CR 780W and 660 Math. UW GPA 3.2 W 3.6; competitive prep school. He wants to apply to 1-2 top 20’s which of course will be super reaches with his gpa. Question I have is: does he really need to take calculus next year? He was planning on 1/2 year intro to Calc & 1/2 year intro to stats. He isn’t a really strong math student and all school offers is AP cal, that would be killer. He is taking two other AP’s senior year - AP Euro and AP Envir Sci or AP Bio; possibly Honors Eng(they don’t have AP). School has a lot of math/science AP’s but not much humanities- just the two in History. No AP psych, Econ etc.</p>
<p>ldinct, an SAT score is not nearly enough information to tell you how your son will do in math. My younger son got a 670 in math junior year, 690 senior year. He’s got a good math mind, but he’s slow and really bad at memorizing facts. I’m still not convinced he actually knows his multiplication tables. Junior year he had a great math teacher and excelled. They ended up covering all the AB Calculus material by June even though it was only supposed to be a pre-calc class. Unfortunately they finished up Calc too late to take the APs, but they had an old exam for their final and he would have gotten a 5. This year his math teacher is not nearly as good. He’s been doing well (B+), but he says he doesn’t understand the material nearly as well. On the AP itself there were topics the teacher had never covered. In general with a 660 a kid should have the ability to do calculus, but how easy or hard or good the course is really depends on the school. </p>
<p>I also think calculus is something that it takes a somewhat more adult mind to understand. I took Calculus at 16 and felt it was just beyond my grasp. I repeated the material in college at 19 after three years of no math courses at all and it was a breeze.</p>
<p>no, don’t bother with calculus. Whether or not he takes Calc is not going to be the deciding factor in his application.</p>
<p>T20’s prefer students who take on the most rigorous curriculum in their high schools. If the school offers AP Calc, then by not taking Calc your son risks not having the most rigorous curriculum box checked on his transcript or GC’s recommendation. You should talk to his GC about this and see if he can still get the designation, especially since your son is a humanities student.</p>
<p>If you and your son believe he will not do well in Calc, then don’t take it and ruin his transcript. Take the most challenging course load that he can handle. I don’t believe the top LAC’s care as much about Calc as the top research universities.</p>