<p>Thanks, Hat! S just took 3 SAT IIs last Saturday, exactly for the reasons you stated. I will check out Ithaca College, thanks for the tip. S doesn’t currently want to major in theater, but he does insist on a school where he can continue to be in shows/take theater classes.</p>
<p>CPT, and GKM… you guys have given me a lot of hope for my 3.2 3.33 UW GPA on a good day, high test scorer S. My biggest fear is that the colleges will look at him as another smart but lazy boy. He is anything but, as his EC’s will portray. Another one of my worries is that even if he could manage to get into one of these top 20/25 schools, he would be overwhelmed with the competition. He is not one of those type A students that likes to study non-stop. He is very balanced and likes to do many other things besides study. I’m thinking that being a big fish in a small pond would be better for him, although he fell in love with Reed college. LOL!!! GPK… I think my S and I are going to be going on the same college tours as you in the Spring… my S is interested in a lot of the same colleges. Please let me know how it goes… especially the driving. My S will be in Vermont at The Mountain School so I will fly there and we will start at Bennington and probably UVM. Just would LOVE a report and tips.</p>
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<p>Yes, because top 20 universities want their student base to be comprised solely of Andover/Exeter/et al (elite society preps), Harker/Latin School/et al (other elite schools), New Trier / Scarsdale HS et al (top public hs), and only those who are #1,2 or 3 elsewhere. @@</p>
<p>This doesn’t square with my experience and what I observe one bit.</p>
<p>Heu 5boys! My son visited Reed and Whitman this Spring; loved Whitman, wasn’t sure what to make out of Reed. </p>
<p>I will definitely report back with notes and tips! Not being from the Northeast I’m totally intimidated about driving there–I did rent a car with a GPS and I hope that is reliable/useful. Amazing what we’ll do for our kids!</p>
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<p>And 88.35% of all statistics are made up. On what authority do you speak?</p>
<p>GKM… The one reason we went up to the PNW was to see Whitman but it snowed over the pass so we couldn’t get there from Portland. My dad lives in Seattle so we paid him a visit instead. I think my S will also LOVE Whitman. I heard they are a stickler for high GPA’s… although from our Naviance it looks promising for my S.</p>
<p>FYI… you did the right thing by getting the GPS with the rental car. They asked me if I wanted one in Portland and I politely declined it thinking WHY WOULD I NEED THAT??? Boy was that a mistake. Loved the bonding moments with my newly permitted DS thinking he knows everything about directions and driving… URG!!! GET THE GPS!! I am very worried about driving in the East too. I’m from CA. I’m so glad that you are going to do all this before me so you can forewarn me of potential disasters and FYI’s :-)))) We are also taking a few days this Fall to go see Colorado College.</p>
<p>IMHO, if your kid loves a school, then he/she should apply to that school. It really is a crap shoot where kids will get in. My kids got into some very selective schools, and they were rejected from others. I think that the essays are key, and taking time to target them to specific schools is also terribly important. Also, no matter what the school says, I think that it is important to interview, not because it is important in deciding whether your kid is a good match, but because it is important that your kid demonstrates interest in the school.</p>
<p>FWIW, my kids (twin Ds) got into schools such as Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Bard, but they were rejected from Vassar despite being double legacies. So Vassar, these days, appears to be fixated on grades, test scores, and, despite their written material, kids who can afford to pay full tuition. Admissions may be need blind, but when the committee looks at an app and see that parents are a teacher and a professor, they know that we will apply for FA. And FWIW, I teach at the graduate level at an ivy league school, and I can tell you that many of my graduate students have not gone to top rated undergrad institutions, but are very bright.</p>
<p>I also really like the colleges that change lives group of schools.</p>
<p>NEmom - wonderful insight. It’s great that you have the view from “the other side,” both as a professor and an after-the-fact parent.</p>
<p>In my D’s preferred area (theater) she is having to spread a large net - she will have something like a 3.6 UW/high 20s ACT when she applies, and some of her BFA choices are academically selective, as well as artistically selective, AND she will have schools of varying selectivity among the ones that do not require an audition. </p>
<p>Vassar has always hovered as a high reach in her non-audition list. I think it’s a long shot for her, being an artsy girl without the kind of stats they seem to be craving now. Not much to make her stand out, except we are full-pay, and we come from a nowhere town, so maybe she’d get “lucky” (I say that will full irony - I don’t consider it such a great thing to “win” this game when it feels so crass). </p>
<p>The real wisdom she’s gathered in her long-term planning is that if she doesn’t get into a BFA now, she’ll get a respectable (if not superior) BA education and could try for an MFA, whether that, too, ends up being at a prestigious program or not. She knows that they are all steps in the process, and it’s not “game over” (literally) if she doesn’t get into a top school this time (or ever).</p>
<p>P.S. She’s another kid who really likes Bard!</p>
<p>I wish I could come up with a stellar and persuasive argument to convince S’s private high school to stop the ranking. This year we ended up with 3 Vals and 2 Sals. Statistically these 5 were separated by 2/1000th of a point. The whole top 20% of the class is statistically tight) My son lands at 14% because of 2 B’s in 9th grade and a couple A-'s scattered about. (silly me for giving birth to a human) 
As a result of the economy we lost about 30 kids out of 200 which affected the ranking. (unfortunately they rank lower than him). </p>
<p>I am convinced that because our HS ranks, a top college may reject him because they cannot report to US News that he was in the top 10%. His other stats are wonderful and for that matter so is his end of sophomore unweighted GPA of 3.981. (no junior grades yet) If he doesn’t make the cut so be it, but I just want him to be on equal footing with the competition.</p>
<p>5boys…what a bummer re the snow blocking teh way to Whitman! Yeah, I’ve heard that they are a stickler for GPAs too. They have had a few students from our town…but never one from our school (not sure if any have applied).</p>
<p>Not only have I got the GPS from Avis, but I got one where you can program the addresses you’ll be visiting on an SD card, so when you get the GPS you pop in the card and all the addresses on your trip come up in the "favorites’ section, so you don’t have to fumble around inputing addresses. If it works, I’ll be estatic. I’ll definitely report back!</p>
<p>Get an iPhone - has a built-in GPS! Don’t even need to have a car GPS when traveling.</p>
<p>Our school stopped ranking several years ago (before my kids started there). Before making that decision, they did studies of admissions rates for ranked/non-ranked (just using GPA’s) students to top schools to see where the decisions landed. They found higher admission rates for the students who weren’t ranked than for those with the same GPA’s but who used ranking. FWIW. It made me feel better about that change.</p>
<p>S1 had a 3.5 gpa heading into Jr year at his rigorous/respected HS… where students are not ranked. I am not sure how this year’s performance will change his unweighted gpa? His test scores evidence room for improvement… but he has not been motivated to study/prep for them. He has the help of the athletic hook on his side…and another chance to take SAT/ACT in the fall. He has more reach schools on his list at this point, than match and safeties combined. It will be interesting to see how/if that distribution of selectivity changes, once scores & transcripts become available.</p>
<p>cPT, asking the GC “where kids with these scores get in” is only helpful info when the other kids are applying to the schools in question. It’s useless when you’re dealing with states in which state flagships siphon off the top students.</p>
<p>One of the obsessive things a parent does when unable to sleep … recalculated GPAs in my head last night. Based on how I think she did this semester, and the likely range of results next year, my D will have something between a 3.6 and a 3.75 (virtually impossible - needs all As/A-s with 3 APs and honors Chem). My guess is about a 3.65 will be her UW GPA, which is fine. Only academics makes it more like 3.3-3.4. Can’t even begin to weight it, but she got several Bs in UW classes so even with weighting she won’t get significantly higher with the academics, but I guess someone could generously give her a 3.7-3.8 if they really pull grades up a whole point.</p>
<p>So that’s that. It’s funny that I can settle the whole question right now, but it’s just an issue of an A or a B in her APs and Chem class. I doubt she’ll get a C, but I was mostly looking to see the upper limit, anyway. Once you’re looking at 4 years’ worth, a point or two in the larger averaging equation doesn’t always make much difference, anyway.</p>
<p>I guess I’m confused how so many kids here manage to pull their GPA up several percentage points in a semester or two? It seems like you’d have to go from Cs to As in several classes … ?</p>
<p>EmmyBet - Not sure if your daughter is interested in majoring in theater (drama) or musical theater. From my experience with our son applying to schools which required a music audition, even the most rigorous (NU?) cut a break on academics for artistic types who intend to major in their art. The weighting of academics vs. audition will vary significantly by school. I remember one school where the audition was about 80% and another where it was perhaps 20%. You should check out the music theater major sub-forum or the one which includes drama theater (not sure of the name) for better ideas on schools your daughter is particularly interested in.</p>
<p>Thank you! She is quite sure she wants to study “straight” theater, and I read that forum and the MT forum a lot. Very, very helpful.</p>
<p>You should see my chart … it’s crazy how differently the schools emphasize academics, arts, resume, “talent,” etc. We can hardly keep track. Carnegie Mellon, for example, is said to count the audition 90% and academics only 10%, but it does seem foolish not to aspire to their academic standards nonetheless. It’s one of her favorite schools, specifically for theater, but she’d like to feel that she was the academic peer of the other students, in general. It’s hard to imagine the arts kids there not having had rigorous and successful HS records.</p>
<p>Her first choice is Boston University, which very directly states that students must meet their academic criteria, about a 50-50 balance with the audition. Other schools won’t even let her audition before she is academically admitted, but luckily at most of them she has met or exceeded their standards. </p>
<p>She doesn’t really have that many “top” schools on her list, since everything goes through the “theater filter,” and she doesn’t have the stats or the desire to go to Ivies, etc. I’ll hang around here still, though; I find the whole process fascinating, and really appreciate the support. If she does decide on Vassar, or does add Northwestern (a good friend is going there next year, and if she pops her ACT, she could have a chance), you’ll be hearing from me more!</p>
<p>Emmybet, you say that “only academics makes it more like 3.3 - 3.4.” I am under the impression that when colleges look at GPA (or recalculate it themselves), they only look at the academic classes. I’d suggest basing the college application decisions only on the academic GPA (math, science, history, english, foreign language).</p>
<p>Reporting back on our college trip–beter late than never!</p>
<p>The GPS from Avis worked perfectly…having all the addresses loaded on the little SD card made things a snap. I liked it so well I now own one. We covered over 1,600 miles and only got a bit lost once when the GPS seemed to think a cornfield was the address to one of the schools (the school was close enough by the mis-direction that we were able to figure it out).</p>
<p>As to the trip itself, S now has a list of schools that he is going to apply to and is very excited about…both reaches and a match or two although after listening to several info sessions we started to feel that all the LACs we chose to see were reachy. Top 2 choices turned out to be Wesleyan and Bard, with Hamilton and Bates right up there (very different feels; its like my S’s arty and scientific sides are fighting for school choice!) . Crossed a few right off the list, including Cornell (decided to throw in on Ivy since we were in the neighborhood, which S disliked).</p>
<p>Doing 2 schools a day on several days was not a problem except occassionally we wished we had more time to spend at a particular school; we were only late once and thanks to the GPS, we knew we would be late and called to let the school know. </p>
<p>Let me know if anyone has any questions.</p>
<p>Hey all, </p>
<p>I’d like to get into the discussion. I have a question, for performing arts schools, are “electives” courses, that is majors courses, considered any differently. My weighted cum GPA is 4.025, Unweighted 3.5ish, but without majors courses (straight As) it’s closer to a 3.1. How screwed am I?</p>
<p>Applying to University of Pitt, U of Minnesota, Fordham U, Barnard, Skidmore, Temple U (would be VERY happy to get into Honors College), Boston U, and Emerson. And then I’m applying as a BFA student to Rutgers, North Carolina School of the Arts, and SUNY Purchase. </p>
<p>So… just how screwed am I? (half-joking)</p>