<p>mantori, congrats on Rochester! $22K for NMF is no chump change! For as long as I can remember, its Institute of Optics is the best in the world in optical engineering.</p>
<p>$22K, really? Hmm…so far they’ve only offered the Bausch & Lomb Scholarship at $10K. If the $22K for NMFs is in addition to that, then the total is pretty close to full tuition. We’d better follow up and see if they got his NMF letter. Thanks for mentioning that; it would make a very, very big difference.</p>
<p>^^ Rochester only does one merit scholarship and won’t stack them. So I think you’ll only get the 22K.</p>
<p>Check the URoch threads – I recall MConklin saying NMF is now $17k. Still not bad!</p>
<p>Rochester is releasing their decisions in waves which started at the end of February. We’ve been told the last wave went out last week but so far nobody has received anything from that mailing, including DS.</p>
<p>The tally so far:</p>
<p>Rejected Rice (ED), Carnegie Mellon (thought he was a match), Northwestern and UC Berkeley.</p>
<p>Waitlisted WUSTL & UC San Diego (didn’t think he had a chance).</p>
<p>Accepted Case & Tulane with nice scholarships, Boston U, Rensselaer, UOP, Cal Poly SLO, Georgia Tech, Clemson, U Utah.</p>
<p>Waiting Decision UPenn & URochester.</p>
<p>^^ holy!!! 17 applications!!!</p>
<p>^^I left out the application we withdrew from Hofstra.
He’s our one and only, so why not go all out eh?</p>
<p>Given the seemingly arbitrary nature of acceptances, I understand why students are applying to so many schools these days, especially the Naviance-outliers who are posting on this thread (because of a mismatch between grades and test scores.) It is really hard to predict where a student will be accepted, and properly label Reach, Match, Safety.</p>
<p>One of my takeaways from this admissions cycle has been the importance of applying to schools with a variety of selectivity levels, and at more than one school at some of the Match selectivity level. </p>
<p>AVHS Dad, your S has a lot of great schools to choose from, and even with scholarships, which hopefully has taken away the sting of the rejections. Good luck on the remaining schools, and please let us know which one he picks.</p>
<p>GPA 3.49, ACT 27, excellent private school, spent jr year abroad in Beijing with SYA.
Accepted; Wake Forest, Fordham, Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, U of Or
Rejected; Colgate, Duke, WUSL, BC, USC
WL; Villanova
Very happy D, who is glad she gave the ‘dream schools’ a shot, as she says she would always wonder if she could have been accepted if she didn’t give it a try. </p>
<p>For the sake of next year’s parents, some ‘experts’ on this board asserted that the year abroad would do nothing to help admission. The schools that accepted D said it was a big factor. So a year in France might not mean much, but it seems a year in China helps.</p>
<p>sacchi: I was very surprised at the wide range of merit money offered by the privates. DS helped his case tremendously by working hard to improve his SAT scores (3 sittings, +100 each sitting!). It’s obvious which schools took notice.
One thing that really bothers me is the way schools treat AP/Honors classes and how they effect GPA. DS goes to a very competitive public school where the AP classes teach to the test and they have excellent pass rates for those AP tests. They also get a 1 point boost to GPA, but nothing for Honors courses. It’s obvious that some schools pass out A’s like candy in AP courses, where their weighted GPA is through the roof but they’ve taken maybe one actual AP test and maybe gotten a 3…if they list it at all. In the craziest example I’ve seen, one senior had a weighted GPA a full 1.2 poinits higher than his unweighted. When I asked about it, they said their school gives one point for all Honors Courses and TWO points for the few AP courses they offer.
Good Lord!!!</p>
<p>We keep looking at S2’s GPA and the insane courseload he took, and saying that he will be superbly prepared for college, wherever he goes. Bs in classes, 5s on APs, and he has learned what to do when he hits the wall.</p>
<p>^ Ditto here. Our son received mostly B grades in an extremely rigorous junior year in a top public school that does not have grade inflation. Ironically, he is now a straight-A student in a full-AP course load his senior year. His unweighted GPA ended up as 3.46 (4.02w) when he applied to colleges, but no regrets.</p>
<p>Just the other day, he said something like, “You know, taking those courses was the best thing, because I think I’m totally prepared for college.” He’s right. A couple of years ago I taught as a visiting professor at Stanford, and I would say that he is now a better writer than some of the undergraduates I had there.</p>
<p>I posted earlier that we had been surprised at how some schools emphasized the unweighted gpa. But if we could go back in time, I don’t think this information would have changed anything. Our son attends a Silicon Valley district that is “open access,” meaning that any student can enroll in any honors or AP course he wishes, no teacher permission required, no gatekeepers. I’m proud of him for really challenging himself and feel that he is now really well prepared.</p>
<p>Still, the poster who pointed out that Naviance outliers like my son are difficult to figure out in terms of “match” and “safety” schools is absolutely right.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I want to believe this SO very much, and I guess I really do. My son is exactly the same, except throw in a few Cs in place of Bs. He is taking seven classes (eight if you count Choir) and is never completely out of academic trouble; it just shifts from class to class depending on what week it is. When I tell him that “full-time” in college can mean as few as four classes, he gets a far-off look in his eyes and seems to be dreaming of the leisurely life, or at least one in which he has time to do something other than study. I don’t blame him. (It was his idea to take so many hard classes; his mom and I warned him not to. So, tough.)</p>
<p>
Ain’t it the truth. Also difficult to figure out in terms of which reaches are reachiest–which is why I have not yet given up all hope for Tufts, even though a kid who is waitlisted at Skidmore and Brandeis could be pardoned for assuming that Tufts is a lost cause.</p>
<p>And yes, I think our kids who have gone through these extremely rigorous high school programs do get the payoff when they hit college. We know a girl from our son’s school who’s now a sophomore at a highly ranked university, and her mother tells us that her daughter has found college easier than high school. I expect to hear the same thing.</p>
<p>(LOL about the dreamy look mantori.suzuki. Same here, and it gets dreamier when I point out that with a bit of luck he might get through the whole four years without having to get up at 6:30 in the morning once!)</p>
<p>Certianly the anecdotal reports we hear from alums of his IB program is that “college is easier.” He attends a selective admit IB which attracts the top kids in the county already. The teachers put the program on steroids and WHAM. 3.49 UW (includes eight semesters of middle school grades, but a 3.56 UW 9-12), 4.24 W. </p>
<p>His 9th grade pre-IB English class was tougher than S1’s AP Eng Lang – covered some of the same books, but in MUCH greater depth. While DH and I have some regrets about the way the program is run and the toll it has taken on S2 at times, he says he’s happy with his decision to attend this program.</p>
<p>Wholeheartedly agree with the benefit of taking most rigorous curriculum with high caliber classmates. Kids who have gone through this are indeed very well prepared for college, even at the Ivies+ level.</p>
<p>I also agree that a GPA thus suffered will not even be close to being fully compensated. Not only are these students in a disadvantage in admissions to top colleges, they may also be shut out of competitive merit scholarships that are fully or partially based on GPA. You may even find yourself in a strange position of being accepted by some top colleges and yet not able to get meaningful merit scholarships even in second tier colleges.</p>
<p>The unfortunate reality is that elite colleges want diversity, including diversity of high school backgrounds. When a small group of classmates gets 3.8+ in the same rigorous curriculum, your 3.6- may just be too difficult to overcome, even if you could have easily graduated in the top three of any of your neighboring high schools. Granted your 3.6- may have come with huge EC commitment or tough university classes or incredible research works, but it is hard for adcoms to discard the perceived flaw of a 3.6- when there are so many 4.0’s in the pool.</p>
<p>Does this mean our kids shouldn’t have applied to T20’s? Absolutely not. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.</p>
<p>
…and prepare for a loving, fulfilling, meaningful long-term relationship with one of your safeties. ;)</p>
<p>I have already seen many success stories on this thread …apparently highly ranked schools do look at the curriculum and scores and take a more understanding attitude toward somewhat erratic grades. So far my son with a 3.47 UW, 3.7 W (full IB/AP since 10th grade so I have lost track of how many credits he may have) has been admitted to UW-Madison, Wash U. St. Louis, and Carnegie Mellon. Admitted with substantial merit aid to 4 safeties. He may still choose one of the safeties because they are darn good schools but “damn the torpedos” is a great attitude for our kids. He is over the moon about CMU and the acceptances have been a good confidence booster.</p>
<p>Congrats on all these success stories!</p>
<p>I completely agree that kids who have taken the hardest program at a rigorous school are going to be:
- highly prepared for college
- unfairly dinged in the process of applying to elite colleges.</p>
<p>Thank goodness there are colleges who recognize brilliance when they see it 
and thank goodness for the resilience of an 18-year-old! My kids’ high school has an annual assembly where recent alums come back to talk about college. When asked if anyone has gotten better grades in college, they all raise their hands. My son’s GPA after two years is around .3 better than his high school GPA, and I imagine your kids will have a similar experience.</p>
<p>College acceptances are so weird. I was bemused to read a post from a kid who was accepted at Georgetown SFS, but reject by both Vassar and U of Chicago, while my son was rejected at Georgetown and accepted the latter two. I suspect that it’s more a case of fit- who likes quirkiness?</p>