Unless You Have a 2200 SAT Don't Bother

Parents Forum
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<p>Some data here . .</p>

<p>1- 2200 kids CAN compete</p>

<p>in re: the OP’s referenced 2200 SAT, in 2010 there were 24340 kids who scored 2200 or above; that’s about the same number as a combined top 15-18 Top schools (e.g., HYPed + Duke, Berkeley, Swarthmore, Amherst, Williams, Pomona). The absolute identity of the schools isn’t importantant (you can make up your own 18 or so Top Schools and you’d come up with an incoming class of about 24000 kids).</p>

<p>What IS important is that kids with a 2200 - depending on their other values - are not shut out from the mythical Top 20 schoools; there will always be slots available, so if a kid is inerested in reaching for one of those schools, she should go right ahead.</p>

<p>2- 2350 kids and Valedictorians are ALSO a reach for HYPed schools </p>

<p>Even if they have a better shot than the 2200 kids, their chances ars still not as good as the kids - and well meaning but uninformed parents - believe they are. </p>

<p>For example, Brown rejects ~ 80% of Valedictorians, ~ 70% of those who score a perfect 36 on the ACT, and ~75% of those with an 800 SAT Math score. Now those acceptance rates are still better than the 2% acceptance rates for those who ranked in the bottom 80% of their class by GPA or the 7% acceptance rates for those who had SAT Math scores in the 600s, but it’s still a far cry from what too many of those 2350/Valedictorian kids hear: “you’ll have NO trouble getting in.”</p>

<p>3- in re: post # 95: ALL kids need to have reasonable expectations</p>

<p>That’s why it’s important to end up liking a diverse set of schools, from Reaches to Fits to Safeties . . . and being ready to go to ANY of the schools you apply to, including - if you need them - what I call Financial Aid Safety schools, colleges that will both accept you AND offer you signfiicant money to attend </p>

<p>Worked best, April can be the time of year when you finally leave your college application process behind and move with fresh eyes to your college acceptance decision, with a range of schools to consider, any one of which you would be happy to attend.</p>

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<p>I agree with your points, Jonri, and I have a difficult time understanding why any adult would think this way. Very offensive. It is obvious that ACCecil likes to put people in boxes to keep things in his comfort zone. It must be some sort of jealousy of those who are highly intelligent - easier to rationalize that they must be a bunch of geeks anyway than to examine why they have academic success.</p>

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For one thing, I think it was a huge mistake for both Chicago and Columbia to go to the common app.</p>

<p>I was just looking at a page about Columbia’s core – [Columbia</a> College Advising | Student Affairs](<a href=“http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/csa/advising_cc]Columbia”>Columbia College Advising | Columbia College and Columbia Engineering) – it made me very glad my d. was at Barnard & not Columbia, as there is no way on earth that my d. would have wanted to have had to complete that very uniform, very structured curriculum. As it was she bristled under a much broader set of distribution requirements – she would have preferred an entirely open curriculum, such as Brown. </p>

<p>I am assuming that there are many other students who feel the same way as my daughter, as well as a much narrower subset of excellent students who are absolutely enamored of the idea of the strong foundation offered by Columbia’s stringent demands on its students. I think Columbia would be better served by being able to select all of its students by that subset, and not from the kids who really want the flexibility that Brown offers, but will toss out apps to all 8 Ivies and then choose Columbia over Brown because it’s higher up on that year’s US News listing. </p>

<p>Chicago is the same story – all of those “life of the mind” kids are being lost in the shuffle, and quite a few will be deterred from applying by the daunting stats. Chicago’s loss may be Reed’s gain (if Reed doesn’t also go down to single-digit admission stats) – but I don’t think it benefits either the school or its students.</p>

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<p>I wonder if this would have looked like such a good decision if one or both of your children were rejected or deferred ED. I don’t like single choice ED - it makes for a long, cold, lonely winter for students who are rejected or deferred. Nothing like a rejection under your belt in early December to ruin senior year.</p>

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<p>I have one kid who aced all the tests and went to a HYP. He’s okay but it did not thrust him into a fairy tale life. With second kid I keep trying to talk her down from the heights and she interprets that as an insult in that I don’t think she is as viable at the uber- selective schools.</p>

<p>I think part of the OPs position is just the general awfulness of parenting through this twisted world of admissions.</p>

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<p>ED also would not have worked for us, given our need for financial aid. And EA was a bust for my daughter – she was deferred/waitlisted from schools that promised an early answer, though I do think that her Chicago app was strengthened by the fact that it started out as an EA app – and also that getting the EA app done helped start the flow of admissions apps. So EA may be a very useful tool for getting past writer’s block on essays and helping to avoid an end of December crisis for kids who are prone to procrastination. (I also liked the early deadline for UC apps for that reason – it also was a lot less stress on the parent, as I pretty much let go of worrying once my daughter had pressed the submit button on the UC app, given that she was guaranteed admission there.)</p>

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<p>I’d just echo the “Look at the Midwest” comment. What wonderful schools! My son is at Grinnell but Carleton, Oberlin, Macalester, Beloit and many others are amazing schools! I mean, really. Look outside of the Northeast, California and Chicago.</p>

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<p>I do like EA for that reason - the common app, essays, visits should all be in good shape by mid-fall, and the Nov. 1 deadline definitely moves things along. My son’s MIT application is going to be a pleasure next fall - not binding, not single choice, but he’ll have to get his act together early.</p>

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<p>Well, my UChicago application was basically one long string of anti-hooks (international, no $$, 3.3 GPA, no leadership positions/awards/recognitions, transcript littered with Cs and Ds) with a couple of very honest and passionate essays about my thirst for knowledge tacked on, and I got waitlisted while the other applicants from my school, whom I considered much more competitive than me, were rejected. I have no choice but to conclude I was deemed a better fit for the school personality-wise.</p>

<p>So in my personal experience at least, UChicago is still quite concerned with fit. At the end of the day, getting waitlisted means very little, of course, but the very fact that my application was given more serious consideration than the apps of some intimidatingly accomplished science whizzes tells me that the UChicago adcom may have become more discerning, but hasn’t altered its approach to the selection process on a fundamental level.</p>

<p>That may still change in the future, though.</p>

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<p>The OP wasn’t saying that 2200 kids cannot compete, but rather that people were telling her that her kid needed 2200 to compete. According to the CollegeBoard, 2200 is in the 98+ percentile. 2030 (the OP kid’s score is in the 94%) which does not sound that much different until you realize that every 1 percent of the the 2010 statistics for the CollegeBoard translates to about 15,000 students, making the difference between 2030 and 2200 60,000 students (on top of the 24,000 students between 2200 and 2400). And if you accept that there are about 25,000 openings for these top schools, it is easy to see that they cannot accept them all.</p>

<p>Re: the statistics for Brown. If you are a val, you have a 20% chance of acceptance; 36 on the ACT will get you a 30% chance and an 800 on Math will get you a 25% chance. All of those are far better than the average acceptance rate. What if you start combining them - a val with a 2400? I suspect that you are looking at a 50% chance. Its not a safety, but 50% is usually where CCers start tallking about “matches”</p>

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<p>My daughter is one of the kids with a 3.9+ unweighted GPA and 2200 SAT that was waitlisted at four schools, none of them Ivys. She also has very strong ECs. Schools look for different things and I would not let a less than 2200 SAT score deter your son. My son got into schools that placed in the top 30 with an SAT score less than 2200. I also think boys have an advantageous when applying for schools since there are more females applying to college and some schools want the male-female ratio to be a little more even. Good luck to your son. He should apply where he wants to - he just may get in.</p>

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<p>“…Unless You Have a 2200 SAT Don’t Bother…”</p>

<p>Absolutely NOT true, I have seen plenty of folks getting into Ivy leagues and MIT with 1900 SAT scores. And I have seen 2400 SAT kids NOT get accepted into ANY Ivy leagues…There are many factors affecting the admission process - such as gender. under-represented groups, demographics and the applicant.</p>

<p>So don’t let the stats affect you! apply to whichever school you son desires and try his best!</p>

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<p>Calmom - I agree with Hunt that if your daughter had self-directedly studied Russian and arranged to live for a time in Russia to further that knowledge, that that is the kind of interest that many elite college consider “outstanding”. Thirst for knowledge, often just for knowledge’s sake, is IMHO a powerful plus in a college application. Barnard may not have accepted her because she said she wanted to be a Russian major (assuming that she did), but rather because of her demonstrated interest in learning. My son learned elementary linguistics and IPA on his own and did his IB research paper on phonology. I think it made a difference in his admissions.</p>

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<p>I knew a kid who was accepted to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Georgetown, and Duke who has a 32 ACT. No hooks (not a legacy, athlete, big donor, etc). Compelling essay, great grades.</p>

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<p>Pleaseadvise, look at the College of Creative Studies program at UCSB. I have a friend whose S is absolutely thriving there.</p>

<p>Agree that Chicago is still very serious about fit and they seem to be finding those kids amongst all the piles of apps. My hope is that when H and UVA go back to SCEA the smoke will clear at Chicago a bit (said as a happy Chicago '12 parent who was quite fond of the Ted O’Neill philosophy of admissions).</p>

<p>Maybe we are just weird at my house, but my kids looked for schools that were good in their intended majors rather than name brand. In the process, some of those “brand names” got on their lists, but the goal was never to get into the highest ranking school possible. It was to attend a school that was serious about learning and where they felt there was a good fit socially. Indeed, neither of mine matriculated at the “highest ranked” school to which they were accepted.</p>

<p>Both of my kids knew enough folks at the flagship to know they could make it work and have a shot at merit $$ as well. My younger S added a smaller “likely” school to his list as well. They focused their energies on the “target schools” that truly met their criteria (though the schools were on the low reach side) and where, with some compelling essays, they could make a good case for admission at these low reaches despite not being perfect candidates. They each got into every “target” school to which they applied. Happily, some of these were EA acceptances. It was darned nice to have UChicago as the baseline for evaluating other acceptances, and it was in the top two on both my kids’ lists.</p>

<p>S2 also looked at midwestern and West Coast LACs and liked them a lot. Applied to several. GC wasn’t much help with the geographically distant schools, as the GC’s focus is on East Coast and flagship/in-state schools, but that’s what CC is for. We learned about some great schools from other posters here. </p>

<p>OP, if your S has not done any studying for the SAT but is willing to give it another shot, it might not hurt. If he’s currently taking pre-calc and/or AP English, I’d encourage a retake because he now has a better foundation for the SAT. My younger S’s scores went up 480 points (9th grade PSAT –> junior year SAT) based largely on what he learned in his IB classes. OTOH, if your S is more laid back and flexible, love the kid on the couch and know that there are many, many great schools who will accept him <em>as is</em> with his good scores and GPA, that will give him a wonderful education – and can save your family the angst and drama of senior year applications.</p>

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<p>I’m sure there is no correlation between one’s standardized test scores and “how interesting” one is. It may be true that some or even many of the 4.0 students are not as “interesting” because they fear taking chances with harder classes or harder teachers and may work long hours to ensure they never get a B, thus taking time away from other pursuits.</p>

<p>But test scores are a different animal because they do not necessarily require any significant commitment of either time or effort. My son got a perfect 36.0 on the ACT on his first sitting, with under 10 hours of review time and a 240 on his PSAT with zero prep on a day he wasn’t even feeling well. Acing the ACT/SAT doesn’t interfere with a student’s ability to pursue unique passions, but the smartest students often find themselves somewhat interested in everything they encounter, so they tend to have a more diffused breadth of knowledge than a highly-focused depth in a single topic, a niche which occasionally may make them look more appealing to ad-coms</p>

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If so, that’s wonderful news… but obviously there’s a lot more work for the ad com when the volume of apps shoots through the roof. Chicago used to take pride in its “self-selecting” applicant pool. It doesn’t look like there’s all that much “self” selection going on any more.</p>

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It wasn’t self-directed study – she enrolled in Russian at her high school in 9th grade because the french & spanish classes were full – she might have even mentioned that in an essay. She went to Russia twice, once on an organized & chaperoned school trip with 10 other students & her high school Russian teacher, and once via the auspices of one of the major foreign exchange outfits. (YFU; my son was an AFS’er in high school). </p>

<p>I’m not trying to minimize this – it was an adventure for my d. and certainly demonstrated that she was up to a challenge at age 16 and it set her apart from her classmates. But high school foreign exchange is pretty much open to anyone who wants to sign up and can fund the travel. My d’s high school had foreign exchange students attending, and a friend of hers spent a semester in Spain the year before her exchange. </p>

<p>So yes, I agree that it’s a kind of special thing to write about – but it falls pretty short of “amazing” – and more important, it is the type of thing that <em>any</em> kid who is interested in foreign languages or cultures can do. The application process is fairly easy, and the foreign exchange outfits are much more interested in assuring that the kids are well-adjusted and in good emotional health than they are about GPA. If the elite colleges don’t see it that often, it’s mostly because a semester or year abroad wreaks havoc with any attempt to structure a “rigorous” high school schedule – so it can’t be managed by a kid who wants to take every AP course their school offers. </p>

<p>Again, the reason I shy away from “outstanding” is because that sounds too much like “impossible” --something that other people’s kids can do but would be unattainable by a non-superstar. </p>

<p>I’m not suggesting that parents go out and tell their kids to sign up for a foreign exchange because it’s so easy. I’m saying that parents – and students – need to take a broader view and recognize that a student does NOT have to be a superstar to stand out and get the attention of the admissions committee. The goal really is simply to provide the kind of information that will evoke a positive response in an admissions reader. It is NOT a numbers-driven process – it is a people-driven process, where numbers have significant weight but do not always play a decisive role.</p>

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<p>at #93 and #102.</p>

<p>Well, actually what I said was I was glad that MY KIDS didn’t get geek out to get an extra bump in the GPA or SAT score. Heck, my oldest kid hasn’t even taken the SAT yet. I am sure he will do fine but he won’t get an exceptional score, I am guessing, because he hasn’t gone the extra mile to prepare. That is and was my point. </p>

<p>I never said my kids were the perfect balance of anything. My kids aren’t perfect. They are pretty good. I’m more than happy with that. I said I was glad my kids were good socially, academically and otherwise. </p>

<p>I’d appreciate it if you didn’t put words or thoughts into my mouth and you can stuff your personal comments while you are at it.</p>

<p>I’m hardly rationalizing because of any insecurities. There are plenty of kids at my oldest son’s school who are smarter and/or more motivated to succeed. I compliment them for reaching their potentials. There are plenty of kids with parents who read CC that will have apps that will blow my sons away I am sure. None of it bothers me in any way. </p>

<p>I suppose what may have offended you is that I implied to be a high achiever you had to be a geek or a need. No. Not always. Some kids, as I said, are just plain brilliant. But lets be honest that some folks spend too much time in the library. You know what I mean? There does come a point of diminishing returns.</p>

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<p>From my D’s HS, the sole admittance to MIT this year was a young lady (NOT a URM) with less than a 2200. And no, she had not cured cancer or done anything out of this world. Great kid though!</p>