When Siblings All Get Into Highly Selective Colleges

Parents Forum
21

Money certainly is a driver. I live in an area where some folks have live in household staff, private airplanes and summer homes in the Hamptons.

Not all neighbors are that wealthy- there are plenty of “normal” upper middle class folks - you know, families with two professional parents making reasonable bank but still living a W2 life.

In general, the neighborhood expects its kids to attend college. NOT attending college is a weird choice, but it happens because not all kids should attend. But the starting point is assumed to be college.

There is a family around the corner in a typical 3-bedroom suburban home. There are 6 kids; 4 are college age. All of them either go to an Ivy or a near Ivy (3 of 4 at an Ivy.) The grandparents pay.

I’ve worked out with the mom of the family before and she’s probably the most unhappiest person I’ve ever met. I stopped working out with her because our conversations were never light and cheery (I tried) but rather a long bitter complaint-festsand I decided we weren’t close enough friends for me to hear that level of unhappiness on a regular basis. The kids are successful but I’d not place $1 on their happiness. I do hope they find it in college, because I don’t think that house is a happy one.

Anyway, I go with $ over genetics. I don’t buy into genetics as the magic ticket. I see $ as the answer. Yeah, the pool of parents may be self selecting but it’s a rich person’s world they are selecting into. Having $ allows those families to provide experiences and access that most families are excluded from- I see this in how my own kids interact with their friends. They are sometimes surprised by their friends’ smaller world views as they haven’t had similar experiences in life.

(As full pay not rich parents, we had our kids chase merit so they aren’t at an Ivy or near Ivy. Neither kid seems to be harmed by their choices.)

22

I have three kids, all by the same Dad, I swear. Genetics, assortative mating…do play some role in intelligence. Family values, support, and size of household all matter too. And sometimes, all things being equivalent, outcomes vary.

Dad RPI, Cornell, Mom Colgate.

DS and DD1 two years apart. Same household, socioeconomic status. Same race. Say at the same dinner table. Had the same access to SAT prep and family support. They had nearly identical GPA and SAT scores, although DS had perfect scores in Math and math II, and DD got 780 on both.

DS rejected from Stanford, Vandy, Duke, UVA (OOS), UNC (OOS). Accepted to USC, UMiami, U of SC Honors College. He is a math/Econ major at Miami with a half tuition merit scholarship. . I thought he would have gotten into at least ONE of his more selective schools. OK, maybe USC counts, but barely.

DD accepted to Cornell, Northeastern, Case, VT, Clemson, RPI, Stevens, and Rowan, with merit scholarships at all but Cornell ranging from $10k to more than full tuition. Difference? He was a boy who wanted to major in math. She was a girl who wanted to major in engineering.

My white girlfriend got invited to “diversity” weekends and events. She was a “diversity “. My son, with slightly better stats, was nothing special. I feel Like the “playing field” is being leveled on the backs of young white males. On a societal basis, maybe it balances out. But there is no denying the fact that sex and choice of major and color of skin and athletic ability and first generation status and a whole lot of other factors besides high socioeconomic status factor into the equaltion. Some, like sex and skin tone, are genetic, but not in the way that the poster meant when they cited “genetics”.

There are a lot of factors that can result in better than average outcomes - I think Yale currently has 2 complete sets of Black quadruplets, which statistically would seem very unlikely. (How many quads were born to black couples in the 4 years in question? How does the academic achievement of higher order multiples normally compare to the average Singleton, given the high rate of premature births? What is the chance that 8 individuals, individually, would be accepted to yale? Now what are the chances of 4 siblings individually getting accepted to Yale?

IMHO, it is a crapshoot. Some people have an edge, some people may have discovered a secret sauce of high achievement. It’s a little of both, I think.

23

I think money helps, but parental involvement, which can be supported by money, is more important. Certainly, monetary extremes (building named after family) is a fast track to admission, but just being well off does not lead to much, in my view. I see so many families that do everything but have their kids do their own homework and pick their own activities. Moms and Dads writing papers (cheating!), Moms and Dads in the face of the teachers complaing about grades, parents hiring tutor after tutor, or directing or mandating what activities to do. Then, when college apps come around, is is a surprise that recommendations are poor, or that the activities seem managed. I certainly realize it is easier to be supportive if you are not struggling, but a lot of kids are sabotaged by parents who are unwilling to let their kids make their own way, including struggling with hard material, and then are surprised when the outcomes are not what they, the parents wanted. And what about the childhood—if parents are directing everything even if you do get the holy grail of admission, what type of life is that.

24

It would be more surprising if one kid goes to an ivy and his little brother goes to a community college.

25

Yes @manyloyalties!!! I know plenty of kids whose parents did their science olympiad projects, “helped” with homework through high school, micromanaged everything, etc… and then wondered why their kids struggled in college or had a nervous breakdown with their first bad grade.

26

We abandoned the entire process and let his prep school take care of him. If he’d had a sibling, I assumed we’d have done the same thing. Life’s too short to waste our time on what certain high schools do so well. :wink:

Seriously, we just raised our son to understand the value of education and then worked to provide him with the best high school experience he could consume always believing that college would take care of itself. Prior to high school, we never gave a thought to college admissions other than joking that he could go anywhere he wanted, just not Ohio State. We also should have included service academies.

(DH and I met at the University of Michigan back in the day when you could drop out of beauty school to attend. And I later dropped out of Harvard Business School. I may be dropping out of retirement soon. I see a pattern forming…)

27

Yes #24, crazy, it is also cheating to write your kids school work and also, write your kids college essays.

28

@ChoatieMom We all drop out of retirement eventually. We’re doing our best to stay in and to enjoy retirement.

29

“I feel Like the “playing field” is being leveled on the backs of young white males.”

Absent a few majors at some schools, females apply in much greater numbers and face more challenging odds at many schools over white males. Young, white males are definitely not the underdog in college admissions and in life in the USA.

What I find more interesting is the stories of families without financial means, parental legacies, and all the other advantages who go on to raise kids who are going to top schools and who are rising socioeconomically. Those are the compelling stories IMO.

30

At the vast majority of LACs and many selective universities, boys have the admissions advantage. There are fewer of them graduating high school, heading to college, having top grades. So top colleges try hard to get them.

The engineering tip for women, especially at tech schools, is also real. But not as common.

31

I’m an only child but this thread has made me chuckle. The reason certain families get into top schools is not a mystery. Most of the students I teach at umich are very well off and their parents went to college. Genetics? Maybe but mostly the environment they’re raised with imo based on the number of adopted students I’ve had.

I’m one of those anomaly students. Parents didn’t go to college. On my mom’s side, the family I’m much closer to, I’m still the only one who went to college. We were poor. Education was important but I was never groomed for college. I never did standardized test prep, did ECs because they were fun, etc.

People who know both me and my parents wonder where I came from. My mom calls me her alien child. I did things like teach myself to read before I was 3 and was self motivated from the start. I really don’t think my parents give themselves enough credit. They always made sure I was surrounded by books and educational things. We played games and cards all the time. I learned how to do mental math playing poker with my dad. They each worked multiple jobs to make sure I could do things like dance and play sports.

I’m confident that if my parents had another kid, they probably would be similar to me. I have a half sister raised by her mom and we’re polar opposites. She’s smart but acts just like her self - absorbed mother.

32

I think money is very important, but not in the way most posters are indicating. In my opinion, multiple siblings who all attend the same college are more likely to stay active and in touch with the college, reminisce about the college during family gatherings, attend more college/alumni events together, and…donate more generously to the college.

Obviously this isn’t the case with all families, but I think admissions committees, along with “giving” committees, have learned that this formula works, even if it means lowering standards ever so slightly to accept little bro.

33

Our kids are double legacies for Harvard, one got in the other didn’t, neither attended, but they attended top 25 universities that are particularly strong in their fields of interest. Our kids attended public schools that are considered somewhat below middle of the pack in the county. While I have no complaints about the schools, I don’t think they had much to do with where they ended up. I think their natural abilities (genes) and their nuturing (house full of books, dinner conversations about black holes etc) had a lot more to do with where they ended up. But sometimes it’s a matter of luck. My older younger brother’s kids (also Harvard double legacies) were not interested in selective schools. Two did St. Johns great books, one was horse-mad and went to Sweet Briar and one (who didn’t get into the most selective schools she applied to) went to UNH for engineering. They went to private schools through middle school then the public high school. My other brothers kids went to private school starting in middle school. The oldest is at U of Toronto. The youngest is still in high school.

I do think I was savvier about college admissions thanks to CC.

In my Dad’s family all three brother’s went to Harvard, but only my fathers’ kids followed him to Harvard, all my cousins went to less selective schools.

In my cousin’s circles the only family that has all Harvard kids also has kids who are all stars at the same unusual sport. It’s a sport their prep school is known for, so that may have been a factor.

34

Ours graduated from a top LAC and an Ivy.

HS?–barely adequate public. Its SATs averaged around 900 M/V when they went there. So, not really a factor.

Money?-- we were low income when they were young; not UMC until about high school.

Tutoring?–none

Expensive activities?–couldn’t afford them. By the time we had money to spare, we were feverishly saving for college.

Donations to colleges? Hah.

I’m going to say they had pretty good genes–H and I both did very well at every level of school, and both have graduate degrees. So, educated parents who thought about thinking a lot.

Tons of books. Tons of conversation–often Socratic. Tons of cheap activities–walks in the woods, libraries, museums, music. Microscopes and telescopes. Gardens and instruments. Books–did I say books? And books.

And good fortune.

35

My guess is that we are going to be an exception. Our two kids are quite different.

S17 is at Caltech and enjoying it quite a bit. My guess at his major would have been physics or CS as far back as 5th grade and earlier. That is still accurate.

S21 I’m guessing may end up at a mid-range UC or a less-prestigious LAC. (He scored quite high on the 3rd grade OLSAT screening test, but it’s always been expressed differently.) He’s thinking right now about some health care related career or being an elementary teacher. But, his interests have ranged from entomology to architecture to … I guess he might surprise us. He has some diversity he may choose to play up because of his T in the LGBT status, but I think he may not mention that in his applications. Dealing with that messed with his GPA in middle school.

We are double Texas A&M as a free ride legacies, so no legacy boost anywhere.

DH has a PhD in physics, so that’s where S17 gets that. I’m more of a CS person, so I guess that’s where S17 gets that. Not sure where S21 gets his extroversion and people skills…

36

Post #5 notes that the common thread is “prep school.” In my case, my kids attended a tough urban public high school…we are not URMs…they got into (among other schools) Cornell & UChicago.

37

I go to Ucla. My sister is going to cal. We will see where the youngest goes in a few years. Parents just helped us foster our interests (mostly sports tennis for me and gymnastics for my sister) and didn’t push us academically it just sorta happened. Legacy status doesn’t help for the UC’s…

38

I don’t know why D2 got into a highly selective college! She didn’t attend because we couldn’t afford it! One of the shocks of the college process was how many families CAN afford it.

39

Genetics. Smart people marry other smart people (i.e., assortative mating) and for the most part (notwithstanding regression to the mean) have smart children who get good grades, good SAT scores, and get into good colleges.

Socioeconomic status is often loudly claimed to be a great advantage, but studies have shown that it is insignificant when the covariate of parent IQ (or proxy of parent educational attainment) is taken into account. For example, from https://openpsych.net/forum/attachment.php?aid=194:

One of the interesting things noted in that article is that parent education is often included as a component of SES itself, thus artificially inflating its apparent impact on child educational attainment.

40

There are a lot of professions that don’t pay particularly well but that require a lot of education… being a pastor, social worker, HS latin teacher, some fields in clinical psych which require a PhD. So the economics don’t trump- the education does.

Doesn’t change the fact that being affluent helps your kids attain elite college status in many ways.