When Siblings All Get Into Highly Selective Colleges

Parents Forum
121

“Bingo! If you want to get 2 or 3 kids into a top school, you really don’t want to be playing RD.”

Not in our house. Both of my unhooked daughters were accepted RD to their Ivy schools. They both applied SCEA, to Yale and Stanford, respectively, and neither was accepted. But in the RD round both had multiple high-end school acceptances including Ivy. If I had to do it all over again I’d advise them to skip the Early process altogether and focus on RD. The only thing applying early did for my daughters was produce a lot stress to get the applications done early and induce a lot of heartache when they didn’t get in.

122

"If I had to do it all over again I’d advise them to skip the Early process altogether and focus on RD. The only thing applying early did for my daughters was produce a lot stress to get the applications done early and induce a lot of heartache when they didn’t get in. "

@Scipio – Although many would conclude that your kids should have embraced ED instead. Or taken advantage of the increasingly popular ED2 (which is tailor made for SCEA missers).

Your two daughters presumably would have been slam dunks at, say, Penn and Duke had they applied ED there rather than taking the SCEA shot at YS. That would have been low stress. Agree that an ED/SCEA swing/miss is stressful.

123

It takes a certain personality to willingly give up all chance of admission to Yale or Stanford in favor of enhancing your chance of admission at a slightly less selective school. If you’re not that type of person, I don’t think it would be a low-stress option.

124

“Your two daughters presumably would have been slam dunks at, say, Penn and Duke had they applied ED there rather than taking the SCEA shot at YS. That would have been low stress.”

Maybe so. But unfortunately neither of them wanted to go to Penn or Duke, and so they did not apply - ED or otherwise. A slam dunk at a school you have no particular desire to attend is not very valuable. And since in RD they got in anyway to great schools that they DID want to attend, all’s well that ends well.

Didn’t have hooks and didn’t need ED.

125

@Scipio – Did the schools they eventually chose (after much stress) have ED?

If so, they could have gotten in there sooner, with more certainty, and less stress by applying ED. While your kids got in, they lowered their chances by passing that up.

My unhooked kid got into every top 20 school applied to RD, but got turned down RD by a couple top 10s. Very likely would have gotten in if the ED bullet had been used. But it all worked out great in the end.

126

“It takes a certain personality to willingly give up all chance of admission to Yale or Stanford in favor of enhancing your chance of admission”

This is only true if every student’s top choice is Yale or Stanford. Since this isn’t true…

It’s no sacrifice at all to apply ED to a school that is the student’s top choice. If it isn’t the student’s top choice, s/he shouldn’t be applying ED to that school. Not so very difficult. Doesn’t require any particular personality other than a student knowing and applying to his/her top choice (which - hold on tight to your pearls - isn’t always Yale or Stanford.)

127

@northwesty - One of the chosen schools did have ED and one didn’t. D2 was accepted by and chose Dartmouth which has ED. But she didn’t want to apply ED there because it was not her top choice at the time and didn’t want to be shut out of any chance of getting into her top choice. Stanford was her top choice so she applied there SCEA. Dartmouth accepted her in RD and she ended up very happy about it.

I understand that ED increases one’s chances of acceptance. But I disagree with the notion expressed on this thread that one MUST go the ED route and/or must be rich in order to get more than one unhooked kid into Ivy League or other top-end schools. We did not use ED and we’re not rich, but we went 2 for 2, and if we had had a third kid who worked just as hard and produced high stats and achievements on par to his/her two big sisters, I bet we could have gone 3 for 3.

Big money and ED are certainly nice-to-haves, but in my observation it is the intelligence combined with hard work producing high stats and achievements that is the “must-have.”

128

@gallentjill I ran some number to show what I meant about ED not always giving that much of an advantage. I used Brown since you cited that as an example.

From Brown’s newspaper as to their class of 2022 ED decisions, 737 were accepted out of 3,502 applications. 38% self-identify as persons of color, and 10% are 1st generation.

From Brown’s newspaper as to their entire class of 2022, total of 2,566 accepted out of 31,936 applications. 49% self-identify as person of color, and 13% are 1st generation.

FYI, according to Brown’s newspaper, the admissions director said of the 2022 ED class that their chances of admissions were no better than if they had applied RD.

From a 2014 article in the Brown student newspaper, legacies comprise 10 - 12% of the student body.

From a 2015 Yale student newspaper, it said that the Brown University Athletics claims that about 230 students in each class are recruited athletes.

Anyone, feel free to correct my math and logic, but here goes:
2,566 admits total
1,257 POC total
282 legacies
230 athletic recruits
133 first generation non-POC (I guessed that non-POC 1st gens are 4%)

I made the following assumptions:
3/4 of legacy admits would be ED (so 211 ED and 72 RD)
all athletes are ED
1/3 of athletes would be POC (so I reduced athletes in ED round by 77 kids)
regardless of whether 1st generation admits were 10% (ED) or 13% RD, I only counted this as 4%, assuming that the other percentage represented an overlap with another group

So, for ED:
737 students admitted out of 3,502
(211) legacies (includes 10 POC)
(153) athletes (230 athletes less 77 also POC.)
( 268) POC non-athletes (this is 38% of 733 ) (but 10 counted in legacy)
( 30) 1st gen non-POC (this is 4%)
Total Unhooked ED spots = 75
75/3,502 = 2.142% chance for unhooked ED

And for RD:
1,829 students admitted out of 31,936
( 71) legacies
( 902) POC
(103) 1st generation non-POC
Total Unhooked RD spots = 753
753/31,936 = 2.358% chance for unhooked RD

So the difference for an unhooked ED vs unhooked RD applicant are 2.142% chance vs 2.358%

129

@scipio I’ guessing that in your case and that of other unhooked kids who get into top 10 schools RD it really is more about the achievements and the presentation more than anything else. As these schools keep telling us, 90% of the applicants are qualified to attend based on stats alone. Your daughters must have some pretty impressive accomplishments. Congrats to all of you!

130

@melvin123 actually, I didn’t mention Brown. I talked about Cornell and Columbia. Your math looks good to me though and you make a good point. I will say that it looks like Brown is being more aggressive with admitting URM than many of the other schools. 49% POC seems like quite a high number. But honestly, I have no idea how the numbers would translate to other schools.

131

It took me a while to do those numbers and I kept getting interrupted, so I was still responding to your post 119. :slight_smile:

132

When siblings are all highly accomplished but don’t go to highly selective colleges: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/columnists/jim-stingl/2018/05/17/four-siblings-take-turns-being-valedictorian-milwaukees-riverside/619161002/

133

From the article @rosered55 posted

So much for letting your kids learn to succeed or fail on their own.

134

Neither of my kids applied ED. But I’ll admit that the kid who got into Harvard was a legacy. He also had 800/770 on the SAT and three 800 subject tests, and was in the top 2% of his class. Younger kid got into Chicago EA with more modest scores and grades, but an application that made it clear he had lots of potential. I know it’s just anecdotes.

I’m with Garland. Older son was reading at 2, was the banker in Monopoly at 4. That’s genetics. (And not mine, my family does not run to precocity!) Younger son was bright in different ways, but much more of a late bloomer.

135

I’m sure the parents didn’t do the kids’ homework. I’m still impressed by their accomplishments.

136

@melvin123 Your logic/numbers don’t make sense to me, particularly the POC issue. I wonder what POC actually means in this context - is it just 100% - %of people that checked any box including (and in addition to) white? Meaning that white hispanics are considered POC?

Brown’s latest common data set has the following numbers:
689 admitted out of 3183 applicants ED or 22%
1266 admitted out of 13038 Male applicants RD or 10%
1513 admitted out of 19685 Female applicants RD or 8%

Note - these are admits, not attendees. The newspaper admit numbers seem low and may actually represent attendees.

If you subtract out the 230 ED athletes you still get 15.5% admitted ED. Athletes can also be 1st gen or legacy and its really tough to guess that percentage. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if the 1st gen / legacy non athletes added up to 5%, bringing the ED admit rate for non-hooked students even with the RD men. (Agreeing with your conclusion)

Given the disparity between the sexes, it may be that ED benefits females more than males…although without knowing how the ED athletes are broken down by sex, its difficult to tell.

One caveat - all of these numbers really vary by school so its important to look at the common data sets for the schools that you’re actually interested in and make a judgement from there.

137

“As we all know, siblings are often unlike one another than like.”

Agree, which is why outside of this thread or cc i general, most siblings do not attend very similar colleges, unless it’s a parental mandate (for lack of a better word), i.e. kids have to be a STEM major. Most younger siblings that are more independent thinkers do not want to follow in the footsteps of their elder siblings.

138

“In fact, in our 10 year Naviance history not one student has gotten in to Brown without going ED. I realize this is not a representative sample, but it seems like the best choice for the unhooked kids who can afford it.”

That’s actually a pretty representative sample if you’re using high school data to predict how students will do from that same high school. In some high schools in the bay area, it’s very similar, you need to apply ED to have a decent chance at Brown or any of the other ivies that use ED. That’s kind of the purpose of Naviance, :-).

139

“From Brown’s newspaper as to their entire class of 2022, total of 2,566 accepted out of 31,936 applications. 49% self-identify as person of color, and 13% are 1st generation.”

For Brown, POC includes Asians I think, which is not typical, Brown’s demographic has 21% POC if you include only African Americans, Latinx and Native American. The other 28% are Asians and more than one or other. Brown also gives a, shall we say, liberal definition of first-gen, meaning it could be parents who attended colleges in the US only, so if parents went to college in Asia, they could be first gen. I don’t think Brown gives a first-gen hook to applicants whose parents went to college in Asia or Europe, but it could be in the definition.

140

Neither of my sons applied ED. Each did EA at two schools – S1’s EAs were two of his top choices (MIT/Chicago), and S2’s were one of his top choices and another very strong in his field (Chicago/Georgetown). We were really happy with the EA approach and results, as it took off lots of stress. S2 considered ED for Tufts, but felt strongly enough about Chicago that he applied to Tufts RD.

They were not a legacy at any of their college app lists, not full pay (but close enough for real pain). Neither had any interest in applying to Penn, where they would have been a legacy and where DH was a first-gen, Pell Grant, scholarship student.

S1 had some significant activity/awards hooks, S2 had some very diverse interests. Both wrote really fabulous essays. Both attended selective admit programs within public high schools – and there are plenty of stats that show that can cut against students applying to top schools, though the education was fabulous.

Both were early readers, insatiably curious and extremely good at entertaining/teaching themselves. Those traits carried them a very long way.

Count me as another parent who learned more about college admissions here than anywhere else.