My D is a senior in college now. One of the kids she went through all of school with attends Harvard. Our high school probably sends a kid to one of HYP each year. He’s not hooked in any way, not the Val or close to it, and I’m very sure his family (who appeared to have modest means) didn’t hire a private advisor.
On reflection, I think he got in because he presented a very cohesive and clear picture of who he is and how his values and work ethic aligned with Harvard’s. And, everyone liked him. He is, well, a nice guy. He was the class president for umpteen years. He actually got things done in the schools. He was very involved, at a young age, with activities that aligned with his leadership skills, both inside and outside of school. I believe he spent many weekends at the State Capitol, doing whatever it was he did.
He did apply ED.
No doubt his app displayed what @lookingforward is always emphasizing: that he “got” what Harvard is looking for and his app showed it.
@Lindagaf This is exactly why I think @socaldad2002 's daughter got into Duke. If you re-read his earlier thread, you can see she had a very cohesive story with ECs supporting her plans for a possible major. I think her recs were probably stellar. And her essay was self-reflective which, in my humble opinion, AOs like. They see so many bad and/or boring essays and this one sounded interesting and showed that his D was self aware and in touch with who she is. Add to that strong academics and ACT score and she had the whole package. She “fit”.
@homerdog Yes, she fit what Duke wanted this year, and was “packaged” to showcase this. My issue with OPs post is that I don’t think you can extrapolate from her acceptance that kids shouldn’t follow good CC advice (which I think is more nuanced than suggested in the post) and that will land you in a “top ten school.” The authenticity part is true. And, if you find out that a particular school is seeking students like you, and you love that school and can ED, do it.
My sense from most of the kids we see accepted to HYSPM is that they are not “average excellent” kids. The kids we see getting in there are those brilliant, self-motivated kids who - on their own - manage to do extraordinary things (along with URM recruited athletes and legacies). Our S’s friends are like this (he’s not) - one boy, whose parents aren’t wealthy or involved, taught himself 2 levels of math and took the calc AP so he could move up and be in their phys C class. (His parents hadn’t taken him to math testing day so he wasn’t on the “advanced” track). He also went through an Ayn Rand phase a couple years back (I didn’t do that until college), has 2 apps out, and is always working on something so hasn’t had time yet to take the SAT. I remember that back in elementary school, our daughter got in trouble for using code he wrote to create a website (teacher was crazy). I could go on about the other equally extraordinary kids, but you get the picture. These kids aren’t what I think of as “normal.” (Being friends with them has certainly had the effect of pushing our S to higher levels!)
I think I read this correctly but first off Mazel Tov on your daughters acceptance to Duke.
Secondly everyone seems to have a different route and suggestions but “branding” yourself to me is key. Some will say to paint a vivid picture through the apps and essays of who the applicant is. It’s seems to me that people I know who have done that have also been successful in acceptances. The “you do you” remark to me is spot on. Also framing yourself to what the colleges are looking for and expressing that in the apps. So no cookie cutter applications with copy and pasting.
Good thing the people on this thread including me “always” give good, correct advise…?. Those other people, I don’t know much about ?.
Well I think lots of Duke gear would make a great Chanukah gift!
Or he had what Harvard was looking for and showed it, but did not necessarily know what Harvard was looking for in advance of receiving the admission offer.
@havenoidea
Your phrasing, “along with URM, recruited athletes, and legacies,” assumes that none of these kids are also “brilliant” and “self-motivated” as well. Unless you know the individual profiles/stats of the kids getting admitted, that assumption is problematic, at best. The categories are not mutually exclusive.
This is a small school and everyone knows everything. Kids share their “stats,” there’s also Naviance, and the school announces every achievement. I shouldn’t have phrased it that way because off-the-chart scores, grades, and scientific achievements are certainly not the only way to show what I’m referring to. Excelling in a sport to such a top level, while getting excellent stats, also takes incredible drive and brilliance. This is to say that, at least at our school, none of the -very few- students getting in to those schools are what people on CC call “average excellent.”
I like this thread, as an antidote to the “getting the formula right” mentality that sometimes prevails on CC. The stories here show that it really can still be a holistic process where fit and authenticity are important. We had a good experience last year with our son, who definitely did HS his own way and told his own story - he got into just the right school for him and is very happy. He is Asian, and recently the various posts from kids who are worried whether they should try to hide their Asian ethnicity have been making me very sad - if they do that, they will inevitably sacrifice authenticity, but right now it seems the wisdom is the formula cannot accommodate Asian ethnicity.
You also have to be careful not to call the roulette wheel broken just because it came up red ten times in a row. We don’t know if this is one of the good outcomes of a low probability event or a higher probability event.
Lots of stories out there and they don’t always buck the trend.
There is a lot of value for a general view of things to help inform families and students.
Yes there are people who drink whiskey every day and smoke cigars who live to age 100. If living to age 100 is a goal, that’s probably not the best advice. lol
I’ve been reading CC for a few years and don’t recognize any of those as “conventional wisdom”. Several are things that paranoid newbies post as expectations, which are quickly pointed out as incorrect.
Along the lines of “I got a B+ this grading period, my chances of a good college are doomed”.
Though I’ve never seen “4 AP science required” in even the most paranoid posts.
Never read this advice. In fact, when asked if kids should continue a sport the advice is always “Not if you don’t want to play anymore.” The advice I have read is to drop it if you don’t like it and replace it with something you DO like. Also have read that unless the student is planning on being a recruited athlete, a sport is just another EC. Play football, play tennis, join the band, be a boy scout, get a job. DO something.
On the other hand, some things that really are disqualifiers at many desired colleges get overlooked. There is a thread where some student is worried about how to explain to “top colleges” the single B+ gotten while his/her parents were divorcing. Neither s/he nor most of those responding seem to notice that the parental divorce will probably make most “top colleges” problematic in terms of financial aid (the parents become collectively poorer and often uncooperative).
I also think this is a misleading thread, acceptance to an elite school is about probabilities not absolutes. Is the OP implying that you don’t need all of those things he mentioned? I agree you don’t, but in the same breath I can say that National award winners, ISEF winners, perfect grades/scores, etc. have a much higher probability of getting into top schools. Still not everyone can be a “national award winner” so the vast majority of admits will not have that on their application…
D2’s private counselor had a client with B+/A- GPA, but had an interesting background - parents were pseudo royalty from France, lived around the world, etc. He was able to make the applicant a perfect fit for Barnard. He said to me,“if she didn’t get into Barnard during ED it’s going to be tough to get her into a top school during RD.”
D1’s good friend who didn’t take very rigorous course load in high school and had very mediocre ECs got into Duke. Whereas other students with much better stats (D1 included) were WL or rejected. I think everyone was surprised and we still don’t know why she was admitted. (this is not to take anything away from OP’s D)
I think one needs to have “good enough” stats to have a seat at the table, and after that it is about fit and what extra stuff school looks for. There is no absolute answer on how/why someone is admitted.
I think the quality of the advice you get on CC is very dependent on the questions you ask.
I think there are two major types of threads that parents or students start.
One is the “this is me, help me find my place” thread. Invented example: DD plays tuba in a marching band and s fluent in 3 languages, wants to embark on studying Greek and wants to major in archeology. Family is looking for a college that will offer merit money, preferably in a western state. Somehow or other through the magic that is CC, there will end up being posters who know of hidden gem programs that are just the right mix of what this particular student hopes to find. CC works because there is a clearly defined student with a clear goal that’s enough off the beaten path that the answers really do benefit from being crowdsourced. (Over the years I have been utterly amazed by the repository of information and suggestions that CC’er seem to have for answering those types of questions, no matter how quirky or unusual they seem to be.)
The other is the more common “my heart is set on attending Ivy U. tell me what they are looking for so I can get in.” In this scenario, the student aspires to a highly desireable school more for the sake of getting into that particular school, because of whatever perceived benefits it offers (generally tied to prestige or ranking.). Rather than seeking the school that fits the student, the student (or their family) are looking for the magic formula that will make the student fit the school in such a way as to increase chances of admission. And I think that’s where you find an abundance of meaningless advice, focused on all of those “rules” about test scores, APs, courseload, GPA, EC’s, whatever. Meaningless because a student can easily check off everything on that list of “musts” and be rejected against a student who has managed to break just about every so-called rule, but has something or other that the college happens to value, which may or may not be discernable after all decisions are in. It’s not that all those points don’t accurately reflect the qualities that the collective student body will tend to share – it’s just it doesn’t do a good job of getting the students matched to the schools that might want them the most.
There is also a third, separate type of thread – the “how in the world are we going to pay for this” … but that’s another topic entirely. A lot of excellent but often-ignored advice to be found on CC in that respect as well.
We know a girl who went to school with my D17. She got into MIT. Of course she had great test scores and GPA (was not Val or Sal though). She was into science and had EC’s that were related to that, but was not “published” or anything super ordinary on paper, but just talking to this girl, you knew she was the “right package” for MIT. Her REC’s from the teachers likely showed this, and I am sure that her essays were spot on showing what she wanted to be and that she would be successful. I sometimes think that the kids that get rejected from non T20 schools even with 36 ACT’s and A’s and EC’s are just not showing who they are. Someone on the UPenn thread posted their essay and asked why they did not get in ED. After reading that essay it was very apparent, but I would assume if they had self rated that essay in a chance me thread, they would have said it was better than it was. I do think for top schools the “WHY XYZ” and the Recs mean so much more than doing a bazillion EC’s . And having REC’s that are not just from your favorite teacher or the teacher in the class you struggled. I recall somewhere that someone got into a T10 school with a Rec from the janitor .
Anyway these are my random thoughts there. Duke saw a package that said “this kid wants to go here, and we can see her doing great things and making her time at Duke meaningful”