GJ, I was asking why you accept it, let it affect your understanding, and repeat it. And anecdotes are just random assurance. So what if I know top performers without national awards, who did get into S or an Ivy or top 25? (I do.) Each applicant still had to present him/herself well in the full app/supp. And do that without leaning so hard on the proclamations found on CC (and in blogs or, sorry, books.) They have to do it by being the right match, not just a popular high school kid with good stats and rigor.
Go to the source, your college targets, learn what they say, the sorts of kids they tout, what these colleges offer and how. And where. Not just some posters or some âadvisorsâ making their living purporting to know some secrets. Of course, you can be in math club, yearbook and a play. In fact, they encourage breadth, not just depth. But often, not just the fun things. Your app and supp need to make sense to your college targets. After all, youâre applying, hoping they want you.
This is a different direction on this topic. People tend to make purchases, whether houses, cars, clothing etc. for two reasons. First is function. You have a need and you are looking for a product to fulfill it. Second is self actualization. How does the product make you feel and what image does it convey to others. I believe the second is where we spend the most money and emotional energy.
I think students apply to so many elite universities not for the education it might provide them, there are many places that would offer similar results, but because of the way it makes them feel about themselves and the perception they feel it will give others. We justify it much in the same way we justify leasing or purchasing a BMW over a Honda. Both will offer us excellent transportation but the BMW offers an image. Whether it be grade inflation, test preparation, the common app, the proliferation of information, ease of travel, or a myriad of other reasons far more students are viewing their value as a function of where they attend college more than the actual education they are looking to receive. They are essentially creating the very problem they decry because it is the shear number of students applying to these institutions which drive down acceptance rates.
@lookingforward If I excepted it, I wouldnât be asking. Of course anecdotes are not guarantees but they are a counter note to the constantly repeated story here. Like it or not, many people are learning about the college application process for the first time here, on this site. Its nice to have a few different voices and different stories floating around.
Some applicants may be naturally great app writers, but most are going to have to lean on something to improve their presentation. That means websites like this one, blogs and books. I donât see anything wrong with questioning the information that is presented here so that a more balanced picture emerges.
Since this discussion was to include non tippy top schools too; I am going to throw in my anecdotal examples.
DD2016 is at Marquette University, ranked #90. She was accepted to their direct entry DPT program, which has a less than 10% acceptance rate and was ranked #14, nationally at the time of application. She is a B student and fell somewhere around the 25% of MUâs stat range. DD2016 was involved in: marching band (pit leader but played the oboe), plays piano and passed performance levels annually from ABRSM, made it to the regional and state level for Business Professionals of America, defensive captain on her lacrosse team, and was a member of latin club with a cum laude award for the national latin exam III, and several honor societies. None of those ECs had one dang thing to do with her intended major or career path. Although she had multiple experiences with PTs thru injury and shadowed a PT for about 15 hours the summer between jr and sr year. Yet, oddly, she was accepted to all 12 schools to which she applied, including #56 Purdue and #68 University of Pittsburgh, and 5 or 6 of which were direct entry DPT programs. She has since changed her major; go figure, considering most college student do switch at some point!
DD2018 will attend TAMU, ranked #69, in the fall as a BS Psychology major (undetermined career: maybe forensic psych, maybe law school to be a divorce attorney, maybe clinical?). She is a B+ student and falls in about the 50% of the TAMU stat range. She was NOT auto admit with her 14% class rank and standardized tests just missing the academic admit mark. She was a holistic review candidate and the acceptance rate for them is a whole lot lower compared to the overall TAMU acceptance rate. She has one single EC focus: Cheerleading. She has done it for 12 years; recreational and competitive, in school (varsity co-captain), outside school, all star, volunteered hours coaching and was award UCA All American Nominee/NCA All American. Her additional ECâs amounted to being a member of multiple honor societies (NHS, NEHS, Rho Kappa and NSHS. She had to drop Mu Alpha Theta because she could not meet the required number of volunteer hours), latin club with a cum laude award for the national latin exam II. DD2018 was accepted at 14 of 17 schools to which she applied, including #42 U of Florida and #61 Fordham. Her ECs are certainly not related to her major or potential career path, although she did take AP Psych and a forensic science class to explore her possible career interest.
The one thing that stands out to me about their applications was the cohesive picture that they painted of themselves.
Neither kid appears to have overreached (but they did reach) and were not disappointed with their admission results. Both pursued their interests in HS and balanced their academics and ECs to their satisfaction. Neither choose the highest ranked school. They were never going to applying to elite schools and that was evident early on in their academic careers. Although I doubt either would have selected an elite school independent of their academic ability anyway. DD2016 is thrilled with her choice of Marquette and I suspect DD2018 will happily integrate into the cult that is Texas A&M.
Here are anecdote examples for my 2 children. They were admitted to schools ranked #2 and #3 by USNWR within the last 2 years.
They both had very few ECs (basically 2 each) but went very deep within each EC. They both won awards and were recognized on a state and national level. One had some leadership and the other had zero leadership. One was in the top 1% of class and the other was in top 5% of class.
What I think helped both of them was the âcohesivenessâ of their applications. Their applications clearly illustrated how much they have learned from their ECs and how this has made them better people. I think âcohesivenessâ is very important because it made it very simple for the adcoms to understand my kidsâ applications. Also, both applied EA and SCEA and I think that made a big difference.
âAre there examples of the kids that did the yearbook, flag team, the school play and helped as an aid in Sunday School? I would kill to see that application.â
Many examples, most applicants that get into an elite school (depending on your definition of elite) are kids that did these kinds of activities. Even applicants with hooks that get in will show some kind of engagement with the high school or community.
@gallentjill This was a little over ten years ago, but the percentage taken was very low even then. Columbia:
high SATs, pretty good SAT2s, 5/400. ECs were a ton of music but all local, some volunteering with astronomy club locally, various club memberships and volunteering in HS and with church.
No state or national ranked achievements (well, was a Byrd Scholar but that was, I think, after apps were in.)
Kickass (sez his mother!) essay linking music and astronomy.
Iâm as guilty as the next parent in saying âthis worked for us, so it must be rightâ â so, my apologies for taking people back through this exercise.
First kid had some reaches on list, was waitlisted or rejected, but he didnât care because he was admitted to his âdreamâ school which was a match (now, just a few years later, it would be a reach as well). Second kid wanted a LAC and we knew it could only work with merit, so there were no reaches on the list. He did two things deeply and well in high school, his sport and his music. He was involved in both activities inside and outside school, and had leadership and awards (local but not state) in both activities. His essay was reverse engineered â we researched what the schools of interest said they valued, and then thought about how he could contribute to that. Then brainstormed about how to show that through his essay. In giving his teachers and GC a brag sheet/resume for recs, he emphasized the same themes, using an intro which linked his interests/experience with the types of schools he was focusing on. He was accepted at all his schools (not a surprise, since most were low match/safeties), with more merit than most of the schools had predicted for him. I think that the coherence of his package â his activities, his essay, and his recs â had an impact on the merit awards.
I graduated from HS in the early 1970âs and I gotta say- the kids who were getting into HYP were damn special back then, even by current standards.
No, it wasnât as hard to get into Dartmouth or Penn or Brown. But even in ancient times- HYP was not for the âgood all around smart kid with high scoresâ.
Perhaps it was my HS and region (suburban Boston) and perhaps it was the demographics of my HS? But although youâd hear about a kid going to Penn and think âwhy him?â (great on paper but maybe not so special in real life) I donât recall anyone thinking that about Harvard (even as a local kid). Yale and Princeton even more so.
I did some quick Facebook and Linkedin research here- the kids from my HS who went to HYP have become Federal judges, head of trauma at a major academic medical center, an Emmy/Tony winning producer and writer, etc. A couple of people who seem to have had ordinary careers. But these kids were superstars in HS and seem to have continued on that trajectory after college.
The federal judge did his first professional performance as a musician with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Not youth symphony, not first violin with the regional HS ensemble⊠but the BSO.
So Iâm not sure things have changed all that much. And no- he was not a music major at Harvard- he claimed he âjust liked to playâ.
I have a junior who will be applying to college next year and I am very keen that he not overreach. The problem is determining ideal matches and safeties, and the only thing we have is Naviance. There seems an entire science to it but not quite sure if this is the right thread to ask Naviance based questions. I did a search and did not find any threads on interpreting Naviance. Would it be ok to post my questions hereâŠthis board gives more information than a thousand college counselors.
@stemforward - exactly. If a school over enrolls STEM majors beyond the capacities of its labs, etc. then the parents would be complaining that they are paying up the wazoo for overcrowded classes and zero time with a professor. Schools need to fill their niche majors (at least the liberal arts ones) - Classics, Literature, languages, English, Political Science, etc. No one wants a school of only Biology majors unless it is a specialized school. Also, they not only need athletes, but someone to be the Editor of the newspaper, sing in their singing groups, run their community programs, play in the orchestra. I always say the person who can write their ticket is that one stellar (grades and talent) oboe player who wants to go to YHP in exactly the year their first chair graduates. You can never plan for that.
Since there are lots of anecdotes here . . . . An ORM kid in my sonâs high school class was accepted at Harvard SCEA and Stanford RD (the only other college to which he applied). He was ranked high in a competitive class â #7 out of 550 â but that meant that his grades were not perfect. His SATs were in the high 1500s. He ran cross-country, but never tallied points. He was not even president of the school math club. He went to Japanese school on weekends and some evenings; that really limited his ability to do other ECs, including science competitions which were big in that high school. Several kids in his class with (slightly) better grades (or slightly worse grades) and equivalent test scores, and much more significant ECs, were rejected at the colleges that accepted him. One of the rejected applicants with (slightly) better grades was an actual-factual URM.
So, what did he have going for him? Of course, I didnât read his application, or his recommendations, but I knew from my son and his associates clustered at the top of that very competitive class: Every single one of them â and so almost certainly the teachers, too â thought he was head-and-shoulders the smartest kid in the class. Not that he knew the most â in fact, he was sheltered and a little spacey, and lacked a whole bunch of information about the world â but that his brain worked faster than anyone elseâs, he saw patterns and connections that others hadnât seen, and he was good at describing those patterns and connections to others. He was also completely non-arrogant.
With this kid, it didnât matter that he had no meaningful ECs, had overcome no terrible obstacle (he hadnât, besides learning English when he came to the U.S. as a young child), had not bothered to engineer a perfect GPA for himself, had missed a couple of questions on the CR SAT. He was the smartest.
blossom I graduated from HS in the mid 70âs and one of the big things I see different is expectations. First, I am not sure if anyone got a straight 4.0 at my public school. Teachers were much harder. And even if you were the top of your class I am not sure if anyone at my excellent public high school even gave any thought about going to an Ivy. If they did, they were rich and smart but not necessarily the smartest, because I am not sure any middle school family got enough aid to go to an ivy. I guess that is the best thing about our current problem, it is because the doors are open a lot wider to a large economic mix. Probably 90% of my high school that went to school, went to a public college instate. The other thing is the only thing that you ranked, or competed in back then was sports, and no girl in my school, even my friend who was top diver in the country, got a college scholarship. College rankings have set a goal for those who want or believe they deserve the best, to expect the best. It is a whole different animal now.