Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Northwestern, other Ivies What Does It Take ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams and Amherst have single digit admissions rates. The rates you cite can only possibly by ED and if so, as a PP said, are very skewed by atheltes which they probably recruit in the same raw numbers as ivies but the colleges themselves are much smaller. At my
kids’ mcps high school, many more students were admitted to Cornell than either of these.

In the world of kids I know, the ones who were admitted to H/Y/P were true superstars. Not just perfect gpa, perfect sat and the most rigorous classes (and when I say most rigorous, I really mean it - not just thru MV but also took all of the english and social studies APs, took multiple hard science APs, and finished world language AP junior year). But also excelled in other things - music, science competitions, quizbowl or debate. These were the 2-3 kids in a class of 500 who you “knew” would one day go to H/Y/P. There are of course other students every year who get into Penn,Columbia, Dartmouth - these kids are also terrific students but don’t have that “extra” and so there are a lot more of them so it actually seems less predictable to me why Lola got into Penn and Larla
did not.

And again, I think from our HS the students have an easier time getting into Penn and Dartmouth than Williams and Amherst where the 1-2 admits are usually sports recruits (and terrific students).

My answer expands on this but generally tracks. Top 10 schools are for the very top kids at a high school. Truly, top 3-5 in class (not 5%), above 1550 test scores, major leadership (President of class, captain of championship winning team sort of stuff). They will likely get rejected to some places too but I have seen most of those kids get into 1 top 10 school that is considered the long shot - particularly if they can apply SCEA/ED.

I think where DCUM gets confused is many of us have a kid who is awesome but not quite that level: maybe 1550 SAT and near perfect grades but only top 10 kids in class. Maybe President if a smaller club. And, that kid is awesome but there are so many out there like that. I have one of these. He is not going to get into an Ivy (maybe he would have in my generation, but that is not relevant) and he is not sad about it. He knows he is accomplished but there are more qualified candidates. He has found a few schools beyond the top 20 he would be excited to attend. They are tremendous colleges.

We can all believe our kids are great and worked hard but rationally understand they are not worthy of a spot where only 6/100 kids get in. And be proud of them and excited for college!

I am sure Northwestern is a good school, but the students from our private DC high school who apply and get in NU are not the top students in the grade. Probably top 25-30%

Which private DC high school ?

I find this hard to believe. Northwestern University reports that slightly over 95% of matriculated (Fall 2020 entering class) students who graduated high school in 2020 were in the Top 10% of their HS class.

For a relative comparison, US News reports the percentage of Fall 2020 entering class who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class:

Princeton 89%
Columbia 96% (but not sure if this was part of the fraudulent date submitted by Columbia to US News)
Harvard 94%
MIT 100%
Yale 94%

Stanford 96%
U Chicago 99%
U Penn 96%
CalTech 96%
Duke 95%

Johns Hopkins 99%
Northwestern 95%
Dartmouth College 93%
Brown 95%
Vanderbilt 90%

WashUStL 86%
Cornell 84%
Rice 92%
Notre Dame 90%
Emory 83%

Georgetown 83%
Michigan 77%
Carnegie Mellon 89%
U Virginia 90%
NYU 82%

Tufts 84%
UNC-Chapel Hill 74%
Wake Forest 73%
Boston College 79%
Georgia Tech 88%

William & Mary 77%
Boston University 66%
Tulane 63%

SLACs:

Williams 95%
Amherst 855
Swarthmore 93%
Pomona 90%
Wellesley 85%

Bowdoin 84%
Claremont McKenna 73%
Carleton College 70%
Middlebury 80%
Wash & Lee 80%

Davidson 76%
Grinnell 72%
Hamilton 86%
Haverford 94%
Barnard 90%

Colby 74%
Colgate 65%
Wesleyan 67%
U Richmond 50%
Vassar 73%

Bates College 60%
Colorado College 73%
Macalester 66%
Kenyon 55%
Bucknell 54%

Skidmore 33%
Furman 44%

Yup. Thanks for coming through with the receipts. This one obsessed parent has no idea what they’re talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my kids went private (two different graduation years) to ivies below HYP. At our top private, Chicago Northwestern etc. was for kids who didn’t think they could make Ivy but wanted a decent rank. They didn’t think they could even get Dartmouth, Brown, or Cornell. So they might have EDed 1 Cornell or Dartmouth say but ED2ed Chicago. Of the ones that ED1ed northwestern, they did so because they saw top of class applying to ivies and knew they would lose out. Don’t get me wrong great schools but most I think would take any Ivy out of our area due to East Coast bias. Duke is more competitive over Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth.

Ditto. At the top DC privates, Chicago is not for the top 10% of the class.
These schools sen 10% of the class to Chicago, in addition to the 20% to the Ivies.
NCS is another example. 10% last year to Chicago; in addition to the Ivy admits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams and Amherst have single digit admissions rates. The rates you cite can only possibly by ED and if so, as a PP said, are very skewed by atheltes which they probably recruit in the same raw numbers as ivies but the colleges themselves are much smaller. At my
kids’ mcps high school, many more students were admitted to Cornell than either of these.

In the world of kids I know, the ones who were admitted to H/Y/P were true superstars. Not just perfect gpa, perfect sat and the most rigorous classes (and when I say most rigorous, I really mean it - not just thru MV but also took all of the english and social studies APs, took multiple hard science APs, and finished world language AP junior year). But also excelled in other things - music, science competitions, quizbowl or debate. These were the 2-3 kids in a class of 500 who you “knew” would one day go to H/Y/P. There are of course other students every year who get into Penn,Columbia, Dartmouth - these kids are also terrific students but don’t have that “extra” and so there are a lot more of them so it actually seems less predictable to me why Lola got into Penn and Larla
did not.

And again, I think from our HS the students have an easier time getting into Penn and Dartmouth than Williams and Amherst where the 1-2 admits are usually sports recruits (and terrific students).

My answer expands on this but generally tracks. Top 10 schools are for the very top kids at a high school. Truly, top 3-5 in class (not 5%), above 1550 test scores, major leadership (President of class, captain of championship winning team sort of stuff). They will likely get rejected to some places too but I have seen most of those kids get into 1 top 10 school that is considered the long shot - particularly if they can apply SCEA/ED.

I think where DCUM gets confused is many of us have a kid who is awesome but not quite that level: maybe 1550 SAT and near perfect grades but only top 10 kids in class. Maybe President if a smaller club. And, that kid is awesome but there are so many out there like that. I have one of these. He is not going to get into an Ivy (maybe he would have in my generation, but that is not relevant) and he is not sad about it. He knows he is accomplished but there are more qualified candidates. He has found a few schools beyond the top 20 he would be excited to attend. They are tremendous colleges.

We can all believe our kids are great and worked hard but rationally understand they are not worthy of a spot where only 6/100 kids get in. And be proud of them and excited for college!

I am sure Northwestern is a good school, but the students from our private DC high school who apply and get in NU are not the top students in the grade. Probably top 25-30%

Which private DC high school ?

I find this hard to believe. Northwestern University reports that slightly over 95% of matriculated (Fall 2020 entering class) students who graduated high school in 2020 were in the Top 10% of their HS class.

For a relative comparison, US News reports the percentage of Fall 2020 entering class who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class:

Princeton 89%
Columbia 96% (but not sure if this was part of the fraudulent date submitted by Columbia to US News)
Harvard 94%
MIT 100%
Yale 94%

Stanford 96%
U Chicago 99%
U Penn 96%
CalTech 96%
Duke 95%

Johns Hopkins 99%
Northwestern 95%
Dartmouth College 93%
Brown 95%
Vanderbilt 90%

WashUStL 86%
Cornell 84%
Rice 92%
Notre Dame 90%
Emory 83%

Georgetown 83%
Michigan 77%
Carnegie Mellon 89%
U Virginia 90%
NYU 82%

Tufts 84%
UNC-Chapel Hill 74%
Wake Forest 73%
Boston College 79%
Georgia Tech 88%

William & Mary 77%
Boston University 66%
Tulane 63%

SLACs:

Williams 95%
Amherst 855
Swarthmore 93%
Pomona 90%
Wellesley 85%

Bowdoin 84%
Claremont McKenna 73%
Carleton College 70%
Middlebury 80%
Wash & Lee 80%

Davidson 76%
Grinnell 72%
Hamilton 86%
Haverford 94%
Barnard 90%

Colby 74%
Colgate 65%
Wesleyan 67%
U Richmond 50%
Vassar 73%

Bates College 60%
Colorado College 73%
Macalester 66%
Kenyon 55%
Bucknell 54%

Skidmore 33%
Furman 44%

I don't know how this could possibly be true. Chicago is a typical destination for DC private school kids who are more like the top 20-30%. The very top (top 10%) go to the Ivy league. Is the entire 1% at Chicago that is outside the 10% from DC?

WOW ! If you believe this, then you need to do some simple basic research and stop posting misinformation.

Dude. St. Albans 2022 sent 14 kids to Chicago from a class of 75. By definition, 7 kids were outside of the top 10%. Plus the school sent 20 kids to the Ivy League and most of these were academically above the 14 who went to Chicago.
So the Chicago admits were primarily in the 60-90% percentile of the class.

So, if true, then St. Albans does not rank. Is this correct ?

[Anonymous]

St. Albans does not rank, therefore, you are guessing.

[Anonymous]

I get it guys

[Anonymous]

Nobody grows up from kindergarten I want to go to Chicago or Northwestern. Or even Amherst or Williams or Pomona. They are forced into it. They dream about going to Ivies. Only exception is somebody who may have grown up as a Duke or Georgetown basketball fan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nobody grows up from kindergarten I want to go to Chicago or Northwestern. Or even Amherst or Williams or Pomona. They are forced into it. They dream about going to Ivies. Only exception is somebody who may have grown up as a Duke or Georgetown basketball fan.

LOL ! "They are forced into it." LOL !

Individuals dream of attending many schools. Only the narrow minded prestige obsessed limit their desired schools to an athletic league.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams and Amherst have single digit admissions rates. The rates you cite can only possibly by ED and if so, as a PP said, are very skewed by atheltes which they probably recruit in the same raw numbers as ivies but the colleges themselves are much smaller. At my
kids’ mcps high school, many more students were admitted to Cornell than either of these.

In the world of kids I know, the ones who were admitted to H/Y/P were true superstars. Not just perfect gpa, perfect sat and the most rigorous classes (and when I say most rigorous, I really mean it - not just thru MV but also took all of the english and social studies APs, took multiple hard science APs, and finished world language AP junior year). But also excelled in other things - music, science competitions, quizbowl or debate. These were the 2-3 kids in a class of 500 who you “knew” would one day go to H/Y/P. There are of course other students every year who get into Penn,Columbia, Dartmouth - these kids are also terrific students but don’t have that “extra” and so there are a lot more of them so it actually seems less predictable to me why Lola got into Penn and Larla
did not.

And again, I think from our HS the students have an easier time getting into Penn and Dartmouth than Williams and Amherst where the 1-2 admits are usually sports recruits (and terrific students).

My answer expands on this but generally tracks. Top 10 schools are for the very top kids at a high school. Truly, top 3-5 in class (not 5%), above 1550 test scores, major leadership (President of class, captain of championship winning team sort of stuff). They will likely get rejected to some places too but I have seen most of those kids get into 1 top 10 school that is considered the long shot - particularly if they can apply SCEA/ED.

I think where DCUM gets confused is many of us have a kid who is awesome but not quite that level: maybe 1550 SAT and near perfect grades but only top 10 kids in class. Maybe President if a smaller club. And, that kid is awesome but there are so many out there like that. I have one of these. He is not going to get into an Ivy (maybe he would have in my generation, but that is not relevant) and he is not sad about it. He knows he is accomplished but there are more qualified candidates. He has found a few schools beyond the top 20 he would be excited to attend. They are tremendous colleges.

We can all believe our kids are great and worked hard but rationally understand they are not worthy of a spot where only 6/100 kids get in. And be proud of them and excited for college!

I am sure Northwestern is a good school, but the students from our private DC high school who apply and get in NU are not the top students in the grade. Probably top 25-30%

Which private DC high school ?

I find this hard to believe. Northwestern University reports that slightly over 95% of matriculated (Fall 2020 entering class) students who graduated high school in 2020 were in the Top 10% of their HS class.

For a relative comparison, US News reports the percentage of Fall 2020 entering class who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class:

Princeton 89%
Columbia 96% (but not sure if this was part of the fraudulent date submitted by Columbia to US News)
Harvard 94%
MIT 100%
Yale 94%

Stanford 96%
U Chicago 99%
U Penn 96%
CalTech 96%
Duke 95%

Johns Hopkins 99%
Northwestern 95%
Dartmouth College 93%
Brown 95%
Vanderbilt 90%

WashUStL 86%
Cornell 84%
Rice 92%
Notre Dame 90%
Emory 83%

Georgetown 83%
Michigan 77%
Carnegie Mellon 89%
U Virginia 90%
NYU 82%

Tufts 84%
UNC-Chapel Hill 74%
Wake Forest 73%
Boston College 79%
Georgia Tech 88%

William & Mary 77%
Boston University 66%
Tulane 63%

SLACs:

Williams 95%
Amherst 855
Swarthmore 93%
Pomona 90%
Wellesley 85%

Bowdoin 84%
Claremont McKenna 73%
Carleton College 70%
Middlebury 80%
Wash & Lee 80%

Davidson 76%
Grinnell 72%
Hamilton 86%
Haverford 94%
Barnard 90%

Colby 74%
Colgate 65%
Wesleyan 67%
U Richmond 50%
Vassar 73%

Bates College 60%
Colorado College 73%
Macalester 66%
Kenyon 55%
Bucknell 54%

Skidmore 33%
Furman 44%

I don't know how this could possibly be true. Chicago is a typical destination for DC private school kids who are more like the top 20-30%. The very top (top 10%) go to the Ivy league. Is the entire 1% at Chicago that is outside the 10% from DC?

WOW ! If you believe this, then you need to do some simple basic research and stop posting misinformation.

Dude. St. Albans 2022 sent 14 kids to Chicago from a class of 75. By definition, 7 kids were outside of the top 10%. Plus the school sent 20 kids to the Ivy League and most of these were academically above the 14 who went to Chicago.
So the Chicago admits were primarily in the 60-90% percentile of the class.

St. Albans 5 year college matriculation list is posted. 103 different schools for 375 graduates.

St. Albans transcripts do not rank students.

[Anonymous]

Huh. So that whole "XX% of our class is in the top 10% of their high school class" thing is kind of a bunch of crap because almost all private schools (which are a large percentage of their applicants) don't rank. none of the DC privates rank to my knowledge,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my kids went private (two different graduation years) to ivies below HYP. At our top private, Chicago Northwestern etc. was for kids who didn’t think they could make Ivy but wanted a decent rank. They didn’t think they could even get Dartmouth, Brown, or Cornell. So they might have EDed 1 Cornell or Dartmouth say but ED2ed Chicago. Of the ones that ED1ed northwestern, they did so because they saw top of class applying to ivies and knew they would lose out. Don’t get me wrong great schools but most I think would take any Ivy out of our area due to East Coast bias. Duke is more competitive over Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth.

This is what I saw too. Top 10 students apply to Ivy (except for Cornell), Stanford, MIT. Kids around top 20 applies to schools like Northwestern, Hopkins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nobody grows up from kindergarten I want to go to Chicago or Northwestern. Or even Amherst or Williams or Pomona. They are forced into it. They dream about going to Ivies. Only exception is somebody who may have grown up as a Duke or Georgetown basketball fan.

This is literally so bizarre. One of my neighbors' kids is in middle school, and they've literally talked before about how Northwestern is their dream school. I don't have firsthand experience about those other schools, but what kind of weird bizarre alternate reality do ou live in?

[Anonymous]

Solid sample size.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams and Amherst have single digit admissions rates. The rates you cite can only possibly by ED and if so, as a PP said, are very skewed by atheltes which they probably recruit in the same raw numbers as ivies but the colleges themselves are much smaller. At my
kids’ mcps high school, many more students were admitted to Cornell than either of these.

In the world of kids I know, the ones who were admitted to H/Y/P were true superstars. Not just perfect gpa, perfect sat and the most rigorous classes (and when I say most rigorous, I really mean it - not just thru MV but also took all of the english and social studies APs, took multiple hard science APs, and finished world language AP junior year). But also excelled in other things - music, science competitions, quizbowl or debate. These were the 2-3 kids in a class of 500 who you “knew” would one day go to H/Y/P. There are of course other students every year who get into Penn,Columbia, Dartmouth - these kids are also terrific students but don’t have that “extra” and so there are a lot more of them so it actually seems less predictable to me why Lola got into Penn and Larla
did not.

And again, I think from our HS the students have an easier time getting into Penn and Dartmouth than Williams and Amherst where the 1-2 admits are usually sports recruits (and terrific students).

My answer expands on this but generally tracks. Top 10 schools are for the very top kids at a high school. Truly, top 3-5 in class (not 5%), above 1550 test scores, major leadership (President of class, captain of championship winning team sort of stuff). They will likely get rejected to some places too but I have seen most of those kids get into 1 top 10 school that is considered the long shot - particularly if they can apply SCEA/ED.

I think where DCUM gets confused is many of us have a kid who is awesome but not quite that level: maybe 1550 SAT and near perfect grades but only top 10 kids in class. Maybe President if a smaller club. And, that kid is awesome but there are so many out there like that. I have one of these. He is not going to get into an Ivy (maybe he would have in my generation, but that is not relevant) and he is not sad about it. He knows he is accomplished but there are more qualified candidates. He has found a few schools beyond the top 20 he would be excited to attend. They are tremendous colleges.

We can all believe our kids are great and worked hard but rationally understand they are not worthy of a spot where only 6/100 kids get in. And be proud of them and excited for college!

I am sure Northwestern is a good school, but the students from our private DC high school who apply and get in NU are not the top students in the grade. Probably top 25-30%

Which private DC high school ?

I find this hard to believe. Northwestern University reports that slightly over 95% of matriculated (Fall 2020 entering class) students who graduated high school in 2020 were in the Top 10% of their HS class.

For a relative comparison, US News reports the percentage of Fall 2020 entering class who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class:

Princeton 89%
Columbia 96% (but not sure if this was part of the fraudulent date submitted by Columbia to US News)
Harvard 94%
MIT 100%
Yale 94%

Stanford 96%
U Chicago 99%
U Penn 96%
CalTech 96%
Duke 95%

Johns Hopkins 99%
Northwestern 95%
Dartmouth College 93%
Brown 95%
Vanderbilt 90%

WashUStL 86%
Cornell 84%
Rice 92%
Notre Dame 90%
Emory 83%

Georgetown 83%
Michigan 77%
Carnegie Mellon 89%
U Virginia 90%
NYU 82%

Tufts 84%
UNC-Chapel Hill 74%
Wake Forest 73%
Boston College 79%
Georgia Tech 88%

William & Mary 77%
Boston University 66%
Tulane 63%

SLACs:

Williams 95%
Amherst 855
Swarthmore 93%
Pomona 90%
Wellesley 85%

Bowdoin 84%
Claremont McKenna 73%
Carleton College 70%
Middlebury 80%
Wash & Lee 80%

Davidson 76%
Grinnell 72%
Hamilton 86%
Haverford 94%
Barnard 90%

Colby 74%
Colgate 65%
Wesleyan 67%
U Richmond 50%
Vassar 73%

Bates College 60%
Colorado College 73%
Macalester 66%
Kenyon 55%
Bucknell 54%

Skidmore 33%
Furman 44%

I don't know how this could possibly be true. Chicago is a typical destination for DC private school kids who are more like the top 20-30%. The very top (top 10%) go to the Ivy league. Is the entire 1% at Chicago that is outside the 10% from DC?

WOW ! If you believe this, then you need to do some simple basic research and stop posting misinformation.

Dude. St. Albans 2022 sent 14 kids to Chicago from a class of 75. By definition, 7 kids were outside of the top 10%. Plus the school sent 20 kids to the Ivy League and most of these were academically above the 14 who went to Chicago.
So the Chicago admits were primarily in the 60-90% percentile of the class.

You may have incorrect information. According to the St. Albans website:

St. Albans does not rank students.

Over the past 5 years, St. Albans sent 39 students to the University of Chicago--an average of 8 per year. Certainly possible that 14 went last year (although not likely). The St. Albans website states that there were 77 graduates in 2022, not 75. (A minor discrepancy.)

It appears that the University of Chicago is the preferred--certainly the top--destination for its graduates over the past 5 years.

For the past 5 years (St. Albans graduating classes of 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, & 2022), St. Albans most attended colleges & universities were:

U Chicago 39 students matriculated in the past 5 years

Yale 19

Dartmouth 16

Tulane 13

Harvard 10

Columbia 9

Bates College 8
Davidson College 8

Northwestern 7
Georgetown 7
Boston College 7
Princeton 7
Wake Forest 7
Wash & Lee 7
WashUStL 7
Wesleyan 7

Amherst 6
Bowdoin 6
Colgate 6
Emory 6
Virginia 6

169 grads out of about 375 St. Albans grads over the past 5 years matriculated at these 21 colleges & universities. (Represents almost 45% of all college matriculations over the past 5 years.)

Three Ivy League schools (Brown, Cornell, & Penn) are not among the 21 top destinations for St. Albans grads over the past 5 years. MIT, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Williams College, and Michigan are not among the top 21 matriculations for St. Alband grads over the past 5 years.

An interesting list that suggests St. Albans students take advantage of ED 1 and ED 2 admissions to the University of Chicago.

[Anonymous]

As to who goes where at "top" privates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So my kids went private (two different graduation years) to ivies below HYP. At our top private, Chicago Northwestern etc. was for kids who didn’t think they could make Ivy but wanted a decent rank. They didn’t think they could even get Dartmouth, Brown, or Cornell. So they might have EDed 1 Cornell or Dartmouth say but ED2ed Chicago. Of the ones that ED1ed northwestern, they did so because they saw top of class applying to ivies and knew they would lose out. Don’t get me wrong great schools but most I think would take any Ivy out of our area due to East Coast bias. Duke is more competitive over Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth.

Difference is if you're looking at Chicago for Econ, or journalism, theatre, or music for Northwestern.