How the hell is anyone supposed to get into college now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS is friendly with a kid who is one of the top 10 chess players in the country for his age. Near perfect GPA, SATs, and a boatload of other fairly impressive ECs. Advanced 3+ years in math, was taking college courses as a sophomore. Got rejected from Harvard. (Did get into Yale, but still - what else was Harvard looking for?)

Math geek/chess player is one of the most generic types of smart boy. Has been true for centuries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most colleges accept most students. It's not hard to get into college. It's hard to get into a very small number of schools. Any student can find a fit if they widen their scope.

I just looked up the VA public schools admit rates from Fairfax County. Only three of the universities have acceptance rates below 50% -- UVA (30%), W&M (42%), VT (43%, yes engineering admit will be lower).

JMU admitted 68.5% of Fairfax apps.

ALL OTHER VA public Us admitted at least 85% of applicants. And VCU is now an automatic admit for GPAs 3.5+ (excluding Arts and Engineering).

I know really smart kids having a great experience at VCU, GMU. I work with someone who speaks highly of her time at UMW. My husband is a successful engineer who went to ODU. There are so many options.

+1000
Thank you for the data. Stop the DCUM hyperbole that VA in-state schools are almost impossible. Even the top three are relatively accessible

Yes. And for VT in particular talking in generalities is really pointless. Admit rate varies so widely by major. The year he applied, the in-state/not-URM/male admit rate for my son's major was 90%. Now it's 60%.

Even engineering is not a super-low admit rate, it's just really hard to predict which specific kids will get in which upsets people. They look at the admit rate and decide it's a safety, not knowing it's unpredictable. The in-state/not-URM/male admit rate for engineering last year was a not-impossible 40%.
https://udc.vt.edu/irdata/data/students/admission/index#college

[Anonymous]

There's always JMU.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Getting into the second tier schools like Mich really isn’t that hard. You just need the stats and scores. And you need to be strategic, know which regions and which schools the college likes the pull kids from. There are schools that have 3-4 kids accepted into Mich every year. This may not be where your HS sends kids. So figure out if they send kids to NYU or another school.

I disagree. Michigan routinely denies valedictorians

Michigan waitlisted my A Student IB Diploma DD. Has old time ECs like newspaper EIC and sports captain, plus a couple of good internships. Perhaps because TO. But going to a top 15 school.

same.

4.92 wgpa
4.0 gpa
1580 sat

THIS. Try applying to Michigan 00S with a 1350 and not at the very top of your class with excellent ECs and essays and awards and see what happens. It's on par with ivies for OOS kids - the 20% is for in-state kids. That 1350 poster always pops up to crap on Michigan and say how easy it is to get in.

Major matters….

ok, so major in art history, as a PP stated. Certainly not CS or Eng, like my super high stats DC did.

You clearly weren’t strategic.

How would they have been strategic in order to be a CS major? I don't think it's easy to transfer into CS.

Don’t be a CS major.

but, that's what they are interested in, so that doesn't really work.

Then go to a less selective school. You can study CS in lots of places. In VA, you could go to UMW (91% admit rate) and a high-stats student would get merit making the cost <$20k/year. Then take advantage of their accelerated master's agreement with VT to get a CS masters from a "name" school in 5 years for less than the cost of 4 years at VT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I just looked up the VA public schools admit rates from Fairfax County. Only three of the universities have acceptance rates below 50% -- UVA (30%), W&M (42%), VT (43%, yes engineering admit will be lower).

Where is this?

SCHEV tells you in state vs OOS admissions rates but not by county so far as I can tell.

Got it… I was on a different page, thanks!

This report lets you drill down by county: https://research.schev.edu//enrollment/b8_admissions_locality.asp

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Getting into the second tier schools like Mich really isn’t that hard. You just need the stats and scores. And you need to be strategic, know which regions and which schools the college likes the pull kids from. There are schools that have 3-4 kids accepted into Mich every year. This may not be where your HS sends kids. So figure out if they send kids to NYU or another school.

I disagree. Michigan routinely denies valedictorians

Michigan waitlisted my A Student IB Diploma DD. Has old time ECs like newspaper EIC and sports captain, plus a couple of good internships. Perhaps because TO. But going to a top 15 school.

same.

4.92 wgpa
4.0 gpa
1580 sat

THIS. Try applying to Michigan 00S with a 1350 and not at the very top of your class with excellent ECs and essays and awards and see what happens. It's on par with ivies for OOS kids - the 20% is for in-state kids. That 1350 poster always pops up to crap on Michigan and say how easy it is to get in.

Major matters….

ok, so major in art history, as a PP stated. Certainly not CS or Eng, like my super high stats DC did.

You clearly weren’t strategic.

How would they have been strategic in order to be a CS major? I don't think it's easy to transfer into CS.

Don’t be a CS major.

but, that's what they are interested in, so that doesn't really work.

Then go to a less selective school. You can study CS in lots of places. In VA, you could go to UMW (91% admit rate) and a high-stats student would get merit making the cost <$20k/year. Then take advantage of their accelerated master's agreement with VT to get a CS masters from a "name" school in 5 years for less than the cost of 4 years at VT.

? yes, they did. They got merit at our in state, Top 20 for CS (depending on what ranking site you use, also will do 4+1 masters program in 4 years). But, that wasn't the point. The point of this particular post was about UMich admissions. Someone stated that DC should've been strategic to get in. Can't do that as a CS major.

[Anonymous]

For insanity purposes my kids HS graduation class in NY her Valedictorian was a guest lecturer at Columbia and was advising a Nobel Prize winner on his work.

My other kids graduation the Valedictorian basketball team won the state championship and she was the start player.

My third Kid one kid in class going to Ivy League for theater was in elementary the lead in the play Annie on Broadway and attended and performed at the Tony awards.

Their are some really talented kids out there

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Then go to a less selective school. You can study CS in lots of places. In VA, you could go to UMW (91% admit rate) and a high-stats student would get merit making the cost <$20k/year.

You can study CS in lots of places, but the outcome is not the same. As you would expect, the average salary at age 25 and age 45 of a CS grads from UMW is far less than that of a CS grad from VT or UVA or an OOS selective institution.

Sensible major at less selective school >>> dumb major at more selective school
Sensible major at more selective school >>> sensible major at less selective school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For insanity purposes my kids HS graduation class in NY her Valedictorian was a guest lecturer at Columbia and was advising a Nobel Prize winner on his work.

Come on... does anyone believe a high school kid was providing useful/ meaningful advice to a Nobel Prize winner? Nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For insanity purposes my kids HS graduation class in NY her Valedictorian was a guest lecturer at Columbia and was advising a Nobel Prize winner on his work.

Come on... does anyone believe a high school kid was providing useful/ meaningful advice to a Nobel Prize winner? Nonsense.

Yeah, this is a bit much. I think the whole cottage industry that has sprung up around high school students allegedly meaningful contributions to science research and literature has warped perspective around how difficult true, meaningful research is. We see this in experienced researchers seemingly fudging data, lying about data/findings, etc. in search of something impactful to say.

It's a 'thing" now that high schools students think that 'research' will give them an edge. And universities (via summer programs run by third parties), and independent outfits are happy to oblige. There is money to be made. Get a name on a paper, spend time in a lab 'advising' sounds impressive for sure. But hard to believe much of it is authentically real. Im sure there are edge case with talented students, but see it too often in forums for much of it to be geniune IMHO

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DS is friendly with a kid who is one of the top 10 chess players in the country for his age. Near perfect GPA, SATs, and a boatload of other fairly impressive ECs. Advanced 3+ years in math, was taking college courses as a sophomore. Got rejected from Harvard. (Did get into Yale, but still - what else was Harvard looking for?)

Think about it this way - odds are all ten of the top ten chess players in the country for his age also applied, including #1. "National under 18 chess champion" sounds a lot snazzier, don't you think?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Full pay helps

Do you indicate full pay on the application? How does full pay help?

You apply Early Decision, and the admit rates are much more favorable if you do that.

Good to know. Will log this info for later!

Some schools (northwestern and UChicago) care more than others (HYPSM)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What does national level ECs (extra curriculars)” mean?

Regeneron science winner
National chess champion
Top ranked national figure skater
National Debate finalist

There are many other examples…you compete against people from all over the country

Nobody can accomplish that realistically even with hard work

Plenty do each year - you can even look them up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just apply as an art history major.

Top schools do not accept by major. No one is getting fooled by the art history major with programming ECs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Then go to a less selective school. You can study CS in lots of places. In VA, you could go to UMW (91% admit rate) and a high-stats student would get merit making the cost <$20k/year.

You can study CS in lots of places, but the outcome is not the same. As you would expect, the average salary at age 25 and age 45 of a CS grads from UMW is far less than that of a CS grad from VT or UVA or an OOS selective institution.

Sensible major at less selective school >>> dumb major at more selective school
Sensible major at more selective school >>> sensible major at less selective school

That's because the elite school is get first pick of the students, not because the school makes the students more successful.