What was the major difference between your IRL admissions results and what others shared here on DCUM?

[Anonymous]

What was the major difference between your IRL admissions results and what others shared here on DCUM?

[Anonymous]

I knew all the details of my kid’s life and applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I knew all the details of my kid’s life and applications.

Using those details, what was the major difference between your IRL admissions results and what others shared here on DCUM?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What was the major difference between your IRL admissions results and what others shared here on DCUM?

I would answer but there appears to be dcum posters who would accuse some of us as trolls just because we answer out of the expected norm.

[Anonymous]

I'll go OP. My kid had a 3.7W at FCPS. Lots of Bs all around. Had to work extremely hard for Bs and B- in Honors Humanities classes; also worked very hard for A- grades in AP math classes. Only took a total of 3 APs and 1 or 2 DE. Really nice, good kid, but definitely below average for DCUM. Got into 11 of 12 colleges including Virginia Tech and a bunch more similarly ranked schools. DCUM made me worry he had no chance at what I thought were safeties.

[Anonymous]

Huh? what does this question mean.

[Anonymous]

The main thing is your high school. Colleges evaluate kids in the context of their high schools. DCUM anecdotes are mostly irrelevant to your DC. Look at Naviance or meet with your school counselor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The main thing is your high school. Colleges evaluate kids in the context of their high schools. DCUM anecdotes are mostly irrelevant to your DC. Look at Naviance or meet with your school counselor.

Yes, I think this is the biggest difference. DCUM does raise a parents' blood pressure by quite a lot. Most of us forget that we have no idea which high school, region, or state the person is posting is from. I particularly find it interesting that this forum on DCUM is used by many across the country, from NY to CA. So it's really hard to tell and I think that leads to a lot of panic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll go OP. My kid had a 3.7W at FCPS. Lots of Bs all around. Had to work extremely hard for Bs and B- in Honors Humanities classes; also worked very hard for A- grades in AP math classes. Only took a total of 3 APs and 1 or 2 DE. Really nice, good kid, but definitely below average for DCUM. Got into 11 of 12 colleges including Virginia Tech and a bunch more similarly ranked schools. DCUM made me worry he had no chance at what I thought were safeties.

Lesson # 1: don't believe this forum. Your kids are better. You and the kid know that.

[Anonymous]

3 kids from over represented city in to top choices ED, full pay but otherwise unhooked. This forum often says ED is only for athletic recruits, legacy, major donors etc, but I know so many kids in during ED rounds

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The main thing is your high school. Colleges evaluate kids in the context of their high schools. DCUM anecdotes are mostly irrelevant to your DC. Look at Naviance or meet with your school counselor.

Yes, I think this is the biggest difference. DCUM does raise a parents' blood pressure by quite a lot. Most of us forget that we have no idea which high school, region, or state the person is posting is from. I particularly find it interesting that this forum on DCUM is used by many across the country, from NY to CA. So it's really hard to tell and I think that leads to a lot of panic.

Very true. My kid was in at their first choice T20 as a math major with “only” Calc AB, while DCUM kept telling me I needed to enroll the kid in online courses (or move!) so she could take BC. Calc AB is the top math offered at our school and it was enough.

[Anonymous]

Specific high school context matters more than conventional DCUM wisdom.

At our small high school, the unweighted 3.9-ish crowd with high rigor got into Harvard, Yale, Stanford but the surprise for us was that our DC's friend group (3.6-3.8) got into very good schools (so-called "new Ivies" like Northwestern, Georgetown, Tufts, WashU, so-called Ivy "plus" schools like UChicago). They also did very well at NYU and USC.

DCUM conventional wisdom would not have predicted that. But DCUM wisdom is not high school specific. For our school, it was not helpful at all to read comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Huh? what does this question mean.

See 11:57

[Anonymous]

My kid didn’t get in HYPMS & use Penn & Northwestern as safeties, like everybody else here.

[Anonymous]

Agree with the posts above. Real life results were much better than what DCUM would say. Normal kids are getting into great colleges.