Sidwell, 3.93 1570 Junior - T10 prospects?

[Anonymous]

I'd probably say yes if Chicago hadn't dropped rankings wise. My guess is Sidwell will advise your child to apply REA or ED at their top choice and mention Chicago would be a good match for ED2 if it doesn't work out.

[Anonymous]

Hard to say. Top 10 is unpredictable for just about everyone. Legacy would help.
Might be smarter to apply ED to a school between 10-20. So many excellent schools to choose from

[Anonymous]

A kid like this should go for it.

People on this board love to cite the necessity of “national level awards” for ivies/t-10. We pretty closely know kids at every ivy plus Duke, Northwestern etc (don’t know anyone at Stanford!), including one of my kids, and all are amazing kids who had excellent grades, extracurriculars, so on but none had a national level award. Tbh other than a national science fair award or debate ranking, I don’t even know what those would be.

[Anonymous]

With that profile I would focus more on Northeastern, Cornell, Tulane, USC, BC level - which is probably 2 steps down from T10. Can definitely take a shot or two with ED, but need a realistic approach. Cornell boosters will point to low acceptance rate, but most of the rejects that drive this number down are lower quality applicants thinking they have a shot at a lower quality ivy - they don’t

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Potential major? I see no reason to go T10 for STEM, for example.

With the smaller hiring cohorts recently and increased competition for spots in STEM careers, especially big tech, fintech, and medicine, I think attending top colleges with good placement at grad and med schools and top employers will matter more. I don't see the market going back to 2021 or even 2019 levels. You'll see that schools also hurt their own undergrad job placement, particularly in tech, with large "cash cow" MS programs in CS and related fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With that profile I would focus more on Northeastern, Cornell, Tulane, USC, BC level - which is probably 2 steps down from T10. Can definitely take a shot or two with ED, but need a realistic approach. Cornell boosters will point to low acceptance rate, but most of the rejects that drive this number down are lower quality applicants thinking they have a shot at a lower quality ivy - they don’t

No way. The 3.93 kid at Sidwell is not going to Tulane or BC--even in 2024.
This kid has a great chance at a top 20 school and very good chance at a top 10. It's a quite a rare GPA at Sidwell. You don't have to do the theoretical math track either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d say Top 40 likely but without stellar ECs more like Tufts than Yale. Definitely consider Cornell as it’s probably the most likely.

Stellar EC examples?

This article is helpful in explaining the tiers of ECs

https://blog.collegevine.com/breaking-down-the-4-tiers-of-extracurricular-activities

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Potential major? I see no reason to go T10 for STEM, for example.

With the smaller hiring cohorts recently and increased competition for spots in STEM careers, especially big tech, fintech, and medicine, I think attending top colleges with good placement at grad and med schools and top employers will matter more. I don't see the market going back to 2021 or even 2019 levels. You'll see that schools also hurt their own undergrad job placement, particularly in tech, with large "cash cow" MS programs in CS and related fields.

I don't understand what you are saying. The tech companies are cutting jobs in some areas, but expanding hiring in other areas. The problem is you hear only about the cuts, but not about the hiring.

There was a chart showing employment at MSFT, Google, FB, etc. which actually shows overall employment is basically flat since 2021, mainly because all these companies are aggressively hiring people in various AI fields, while simultaneously cutting in other areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With that profile I would focus more on Northeastern, Cornell, Tulane, USC, BC level - which is probably 2 steps down from T10. Can definitely take a shot or two with ED, but need a realistic approach. Cornell boosters will point to low acceptance rate, but most of the rejects that drive this number down are lower quality applicants thinking they have a shot at a lower quality ivy - they don’t

No way. The 3.93 kid at Sidwell is not going to Tulane or BC--even in 2024.
This kid has a great chance at a top 20 school and very good chance at a top 10. It's a quite a rare GPA at Sidwell. You don't have to do the theoretical math track either.

The above is among the very few reasonable posts in this thread.

OP: Any intended major or desired career for this student ?

MIT, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd are out, but depending upon the whole picture, the remaining top 20 colleges & universities are in play.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d say Top 40 likely but without stellar ECs more like Tufts than Yale. Definitely consider Cornell as it’s probably the most likely.

Stellar EC examples?

AVN award winner

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A kid like this should go for it.

People on this board love to cite the necessity of “national level awards” for ivies/t-10. We pretty closely know kids at every ivy plus Duke, Northwestern etc (don’t know anyone at Stanford!), including one of my kids, and all are amazing kids who had excellent grades, extracurriculars, so on but none had a national level award. Tbh other than a national science fair award or debate ranking, I don’t even know what those would be.

Agreed, and to expand on that, the amount of "my kid has top grades and scores" posters here whose kids actually don't have 4.0 U/W, don't have 12+ AP classes with scores on all AP exams of 5 (arbitrary levels that I selected simply to illustrate the point that "top" is far too subjective), and don't have a one-and-done 1600 or 36 is astounding.

Nationwide, there are maybe 200 kids that meet the standard above. If you read DCUM, you'd think that every other kid meets the standard based on the "top grades and scores" rhetoric.

That said, go for it! That profile seems plenty good enough to buy a Wonka bar and hope for a golden ticket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With that profile I would focus more on Northeastern, Cornell, Tulane, USC, BC level - which is probably 2 steps down from T10. Can definitely take a shot or two with ED, but need a realistic approach. Cornell boosters will point to low acceptance rate, but most of the rejects that drive this number down are lower quality applicants thinking they have a shot at a lower quality ivy - they don’t

Tulane? NE? Come on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With that profile I would focus more on Northeastern, Cornell, Tulane, USC, BC level - which is probably 2 steps down from T10. Can definitely take a shot or two with ED, but need a realistic approach. Cornell boosters will point to low acceptance rate, but most of the rejects that drive this number down are lower quality applicants thinking they have a shot at a lower quality ivy - they don’t

No way. The 3.93 kid at Sidwell is not going to Tulane or BC--even in 2024.
This kid has a great chance at a top 20 school and very good chance at a top 10. It's a quite a rare GPA at Sidwell. You don't have to do the theoretical math track either.

The above is among the very few reasonable posts in this thread.

OP: Any intended major or desired career for this student ?

MIT, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd are out, but depending upon the whole picture, the remaining top 20 colleges & universities are in play.

you guys are delusional - unless they are hooked they will be competing against a ton of top public school kids with better grades and challenging course selection. Sidwell the equivalent of a top public school - but this is bad advice, this kid needs to be reasonable and target appropriate schools at Tulane / Cornell level

[Anonymous]

Tulane NE. That just ridiculous. 3.93 is a very solid GPA from Sidwell. Gives you an excellent shot in lots of T20 places.

[Anonymous]

Maybe not HPSM but could be competitive for Columbia, Duke, Yale, Penn