A place for ordinary kids?
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Anonymous
My brother and I are both in our mid 20s (I found this thread in the "recent topics" just so that someone does flame me for being here even though I'm not old enough to have a kid look into going to college). I was your typical B/B+ student (maybe an unweighted GPA around 3.3...and I had a couple Cs on my transcript) with good but not stellar test scores (30 on the ACT) taking mostly AP and honors classes, who played an instrument in symphony orchestra, played a couple sports, did some volunteering and clubs, and graduated in only the top 40% of a very competitive high school. I went to a selective (~30% acceptance rate) and highly regarded small liberal arts college. Later I spoke with someone in the admissions department, and they said that my essays and teacher recs made me seem like I was the sort of student that would thrive at that school, even though my college counselor thought it would be a reach. I went on to a competitive graduate program. My brother was a B student who only played intramural sports, played an instrument but was decidedly mediocre at it. He did some volunteer work and was semi-fluent in Spanish. He didn't take any AP or honors classes, and his test scores were not terrible, but worse than mine (28 or 29 on the ACT) and he had a couple Cs. He went to American University for a couple years and transferred to another school because he wanted to study engineering. So given our experiences, I don't think that opportunities don't exist for "unhooked, smart, wonderful, talented" kids with less than a 3.7. You're not going to get into the most highly ranked schools, but there are plenty of good schools to go around for more "normal" kids. |
Anonymous
| ^^i think we're in agreement that "average" kids can get into good colleges outside the top 50. A few will manage to get into a top 50. |