WSJ article on your child's chances of getting into an IVY are slim

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Three paragraphs summarily explain her rejections. Twenty years ago, she wouldn't have applied to these top-tier colleges and accumulated a hoard of rejections. Twenty years ago, she would have been happy to matriculate at UT or ASU.

1. Ms. Younger wrote in the applications about her history of depression and anxiety to explain the two B’s she earned during her sophomore year.

2. Ms. Younger’s father attended the University of Oklahoma and her mother went to Montclair State University in New Jersey. She has no connection to the faculty or alumni at any elite school, nor did she hire a test-preparation coach or a private college counselor.

3. Her school serves McKinney, Texas, a fast-growing suburb 30 miles outside of Dallas. In a given year, about half of the school’s graduates enroll at four-year colleges; most attend public universities in Texas, Dr. Cranmore said. He recalls two McKinney graduates enrolling at Yale and one at Princeton over the past decade.

"She is now ranked 23rd out of 668" at a high school where only half the graduates go to a 4-year college doesn't make her a "star."
I'm sorry if someone told her otherwise. She was poorly counseled, and should've applied to more colleges that occupy the wide space between USC and ASU.

The article doesn't mention what her class rank was at the time when she applied to colleges (presumably lower than 23rd) only her final class rank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid had a 4.0UW at TJHSST, a 1580 SAT, double digit number of APs with 5s on all the exams, state-level academic awards, club leadership, varsity athlete, and didn't get into HYPSM.

Should I call the WSJ?

Agree 100%. There are so many of these "average excellent" students like the subject of the article with all the grade inflation in HSs nationwide, and the vast majority won't get into the Ivy League. Straight A's, solid extracurriculars and top test scores just don't cut it for most students. My daughter graduated TJHSST in 2018, had a superscored 1600 SAT and was also a 2 sport varsity athlete with first or second team all conference honors (but not good enough to play either sport in the Ivy League D1) and was likely in the top 10% of the class at TJ. She had an excellent guidance counselor at TJ who gave her good advice about her chances and how she should present herself to the colleges she applied to. She too was shut out of Stanford and the 3 Ivys she applied to but she wasn't surprised and took it in stride. Still she had a fantastic outcome and was accepted to Duke, UChicago and UVA Echols and is now a few weeks from graduating from Duke w/a great job waiting for her. She wouldn't have traded her 4 years at Duke for ANY of the Ivys at this point. Outside of the covid year, she loved her 4 years at Duke and the group of friends she made there.

[Anonymous]

Re: the student covered in the article, her motivation will serve her well. At a big public high school that isn’t uber wealthy there isn’t much individual college counseling going on.

[Anonymous]

I’m sorry but this column is idiotic. A student with a history of depression who wants to study business is not a fit for nearly every Ivy. Most don’t have a business school and they are looking for students who want to change the world, but go into business. She’s top third of her class in grades, not top 5%, meaning that its not just the one B that dragged down her GPA, but the fact that many of her peers took a more rigorous course schedule. Getting into the top schools is nearly impossible, but they really should have found a better candidate to build the narrative around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m sorry but this column is idiotic. A student with a history of depression who wants to study business is not a fit for nearly every Ivy. Most don’t have a business school and they are looking for students who want to change the world, but go into business. She’s top third of her class in grades, not top 5%, meaning that its not just the one B that dragged down her GPA, but the fact that many of her peers took a more rigorous course schedule. Getting into the top schools is nearly impossible, but they really should have found a better candidate to build the narrative around.

She really should not have mentioned the depression

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m sorry but this column is idiotic. A student with a history of depression who wants to study business is not a fit for nearly every Ivy. Most don’t have a business school and they are looking for students who want to change the world, but go into business. She’s top third of her class in grades, not top 5%, meaning that its not just the one B that dragged down her GPA, but the fact that many of her peers took a more rigorous course schedule. Getting into the top schools is nearly impossible, but they really should have found a better candidate to build the narrative around.

If she was a Kennedy cousin, she would be in easily

[Anonymous]

None of the Ivies have an accounting major as far as I’m aware, and it sounds like she may have been in the donut hole.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know if the subject of the article is a good poster child for a broken admissions process or not.

But Harvard had 65,000 applications this year. In 1990, it had around 11,000 or 12,000 applications for approximately the same number of spots. In 2000, it had around 17,000 or 18,000 applications.

Something has happened to make a lot more applicants think they have a chance at it than ever before. Some of it is pandemic-related, e.g., HS grading policies becoming softer and TO. But that only accounts for the past 2 years. Even in the pre-Covid years, they had more than 40,000 applications.

Princeton is a similar story. in 1989, it had around 12,000 applications. in 2019, closer to 40,000, again for the same number of seats.

Why haven’t the elite universities increased their class sizes in the past 40-50 years? They certainly have the resources to do so in a way that would not diminish their educational or research quality (if anything, it would likely improve both). It’s artificial scarcity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if the subject of the article is a good poster child for a broken admissions process or not.

But Harvard had 65,000 applications this year. In 1990, it had around 11,000 or 12,000 applications for approximately the same number of spots. In 2000, it had around 17,000 or 18,000 applications.

Something has happened to make a lot more applicants think they have a chance at it than ever before. Some of it is pandemic-related, e.g., HS grading policies becoming softer and TO. But that only accounts for the past 2 years. Even in the pre-Covid years, they had more than 40,000 applications.

Princeton is a similar story. in 1989, it had around 12,000 applications. in 2019, closer to 40,000, again for the same number of seats.

Why haven’t the elite universities increased their class sizes in the past 40-50 years? They certainly have the resources to do so in a way that would not diminish their educational or research quality (if anything, it would likely improve both). It’s artificial scarcity.

Why should they? Their rejection of good students leads those good students to make their universities better.

[Anonymous]

It used to be that attending Ivies meant you came from a certain social class.

For about three or four decades it meant you were among the brightest kids in the country.

Now it largely means you won the diversity lottery.

Which is fine but the degrees don’t carry as much weight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It used to be that attending Ivies meant you came from a certain social class.

For about three or four decades it meant you were among the brightest kids in the country.

Now it largely means you won the diversity lottery.

Which is fine but the degrees don’t carry as much weight.

The bolded sentences are the same time period.

[Anonymous]

Of course the WSJ picked a white girl from Texas for this so they could make it seem like the reason why she didn’t get in was because of “those” kids.

[Anonymous]

Now it largely means you won the diversity lottery. Which is fine but the degrees don’t carry as much weight.

This is bullshit and diminishes the hard work of so many kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course the WSJ picked a white girl from Texas for this so they could make it seem like the reason why she didn’t get in was because of “those” kids.

Yet a basically meh one in comparison to many HYPSM applicants. She is not a truly outstanding applicant when I think of the ones admitted in my DC's senior class this year, including published science research, running a relief operation for essential workers in COVID, etc. And for a kid focused on an Ivy, it's mystifying at why she wrote about her B grades and depression in her essay. College Confidential and nearly every college essay web site wave students off that topic, including "successful" stories of a student not getting a learning diagnosis until middle school/early high school and being able to turn around their learning trajectory after better understanding their strengths and weaknesses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course the WSJ picked a white girl from Texas for this so they could make it seem like the reason why she didn’t get in was because of “those” kids.

Yet a basically meh one in comparison to many HYPSM applicants. She is not a truly outstanding applicant when I think of the ones admitted in my DC's senior class this year, including published science research, running a relief operation for essential workers in COVID, etc. And for a kid focused on an Ivy, it's mystifying at why she wrote about her B grades and depression in her essay. College Confidential and nearly every college essay web site wave students off that topic, including "successful" stories of a student not getting a learning diagnosis until middle school/early high school and being able to turn around their learning trajectory after better understanding their strengths and weaknesses.

I think the girl's 300 plays she played in and/or "directed" goes to the issue of the veracity of her grandiose claim. PP's claim of HS classmate kids who are already published research scientists just takes it to another level. It's like forcing a 10 year old boy to tag along on a trek to the Himalayas to become the youngest ever. It's on the level of Greta Thunberg. It's cringey.