Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Northwestern, other Ivies What Does It Take ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People on this board will disagree, but I see a pull away from the standard privileged, high-stats person coming from a pricey private school. Of course, legacies are still a thing.

I mostly agree. Chicago seems to be a big exception. They have been taking a large number of high-stats private school applicants from the DMV. Anecdotally, at several applied and were admitted ED2.

Same for the Hotchkiss School (a boarding school) in Connecticut.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People on this board will disagree, but I see a pull away from the standard privileged, high-stats person coming from a pricey private school. Of course, legacies are still a thing.

I mostly agree. Chicago seems to be a big exception. They have been taking a large number of high-stats private school applicants from the DMV. Anecdotally, at several applied and were admitted ED2.

Same for the Hotchkiss School (a boarding school) in Connecticut.

Yes, STA has sent a large number to Chicago recently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People on this board will disagree, but I see a pull away from the standard privileged, high-stats person coming from a pricey private school. Of course, legacies are still a thing.

Can you elaborate on your point? And support?

The times they are a changin'.

[Anonymous]

What kind of GPAs do these big 3 kids have that allow them to get into Chicago but not ivies etc? I thought Chicago required high stats?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams and Amherst have single digit admissions rates. The rates you cite can only possibly by ED and if so, as a PP said, are very skewed by atheltes which they probably recruit in the same raw numbers as ivies but the colleges themselves are much smaller. At my
kids’ mcps high school, many more students were admitted to Cornell than either of these.

In the world of kids I know, the ones who were admitted to H/Y/P were true superstars. Not just perfect gpa, perfect sat and the most rigorous classes (and when I say most rigorous, I really mean it - not just thru MV but also took all of the english and social studies APs, took multiple hard science APs, and finished world language AP junior year). But also excelled in other things - music, science competitions, quizbowl or debate. These were the 2-3 kids in a class of 500 who you “knew” would one day go to H/Y/P. There are of course other students every year who get into Penn,Columbia, Dartmouth - these kids are also terrific students but don’t have that “extra” and so there are a lot more of them so it actually seems less predictable to me why Lola got into Penn and Larla
did not.

And again, I think from our HS the students have an easier time getting into Penn and Dartmouth than Williams and Amherst where the 1-2 admits are usually sports recruits (and terrific students).

My answer expands on this but generally tracks. Top 10 schools are for the very top kids at a high school. Truly, top 3-5 in class (not 5%), above 1550 test scores, major leadership (President of class, captain of championship winning team sort of stuff). They will likely get rejected to some places too but I have seen most of those kids get into 1 top 10 school that is considered the long shot - particularly if they can apply SCEA/ED.

I think where DCUM gets confused is many of us have a kid who is awesome but not quite that level: maybe 1550 SAT and near perfect grades but only top 10 kids in class. Maybe President if a smaller club. And, that kid is awesome but there are so many out there like that. I have one of these. He is not going to get into an Ivy (maybe he would have in my generation, but that is not relevant) and he is not sad about it. He knows he is accomplished but there are more qualified candidates. He has found a few schools beyond the top 20 he would be excited to attend. They are tremendous colleges.

We can all believe our kids are great and worked hard but rationally understand they are not worthy of a spot where only 6/100 kids get in. And be proud of them and excited for college!

I am sure Northwestern is a good school, but the students from our private DC high school who apply and get in NU are not the top students in the grade. Probably top 25-30%

Which private DC high school ?

I find this hard to believe. Northwestern University reports that slightly over 95% of matriculated (Fall 2020 entering class) students who graduated high school in 2020 were in the Top 10% of their HS class.

For a relative comparison, US News reports the percentage of Fall 2020 entering class who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class:

Princeton 89%
Columbia 96% (but not sure if this was part of the fraudulent date submitted by Columbia to US News)
Harvard 94%
MIT 100%
Yale 94%

Stanford 96%
U Chicago 99%
U Penn 96%
CalTech 96%
Duke 95%

Johns Hopkins 99%
Northwestern 95%
Dartmouth College 93%
Brown 95%
Vanderbilt 90%

WashUStL 86%
Cornell 84%
Rice 92%
Notre Dame 90%
Emory 83%

Georgetown 83%
Michigan 77%
Carnegie Mellon 89%
U Virginia 90%
NYU 82%

Tufts 84%
UNC-Chapel Hill 74%
Wake Forest 73%
Boston College 79%
Georgia Tech 88%

William & Mary 77%
Boston University 66%
Tulane 63%

SLACs:

Williams 95%
Amherst 855
Swarthmore 93%
Pomona 90%
Wellesley 85%

Bowdoin 84%
Claremont McKenna 73%
Carleton College 70%
Middlebury 80%
Wash & Lee 80%

Davidson 76%
Grinnell 72%
Hamilton 86%
Haverford 94%
Barnard 90%

Colby 74%
Colgate 65%
Wesleyan 67%
U Richmond 50%
Vassar 73%

Bates College 60%
Colorado College 73%
Macalester 66%
Kenyon 55%
Bucknell 54%

Skidmore 33%
Furman 44%

At many schools, only 20% of so of enrolled students had class rank reported, so this can be highly misleading. Class rank is not known or reported in Common Data Sets for the remaining 70-80%.

Sure. Look, mit is not admitting kids that are not at the top of their class. Maybe the high school won't rank the students but you can sure that MIT is directly comparing all the students applying from the same school. And guess what ..they are admitting the ones at the top of the pile. Sorry

I didn't comment on MIT specifically. Why are you responding with MIT specifically and then saying "sorry"?

Substitute any elite school you want. The students at the top of the class have an advantage in admissions. Even if the HS is not ranking the students, the admissions committee is. There was a poster that was implying this is not an extremely important consideration which I think is nonsense.

My point was that it is a stat that can be manipulated. This isn't likely by MIT, but it is by schools trying to climb the USNWR rankings.

How does a college manipulate the class rank of applicants?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Williams and Amherst have single digit admissions rates. The rates you cite can only possibly by ED and if so, as a PP said, are very skewed by atheltes which they probably recruit in the same raw numbers as ivies but the colleges themselves are much smaller. At my
kids’ mcps high school, many more students were admitted to Cornell than either of these.

In the world of kids I know, the ones who were admitted to H/Y/P were true superstars. Not just perfect gpa, perfect sat and the most rigorous classes (and when I say most rigorous, I really mean it - not just thru MV but also took all of the english and social studies APs, took multiple hard science APs, and finished world language AP junior year). But also excelled in other things - music, science competitions, quizbowl or debate. These were the 2-3 kids in a class of 500 who you “knew” would one day go to H/Y/P. There are of course other students every year who get into Penn,Columbia, Dartmouth - these kids are also terrific students but don’t have that “extra” and so there are a lot more of them so it actually seems less predictable to me why Lola got into Penn and Larla
did not.

And again, I think from our HS the students have an easier time getting into Penn and Dartmouth than Williams and Amherst where the 1-2 admits are usually sports recruits (and terrific students).

My answer expands on this but generally tracks. Top 10 schools are for the very top kids at a high school. Truly, top 3-5 in class (not 5%), above 1550 test scores, major leadership (President of class, captain of championship winning team sort of stuff). They will likely get rejected to some places too but I have seen most of those kids get into 1 top 10 school that is considered the long shot - particularly if they can apply SCEA/ED.

I think where DCUM gets confused is many of us have a kid who is awesome but not quite that level: maybe 1550 SAT and near perfect grades but only top 10 kids in class. Maybe President if a smaller club. And, that kid is awesome but there are so many out there like that. I have one of these. He is not going to get into an Ivy (maybe he would have in my generation, but that is not relevant) and he is not sad about it. He knows he is accomplished but there are more qualified candidates. He has found a few schools beyond the top 20 he would be excited to attend. They are tremendous colleges.

We can all believe our kids are great and worked hard but rationally understand they are not worthy of a spot where only 6/100 kids get in. And be proud of them and excited for college!

I am sure Northwestern is a good school, but the students from our private DC high school who apply and get in NU are not the top students in the grade. Probably top 25-30%

Which private DC high school ?

I find this hard to believe. Northwestern University reports that slightly over 95% of matriculated (Fall 2020 entering class) students who graduated high school in 2020 were in the Top 10% of their HS class.

For a relative comparison, US News reports the percentage of Fall 2020 entering class who graduated in the top 10% of their high school class:

Princeton 89%
Columbia 96% (but not sure if this was part of the fraudulent date submitted by Columbia to US News)
Harvard 94%
MIT 100%
Yale 94%

Stanford 96%
U Chicago 99%
U Penn 96%
CalTech 96%
Duke 95%

Johns Hopkins 99%
Northwestern 95%
Dartmouth College 93%
Brown 95%
Vanderbilt 90%

WashUStL 86%
Cornell 84%
Rice 92%
Notre Dame 90%
Emory 83%

Georgetown 83%
Michigan 77%
Carnegie Mellon 89%
U Virginia 90%
NYU 82%

Tufts 84%
UNC-Chapel Hill 74%
Wake Forest 73%
Boston College 79%
Georgia Tech 88%

William & Mary 77%
Boston University 66%
Tulane 63%

SLACs:

Williams 95%
Amherst 855
Swarthmore 93%
Pomona 90%
Wellesley 85%

Bowdoin 84%
Claremont McKenna 73%
Carleton College 70%
Middlebury 80%
Wash & Lee 80%

Davidson 76%
Grinnell 72%
Hamilton 86%
Haverford 94%
Barnard 90%

Colby 74%
Colgate 65%
Wesleyan 67%
U Richmond 50%
Vassar 73%

Bates College 60%
Colorado College 73%
Macalester 66%
Kenyon 55%
Bucknell 54%

Skidmore 33%
Furman 44%

At many schools, only 20% of so of enrolled students had class rank reported, so this can be highly misleading. Class rank is not known or reported in Common Data Sets for the remaining 70-80%.

Sure. Look, mit is not admitting kids that are not at the top of their class. Maybe the high school won't rank the students but you can sure that MIT is directly comparing all the students applying from the same school. And guess what ..they are admitting the ones at the top of the pile. Sorry

I didn't comment on MIT specifically. Why are you responding with MIT specifically and then saying "sorry"?

Substitute any elite school you want. The students at the top of the class have an advantage in admissions. Even if the HS is not ranking the students, the admissions committee is. There was a poster that was implying this is not an extremely important consideration which I think is nonsense.

My point was that it is a stat that can be manipulated. This isn't likely by MIT, but it is by schools trying to climb the USNWR rankings.

How does a college manipulate the class rank of applicants?

They can take a large % from schools that don't rank (like many schools around here) and accept almost only the very top rank wise from those that do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What kind of GPAs do these big 3 kids have that allow them to get into Chicago but not ivies etc? I thought Chicago required high stats?

They have very high GPAs and test scores. High stats alone are not going to get you into an Ivy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of GPAs do these big 3 kids have that allow them to get into Chicago but not ivies etc? I thought Chicago required high stats?

They have very high GPAs and test scores. High stats alone are not going to get you into an Ivy.

Correct too many URMs with wealthy parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What kind of GPAs do these big 3 kids have that allow them to get into Chicago but not ivies etc? I thought Chicago required high stats?

To be fair, kids can prefer Chicago to multiple Ivies as well. ED2 has also helped Chicago and Hopkins get some great students (most top universities don't have that second binding option). Some kids (and counselors) think they have a better shot with ED2 at elite schools like those two or Vandy, Emory, and a few top LACs (Swarthmore, Wellesley, and Pomona) versus trying their luck with all RD schools. This route also sounds especially appealing if you've just heard bad news on your EA/ED1 app.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of GPAs do these big 3 kids have that allow them to get into Chicago but not ivies etc? I thought Chicago required high stats?

To be fair, kids can prefer Chicago to multiple Ivies as well. ED2 has also helped Chicago and Hopkins get some great students (most top universities don't have that second binding option). Some kids (and counselors) think they have a better shot with ED2 at elite schools like those two or Vandy, Emory, and a few top LACs (Swarthmore, Wellesley, and Pomona) versus trying their luck with all RD schools. This route also sounds especially appealing if you've just heard bad news on your EA/ED1 app.

+1

[Anonymous]

To be fair, kids can prefer Chicago to multiple Ivies as well. ED2 has also helped Chicago and Hopkins get some great students (most top universities don't have that second binding option). Some kids (and counselors) think they have a better shot with ED2 at elite schools like those two or Vandy, Emory, and a few top LACs (Swarthmore, Wellesley, and Pomona) versus trying their luck with all RD schools. This route also sounds especially appealing if you've just heard bad news on your EA/ED1 app.


+1

Makes sense

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

To be fair, kids can prefer Chicago to multiple Ivies as well. ED2 has also helped Chicago and Hopkins get some great students (most top universities don't have that second binding option). Some kids (and counselors) think they have a better shot with ED2 at elite schools like those two or Vandy, Emory, and a few top LACs (Swarthmore, Wellesley, and Pomona) versus trying their luck with all RD schools. This route also sounds especially appealing if you've just heard bad news on your EA/ED1 app.


+1

Makes sense

Or if you need to weigh financial aid packages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We all know that superb stats are not enough for one to get an offer of admission to Stanford, Harvard, and/or Princeton. At what point are superb stats enough to get one an offer of admission to an elite private National University ?

In another thread, a poster listed Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton as their daughter's top 3 school choices. The poster stated that her daughter had the stats for these schools. Most of us understand that stellar stats (GPA, class rank, and standardized test scores) are not enough to generate an offer of admission to the most elite private National Universities.

Is there a point at which stellar stats are enough for admission to an elite private National University ? If so, where--in terms of US News rank--is that point ?

For a student interested in studying liberal arts whose top choice schools are Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Northwestern or any Ivy, wouldn't applying ED to a Top 10 SLAC be a wiser path due to the relatively high ED admission rates ? (#1 ranked Williams College and #2 ranked Amherst College have reported ED admission rates above 30% within the past few years.)

Mostly just a huge wad of cash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My question arose after reading another thread about kids top 3 college choices. One parent listed her daughter's top 3 choices as Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton and stated that the daughter had the stats to enter the Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton lotteries. With admission rates below 5%, the concern arose about what opportunities a high stats kid sacrifices by foregoing ED options to target these three ultra selective schools. Many private National Universities with overall admission rates under 10% have RD admission rates much closer to 5% due to the number of spots taken by ED admits. Is it wise to sacrifice ED opportunities to an elite school for an unhooked high stats applicant for a lottery shot at Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton ?

The "stats" are probably top athletes in their sport in the nation.

Not if they’re recruited to play football, basketball, baseball, soccer, track, etc. none of the top recruits in those sports go to HYP except maybe Stanford on rare occasions. They’re very good high school athletes but hardly the top in the nation.

Less than 2% of high school athletes go on to play D1. Even the very bottom of D1 is top one to few percent in the country plus other top international athletes. High-level D3 athletic departments, which most elite D3 schools (MIT, Chicago, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Hopkins) have, would still be at least top 5% as well.

Well then you’re defining “top” very liberally for athletes in a way you don’t for the skills and abilities of other applicants.

Why were more people on this board not getting their kids involved in sports years ago?! It hasn't been a secret that being a highly recruited athlete is the best hook at almost all of the best schools (at some it is being a legacy). The Varsity Blues scandal shows what parents are willing to give to make their kids "recruited athletes."

From the school's perspective, what other campus activities come close to bringing together the campus community and alumni in the same way? Donations aside, teams are an important part of the campus community at almost every good school, with CalTech being the true exception. Plus, what if a couple of your basketball players end up being the Koch brothers? It still cracks me up knowing that MIT's basketball coach is actually the David H. Koch '62 Head Coach!

No one’s contesting that recruited athletes are the most important hook. But claiming that recruited athletes at Ivy League schools are “top”
athletes in their sports is simply blowing smoke.

Attendance at 90% of sporting events that are recruited is minimal. Even Ivy League football is barely attended. How many donations are flowing to the cot all fencing team?

Yeah they are all low level athletes at ivies unless you consider rowing a sporr

Wrong. Check out all the boys tennis recruits in recent years. All wanting to go to ivies and all are top ranked. One just won junior Wimbledon going to Columbia,

They play awesome squash in the Ivy League too!

Don't forget about Lacrosse! #3 recruit in 2023 class is committed to Penn and 2 players on Georgetown Prep (both 5 stars) are committed to Princeton, #6 recruit in the 2024 class is committed to Brown and #10 in 2024 class is committed to Princeton. Maryland and Cornell was the national championship last year. All of the ivy's other than dartmouth and columbia, columbia doesn't have a mens lax team, made it to the ncaa tournament. And let's not forget that even though it is not an Ivy, Johns Hopkins is considered one of the most decorated programs of all time.

[Anonymous]

OP-- It is hard to get into ANY competitive school these days. I know top ranked kids with top notch activities and accolades who couldn't get into any of the top schools to which they applied. They were white and female, btw.