Was your competitive kid get shut out from all top 40 schools?
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Anonymous
I wrote get a practical skill and then get an internship. For instance, my kid who is a psychology major, taught herself R Programming for statistical analysis. It's a marketable skill that gave her an edge in getting an internship with no connections where she did a lot more quantitative analysis. That's what got her a job--but she wouldn't have gotten the internship without having taught herself R. My older kid did the same with GIS. It's not that hard to learn a specific program well and if it's newly in demand it can be the thing that pushes you over the edge in the competition for a spot. In my son's case, he learned GIS and then volunteered himself to professor's projects saying that he wanted to build his GIS skills and then got an internship outside of academia that used GIS. At any given moment, there's a new skill that's in demand that can get your foot in the door. |
Anonymous
Being a TA is not impressive it just means the school you were at had limited upper science options. It would have been more impressive to be taking another high level science ( as in two at a time) course themselves, or taking one at local college. |
Anonymous
I doubt “top stats” kids are shut out of schools ranked 30-60, unless the admission rates are less than 20% People complaining mean they were shut out of reach schools and yes that happens, that’s why they are reaches with less than 10-15% acceptance rates. |
Anonymous
Yes at a place like northwestern the oboe studio (and bassoon studio) will have approximately 10-12 undergrads total at most and another 5-7 grad students at Most! That means 3-4 slots for freshman at most, unless someone is beyond extremely talented. So they obviously get way more nightly qualified students than spaces auditioning. With only 2 bands and 1 orchestra (chamber orchestra rarely uses the winds/brass) there are only slots for 4-5 students in each group, and even that means not playing in every piece. So you not want them taking more students—or you kid won’t get playing opportunities. But then again it is a good introduction to the real music world after graduation. |
Anonymous
Yes! My kid sat took MVC (calc 3) and organic Chem at URochester with other freshman and over 50% of the students had ALReady taken those courses in GS, just did not have a way to get college credit. So they were retaking them. Some really smart kids at those schools—I’d say an avg of 89% in organic Chem tests (so no curve) is a group of really really smart people. Just as smart as those at ivies/t20 schools, just didn’t win lottery for those schools |
Anonymous
I can totally see that. Being awesome at math and science not necessarily correlated with being “pointy” and interesting and unique and curated, as required by Ivies. These kids are just as smart, maybe even smarter, just don’t have the bells and whistles |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
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High stats kid
Rejected: two T10 T20 T3 SLAC WL: two T25 T20 SLAC Accepted T25 T25 via alternative pathway T40 three outside of T40 |
Anonymous
There are levels of "essay help". Our CC helped with brainstorming and editing. But they DID NOT write the essays. Our kids had to do the work themselves. I read essays from previous clients who obviously were amazing writers (my kids were good but not amazing) and the college counselor assured me that it was those kid's true voices. But it was helpful having someone help brainstorming so you use your own voice to write about your life the best you can. A good counselor only helps, but the kid does all the work. |
Anonymous
Our College counselor was ~$5K for all of HS. We only used from Jan junior year onwards and still had 30+ hours of meetings with the CC. Had we used them from 9th grade onward, it would have been easily 100+ hours of use. |
Anonymous
Amazingly, if you do your list right, your kid will likely get rejected at their reaches, in at most of their targets and all of their safeties. The people who end up "upset come April" are those that think their snowflake will actually get into all their reaches with single digit acceptance rates---fact is majority will not get into any no matter what your stats. You must build your reach, target and safety/likely list from acceptance rates. If you do that, your kid will have a good list of acceptances come April. |
Anonymous
But it's silly, because if all they applied to were schools with single digit acceptance rates, yes of course their kid is likely to get rejected at all of them. But there are many schools in the 30-50 range with 20-30% acceptance rates where most kids "with stats for T20 schools" can get accepted if they show demonstrated interest. |
Anonymous
+1 people completely lose sight of this. Focus on finding safeties you can love because there's a good chance you'll end up choosing among those. DD had four safeties and people asked why bother with multiple safeties. Because then you have choices and preferences can evolve over senior year. |
Anonymous
+1000 for letting your kids select their own ECs in HS. Let your kid be themselves and do NOT force them to do activities just because "it will look good for college applications". Make similar choices for course selection as well. My own kid did not do any actives at school except Band. Instead they focused on 20+ hours of dance/week as that's what they loved. They also choose to take only 4 APs each during Junior and Senior year, with most of them being STEM focused. Sure they could have done APUSH or APEng (whatever its called). But that would have required 10-15 hours of extra homework to get an A/A- and would have made them miserable. Ultimately, my kid got into all reaches and safeties, got rejected at ED1(T10), accepted 1st year abroad at one reach and WL at another reach. My kid ultimately picked between 2 schools ranked 30-45 and BOTH would NOT give any credit for APUSH/AP Eng. So my kid was extremely happy they had not taken those, as the only reason they considered it was to get college credit. Ironically, they would have still had to taken the core curriculum at their respective university so those classes would not matter. Given my kid had covid as their middle two years of HS, their mental health mattered much more----not taking those allowed them to still get 4-5 hours of sleep each night and have a social life on weekends. Had we forced them to take those APs, my kid would have hated us. So we let them choose. And it worked out for the best. |
Anonymous
FYI---at many T30 schools, there is no "sneaking around course enrollment limits with a surprise second major in CS". It simply cannot be done. That is why if you truly are interested in CS you must apply as a CS major. Or take the smarter path and find a school in the 30-60 range where majors are not Direct admit and anyone can self select a major. IMO, that is a much smarter path. All 3 of my kids did this---they wanted to be at schools where they didn't have to compete to get into their desired majors and could add minors/double majors without jumping thru hoops---already did the competition to get into college, but college does not have to continue to be so stressfull/competitive to major in what you want. For $80K/year, My kid should be able to major in whatever they want (with in the constraints of you need to take the 2-3 intro CS or whatever major courses and get a C/C+ or better in order to major). |