Ivy League results so far? who is making it in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on our suburban public school three years in a row

At most 1% of kids get into a top private. Here are some stats

Rank #3 - White female. Deferred from Stanford. Got into Brown and Duke. Went to state flagship

Rank #2 - Asian female, Applied ED to Penn, went to Penn

Rank #1 - Asian Male. Only got into Cornell and Dartmouth. Went to Dartmouth

Anecdotally, only URM's or diversity cases in our school make it to HYPSM


End of Story.

I guess you can keep hating on minorities, but the reality is that these schools are still majority white, with a national demographic that is now nearly not for that cohort. I have no idea what's going on with your school, but it's not the case that white kids are locked out. Not remotely true.

Incorrect. Whites comprise less than 50% of the student body at most of the ivies. White students are down to 36% of undergrads at Stanford.

[Anonymous]

Trying to pull it all together with the "profoundly gifted" student who is in at Penn and Princeton, if that poster is not a troll, I'm assuming that the "formal letter" referred to is a "likely letter" from Penn not related to athletics. The written statement from the coach, which is not binding, would be indicating that the kid can play his sport at Penn as a walk on. The potential choice of Swarthmore over the other options is too confusing for me to make sense of. It's definitely not a place a serious athlete would pick over Princeton or Penn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on our suburban public school three years in a row

At most 1% of kids get into a top private. Here are some stats

Rank #3 - White female. Deferred from Stanford. Got into Brown and Duke. Went to state flagship

Rank #2 - Asian female, Applied ED to Penn, went to Penn

Rank #1 - Asian Male. Only got into Cornell and Dartmouth. Went to Dartmouth

Anecdotally, only URM's or diversity cases in our school make it to HYPSM


End of Story.

I guess you can keep hating on minorities, but the reality is that these schools are still majority white, with a national demographic that is now nearly not for that cohort. I have no idea what's going on with your school, but it's not the case that white kids are locked out. Not remotely true.

Incorrect. Whites comprise less than 50% of the student body at most of the ivies. White students are down to 36% of undergrads at Stanford.

Here are facts:

The number of today's 17 and 18 year olds who are white is barely over 50%. Hard to claim that there is any big disadvantage to being white.

Schools play with how they count ethnicity, including whether international students are in or out and percentages of admits versus students matriculating. But most top schools are still majority white among US students, and once you get out of schools that are at the very top and/or in more urban areas, the percentage of white students soars (here's looking at you, Dartmouth, with 65% white).

There is no top ranked school that has a percentage of African Americans or Latinos (or Native Americans or Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, for that matter) among their student body that exceeds the percentage in the population generally. For URMs, every top school is LESS diverse than the national population of college-age people.

So, you can keep blaming minority students when your kid doesn't get in to a school, but that's just scapegoating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Trying to pull it all together with the "profoundly gifted" student who is in at Penn and Princeton, if that poster is not a troll, I'm assuming that the "formal letter" referred to is a "likely letter" from Penn not related to athletics. The written statement from the coach, which is not binding, would be indicating that the kid can play his sport at Penn as a walk on. The potential choice of Swarthmore over the other options is too confusing for me to make sense of. It's definitely not a place a serious athlete would pick over Princeton or Penn.

Further, no "profoundly gifted" student would choose Swarthmore over Princeton. Penn? Meh

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on our suburban public school three years in a row

At most 1% of kids get into a top private. Here are some stats

Rank #3 - White female. Deferred from Stanford. Got into Brown and Duke. Went to state flagship

Rank #2 - Asian female, Applied ED to Penn, went to Penn

Rank #1 - Asian Male. Only got into Cornell and Dartmouth. Went to Dartmouth

Anecdotally, only URM's or diversity cases in our school make it to HYPSM


End of Story.

I guess you can keep hating on minorities, but the reality is that these schools are still majority white, with a national demographic that is now nearly not for that cohort. I have no idea what's going on with your school, but it's not the case that white kids are locked out. Not remotely true.

Incorrect. Whites comprise less than 50% of the student body at most of the ivies. White students are down to 36% of undergrads at Stanford.

URMs are less than 25% of the Stanford class according to the latest common data set.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yale EA. Top of class at Montgomery County public school (not a W), top test scores, outstanding extracurriculars including fluent Mandarin and Spanish, published political papers, varsity sports letter, several jazz bands, NASA internship etc.

Adding--totally unaffiliated with Yale. No legacy ties or relations and no minority status.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS is in at Princeton and Penn. Waiting on ther others. He's profoundly gifted. We assume he'll get in everywhere, but may head to Swarthmore instead.

Cough cough. BS. Cough cough. Penn is ED.

Exactly - you are not allowed to apply SCEA to Princeton and ED to Penn.

One of them is a written statement from a coach that he's in. The other is formal letter.

Good try but didn't cut the mustard.

If your kid is being recruited by one of the schools for a sport to the point that he's getting a written statement promising admissions, he is not seriously looking at Swarthmore.

Why so angry? I just answered the question for this chain. Sorry if you don't like my son's options and choices. Go talk to him. He'll make the decision. Not me.

How can your son be pretty sure he’s going to Swarthmore when he couldn’t have applied ED as he applied to Penn ED?

He didn't apply ED anywhere.

And he hasn't heard yet from Swarthmore. Applied regular decision.

So you know for sure he’s in at two Ivy schools even though he didn’t apply early to either? What an amazing coincidence.

Ugh. This is not some unique scenario. He has one formal letter and one written statement from a coach. Neither one requires ED. He isn't breaking any rules. He prefers Swarthmore at the moment because he likes the size and environment. He won't hear though until March, although we are anticipating he will get in and have choices. By the way, a friend of his who graduated last year had heard from either three or four top schools at this point last year. I'm not bragging, but was answering the question on this chain.

Your discussion of how admissions offers for athletes work betrays your story as false. DD was recruited this Fall by Penn, a highly ranked state flagship and two other selective division 1 schools. She ended up choosing the state flagship bc she is v. dedicated to her sport and loved the coaches, team, etc. at the Flagship.

Here is the how it happens: After visiting, the Penn coach offered her a spot on the team and told her he ran her academic profile (GPA, ACT) by the admissions dept and that she would be admitted. She could accept the offer with a verbal; once her application was submitted she would get a likely letter right away and a formal admissions decision in mid December with the rest of the pool. However the timeline for accepting the coach's offer was late September, early October. The coaches do NOT give out promises of admission and then sit back and wait to hear from the student in March. Further, you do not get the written likely letter until you apply, and for Penn once you apply ED you cant apply anywhere else. After she told Penn of her decision to go to the other school, another kid who plays the same position as her announced their commitment to Penn with a few weeks. Coaches move on fast or else they wont be able to field a competitive team.

You should clarify that this is how it happened for your daughter. No reason to try to univesalize what is an idiosyncratic process.

DP . Except it's not an idiosyncratic process, at least with the ivies....there are very specific guidelines at the league and institutional level. Random coaches can't magically implement their own recruiting processes.

Seems like your DD's ticket to school was her athletic ability and may have been very dependent on the coach. Not everyone is in the same scenario, including kids (such as mine, who by the way, didn't even visit until mid-fall) who are not even sure yet about continuing to play in college. Ivy League recruiting rules are clear. Your description of your daughter's experience seems at odds with the rules in several places, but so be it. Happy that she's happy.

She is delighted. We were all surprised when she picked the Flagship over the Ivy bc you know holy grail, etc. etc. But I should have known when she started wearing the flagship tshirt around after her visit there and its a v. good flagship and a v. good team. Her athletic ability defin. helped her get the offer of a verbal commitment from the Ivy, which is what she had and which is fully in-line with the recruiting process at both schools. Her ACT scores were at 75% mark for the Flagship and within the middle 50% at the Ivy. I have no reservations about her ability to excel at both colleges and I have no qualms about her leveraging all the work she put into her sport to have the choice of attending the college of her dreams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trying to pull it all together with the "profoundly gifted" student who is in at Penn and Princeton, if that poster is not a troll, I'm assuming that the "formal letter" referred to is a "likely letter" from Penn not related to athletics. The written statement from the coach, which is not binding, would be indicating that the kid can play his sport at Penn as a walk on. The potential choice of Swarthmore over the other options is too confusing for me to make sense of. It's definitely not a place a serious athlete would pick over Princeton or Penn.

Further, no "profoundly gifted" student would choose Swarthmore over Princeton. Penn? Meh

My guess is that the very top SLACs are picked over Ivies, including Princeton, fairly often. At the Swarthmore, Williiams, Amherst level, I assume that happens fairly often---and i can see the attraction of those schools with a couple thousand intense undergrads as the entire campus versus some big research university with five to ten times as many students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on our suburban public school three years in a row

At most 1% of kids get into a top private. Here are some stats

Rank #3 - White female. Deferred from Stanford. Got into Brown and Duke. Went to state flagship

Rank #2 - Asian female, Applied ED to Penn, went to Penn

Rank #1 - Asian Male. Only got into Cornell and Dartmouth. Went to Dartmouth

Anecdotally, only URM's or diversity cases in our school make it to HYPSM


End of Story.

I guess you can keep hating on minorities, but the reality is that these schools are still majority white, with a national demographic that is now nearly not for that cohort. I have no idea what's going on with your school, but it's not the case that white kids are locked out. Not remotely true.

Incorrect. Whites comprise less than 50% of the student body at most of the ivies. White students are down to 36% of undergrads at Stanford.

URMs are less than 25% of the Stanford class according to the latest common data set.

So what? The issue was the percent of white students.

[Anonymous]

She is delighted. We were all surprised when she picked the Flagship over the Ivy bc you know holy grail, etc. etc. But I should have known when she started wearing the flagship tshirt around after her visit there and its a v. good flagship and a v. good team. Her athletic ability defin. helped her get the offer of a verbal commitment from the Ivy, which is what she had and which is fully in-line with the recruiting process at both schools. Her ACT scores were at 75% mark for the Flagship and within the middle 50% at the Ivy. I have no reservations about her ability to excel at both colleges and I have no qualms about her leveraging all the work she put into her sport to have the choice of attending the college of her dreams.


Nice outcome. The goal for everyone should be to find the right fit, and sounds like your DD found hers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trying to pull it all together with the "profoundly gifted" student who is in at Penn and Princeton, if that poster is not a troll, I'm assuming that the "formal letter" referred to is a "likely letter" from Penn not related to athletics. The written statement from the coach, which is not binding, would be indicating that the kid can play his sport at Penn as a walk on. The potential choice of Swarthmore over the other options is too confusing for me to make sense of. It's definitely not a place a serious athlete would pick over Princeton or Penn.

Further, no "profoundly gifted" student would choose Swarthmore over Princeton. Penn? Meh

My guess is that the very top SLACs are picked over Ivies, including Princeton, fairly often. At the Swarthmore, Williiams, Amherst level, I assume that happens fairly often---and i can see the attraction of those schools with a couple thousand intense undergrads as the entire campus versus some big research university with five to ten times as many students.

Probably not as many as you think. Especially against HYPS. I'd think no more than a handful, if money wasn't a factor.

Research opportunities are far better at Princeton than Swarthmore. No knock on Swarthmore as it's a fantastic school, but there's a reason Princeton is Princeton and Swarthmore is not. For anyone wanting the benefits of a school with a strong undergraduate focus but with the stellar research and faculty of a larger university you'd be really silly to turn down Princeton for Swarthmore. For the same reason someone wanting to play higher caliber (recruitment quality) sports in college would be silly to turn down either Penn or Swarthmore for Princeton.

Maybe your kid is the Swattie model and will fit in with Swarthmore perfectly and that calls to him over Princeton, but one does then wonder why he didn't apply ED to start with. Otherwise just be realistic about what Swarthmore can offer that Princeton doesn't. And, of course, let's see if Swarthmore does accept him because if he isn't an African American genius then there's no guarantees. Swarthmore may write him off as a lost cause, someone most likely to be accepted by an Ivy and this reject him to protect their yield.

[Anonymous]

The whole point of the likely letters at an Ivy or top 20 D3/NAESEC is that you then use that to apply ED for the tip in. Those letters don't mean much, if anything, during RD. You're competing with the masses. Good luck with that walk on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The whole point of the likely letters at an Ivy or top 20 D3/NAESEC is that you then use that to apply ED for the tip in. Those letters don't mean much, if anything, during RD. You're competing with the masses. Good luck with that walk on.

??? Likely letters most often are sent during the regular decision season, and are sent to kids that the school very much wants---some are athletes; others are not. And likely letters aren't withdrawn unless the kid completely tanks senior year classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trying to pull it all together with the "profoundly gifted" student who is in at Penn and Princeton, if that poster is not a troll, I'm assuming that the "formal letter" referred to is a "likely letter" from Penn not related to athletics. The written statement from the coach, which is not binding, would be indicating that the kid can play his sport at Penn as a walk on. The potential choice of Swarthmore over the other options is too confusing for me to make sense of. It's definitely not a place a serious athlete would pick over Princeton or Penn.

Further, no "profoundly gifted" student would choose Swarthmore over Princeton. Penn? Meh

My guess is that the very top SLACs are picked over Ivies, including Princeton, fairly often. At the Swarthmore, Williiams, Amherst level, I assume that happens fairly often---and i can see the attraction of those schools with a couple thousand intense undergrads as the entire campus versus some big research university with five to ten times as many students.

Probably not as many as you think. Especially against HYPS. I'd think no more than a handful, if money wasn't a factor.

Research opportunities are far better at Princeton than Swarthmore. No knock on Swarthmore as it's a fantastic school, but there's a reason Princeton is Princeton and Swarthmore is not. For anyone wanting the benefits of a school with a strong undergraduate focus but with the stellar research and faculty of a larger university you'd be really silly to turn down Princeton for Swarthmore. For the same reason someone wanting to play higher caliber (recruitment quality) sports in college would be silly to turn down either Penn or Swarthmore for Princeton.

Maybe your kid is the Swattie model and will fit in with Swarthmore perfectly and that calls to him over Princeton, but one does then wonder why he didn't apply ED to start with. Otherwise just be realistic about what Swarthmore can offer that Princeton doesn't. And, of course, let's see if Swarthmore does accept him because if he isn't an African American genius then there's no guarantees. Swarthmore may write him off as a lost cause, someone most likely to be accepted by an Ivy and this reject him to protect their yield.

As a professor, I think that this is a false comparison. Swarthmore is solely focued on undergraduates, whereas at Princeton undergraduates compete with graduate students for faculty time. Also, the culture at Swarthmore is much more academic than Princeton. According to the NSF, a significantly higher percentage of Swarthmore students end up getting PhDs compared to Princeton. (Swarthmore with nearly 23% of alum eventually earning PhDs is #3 according to the NSF; Princeton falls just outside the top 10 at #11 with 14%.) Swarthmore is well known among PhD programs as a top caliber feeder into doctoral programs. Princeton students do well, of course, but with the exception of a few majors (e.g., math) students don't choose Princeton because they're planning on getting PhDs. Students who do plan on competing a doctorate OTOH do choose Swarthmore--or Reed, Carleton. The best SLACs do a superior job of getting their students into doctoral programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole point of the likely letters at an Ivy or top 20 D3/NAESEC is that you then use that to apply ED for the tip in. Those letters don't mean much, if anything, during RD. You're competing with the masses. Good luck with that walk on.

??? Likely letters most often are sent during the regular decision season, and are sent to kids that the school very much wants---some are athletes; others are not. And likely letters aren't withdrawn unless the kid completely tanks senior year classes.

You learn something new everyday.