If your unhooked kid got into a top 30 college...

[Anonymous]

400+ documented volunteer hours
student newspaper
member/chair of superintendent's student advisory board

In all of 3 activities, a certain common theme emerged indicating a deep interest in/concern about a particular issue that is important to DC.

excellent teacher recommendations

[Anonymous]

top 30 is a large group.

it isn't that hard to get into Carnegie Mellon for example (except for the CS school).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid got into Emory, Rice, and WUSTL without hooks. She had a 3.87 UW GPA and a 35 on the ACT. Her extracurriculars included 1 year of JV swim and 3 years of varsity (not a recruited athlete), starting a club at her HS to support girls' education (She's the First, if anyone has heard of it), interning at a local museum (not Smithsonian type, think smaller), and violin with some state and local level awards.

yeah that sounds right - very strong board scores and a strong transcript.

matches up with the schools she got into.

I believe for schools ranked between 17-30, if you are above the 75% thresholds, you have a very good shot of getting in unhooked.

she might have run into a buzzsaw in the t10 tier.

[Anonymous]

Editor in chief of school newspaper
Fellow on Hillary Clinton campaign + lots of volunteering in 2014 election cycle
President of Young Dems club at her HS
Youth in Government state governor
Cross country and track

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Three varsity sports (soccer, basketball, cross country)
Key Club - leadership role
DECA
Link Crew (freshman transition program) - leadership role

How do you play soccer and cross country in high school at the same time?? Aren't they both fall sports?

it depends on how strong of a runner a kid is- if he's naturally a ridiculous endurance athlete, xc coaches might allow a kid to just run races (i did this for track - i played tennis in the spring but was allowed to run events without really having to go to track practice due to just being purely fast enough to make the team).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dang. Y'all have impressive kids! Were you equally as impressive in your day?

I'm more and more certain as I read this forum that my kids are going to mid-level state schools. I guess that's how life sorts kids out these days. The middling kids go to middling schools where they meet middling spouses and have more middling kids.

The super star kids go to top colleges, meet other super star kids, marry and have more super star offspring. (i.e. Ivanka and Jarred, Chelsea and Mark).

Fortunately, I like my middling life. So at least there's that. I just am really impressed that you all have such ambitious and accomplished kids. I consider it an accomplishment when my kids leave the house outside of school hours.

i would rather my daughter be lesbian than marry and reproduce with a sleazebag like mark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid got into Emory, Rice, and WUSTL without hooks. She had a 3.87 UW GPA and a 35 on the ACT. Her extracurriculars included 1 year of JV swim and 3 years of varsity (not a recruited athlete), starting a club at her HS to support girls' education (She's the First, if anyone has heard of it), interning at a local museum (not Smithsonian type, think smaller), and violin with some state and local level awards.

yeah that sounds right - very strong board scores and a strong transcript.

matches up with the schools she got into.

I believe for schools ranked between 17-30, if you are above the 75% thresholds, you have a very good shot of getting in unhooked.

she might have run into a buzzsaw in the t10 tier.

Yep. She was rejected from Princeton and WL then denied at Stanford. Was also accepted at a few schools outside the top 30.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid got into Emory, Rice, and WUSTL without hooks. She had a 3.87 UW GPA and a 35 on the ACT. Her extracurriculars included 1 year of JV swim and 3 years of varsity (not a recruited athlete), starting a club at her HS to support girls' education (She's the First, if anyone has heard of it), interning at a local museum (not Smithsonian type, think smaller), and violin with some state and local level awards.

yeah that sounds right - very strong board scores and a strong transcript.

matches up with the schools she got into.

I believe for schools ranked between 17-30, if you are above the 75% thresholds, you have a very good shot of getting in unhooked.

she might have run into a buzzsaw in the t10 tier.

Yep. She was rejected from Princeton and WL then denied at Stanford. Was also accepted at a few schools outside the top 30.

it's sad because she's a lot stronger student than many at Princeton. where is she gonna go? I would personally probably pick WUSTL at her age but Rice having some wisdom.

[Anonymous]

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid got into Emory, Rice, and WUSTL without hooks. She had a 3.87 UW GPA and a 35 on the ACT. Her extracurriculars included 1 year of JV swim and 3 years of varsity (not a recruited athlete), starting a club at her HS to support girls' education (She's the First, if anyone has heard of it), interning at a local museum (not Smithsonian type, think smaller), and violin with some state and local level awards.

yeah that sounds right - very strong board scores and a strong transcript.

matches up with the schools she got into.

I believe for schools ranked between 17-30, if you are above the 75% thresholds, you have a very good shot of getting in unhooked.

she might have run into a buzzsaw in the t10 tier.

Yep. She was rejected from Princeton and WL then denied at Stanford. Was also accepted at a few schools outside the top 30.

it's sad because she's a lot stronger student than many at Princeton. where is she gonna go? I would personally probably pick WUSTL at her age but Rice having some wisdom.

Sorry if I wasn't clear - this was last year (college class of 2020). She's a happy Rice freshman studying linguistics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:top 30 is a large group.

it isn't that hard to get into Carnegie Mellon for example (except for the CS school).

Really? CMU isn't that hard except for CS? I'm seeing ridiculous rejections on our school's scattergram but maybe they're all applying for CS? Anyone have insight on CMU? My sophomore dc is interested (but not for CS).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:top 30 is a large group.

it isn't that hard to get into Carnegie Mellon for example (except for the CS school).

Really? CMU isn't that hard except for CS? I'm seeing ridiculous rejections on our school's scattergram but maybe they're all applying for CS? Anyone have insight on CMU? My sophomore dc is interested (but not for CS).

PP poster on CMU - no it really isn't difficult. Full-pay white kids from central PA who are top 10% in their hs public class and score above 2100 get into tepper or CAS. these are dime a dozen students.

cs (and fine arts) is a different story but not liberal arts school, tepper, or engineering (non-cs).

it does help being full-pay though from my experience- cmu says its need-blind but they also are very stingy in aid and are poorer than almost anyone in the top 30 (outside of gtown I believe).

end of the day - if you are unhooked non-urm, just hit the 75% threshold and you'll get into cmu.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid got into Emory, Rice, and WUSTL without hooks. She had a 3.87 UW GPA and a 35 on the ACT. Her extracurriculars included 1 year of JV swim and 3 years of varsity (not a recruited athlete), starting a club at her HS to support girls' education (She's the First, if anyone has heard of it), interning at a local museum (not Smithsonian type, think smaller), and violin with some state and local level awards.

yeah that sounds right - very strong board scores and a strong transcript.

matches up with the schools she got into.

I believe for schools ranked between 17-30, if you are above the 75% thresholds, you have a very good shot of getting in unhooked.

she might have run into a buzzsaw in the t10 tier.

Yep. She was rejected from Princeton and WL then denied at Stanford. Was also accepted at a few schools outside the top 30.

it's sad because she's a lot stronger student than many at Princeton. where is she gonna go? I would personally probably pick WUSTL at her age but Rice having some wisdom.

Sorry if I wasn't clear - this was last year (college class of 2020). She's a happy Rice freshman studying linguistics.

nice!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:top 30 is a large group.

it isn't that hard to get into Carnegie Mellon for example (except for the CS school).

Really? CMU isn't that hard except for CS? I'm seeing ridiculous rejections on our school's scattergram but maybe they're all applying for CS? Anyone have insight on CMU? My sophomore dc is interested (but not for CS).

At their admissions info session, CMU makes it very clear that they are a university for kids that already know what they want to do. Once admitted to a college, you would not be able to transfer into engineering or CS should your interests develop in that direction. I did not get the impression that it is easy to take classes between the divisions. Except for the CS school, funding is tight. That may change though with the influx of tech companies moving into the city to tap the CS resource.

[Anonymous]

Engineering at CMU IS NOT similar to liberal arts or Tepper in terms of admissions.

Many of the top 30 also have similar discrepancies between departments MIT, Hopkins, Georgetown and so on.

I'm not on top of things enough to know which ones allow the discrepancies to be exploited by changing majors but they do alter admissions for different departments.


"PP poster on CMU - no it really isn't difficult. Full-pay white kids from central PA who are top 10% in their hs public class and score above 2100 get into tepper or CAS. these are dime a dozen students.

cs (and fine arts) is a different story but not liberal arts school, tepper, or engineering (non-cs).

it does help being full-pay though from my experience- cmu says its need-blind but they also are very stingy in aid and are poorer than almost anyone in the top 30 (outside of gtown I believe).

end of the day - if you are unhooked non-urm, just hit the 75% threshold and you'll get into cmu."