Yields and Acceptance Rates for Elite Colleges this Year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ sorry, meant UVA's rate. Yes I can explain. We just went thru the process for the second time. It goes sorta like this. Langley and McLean have a senior class of 400-500 and one college counselor. You go in to talk to the counselor about colleges and universities you think would be good for daughter. Counselor has all of daughter's grades and school-related EC in front of her. I ask - after she suggests expensive privates - is she a candidate for UVA? Couonselor says no - you need over a 4.0 and daughter is a 3.5. You agree on which schools to apply and counselor arranges for the transcripts and letters of recommendations to go to those schools. UVA comes on campus and counselor notifies the 60 in the class who are ranked at the top of the class.

This also happens at private schools. There was a poster last week complaining that DS was allowed to only apply to ten schools and all of those will be reasonable fits.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to help explain to me. I am shocked at this scam that only benefits the college and high school numbers. At first I have decided none of my children will apply to UVA; but further thinking, all my children will apply to UVA and decline to attend so it will ruin their yield percentage.

If you aren't top 10% don't apply to UVA you won't get in

What I don't get is why some of you don't move to say Prince William County and then your kid would be a shoein

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The mere fact that elite schools have yield rates so high means that many students cannot be facing multiple acceptances from Ivies. After all, they can only choose one school to which to go. Collusion was quite open until the 1990s, when the government allegedly put a stop to it.

See: http://news.mit.edu/1992/history-0903

When a college only accepts 5-6% of applicants, and most applicants are highly qualified (except for the kids applying to Harvard because it's Harvard), there's a small chance they would accept the same applicant even without collusion. Sure there's some overlap, like the immigrant with a great story who gets multiple acceptances from elite schools. But statistically speaking, assuming most applicants are highly qualified, it's unlikely they'd all choose the same 2,000 kids out of their applicant pools of 30-40,000 kids.

Also, most elite schools get a huge share of their class from ED or SCEA, where you can only apply to one school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who cares? Fanning the flames to get into your psyche by a rigged money hungry group of people.

Lots and lots of people care. Obviously.

That is the point. Of course people care. A small group of people in every society always try to have the upper hand or control the masses. This has been going on through out history. Sometimes it is in your face obvious like dictators and other times it is the passive aggressive approach like here in America. A small group of people control a disproportionate amount of the wealth/status/wealthy and prestigious industries. Everything always boils down to money- power- greed.

[Anonymous]

OP, thanks but... why does any of this matter? What does it even mean or how could it help anyone?

1% or 20%... %s don't really mean anything. Especially when colleges are spending millions of dollars to inflate applications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA's data:

2017--
27.4% admitted, 37.9% yield

2016-
29.9% admitted, 38.1% yield

UVA's in-state acceptance rate was at 39.1%. Despite the gnashing of teeth from NoVa parents, it is still a pretty safe bet for top students in the area.

Nope. It's 27% for this year. And you try telling your public high school counselor that you want the school's support (records, letters of recommendation, statistics, push for your kid) if your child is only an A- students. All high schools, public and private, self-select which students are allowed to apply to UVA. There was no way McLean High school was going to help my A-student get into UVA. So we discussed other options. http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2017/03/uva-acceptance-rates-drop-for-regular-admission-decisions. Also the average GPA to get into UVA is now 4.26 and average ACT scores are 31-34. And 90% of class of 2021 is in the top 10% of their class. 94% of the class of 2020 was in the top 10% of their class. You cannot compare admit figures for UVA (and UCLA and Berkeley for that matter) to rates at SLACs which receive a very different pool of candidate.

Please...... Base de On your Stats is much easy to get into Harvard than UVA...?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:UVA's data:

2017--
27.4% admitted, 37.9% yield

2016-
29.9% admitted, 38.1% yield

UVA's in-state acceptance rate was at 39.1%. Despite the gnashing of teeth from NoVa parents, it is still a pretty safe bet for top students in the area.

Nope. It's 27% for this year. And you try telling your public high school counselor that you want the school's support (records, letters of recommendation, statistics, push for your kid) if your child is only an A- students. All high schools, public and private, self-select which students are allowed to apply to UVA. There was no way McLean High school was going to help my A-student get into UVA. So we discussed other options. http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2017/03/uva-acceptance-rates-drop-for-regular-admission-decisions. Also the average GPA to get into UVA is now 4.26 and average ACT scores are 31-34. And 90% of class of 2021 is in the top 10% of their class. 94% of the class of 2020 was in the top 10% of their class. You cannot compare admit figures for UVA (and UCLA and Berkeley for that matter) to rates at SLACs which receive a very different pool of candidate.

Please...... Base de On your Stats is much easy to get into Harvard than UVA...?

I agree, if the student is truly top, meaning she has a good chance at the ivies, stanford, MIT then UVA is a pretty safe bet.

[Anonymous]

Acceptance rate can be manipulated. Was at a swathmore tour. Official said that they just rid of second essay as they were surprised at low number of applications. So guess what when they did? Applications went us, acceptance % went down. It is all about gaming the ranking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Acceptance rate can be manipulated. Was at a swathmore tour. Official said that they just rid of second essay as they were surprised at low number of applications. So guess what when they did? Applications went us, acceptance % went down. It is all about gaming the ranking.

Absolutely. But you'd be naive to think that every college doesn't want to get their acceptance rates to fall. Think of all the highly ranked colleges (including HYPS) which joined the new Coalition Application last year and partnerships like the American Talent Initiative. At least part of the motivation is to get more applications and to push that number further and further down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Nope. It's 27% for this year. And you try telling your public high school counselor that you want the school's support (records, letters of recommendation, statistics, push for your kid) if your child is only an A- students. All high schools, public and private, self-select which students are allowed to apply to UVA. There was no way McLean High school was going to help my A-student get into UVA. So we discussed other options. http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2017/03/uva-acceptance-rates-drop-for-regular-admission-decisions. Also the average GPA to get into UVA is now 4.26 and average ACT scores are 31-34. And 90% of class of 2021 is in the top 10% of their class. 94% of the class of 2020 was in the top 10% of their class. You cannot compare admit figures for UVA (and UCLA and Berkeley for that matter) to rates at SLACs which receive a very different pool of candidate.

Can you please help me and explain? I thought the student applies to which ever college they want to attend. I don't understand why the student needs the counselor's approval to apply to UVA. This is shocking news to me. My DC is a freshman so we are new to this but I have been reading this forum to learn about financial help. Your experience leaves me perplexed and rather annoyed with McLean High School.

Nope. The in state acceptance rate is a lot higher than that. Out of state applicants have to be amazing. In state applicants have to be very good.

[Anonymous]

In some schools, counselors control as they are the ones who upload the school recommendations and transcripts. For example, at my kids' private school, they discourage applications to HYPS unless there is a hook or the #1 candidate from school where school will throw 100% of support behind candidate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In some schools, counselors control as they are the ones who upload the school recommendations and transcripts. For example, at my kids' private school, they discourage applications to HYPS unless there is a hook or the #1 candidate from school where school will throw 100% of support behind candidate

I understand a private school doing this, though I don't think it's a great practice. Private schools justify their prices and existence in part by offering families a better chance of getting their child into a top school for their stats. But I think it's crazy that a public school would do this, or that parents would put up with it. I absolutely think a counselor should be honest if a kid's stats fall below the likely level for UVA, but they should still fully support the kid's application. There are a lot of kids whose grades or scores might be slightly below the top 10% who are both extremely talented and more likely to make a positive impact on a campus or in the world than some of those in the top group. Also, how can a school with 400 or 500 kids in a class only have a single counselor?

I'm a laid back parent, but I'd be making waves if I had a kid at McLean and they actually do what the PP has stated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In some schools, counselors control as they are the ones who upload the school recommendations and transcripts. For example, at my kids' private school, they discourage applications to HYPS unless there is a hook or the #1 candidate from school where school will throw 100% of support behind candidate

I understand a private school doing this, though I don't think it's a great practice. Private schools justify their prices and existence in part by offering families a better chance of getting their child into a top school for their stats. But I think it's crazy that a public school would do this, or that parents would put up with it. I absolutely think a counselor should be honest if a kid's stats fall below the likely level for UVA, but they should still fully support the kid's application. There are a lot of kids whose grades or scores might be slightly below the top 10% who are both extremely talented and more likely to make a positive impact on a campus or in the world than some of those in the top group. Also, how can a school with 400 or 500 kids in a class only have a single counselor?

I'm a laid back parent, but I'd be making waves if I had a kid at McLean and they actually do what the PP has stated.

In any school, public or private, I can see limiting or controlling the applications - u don't want 10 kids getting acceptances everywhere while the rest didn't get into one of the schools that they had a shot at if not for the 10 kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ sorry, meant UVA's rate. Yes I can explain. We just went thru the process for the second time. It goes sorta like this. Langley and McLean have a senior class of 400-500 and one college counselor. You go in to talk to the counselor about colleges and universities you think would be good for daughter. Counselor has all of daughter's grades and school-related EC in front of her. I ask - after she suggests expensive privates - is she a candidate for UVA? Couonselor says no - you need over a 4.0 and daughter is a 3.5. You agree on which schools to apply and counselor arranges for the transcripts and letters of recommendations to go to those schools. UVA comes on campus and counselor notifies the 60 in the class who are ranked at the top of the class.

I have a child at Langley, and another one who graduated from Langley a couple of years ago. This doesn't sound at all like our experiences. First of all, there are multiple counselors for the entire class - not just one. Each counselor has roughly 60-70 students. They don't have only one counselor for the entire class of 500!

Secondly, our child's counselor left it up to us re: which colleges our child ultimately applied to. Several were beyond reaches, yet it was our child's choice whether or not to apply. The counselor doesn't refuse to let them apply - it's the student's choice!

Question: do you even have a student at Langley?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ sorry, meant UVA's rate. Yes I can explain. We just went thru the process for the second time. It goes sorta like this. Langley and McLean have a senior class of 400-500 and one college counselor. You go in to talk to the counselor about colleges and universities you think would be good for daughter. Counselor has all of daughter's grades and school-related EC in front of her. I ask - after she suggests expensive privates - is she a candidate for UVA? Couonselor says no - you need over a 4.0 and daughter is a 3.5. You agree on which schools to apply and counselor arranges for the transcripts and letters of recommendations to go to those schools. UVA comes on campus and counselor notifies the 60 in the class who are ranked at the top of the class.

This also happens at private schools. There was a poster last week complaining that DS was allowed to only apply to ten schools and all of those will be reasonable fits.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to help explain to me. I am shocked at this scam that only benefits the college and high school numbers. At first I have decided none of my children will apply to UVA; but further thinking, all my children will apply to UVA and decline to attend so it will ruin their yield percentage.

Just so you know, the PP describing the whole process is quite mistaken on several points. Please see my other post, just above this one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In some schools, counselors control as they are the ones who upload the school recommendations and transcripts. For example, at my kids' private school, they discourage applications to HYPS unless there is a hook or the #1 candidate from school where school will throw 100% of support behind candidate

I understand a private school doing this, though I don't think it's a great practice. Private schools justify their prices and existence in part by offering families a better chance of getting their child into a top school for their stats. But I think it's crazy that a public school would do this, or that parents would put up with it. I absolutely think a counselor should be honest if a kid's stats fall below the likely level for UVA, but they should still fully support the kid's application. There are a lot of kids whose grades or scores might be slightly below the top 10% who are both extremely talented and more likely to make a positive impact on a campus or in the world than some of those in the top group. Also, how can a school with 400 or 500 kids in a class only have a single counselor?

I'm a laid back parent, but I'd be making waves if I had a kid at McLean and they actually do what the PP has stated.

Again - PP doesn't know what s/he's talking about. At Langley, there are SEVEN counselors per grade. So a class of 500 is split up alphabetically for each counselor to take a grouping. I have no clue why PP said there was only one counselor. How bizarre. I don't have a student at McLean, but it was easy enough to look up the info online - they have EIGHT counselors and also divide the kids up alphabetically.

And of course your child can apply to whichever schools he or she chooses. The counselors' job is to advise the student and parents on the likelihood of getting into specific schools - not to prevent them from applying! That PP put out a whole lot of misinformation.