What’s the magic formula for getting accepted?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Common App has made it super easy for kids to apply to 15-20 schools at a time, rather than 5-10.

Combine that with the increase in international applications, and accessibility for URM/Economic cases and it make it much more difficult for UMC white kids whose parents and/or grandparents dominated this space.

For society, that is a good thing, but it is tough for the kids applying these days.

We had Common App in the 90s. More schools are on it now, but that's not the the main reason people apply to more colleges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The change is that more people are aware of the "top" schools and are aspiring for them, so there's more competition for the ~50 schools that are deemed "the best." I grew up in a family that was into college prestige, but very few of my classmates were. Most people went to college within an hour or two of home.

Ignore the hype and help your kid research schools that have what they genuinely need when it comes to academics and social life.

Only a handful of colleges are actually selective, but they are the ones people obsess over, so it gives kids the impression that it's impossible to get into college. It isn't if you have an appropriate list and realistic expectations.

Most kids in this country still go to colleges near where they grew up.

Get out of your bubble.

[Anonymous]

The secret is sports. Every sport at every school is allowed a certain number of recruits and those kids don’t need to have the same insane resumes. They usually still need decent grades and scores but there is way more flexibility. Make friends with the coaches at the chosen school bye emailing them in a friendly manner and that way they will remember your kid and possibly offer them one of the slots.

[Anonymous]

The secret, if you don’t have any of the traditional hooks, is to start out with a very bright child who has one or more high level talents/ unusual interests and nurture those talents and interests. Even if your kid doesn’t end up in a top school, they will feel supported and like they have things interesting things to do with their free time.

[Anonymous]

OP - you said you have a DC? How old?

Most things on this thread are true, but it's also totally possible to get into college for most students these days (which is another reason why elite colleges are harder to get into).

My oldest had plenty of options, including schools with merit aid and he is a freshman at his first choice school where he also got a significant scholarship. He had a particular hook/interest but it was something he wanted to do - not something a parent could force.

My younger child will be undecided major at school and is looking at colleges right now. I'm positive he will be able to get into and afford a school he wants to go to and will be able to afford.

The things you can tell your kid, depending on age, is the better you do in school the more options you will have and stick with something you like/are good at because colleges (and employers) like to know you have the guts to stick with something. But it could be a job, a volunteer gig, watching a younger sibling or a club/sport/instrument.

Also, go ahead and manage your family's expectations now that college isn't as easy to get into as when we all did it.

(my father kept pushing for my kid to apply to his alma mater which would have been a bad fit and he couldn't have gotten in).

There are a lot of good schools out there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What the F even is a GPA over 4.0. That’s garbage. The highest grade you can get is an A which is a 4.0 so this nonsense to artificially inflate grades makes me insane. Haven’t hey also made the SAT higher scoring?

Smartest thing kids can do these days is to get an actual vocation.

You must be new here. A 4.1 GPA is like garbage for selective schools.

[Anonymous]

I’m a big believer in fit. Help your DC figure out what they like. Then, get involved and explore those interests inside and outside of school. Work, volunteer, build, play, explore, take risks, fail. Then, spend time visiting & learning about colleges. They all have different personalities. Find the schools that will appreciate your child and challenge them. Find safeties your child would like as well as reaches. Ensure they are ready for college, from making good choices about friends, alcohol & drugs to managing money. Enjoy watching them learn and grow!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The secret is sports. Every sport at every school is allowed a certain number of recruits and those kids don’t need to have the same insane resumes. They usually still need decent grades and scores but there is way more flexibility. Make friends with the coaches at the chosen school bye emailing them in a friendly manner and that way they will remember your kid and possibly offer them one of the slots.

That is not how it works. Athletic recruiting is a formal process (including game videotape, admission pre-reads, official visits, a formal offer, verbal commitment, etc.). Recruited athletes know well in advance of their application whether they will be admitted (absent extraordinary circumstances). It has nothing to do with a "friendly letter" or the coach "remembering" your kid and "possibly" offering a slot on the team.

[Anonymous]

Recently, many niche sports have been struck off. It’s telling that the %athletes at that school in Boston has dropped so dramatically in the REA round.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What the F even is a GPA over 4.0. That’s garbage. The highest grade you can get is an A which is a 4.0 so this nonsense to artificially inflate grades makes me insane. Haven’t hey also made the SAT higher scoring?

Smartest thing kids can do these days is to get an actual vocation.

You must be new here. A 4.1 GPA is like garbage for selective schools.

Except that not all schools weight their GPAs. For the most part, colleges know the difference between a 3.9 at one school, a 4.1 at another and a 5.0 (or whatever insane GPA some schools allow).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...

The Naviance data has to be taken with a huge shaker of salt because many of those admits (perhaps as many as 50%) are probably recruited athletes, ED applicants, URM, legacy, first generation etc. For kids without any of those hooks, the average is probably a 4.0/1550.

PP. You’re missing my point. The applicant pool is centered there, not the admit pool.

That is telling you that the typical competitive applicant to Top 30-40 schools (if CS, roughly UC Irvine or NYU) or better are not 4.0/1500 by a long shot.

Also, W school so hooked are not development cases (those kids are Big 3) or URM. Recruited athletes at that level are rare enough that they don’t dominate the sample.

It is you who are confused. The applicant pool displayed on Naviance does not tell you who is a "competitive" applicant for an Ivy+ school when 90% of the applicants on the scattergram are not admitted. Many of those kids applying are simply not competitive at all and never should have wasted their application in the first place -- particularly if they are not ED, legacy, URM, athlete, etc.

And even when the admit pool is centered at 3.92 and 1500 that does not mean those stats are competitive for an unhooked applicant given the prevalence of ED, legacy, URM and athlete admits at a high SES school like a W school.

Ugh, no. Since you are wilfully misrepresenting what I am saying, I went and counted. At our W school, there are about 10 years of data with about 55-65 applicants to Harvard total who have SAT >= 1500 and uwGPA >= 3.9. I'll use those facts as a starting point.

So if you want to claim that there is this huge dark pool of 4.0/1550/all-state somethings out there that are blocking all the normies from getting into their dream school, you would need to explain why that aren't on that scattergram. Since our school uses Naviance to process letters and manage the flow of information to the schools, I think it's fair to conclude that the uwGPA, SAT, and applied variables are correct and essentially complete. (I know the waitlist, admit/deny and matriculate are self-reported, but I'm not using them.) So either there isn't this huge dark pool, or for some reason Harvard isn't cool and all the smart kids at my W want to go to YPSM but not H.

I'm argiung for the former, but I know it goes against DCUM received wisdom that our kids all really deserve to go to an Ivy, but it's just so unfair now and it wasn't back then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...

The Naviance data has to be taken with a huge shaker of salt because many of those admits (perhaps as many as 50%) are probably recruited athletes, ED applicants, URM, legacy, first generation etc. For kids without any of those hooks, the average is probably a 4.0/1550.

PP. You’re missing my point. The applicant pool is centered there, not the admit pool.

That is telling you that the typical competitive applicant to Top 30-40 schools (if CS, roughly UC Irvine or NYU) or better are not 4.0/1500 by a long shot.

Also, W school so hooked are not development cases (those kids are Big 3) or URM. Recruited athletes at that level are rare enough that they don’t dominate the sample.

It is you who are confused. The applicant pool displayed on Naviance does not tell you who is a "competitive" applicant for an Ivy+ school when 90% of the applicants on the scattergram are not admitted. Many of those kids applying are simply not competitive at all and never should have wasted their application in the first place -- particularly if they are not ED, legacy, URM, athlete, etc.

And even when the admit pool is centered at 3.92 and 1500 that does not mean those stats are competitive for an unhooked applicant given the prevalence of ED, legacy, URM and athlete admits at a high SES school like a W school.

Ugh, no. Since you are wilfully misrepresenting what I am saying, I went and counted. At our W school, there are about 10 years of data with about 55-65 applicants to Harvard total who have SAT >= 1500 and uwGPA >= 3.9. I'll use those facts as a starting point.

So if you want to claim that there is this huge dark pool of 4.0/1550/all-state somethings out there that are blocking all the normies from getting into their dream school, you would need to explain why that aren't on that scattergram. Since our school uses Naviance to process letters and manage the flow of information to the schools, I think it's fair to conclude that the uwGPA, SAT, and applied variables are correct and essentially complete. (I know the waitlist, admit/deny and matriculate are self-reported, but I'm not using them.) So either there isn't this huge dark pool, or for some reason Harvard isn't cool and all the smart kids at my W want to go to YPSM but not H.

I'm argiung for the former, but I know it goes against DCUM received wisdom that our kids all really deserve to go to an Ivy, but it's just so unfair now and it wasn't back then.

I never claimed the bolded and I don't understand the relevance of your counting exercise unless you also consider the number of admitted students from that pool, and how many were hooked in some way?

What I said was (1) Typical stats of applicants does not tell you who is "competitive" for admissions to an Ivy+ because the vast majority of applicants with even tippy top stats are rejected. (2) Naviance does not tell you which admits are hooked (and sometimes multiple hooks) so if you are an unhooked applicant simply looking at admitted student typical stats on Naviance will overstate admission odds. So an unhooked applicant will need to have stats better than the typical or "average" applicants. Do you disagree with those points?

Let me add a third point that your latest post highlights ... you also need to toss out any data that is older than 3-4 years old because it is no longer useful in predicting admissions in 2021. GPA's of top applicants have continued to rise, numbers of international applicants to top colleges have continued to rise, standardized test scores have continued to rise, and acceptance rates at Ivy+ schools have continued to fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...

The Naviance data has to be taken with a huge shaker of salt because many of those admits (perhaps as many as 50%) are probably recruited athletes, ED applicants, URM, legacy, first generation etc. For kids without any of those hooks, the average is probably a 4.0/1550.

PP. You’re missing my point. The applicant pool is centered there, not the admit pool.

That is telling you that the typical competitive applicant to Top 30-40 schools (if CS, roughly UC Irvine or NYU) or better are not 4.0/1500 by a long shot.

Also, W school so hooked are not development cases (those kids are Big 3) or URM. Recruited athletes at that level are rare enough that they don’t dominate the sample.

It is you who are confused. The applicant pool displayed on Naviance does not tell you who is a "competitive" applicant for an Ivy+ school when 90% of the applicants on the scattergram are not admitted. Many of those kids applying are simply not competitive at all and never should have wasted their application in the first place -- particularly if they are not ED, legacy, URM, athlete, etc.

And even when the admit pool is centered at 3.92 and 1500 that does not mean those stats are competitive for an unhooked applicant given the prevalence of ED, legacy, URM and athlete admits at a high SES school like a W school.

Ugh, no. Since you are wilfully misrepresenting what I am saying, I went and counted. At our W school, there are about 10 years of data with about 55-65 applicants to Harvard total who have SAT >= 1500 and uwGPA >= 3.9. I'll use those facts as a starting point.

So if you want to claim that there is this huge dark pool of 4.0/1550/all-state somethings out there that are blocking all the normies from getting into their dream school, you would need to explain why that aren't on that scattergram. Since our school uses Naviance to process letters and manage the flow of information to the schools, I think it's fair to conclude that the uwGPA, SAT, and applied variables are correct and essentially complete. (I know the waitlist, admit/deny and matriculate are self-reported, but I'm not using them.) So either there isn't this huge dark pool, or for some reason Harvard isn't cool and all the smart kids at my W want to go to YPSM but not H.

I'm argiung for the former, but I know it goes against DCUM received wisdom that our kids all really deserve to go to an Ivy, but it's just so unfair now and it wasn't back then.

I never claimed the bolded and I don't understand the relevance of your counting exercise unless you also consider the number of admitted students from that pool, and how many were hooked in some way?

What I said was (1) Typical stats of applicants does not tell you who is "competitive" for admissions to an Ivy+ because the vast majority of applicants with even tippy top stats are rejected. (2) Naviance does not tell you which admits are hooked (and sometimes multiple hooks) so if you are an unhooked applicant simply looking at admitted student typical stats on Naviance will overstate admission odds. So an unhooked applicant will need to have stats better than the typical or "average" applicants. Do you disagree with those points?

Let me add a third point that your latest post highlights ... you also need to toss out any data that is older than 3-4 years old because it is no longer useful in predicting admissions in 2021. GPA's of top applicants have continued to rise, numbers of international applicants to top colleges have continued to rise, standardized test scores have continued to rise, and acceptance rates at Ivy+ schools have continued to fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...

The Naviance data has to be taken with a huge shaker of salt because many of those admits (perhaps as many as 50%) are probably recruited athletes, ED applicants, URM, legacy, first generation etc. For kids without any of those hooks, the average is probably a 4.0/1550.

PP. You’re missing my point. The applicant pool is centered there, not the admit pool.

That is telling you that the typical competitive applicant to Top 30-40 schools (if CS, roughly UC Irvine or NYU) or better are not 4.0/1500 by a long shot.

Also, W school so hooked are not development cases (those kids are Big 3) or URM. Recruited athletes at that level are rare enough that they don’t dominate the sample.

It is you who are confused. The applicant pool displayed on Naviance does not tell you who is a "competitive" applicant for an Ivy+ school when 90% of the applicants on the scattergram are not admitted. Many of those kids applying are simply not competitive at all and never should have wasted their application in the first place -- particularly if they are not ED, legacy, URM, athlete, etc.

And even when the admit pool is centered at 3.92 and 1500 that does not mean those stats are competitive for an unhooked applicant given the prevalence of ED, legacy, URM and athlete admits at a high SES school like a W school.

Ugh, no. Since you are wilfully misrepresenting what I am saying, I went and counted. At our W school, there are about 10 years of data with about 55-65 applicants to Harvard total who have SAT >= 1500 and uwGPA >= 3.9. I'll use those facts as a starting point.

So if you want to claim that there is this huge dark pool of 4.0/1550/all-state somethings out there that are blocking all the normies from getting into their dream school, you would need to explain why that aren't on that scattergram. Since our school uses Naviance to process letters and manage the flow of information to the schools, I think it's fair to conclude that the uwGPA, SAT, and applied variables are correct and essentially complete. (I know the waitlist, admit/deny and matriculate are self-reported, but I'm not using them.) So either there isn't this huge dark pool, or for some reason Harvard isn't cool and all the smart kids at my W want to go to YPSM but not H.

I'm argiung for the former, but I know it goes against DCUM received wisdom that our kids all really deserve to go to an Ivy, but it's just so unfair now and it wasn't back then.

I never claimed the bolded and I don't understand the relevance of your counting exercise unless you also consider the number of admitted students from that pool, and how many were hooked in some way?

What I said was (1) Typical stats of applicants does not tell you who is "competitive" for admissions to an Ivy+ because the vast majority of applicants with even tippy top stats are rejected. (2) Naviance does not tell you which admits are hooked (and sometimes multiple hooks) so if you are an unhooked applicant simply looking at admitted student typical stats on Naviance will overstate admission odds. So an unhooked applicant will need to have stats better than the typical or "average" applicants. Do you disagree with those points?

Let me add a third point that your latest post highlights ... you also need to toss out any data that is older than 3-4 years old because it is no longer useful in predicting admissions in 2021. GPA's of top applicants have continued to rise, numbers of international applicants to top colleges have continued to rise, standardized test scores have continued to rise, and acceptance rates at Ivy+ schools have continued to fall.

We can certainly ask if the data suggest that it's become harder to get admitted. (And, remember, class sizes have been increasing along with applicant pool sizes.) I broke down the admissions rate from our W school by 3-year periods, starting with the most recent 3 years, and going back as far as the data allow. I'm aware that this is self-reported data, but almost all of the admits also matriculated, which Naviance would be able to verify because the guidance department would have used it to send a final transcript and proof of high school degree. So I'm going to assume that this data is correct. The short answer is that in all of the 3-year periods that I can access, the admit rate and applicant pool sizes are more or less the same (the term of art would be "the differences are not statistically significant").

To the PP, if you've read this far, rather than just bolding things you don't like, hopefully you can agree that the above is just data and is quite likely to be substantially correct, even if not exactly so.

If you think about this data, you would realize that the story you are trying to tell about all admits are hooked is inconsistent with what we observe when we look at the applicant pool.

I don't believe in repeating myself on the Internet, so after this, I'm out. As an aside, I strongly believe that MCPS should compute class ranks or at least quantiles down to 2% granularity, because it would go a long way to dispelling the myth that anything less than almost all A's in the hardest classes constitutes worthwhile academic achievement at the secondary school level. I believe that myth has real mental and physical health consequences for a number of students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...

The Naviance data has to be taken with a huge shaker of salt because many of those admits (perhaps as many as 50%) are probably recruited athletes, ED applicants, URM, legacy, first generation etc. For kids without any of those hooks, the average is probably a 4.0/1550.

PP. You’re missing my point. The applicant pool is centered there, not the admit pool.

That is telling you that the typical competitive applicant to Top 30-40 schools (if CS, roughly UC Irvine or NYU) or better are not 4.0/1500 by a long shot.

Also, W school so hooked are not development cases (those kids are Big 3) or URM. Recruited athletes at that level are rare enough that they don’t dominate the sample.

It is you who are confused. The applicant pool displayed on Naviance does not tell you who is a "competitive" applicant for an Ivy+ school when 90% of the applicants on the scattergram are not admitted. Many of those kids applying are simply not competitive at all and never should have wasted their application in the first place -- particularly if they are not ED, legacy, URM, athlete, etc.

And even when the admit pool is centered at 3.92 and 1500 that does not mean those stats are competitive for an unhooked applicant given the prevalence of ED, legacy, URM and athlete admits at a high SES school like a W school.

Ugh, no. Since you are wilfully misrepresenting what I am saying, I went and counted. At our W school, there are about 10 years of data with about 55-65 applicants to Harvard total who have SAT >= 1500 and uwGPA >= 3.9. I'll use those facts as a starting point.

So if you want to claim that there is this huge dark pool of 4.0/1550/all-state somethings out there that are blocking all the normies from getting into their dream school, you would need to explain why that aren't on that scattergram. Since our school uses Naviance to process letters and manage the flow of information to the schools, I think it's fair to conclude that the uwGPA, SAT, and applied variables are correct and essentially complete. (I know the waitlist, admit/deny and matriculate are self-reported, but I'm not using them.) So either there isn't this huge dark pool, or for some reason Harvard isn't cool and all the smart kids at my W want to go to YPSM but not H.

I'm argiung for the former, but I know it goes against DCUM received wisdom that our kids all really deserve to go to an Ivy, but it's just so unfair now and it wasn't back then.

I never claimed the bolded and I don't understand the relevance of your counting exercise unless you also consider the number of admitted students from that pool, and how many were hooked in some way?

What I said was (1) Typical stats of applicants does not tell you who is "competitive" for admissions to an Ivy+ because the vast majority of applicants with even tippy top stats are rejected. (2) Naviance does not tell you which admits are hooked (and sometimes multiple hooks) so if you are an unhooked applicant simply looking at admitted student typical stats on Naviance will overstate admission odds. So an unhooked applicant will need to have stats better than the typical or "average" applicants. Do you disagree with those points?

Let me add a third point that your latest post highlights ... you also need to toss out any data that is older than 3-4 years old because it is no longer useful in predicting admissions in 2021. GPA's of top applicants have continued to rise, numbers of international applicants to top colleges have continued to rise, standardized test scores have continued to rise, and acceptance rates at Ivy+ schools have continued to fall.

We can certainly ask if the data suggest that it's become harder to get admitted. (And, remember, class sizes have been increasing along with applicant pool sizes.) I broke down the admissions rate from our W school by 3-year periods, starting with the most recent 3 years, and going back as far as the data allow. I'm aware that this is self-reported data, but almost all of the admits also matriculated, which Naviance would be able to verify because the guidance department would have used it to send a final transcript and proof of high school degree. So I'm going to assume that this data is correct. The short answer is that in all of the 3-year periods that I can access, the admit rate and applicant pool sizes are more or less the same (the term of art would be "the differences are not statistically significant").

To the PP, if you've read this far, rather than just bolding things you don't like, hopefully you can agree that the above is just data and is quite likely to be substantially correct, even if not exactly so.

If you think about this data, you would realize that the story you are trying to tell about all admits are hooked is inconsistent with what we observe when we look at the applicant pool.

I don't believe in repeating myself on the Internet, so after this, I'm out. As an aside, I strongly believe that MCPS should compute class ranks or at least quantiles down to 2% granularity, because it would go a long way to dispelling the myth that anything less than almost all A's in the hardest classes constitutes worthwhile academic achievement at the secondary school level. I believe that myth has real mental and physical health consequences for a number of students.

I still don't understand what your "data" is intended to show. And you haven't provided what is really the important data (# of admits and # with hooks in the pool of applicants you mention).

Regardless, I don't mind debating these points so long as you don't mischaracterize what I've said. For example, I've never said that at Ivy+ schools "almost all admits are hooked".

What I've said consistently is that many admits to Ivy+ schools in this area are hooked applicants so don't be fooled by the Naviance data that shows some lower scoring admits or "averages" that include hooked kids if you are not hooked yourself.
r
My own kids are a great example as both are at the same Ivy. One had a 33 ACT and 3.7 UW but was an athletic recruit. The other had a 1580 and 4.0 UW (but no hooks). I was well aware that my athlete's stats on the scattergram had no relevance whatsoever to predicting my other kid's odds of admission.