university admissions feel like they're either super easy or impossible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, 100%. We spent a lot of time and effort making a list and could only come up with three targets to six safeties and six reaches. Targets are hard to come by with very high stats. And she already got into one of the targets with a big merit award.

My kid had several targets and applied EA:

Pending
- Purdue
- VT
- Wake Forest

Accepted
- Case Western (merit $40.5k/year)
- Michigan State
- Penn State (main campus)
- U Minnesota Twin Cities (merit $20k/year)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, 100%. We spent a lot of time and effort making a list and could only come up with three targets to six safeties and six reaches. Targets are hard to come by with very high stats. And she already got into one of the targets with a big merit award.

My kid had several targets and applied EA:

Pending
- Purdue
- VT
- Wake Forest

Accepted
- Case Western (merit $40.5k/year)
- Michigan State
- Penn State (main campus)
- U Minnesota Twin Cities (merit $20k/year)

No EA for Wake unless 1G.
Are you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, 100%. We spent a lot of time and effort making a list and could only come up with three targets to six safeties and six reaches. Targets are hard to come by with very high stats. And she already got into one of the targets with a big merit award.

My kid had several targets and applied EA:

Pending
- Purdue
- VT
- Wake Forest

Accepted
- Case Western (merit $40.5k/year)
- Michigan State
- Penn State (main campus)
- U Minnesota Twin Cities (merit $20k/year)

No EA for Wake unless 1G.
Are you?

Edit - Wake was RD!

[Anonymous]

True.
For us, it wasn’t about admissions to any place other than ivies - that was easy!
it was about the college coughing up enough merit. That was frustrating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t you also need to find the schools where everyone else from your school isn’t applying???

Ha! That would be hard to find if your kid is coming from a large high school unless they have no criteria.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel like there are a bunch of liberal arts colleges in the 30-60% acceptance range.

Maybe, but that only works for kids who want a small school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like there are a bunch of liberal arts colleges in the 30-60% acceptance range.

Maybe, but that only works for kids who want a small school.

And have the ability to pay a lot. DD wanted a small school and we had a state U budget. Applied one reach (W&M, size bigger than she really wanted) + four LACs with admit rates >60% that were likely to meet our budget. Waitlisted at W&M, in at all others with similar final cost ( and less than W&M)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, 100%. We spent a lot of time and effort making a list and could only come up with three targets to six safeties and six reaches. Targets are hard to come by with very high stats. And she already got into one of the targets with a big merit award.

My kid had several targets and applied EA:

Pending
- Purdue
- VT
- Wake Forest

Accepted
- Case Western (merit $40.5k/year)
- Michigan State
- Penn State (main campus)
- U Minnesota Twin Cities (merit $20k/year)

MSU accepts 88% of applicants and had a 75th percentile score of 1360 with 50% applying test optional. In what world is that a target for a high stats kid?

Now I agree they’ve done a good job with the honors college and it’s a fine safety for a high-stats kid. But it’s not a target by any sensible definition of the term.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not really. There’s a ton of schools in the 20-40% acceptance range which are neither easy admission or impossible. Just apply to schools like SMU, URochester, Lehigh, etc.

-1
One noticeable change is most of the 20% acceptance rate schools have dropped fast under 20% to keep up their reputations: Bates, Colby, Davidson, Boston College, Colgate, Holy Cross, etc. this has made it difficult to find the appropriate institution for high stats students.

Agreed! Back in the day, it was rare a top student would get rejected from these schools. Now I know Ivy leaguers who were hit with rejections.

That’s because they are not that hard but take so many ED.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, 100%. We spent a lot of time and effort making a list and could only come up with three targets to six safeties and six reaches. Targets are hard to come by with very high stats. And she already got into one of the targets with a big merit award.

Can you share the school?

Case Western - $40,500 per year

Fantastic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not just you. Typically there are fewer selective schools and more nonselective schools. But if you use Niche to sort by selectivity, there are fewer “very selective” schools (15-30% admissions rates) than there are “extremely selective” schools (under 15%).

The problem is particularly acute if you’re seeking a school with at least 3,000 undergrads. There are only 16 schools with 3,000 or more students and admissions rates of 15-30%. One of those 16 is the Air Force Academy. Another nine are state schools that favor state residents (Michigan, UVA, UNC, Ga. Tech, Florida, FSU, UCSD, UCSB, and UC Irvine). Two are private schools in Florida, the Universities of Miami and Tampa. That leaves BC, Wake, Case, and Villanova. And all four seem to take a lot of their students ED.

That’s why it feels like if you don’t get into an extremely selective school (under 15%), you’ll wind up at a much less selective school (over 30%). There is, in fact, almost nothing in between.

And BC and Villanova are Catholic. Case seems engineering-y and Wake a bit bro-culture?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not really. There’s a ton of schools in the 20-40% acceptance range which are neither easy admission or impossible. Just apply to schools like SMU, URochester, Lehigh, etc.

-1
One noticeable change is most of the 20% acceptance rate schools have dropped fast under 20% to keep up their reputations: Bates, Colby, Davidson, Boston College, Colgate, Holy Cross, etc. this has made it difficult to find the appropriate institution for high stats students.

Agreed! Back in the day, it was rare a top student would get rejected from these schools. Now I know Ivy leaguers who were hit with rejections.

That’s because they are not that hard but take so many ED.

Yes - ironically, as ED really seems to favor the rich. So much for trying to be more diverse

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like every place my kid applied to as a "high stats" kid has either quite easy admissions (and hands out generous aid) or is a total lottery crap shot, snow-balls chance in hell kind of reach. Anyone else free this way?
It's unnerving. I wish there was more of a middle ground.

there is a middle ground, where your stats from your high school give you 25-75% admission odds. The key is to know your school (look at SCOIR scattergrams for the high school).
for example above a 4.45 (that is usually top 10% at our school)and a 1450 ish, every single point on the scattergram is a green check for UVA, 3 years of data are on here. For Virginia Tech all but one of the datapoints are green above a 4.2 and a1350, and there are several greens that extend lower too, down to 3.7W/1250 which is just below our school average. The higher dot that is a no might be engineering who knows, or VT is known to yield protect. The highest kids (4.5/1530+)do not seem to apply to VT but they all get in to UVA and most seem to apply.
UGA has green for almost everyone above a 4.1 WGPA and about half in the 3.9 W range too: UGA is a "match" for students in this range, as there is about a 50/50 chance, so it is a much easier admit than UVA in state and also easier than VT in state.
W&Lee is ALL green just below the cutoffs of UVA, up to the top kids, so that is a highly likely admit for the top 10% just like UVA.
JMU appears to be a sea of green for everyone but the very lowest, 3.3 Weighted, 1100 types--that is the very bottom of our school based on school profile. Auburn is the same.
The only schools that have a genuine mix of red and green and WL all the way up to the highest dots 4.72/1580 type kids are the ivies and Duke, reaches for everyone. Even UNCCH has a fairly predictable more than 75% green above 4.6/1500.

So, what you’re saying is that for high stats kids, targets are either LACs or state flagships (including OOS flagships).

That's the way it is for most kids. There just are not that many schools in the 3,000-10,000 range. That is the magic school for many people. It seems to be a lot of Catholic schools in that range and not much else. Is that what you are looking for? Even lower stats kids have a hard time finding it. If that is what you really want, your kid will probably have to slum it in a school "below" their level.

I actually think this is why my kid will wind up at a flagship. I agree the smaller 3,000-10,000 schools are preferable, all things being equal, but my kid is tired of being a statistical outlier in high school and it seems like the flagship will have the larger group of high-stats students (even if it’s just because they have more of everything).

100%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not really. There’s a ton of schools in the 20-40% acceptance range which are neither easy admission or impossible. Just apply to schools like SMU, URochester, Lehigh, etc.

-1
One noticeable change is most of the 20% acceptance rate schools have dropped fast under 20% to keep up their reputations: Bates, Colby, Davidson, Boston College, Colgate, Holy Cross, etc. this has made it difficult to find the appropriate institution for high stats students.

Agreed! Back in the day, it was rare a top student would get rejected from these schools. Now I know Ivy leaguers who were hit with rejections.

That’s because they are not that hard but take so many ED.

Yes - ironically, as ED really seems to favor the rich. So much for trying to be more diverse

No one wants diversity. The schools need the same cookie cutter crunchy student whose going to go into finance or project management to keep up alumni donations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not just you. Typically there are fewer selective schools and more nonselective schools. But if you use Niche to sort by selectivity, there are fewer “very selective” schools (15-30% admissions rates) than there are “extremely selective” schools (under 15%).

The problem is particularly acute if you’re seeking a school with at least 3,000 undergrads. There are only 16 schools with 3,000 or more students and admissions rates of 15-30%. One of those 16 is the Air Force Academy. Another nine are state schools that favor state residents (Michigan, UVA, UNC, Ga. Tech, Florida, FSU, UCSD, UCSB, and UC Irvine). Two are private schools in Florida, the Universities of Miami and Tampa. That leaves BC, Wake, Case, and Villanova. And all four seem to take a lot of their students ED.

That’s why it feels like if you don’t get into an extremely selective school (under 15%), you’ll wind up at a much less selective school (over 30%). There is, in fact, almost nothing in between.

This is well put. If a high-stat kid shoots for the tippy top and misses, but his peers shoot for schools just beneath but apply ED and get accepted, there’s no room for tippy-top at the next level, so they fall further down the selective school list. But, the slide can be much steeper than expected because of OOS public preferring in-state kids, parents seeking merit money from schools that don’t provide needs-blind admissions, etc. Basically, application strategy matters, especially when shooting for the top schools.