WSJ article on your child's chances of getting into an IVY are slim

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:''McKinney High School (MHS) is located at 1400 Wilson Creek Parkway in McKinney, Texas, and is within the McKinney Independent School District. MHS is the oldest high school in McKinney and the current building opened in 1986, after moving from what is now Faubion Middle School.

Although the Texas Education Agency (TEA) rated the school as Academically Unacceptable following the 2009-10 school year, the school has shown improvement, being rated as Academically Acceptable in all following school years as of 2019.''

So she got a 1550 SAT coming from a ''weak'' high school that I am pretty sure is in a rural part of Texas. That is fairly impressive.

It is not in rural Texas. It is an exurb of Dallas. Think Manassas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“The record 11.8 percent admission rate for Harvard's class of 1999 is significantly lower than rates at other Ivy League schools, ...“

Has it ever been easy?

It’s never been easy for your typical kid. It’s always been significantly easier for connected kids.

I went to a NE boarding school. They told us that before about the 1990s, kids essentially signed up for HYP like you would an intramural softball team. It isn’t like that anymore, but my high school sends roughly 25% of its graduates each year to an Ivy League school. The process remains deeply unfair.

Is this typical of the higher end NE boarding schools? Do their students get preferred admissions? Looking at this now for my kid who is interested in going starting in 2023 to play a sport (he's been talking to the coach), so if we're going to consider that school, we'll likely consider others as well. Just curious because DH and I are public school graduates so this is all new.

My husband went to Hotchkiss in the 90s. Got into every Ivy. Chose UPenn. Can count on 1 hand how many people give a damn where he went to college.

I guess it just gives more options? It perplexes me seeing kids major in whatever from a top private univ and then get a master's in teaching when they could have gone just about anywhere for an undergrad teaching degree and certification.

Why?

Well a math teacher would be better off as a math undergrad than a degree in math education. Some for just about any field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

Football is close to it unless you were just crazy gisted and never knew it. You could get into the pool for the first time in high school and find you set records. It does happen. Just not a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“The record 11.8 percent admission rate for Harvard's class of 1999 is significantly lower than rates at other Ivy League schools, ...“

Has it ever been easy?

It’s never been easy for your typical kid. It’s always been significantly easier for connected kids.

I went to a NE boarding school. They told us that before about the 1990s, kids essentially signed up for HYP like you would an intramural softball team. It isn’t like that anymore, but my high school sends roughly 25% of its graduates each year to an Ivy League school. The process remains deeply unfair.

Is this typical of the higher end NE boarding schools? Do their students get preferred admissions? Looking at this now for my kid who is interested in going starting in 2023 to play a sport (he's been talking to the coach), so if we're going to consider that school, we'll likely consider others as well. Just curious because DH and I are public school graduates so this is all new.

My husband went to Hotchkiss in the 90s. Got into every Ivy. Chose UPenn. Can count on 1 hand how many people give a damn where he went to college.

I guess it just gives more options? It perplexes me seeing kids major in whatever from a top private univ and then get a master's in teaching when they could have gone just about anywhere for an undergrad teaching degree and certification.

Why?

Well a math teacher would be better off as a math undergrad than a degree in math education. Some for just about any field.

Waste of money. You can be a public high school teacher with just an undergrad in secondary math ed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not the whole article, but here is the lede:

“ Kaitlyn Younger has been an academic standout since she started studying algebra in third grade.

She took her first advanced-placement course as a freshman, scored 1550 on her SATs as a junior at McKinney High School near Dallas and will graduate this spring with an unweighted 3.95 grade-point average and as the founder of the school’s accounting club. Along the way she performed in and directed about 30 plays, sang in the school choir, scored top marks on the tests she has so far taken for 11 advanced-placement classes, helped run a summer camp and held down a part-time job.

“She is extraordinary,” said Jeff Cranmore, her guidance counselor at McKinney High School.

Ms. Younger, 18 years old, was cautiously optimistic when she applied to top U.S. colleges last fall. Responses came this month: Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern all rejected her.

“I expected a bunch wouldn’t accept me,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be this bad.””

It says she’s going to Arizona State.

Because all of those schools have acceptance rates below 20%. They are all REACH schools for everyone, even someone as talented as this young woman. While qualified and she would be an excellent member of the freshman class at each of these schools, with acceptance rates so low it's a lottery with her high scores, awesome ECs and well roundedness buying her the lottery ticket, but ultimately 8-9 out of every 10 students at those schools are rejected.

If she didn't want to attend ASU, then she should have selected 3-5 True target schools with 30%+ admission rates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

Football is close to it unless you were just crazy gisted and never knew it. You could get into the pool for the first time in high school and find you set records. It does happen. Just not a lot.

Yeah and I can marry my cousin. lol.

You are much much more likely to get recuited to swim or play soccer at a NESCAC, Ivy or any other school if your parents paid for club sports your whole life (and you grew up in a rich suburb) Some high schools don't even have lacrosse or field hockey teams. How do you get recruited if your high school and town dont have teams?

But sure you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I say lets the spawn and URM and 3.5GPA athletes have the "elites". Ivys are sort of sick in the head. The data shows that you have to be in one of those categories to get in, yet they aggressively outreached my kid and others that they had zero intention of admitting (My kids stats are higher than this girl in the article by a small margin). They dont increase their class size and they just roll in the application fees so by rejecting us all they can seem even cooler. Fool me once...but you won't fool me again. I've made a pledge that I will never hire another ivy grad and I wont let my other kids apply. Ivy League is Fake News.

Lower acceptance rates and $$$$ from each application. Given that they spend ~8 mins reading an application, it doesn't cost them $75-100 to process an application.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I say lets the spawn and URM and 3.5GPA athletes have the "elites". Ivys are sort of sick in the head. The data shows that you have to be in one of those categories to get in, yet they aggressively outreached my kid and others that they had zero intention of admitting (My kids stats are higher than this girl in the article by a small margin). They dont increase their class size and they just roll in the application fees so by rejecting us all they can seem even cooler. Fool me once...but you won't fool me again. I've made a pledge that I will never hire another ivy grad and I wont let my other kids apply. Ivy League is Fake News.

Jealous much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For any kind of athletic recruiting, if the schools continue to recruit for athletics, it is impossible to get to the level of being recruitable without parents curating. A 10th grader can't decide in 10th grade that they are going to join club swimming (when they are old enough to drive themselves if their parents were never willing to) and then get a spot on a college team three years later.

Kids can and do decide to take up sports in high school all the time and some of them end up recruited at levels far beyond the Ivy League.

Unless you mean football, this does not happen ever.

Football is close to it unless you were just crazy gisted and never knew it. You could get into the pool for the first time in high school and find you set records. It does happen. Just not a lot.

Yeah and I can marry my cousin. lol.

You are much much more likely to get recuited to swim or play soccer at a NESCAC, Ivy or any other school if your parents paid for club sports your whole life (and you grew up in a rich suburb) Some high schools don't even have lacrosse or field hockey teams. How do you get recruited if your high school and town dont have teams?

But sure you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps

My point was agreeing with your point. It happens but not a lot. Football different. Girl's field hockey different. Track could be different but probably not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I say lets the spawn and URM and 3.5GPA athletes have the "elites". Ivys are sort of sick in the head. The data shows that you have to be in one of those categories to get in, yet they aggressively outreached my kid and others that they had zero intention of admitting (My kids stats are higher than this girl in the article by a small margin). They dont increase their class size and they just roll in the application fees so by rejecting us all they can seem even cooler. Fool me once...but you won't fool me again. I've made a pledge that I will never hire another ivy grad and I wont let my other kids apply. Ivy League is Fake News.

Lower acceptance rates and $$$$ from each application. Given that they spend ~8 mins reading an application, it doesn't cost them $75-100 to process an application.

lol -- not a real revenue generator.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I say lets the spawn and URM and 3.5GPA athletes have the "elites". Ivys are sort of sick in the head. The data shows that you have to be in one of those categories to get in, yet they aggressively outreached my kid and others that they had zero intention of admitting (My kids stats are higher than this girl in the article by a small margin). They dont increase their class size and they just roll in the application fees so by rejecting us all they can seem even cooler. Fool me once...but you won't fool me again. I've made a pledge that I will never hire another ivy grad and I wont let my other kids apply. Ivy League is Fake News.

Your poor, poor Ivy League legacy. How will they survive?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“The record 11.8 percent admission rate for Harvard's class of 1999 is significantly lower than rates at other Ivy League schools, ...“

Has it ever been easy?

It’s never been easy for your typical kid. It’s always been significantly easier for connected kids.

I went to a NE boarding school. They told us that before about the 1990s, kids essentially signed up for HYP like you would an intramural softball team. It isn’t like that anymore, but my high school sends roughly 25% of its graduates each year to an Ivy League school. The process remains deeply unfair.

Is this typical of the higher end NE boarding schools? Do their students get preferred admissions? Looking at this now for my kid who is interested in going starting in 2023 to play a sport (he's been talking to the coach), so if we're going to consider that school, we'll likely consider others as well. Just curious because DH and I are public school graduates so this is all new.

My husband went to Hotchkiss in the 90s. Got into every Ivy. Chose UPenn. Can count on 1 hand how many people give a damn where he went to college.

I guess it just gives more options? It perplexes me seeing kids major in whatever from a top private univ and then get a master's in teaching when they could have gone just about anywhere for an undergrad teaching degree and certification.

Why?

Well a math teacher would be better off as a math undergrad than a degree in math education. Some for just about any field.

Waste of money. You can be a public high school teacher with just an undergrad in secondary math ed.

Sure you can be. You can also not really understand your subject whcih covers most of the teachers I have ever met.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“The record 11.8 percent admission rate for Harvard's class of 1999 is significantly lower than rates at other Ivy League schools, ...“

Has it ever been easy?

It’s never been easy for your typical kid. It’s always been significantly easier for connected kids.

I went to a NE boarding school. They told us that before about the 1990s, kids essentially signed up for HYP like you would an intramural softball team. It isn’t like that anymore, but my high school sends roughly 25% of its graduates each year to an Ivy League school. The process remains deeply unfair.

Is this typical of the higher end NE boarding schools? Do their students get preferred admissions? Looking at this now for my kid who is interested in going starting in 2023 to play a sport (he's been talking to the coach), so if we're going to consider that school, we'll likely consider others as well. Just curious because DH and I are public school graduates so this is all new.

My husband went to Hotchkiss in the 90s. Got into every Ivy. Chose UPenn. Can count on 1 hand how many people give a damn where he went to college.

I guess it just gives more options? It perplexes me seeing kids major in whatever from a top private univ and then get a master's in teaching when they could have gone just about anywhere for an undergrad teaching degree and certification.

Why?

Well a math teacher would be better off as a math undergrad than a degree in math education. Some for just about any field.

Waste of money. You can be a public high school teacher with just an undergrad in secondary math ed.

Sure you can be. You can also not really understand your subject whcih covers most of the teachers I have ever met.

Yeah no I am not into the education ponzi scheme/rat race. More degrees is not necessarily better, just more debt on the student's back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not the whole article, but here is the lede:

“ Kaitlyn Younger has been an academic standout since she started studying algebra in third grade.

She took her first advanced-placement course as a freshman, scored 1550 on her SATs as a junior at McKinney High School near Dallas and will graduate this spring with an unweighted 3.95 grade-point average and as the founder of the school’s accounting club. Along the way she performed in and directed about 30 plays, sang in the school choir, scored top marks on the tests she has so far taken for 11 advanced-placement classes, helped run a summer camp and held down a part-time job.

“She is extraordinary,” said Jeff Cranmore, her guidance counselor at McKinney High School.

Ms. Younger, 18 years old, was cautiously optimistic when she applied to top U.S. colleges last fall. Responses came this month: Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, and Northwestern all rejected her.

“I expected a bunch wouldn’t accept me,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be this bad.””

It says she’s going to Arizona State.

It seems she would be an automatic admit to UT Austin. Unless with all that she's not a top ranked student in her HS, which would mean all those decisions are not that surprising.

With those stats she likely got significant merit aid at ASU

Right. I assume she's getting a free ride at ASU, which is frankly a smart choice anyhow.

January and February in Boston or Tempe? Mmmm