High-stat kids w/o great college options
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Anonymous
+ 1. DP here. My kid is a "legit superstar" and he is fully aware that colleges will be easily able to differentiate between all kinds of students even with being test optional and easy As. No worries. |
Anonymous
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I read from College Confidential that some kids with 1600 SAT and GPA 4.0 could only get into their flagship public schools. Not sure if every of these people are real. Nor do I think the flagships are necessarily bad. But from what I know about MCPS magnet programs that many kids with high stats only get into public schools.
You can say the public schools are the perfect fit for these students. Which implicitly implies that the good private schools are not good fit for them, even though many of them long to attend these schools. |
Anonymous
Definitely not true, unless they applied only to state u and HYP. |
Anonymous
Ridiculous. |
Anonymous
Fit is about much, much more than high school grades. As soon as your child goes through a few on campus visits, you will understand that, as many kids will have strong positive or negative reactions to schools for reasons wholly unrelated to the median SAT scores reported on the CDS. Also, many U.S. colleges are not just about academics, whether you feel they should be or not. |
Anonymous
PP here. I am talking about a different fit; it's not the fit that students feel about a college. It's the colleges that decide who is a "fit". I totally agree with OP. |
Anonymous
I recall a few years ago our high school college counselor telling us that admissions departments were starting to have a specific staff person delegated to handle all the calls from freaked out parents reading College Confidential and convinced their kid wasn't getting in anywhere. My takeaway was there is a lot of nonsense on that site mixed in with useful info and it can be really hard to know which is which. Look, a kid who has done nothing in their high school years other than get perfect grades and test scores isn't going to a T10 school because there are so many other kids who have great stats AND interesting accomplishments. And they will be passed over in favor of kids with great but NOT perfect stats who have other meaningful pieces to their application. But that doesn't mean State U or nothing. Best guess is kids/parents overestimated their chance at reaches and weren't strategic about other choices. But that doesn't mean there weren't other options |
Anonymous
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Find and fall in love with thy safety (s). Apply and be admitted early. Consistently show them genuine love and interest. Trust me (and others), it takes the edge off.
My son was accepted early and loves his safety. Unexpected merit too. He's shows up for virtual admitted sessions and zeemee. He also worked very hard to show continued interest in one deferral. He knows it's likely a rejection or maybe not. If rejected from 9 remaining RD schools, he'll feel a sting, but chalk it up to a wild 20-21. He'll happily attend safety. In fact, he's starting to feel guilty for keeping them waiting. |
Anonymous
Agree with this. If a kid is a superstar, the rest of the application will show this. It's those elements, not the SAT and GPA that show a kid is above and beyond other applicants. |
Anonymous
This makes no sense. The SAT/ACT and GPA have always been huge factors in who gets admitted and who doesn't. Look at the common data set for any elite college or university. A kid may have an out-of-this-world "rest of the application," but he ain't getting in with a 26 on the ACT when the middle 50% range is 32-35. Same for a kid with a 3.27 GPA when 80% of accepted students are at a 3.75 or higher. Or at least that kid wasn't getting in before Fall 2020. Now, thanks to the gat dang coronavirus, his GPA is probably half a point higher from grade inflation, and he no longer has to submit his unimpressive ACT score. Now, by making up a bunch of crap about leadership positions he's held, and maybe writing a Leaders of the New School level Sobb Story about how much his family has suffered because of covid, that thoroughly mediocre kid might have a chance — and might end up taking a spot from a kid who deserves it way more but no longer has a way to show it. That's the rub. |
Anonymous
I agree that it is difficult for a student to get into a top 20 school even if they have high/perfect stats The kids getting into top 20 schools from magnet programs typically have a hook Very prestigious awards (think Regeneron caliber) Recruited athlete Incredible musician Legacy etc Students who have varied ECs or have a huge commitment to a “regular “ EC activity don’t seem to resonate with adcomms. It is not that these bright, high achieving kids are one dimensional “swots”. The problem is that certain activities (eg sports) appear to be more prized by top colleges If your child doesn’t want to attend UMD, I suggest you look at schools in the 20-50 range and also consider slacs. In my limited experience magnet students with good grades and a healthy extracurricular resume have no trouble gaining admission to schools in this tier. So apply to CMU or Tufts or UCLA or UNC or Haverford etc |
Anonymous
Sorry, you're still missing it. Not talking about kids with a 26 ACT now shooting for the stars. At minimum, they need the great scores. Ok, so once they have those, how do you separate the cream of the crop? By looking at the rest of the application. They can see right through the things that you think they can be so easily swayed by. The achievement and attitude they are looking for are years in the making, too. |
Anonymous
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I agree that it is difficult for a student to get into a top 20 school even if they have high/perfect stats The kids getting into top 20 schools from magnet programs typically have a hook Very prestigious awards (think Regeneron caliber) Recruited athlete Incredible musician Legacy etc Students who have varied ECs or have a huge commitment to a “regular “ EC activity don’t seem to resonate with adcomms. It is not that these bright, high achieving kids are one dimensional “swots”. The problem is that certain activities (eg sports) appear to be more prized by top colleges If your child doesn’t want to attend UMD, I suggest you look at schools in the 20-50 range and also consider slacs. In my limited experience magnet students with good grades and a healthy extracurricular resume have no trouble gaining admission to schools in this tier. So apply to CMU or Tufts or UCLA or UNC or Haverford etc Agree with all of this & my DC was just accepted ED to one of the suggested 20-50 schools above. I would caveat that with the comment that our DC had an excellent 'story' to boot, in addition to stats, but is not an athlete, legacy, or nationally recognized talent of any sort. So I wouldn't *bank* on the 20-50 as I realize now as a parent how helpful that **narrative** about DC was. Kinda worried about our DC2 tbh as they don't have strong interests like DC1 did. |
Anonymous
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It seems to me that a major problem stems from parental pressure and the mindset that there are only a handful of schools that are worth attending. Parental cravings for prestige, affirmation (I’m a good parent because my kid goes to HYP..), or a desire to live vicariously through their kids, are creating a pressure cooker environment for high schoolers and churning a generation of kids who are having serious problems with separation and individuate on—the critical process for becoming a happy, healthy, functioning adult. I see threads where parents are talking about their kid’s academic interests where all the replies are portents of doom. Make them study engineering! Computer science! Something STEM. Otherwise they are doomed for failure. Anyone ever stop to think that maybe the kid has neither aptitude for nor interest in those areas? Give me a break. Let the kid explore, learn and grow. You don’t have to pick your career at 16. There is no preschool to Harvard pipeline.
There are an estimated 3.7 million teens slated to graduate from high school in 2021. Even if 40% of those kids do not head off directly to college, that’s still over 2 million kids vying for slots in the college admissions cycle. Parents have convinced themselves that there are only 20 schools worth going to—and I think I’m being generous there. And there are maybe 10 more that parents feel like are okay enough in a pinch. So you’ve got at least a million kids vying for admission at 30 schools. If your kid doesn’t get in to Harvard it isn’t because of scores or hooks or those URMs stealing their birthright—it’s because of STATISTICS AND PROBABILITY. There simply isn’t enough room for everyone. The dirty secret of college admissions is that it is essentially a lottery. Or like a craps table. You buy your ticket or place your bet and hope you win. Please remember that there are more than 3000 4 year colleges in the US. Do your kids, yourself and your wallets a favor. Look at some of the well known and excellent schools that are not in the US News top 30 ranking. Stop giving money to these schools that bombard you with glossy adverts and just want your (and 200-300 thousand other poor suckers) $80. You kid can get a good education at a school where they fit in, where they are a valued member of the community and where they can feel free to learn and explore |
Anonymous
i You know someone on this forum is gonna jump out and tell you otherwise. 
Unfortunately a good portion of the DMV parents feel that anything less than a T20 means they have failed at parenting AND their kids have failed at being good kids. Very sad. A friend once told me that the parents of a kid from a local magnet school refused to attend their DC’s HS graduation because he was rejected by HYP and ended up at UVA, never mind the fact it was a full ride to UVA. |