Can a normal smart kid get into an ivy these days?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not unless they are first gen, rural, a recruitable athlete, URM, or have famous/powerful connections.

Otherwise they go to Big State U with a ton of merit aid and/or the honors college.

I laughed out loud reading this because it is 100% accurate.

I'm biased but my kid graduated with straight As, 33 credits, a 4.6 GPA on a 4.0 scale, 1580 SAT, top 1% of class, multiple published works, an multi-sport athlete, captain of robotics team and savant like skills in his intended major from a full pay family and he goes in only to safeties. White, unhooked male. Everyone knew who my kid was locally- he is genius IQ smart....and at a state flagship honors with merit. LOL. Oh and he went to a seminar on his essay by college AO and they called it "brilliant" so it wasn't a "bad essay". Aside from now seeing the farce this admissions process is (anyone wonder the logic of 60K a year AO's deciding who's worthy or not?) I have learned to accept it is a game you cannot win, you are either "connected" or URM. On the other hand, my kid is surrounded by similar brilliant rejects at his program so what is happening is these kids are not being cancelled, they are establishing new nexuses. Time will tell of the success of the highly coveted school and their filters, I have a hard time believing they are very fine tuned after seeing the test optional, covid-era, dei, legecy preference, bloodbath my kid went through.

And yet the schools are full of unhooked kids. Your kid just didn’t measure up and now you’re rationalizing their failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not unless they are first gen, rural, a recruitable athlete, URM, or have famous/powerful connections.

Otherwise they go to Big State U with a ton of merit aid and/or the honors college.

I laughed out loud reading this because it is 100% accurate.

I'm biased but my kid graduated with straight As, 33 credits, a 4.6 GPA on a 4.0 scale, 1580 SAT, top 1% of class, multiple published works, an multi-sport athlete, captain of robotics team and savant like skills in his intended major from a full pay family and he goes in only to safeties. White, unhooked male. Everyone knew who my kid was locally- he is genius IQ smart....and at a state flagship honors with merit. LOL. Oh and he went to a seminar on his essay by college AO and they called it "brilliant" so it wasn't a "bad essay". Aside from now seeing the farce this admissions process is (anyone wonder the logic of 60K a year AO's deciding who's worthy or not?) I have learned to accept it is a game you cannot win, you are either "connected" or URM. On the other hand, my kid is surrounded by similar brilliant rejects at his program so what is happening is these kids are not being cancelled, they are establishing new nexuses. Time will tell of the success of the highly coveted school and their filters, I have a hard time believing they are very fine tuned after seeing the test optional, covid-era, dei, legecy preference, bloodbath my kid went through.

Ooooh, I almost believed this story until the last sentence. You tipped your troll hand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. DC attends a top Ivy, and only about half the kids are hooked. You do need to excel at something, though, in order to be admitted unhooked.

False. THe Harvard suit showed us this. Hooked include legacies, URMs, first generation, POC, athletes, extraordinary musician that the orchestra needs, geographical representation, international, faculty kids, staff kids and so on.

A number of those aren’t hooks unless you’re defining them as whatever gets you accepted. Then of course everyone is hooked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC’s boarding school sends a large number of extremely smart, unhooked white and Asian kids to the Ivies every year.

At the cost of denying your children a childhood with their parents.

You lost me at "unhooked boarding school"

Has the boarding school not explained hooks to you yet? Maybe want to book an appointment with the headmaster (after his golf game with the legacy AOs).

You are totally clueless. About half the boarding kids are on financial aid. Yet they still get into great schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, unless he’s URM. If he’s white or Asian, he can get into Cornell ED. But he can also get into top 25 schools ED like Emory and Vanderbilt. Also top publics like UVA or Michigan.

I was scrolling to say this also. Some of the T25 are more appealing, have more to offer than the ivies in terms of location, school spirit, weather, with equally strong academics

I would say the same thing about the tier 50-75.

Bonus: they're not full of kids that are curated like a china cabinet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, absolutely. Have your kid get off Minecraft and Instagram and start cultivating a talent--debate, orchestra instrument, singing, theater, art, math or science olympics, creative writing, coding, etc--that will be excellent enough to add something of value to an Ivy campus. Otherwise, why should they pick her application out of the pile for admission when so many other kids have high stats too?

Lots of the high stats kids these days are already doing "debate, orchestra instrument, singing, theater, art, math or science olympics, creative writing, coding, etc."

How I long for Europe where college admission is not a variety show but based on your academic performance in high school. I know- inhumane to be reduced to something as base as prior academic performance when I should also be able to showcase my skills in hiring a essay "editor", in my passion for modern dance, and how I raise money for orphans selling cupcakes at the stop sign every Saturday morning. Colleges in Europe must be the height of boredom without the careful crafting of "class mix" to insure we have enough violin players and people of certain national decent, 4 generations removed no matter! I can already see the history books in a 100 years trying to figure out how the hell America got so lost in understanding the point of higher education.

I know. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not unless they are first gen, rural, a recruitable athlete, URM, or have famous/powerful connections.

Otherwise they go to Big State U with a ton of merit aid and/or the honors college.

I laughed out loud reading this because it is 100% accurate.

I'm biased but my kid graduated with straight As, 33 credits, a 4.6 GPA on a 4.0 scale, 1580 SAT, top 1% of class, multiple published works, an multi-sport athlete, captain of robotics team and savant like skills in his intended major from a full pay family and he goes in only to safeties. White, unhooked male. Everyone knew who my kid was locally- he is genius IQ smart....and at a state flagship honors with merit. LOL. Oh and he went to a seminar on his essay by college AO and they called it "brilliant" so it wasn't a "bad essay". Aside from now seeing the farce this admissions process is (anyone wonder the logic of 60K a year AO's deciding who's worthy or not?) I have learned to accept it is a game you cannot win, you are either "connected" or URM. On the other hand, my kid is surrounded by similar brilliant rejects at his program so what is happening is these kids are not being cancelled, they are establishing new nexuses. Time will tell of the success of the highly coveted school and their filters, I have a hard time believing they are very fine tuned after seeing the test optional, covid-era, dei, legecy preference, bloodbath my kid went through.

What was your child’s major? Unfortunately for STEM and business majors it is a bloodbath these days. The applicant pool is extremely skewed, particularly for males.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC’s boarding school sends a large number of extremely smart, unhooked white and Asian kids to the Ivies every year.

At the cost of denying your children a childhood with their parents.

You lost me at "unhooked boarding school"

Has the boarding school not explained hooks to you yet? Maybe want to book an appointment with the headmaster (after his golf game with the legacy AOs).

You are totally clueless. About half the boarding kids are on financial aid. Yet they still get into great schools.

DP Because they’re still coming from a great school. And financial aid at a school that costs $85,000 a year is most often about $20,000, not a free ride. So it’s still wealthy kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I keep hearing about these high stat kids getting rejected. On social media, I have seen posts about ridiculous students with extremely long crazy impressive extracurriculars.

Can a normal smart kid get into an ivy?

My kid has the scores and grades. He plays 3 sports and is on several academic teams. He is not nationally ranked in anything but good at everything. DH and I both attended T25 colleges and ivy grad schools. Our kid is better than DH and me in every single category.

So, keeping things at the Ivy League, Cornell is doable for a smart unhooked kid with the grades and the stats and the ECs and the recs and the essays and all that.

And of course there's always going to be the random that gets into Brown or Dartmouth or wherever.

But by and large, no. Your smart, hardworking kid is not getting into Harvard.

That's reserved for certain names, wealth, wall street, some athletes (hockey is very good), the DEI stuff, some legacy, the "Z" list, first generation.

Straight A white girl Lucy with college educated parents from Hyatsville is not going to Yale.

But there are some very good non-Ivy League schools that prioritize talent and will make it happen financially - MIT, CalTech, Rice, Williams, Chicago, Notre Dame, Bowdoin, Northwestern, Vanderbilt. And the instate public school honors programs are becoming better and better every single year.

And of course you can shoot your shot with merit scholarships,

But generally, the Ivy League today is a club. It's not a meritocracy.

Haha, no, still a meritocracy, but not just.

[Anonymous]

No, aid tends to be close to a full ride. They do, however, have a few hours a day built into their schedules to hone extracurricular skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I keep hearing about these high stat kids getting rejected. On social media, I have seen posts about ridiculous students with extremely long crazy impressive extracurriculars.

Can a normal smart kid get into an ivy?

My kid has the scores and grades. He plays 3 sports and is on several academic teams. He is not nationally ranked in anything but good at everything. DH and I both attended T25 colleges and ivy grad schools. Our kid is better than DH and me in every single category.

Can they? Sure.

Will they? Crapshoot.

There are too many "qualified" kids for the number of seats available.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not unless they are first gen, rural, a recruitable athlete, URM, or have famous/powerful connections.

Otherwise they go to Big State U with a ton of merit aid and/or the honors college.

I laughed out loud reading this because it is 100% accurate.

I'm biased but my kid graduated with straight As, 33 credits, a 4.6 GPA on a 4.0 scale, 1580 SAT, top 1% of class, multiple published works, an multi-sport athlete, captain of robotics team and savant like skills in his intended major from a full pay family and he goes in only to safeties. White, unhooked male. Everyone knew who my kid was locally- he is genius IQ smart....and at a state flagship honors with merit. LOL. Oh and he went to a seminar on his essay by college AO and they called it "brilliant" so it wasn't a "bad essay". Aside from now seeing the farce this admissions process is (anyone wonder the logic of 60K a year AO's deciding who's worthy or not?) I have learned to accept it is a game you cannot win, you are either "connected" or URM. On the other hand, my kid is surrounded by similar brilliant rejects at his program so what is happening is these kids are not being cancelled, they are establishing new nexuses. Time will tell of the success of the highly coveted school and their filters, I have a hard time believing they are very fine tuned after seeing the test optional, covid-era, dei, legecy preference, bloodbath my kid went through.

The problem is, there are thousands of kids like yours. How are the AO's supposed to distinguish them without flipping a coin? My kid sounds like your kid. absolutely no difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, absolutely. Have your kid get off Minecraft and Instagram and start cultivating a talent--debate, orchestra instrument, singing, theater, art, math or science olympics, creative writing, coding, etc--that will be excellent enough to add something of value to an Ivy campus. Otherwise, why should they pick her application out of the pile for admission when so many other kids have high stats too?

Lots of the high stats kids these days are already doing "debate, orchestra instrument, singing, theater, art, math or science olympics, creative writing, coding, etc."

How I long for Europe where college admission is not a variety show but based on your academic performance in high school. I know- inhumane to be reduced to something as base as prior academic performance when I should also be able to showcase my skills in hiring a essay "editor", in my passion for modern dance, and how I raise money for orphans selling cupcakes at the stop sign every Saturday morning. Colleges in Europe must be the height of boredom without the careful crafting of "class mix" to insure we have enough violin players and people of certain national decent, 4 generations removed no matter! I can already see the history books in a 100 years trying to figure out how the hell America got so lost in understanding the point of higher education.

I know. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

+2

4+ generations removed is right. People have no idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, absolutely. Have your kid get off Minecraft and Instagram and start cultivating a talent--debate, orchestra instrument, singing, theater, art, math or science olympics, creative writing, coding, etc--that will be excellent enough to add something of value to an Ivy campus. Otherwise, why should they pick her application out of the pile for admission when so many other kids have high stats too?

Lots of the high stats kids these days are already doing "debate, orchestra instrument, singing, theater, art, math or science olympics, creative writing, coding, etc."

How I long for Europe where college admission is not a variety show but based on your academic performance in high school. I know- inhumane to be reduced to something as base as prior academic performance when I should also be able to showcase my skills in hiring a essay "editor", in my passion for modern dance, and how I raise money for orphans selling cupcakes at the stop sign every Saturday morning. Colleges in Europe must be the height of boredom without the careful crafting of "class mix" to insure we have enough violin players and people of certain national decent, 4 generations removed no matter! I can already see the history books in a 100 years trying to figure out how the hell America got so lost in understanding the point of higher education.

The elite schools are based on academic performance. The problem is, there are more "qualified" applicants than there are seats. The numbers for applicants of these schools in the US far outweighs the equivalent for european schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But generally, the Ivy League today is a club. It's not a meritocracy.

When have the Ivy Leagues ever been a meritocracy?

Serious question, because to my understanding, the answer is "never"