Reply to Getting into top 20 college is nearly impossible without

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Getting into top 20 college is nearly impossible without"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]having an extreme talent in an area they need at that moment. Perfect scorers with perfect GPA will get rejected. Not only do you need to have an extreme talent, but you have to have provable achievements. 10, 000 hours of community service means nada. Your Scholastic awards mean nothing. Your MUN competitions mean almost nothing. Your state level Varsity sports could mean something, your state level Oboe could mean something, but your state level violin probably won't. Top scorers are a dime a dozen, you have to be top scorer PLUS supremely talented. Every year I tell this to parents and they don't believe me and they apply and their kid gets shut out. And they thank me for making them apply to some realistic schools (that they think they will never have to attend)…bc they got shut out of 7, accepted to the state safety they don't really like, but the other 2 schools they didn't think they would need…well, thank god bc that is where they end up. There are very few exceptions to these rules.[/quote]

Yes and no.  I think the better way to say it is that perfect grades/scores don't guarantee admission to top schools without serious talent.  But there are still plenty of kids that do get in without serious talent or passion.  [b]I know a few kids that got into top 20 schools.  They had great grades/scores and extracurriculars but nothing I would call state or national level anything.  They each played sports at their HS but definitely not recruited or were even on teams that did particularly well. [/b] I'm sure they had great recs, essays & other activities including internships but no one thing that was extraordinary.  They were well rounded kids.  [/quote]

This describes my DD and several of her friends who got into "top 20" schools last year from a good public very well, down to the enthusiastic participation in not very good teams as their main EC.  Not a one of them got into HPYS (only the kids with hooks or staggeringly impressive talents had luck with those), but they got into schools like Duke, Cornell, Northwestern, Rice, Vandy, WashU and Johns Hopkins.  Most of us knew the odds and made sure our kids didn't waste too much time on applications at the super reaches.  Many of the other universities seemed happy to accept high stats kids who showed a lot of interest and were sincere in their desire to attend.

That being said, I did have a couple of friends who were absolutely convinced that a 2400 SAT/4.0 UW GPA/12 APs with all 5s on the tests meant that their kid would get into one of the tippy top schools, and they and their kids were devastated for a while when it didn't work out.  So I think the overall message of this thread is good for people who may not be as familiar with the current admissions picture. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics