Reply to 3.65 unweighted GPA and a 1580 SAT from a BIG 3 - What should realistically be on the list

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think some of the experienced private school parents posting in this thread had kids in HS more than a couple of years ago, and they don't understand how much more competitive college admissions has gotten in the last few years for UMC, unhooked kids in the DMV. My oldest DD graduated HS in 2015, had 3.5 UW GPA/35 ACT/NMF and got into schools like Duke and Swarthmore. My youngest is now a HS junior with a 3.87 UW GPA/1560 SAT and has been told both those schools are reaches and unlikely to admit her.[/quote]

I think it’s wrong to say college admissions has gotten more competitive. The number of kids hasn’t increased that much and they haven’t gotten smarter. The difference is more kids have stats above what used to be high enough for top 25 schools. The stats are inflated due to easier tests and prepping. Your oldest’s 35 from 4 years ago is a much better score percentile-wise than your dd’s 1560 today. [/quote]

[b]The acceptance rates at the most elite institutions decreased steadily. [/b]The problem is, that in the DMV and particularly at elite privates in the DMV, these are the schools that every student wants to attend.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/09/a-majority-of-u-s-colleges-admit-most-students-who-apply/

[Excerpt]

Of the 1,364 four-year colleges and universities we looked at, 17 admitted fewer than 10% of applicants in 2017, the most recent year for which comprehensive data are available. That group includes such prestigious names as Stanford (4.7%), Harvard (5.2%), Yale (6.9%) and Northwestern (9.2%). Another 29 schools admitted between 10% and 20% of applicants, including Georgetown (15.7%), the University of Southern California (16%), UCLA (16.1%) and the University of California, Berkeley (17.1%). ...

[b]The extremely competitive schools amounted to 3.4% of all the colleges and universities in this analysis, and they accounted for just 4.1% of total student enrollment.[/b] By contrast, more than half of the schools in our sample (53.3%) admitted two-thirds or more of their applicants in 2017, including such well-known names as St. John’s University in New York (67.7%), Virginia Tech (70.1%), Quinnipiac University (73.9%), the University of Missouri at Columbia (78.1%) and George Mason University (81.3%).

[/quote]

The bolded doesn’t necessarily mean it’s more competitive. Just because more kids are applying to top schools doesn’t make it more competitive. It just means more kids who probably shouldn’t be applying to top schools are applying to top schools. Like I said test scores are inflated. A 1450 used to be a great score for applying to an ivy. Kids are still thinking this probably because they’ve got parents who remembered doing well with those stats. [/quote]

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