Reply to Why even waste the effort to apply to the top colleges at this point?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was linked to this profile by Amherst College, a prestigious liberal arts college with a 14% admit rate: https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/669797

According to this,

75% of applicants with SAT critical reading scores of 750-800 were turned down.
78% of those with SAT math scores of 750-800 were ultimately turned down.
77%  of those with SAT writing scores of 750-800 were ultimately turned down.
77% of those with ACT scores of 34-36 were ultimately turned down.

It becomes worse on the lower end (85% of 700-740s or 30-33s ultimately turned down).

What's the point in wasting $60-$80 in applying to colleges like Stanford, Ivies, U'Chicago, Amherst, Pomona, etc. when doing the absolute best you can isn't enough to get in? When so many of the slots are taken by athletes, legacies, students of color, or low-income students? I just find this appalling, honestly.[b] I know test scores aren't the best predictors,[/b] but most of these kids rank in the top of their class and have great extracurricular involvements to boot. Is the average valedictorian just not good enough for the top schools at this day and time?  [/quote]

If you know that test scores aren't a good predictor, don't make yourself crazy by focusing on the test scores.  There is so much more that goes into selecting kids for these types of schools.  The key is to avoid ONLY applying to these types of schools.  Use the college common data sets to see where your kids falls with test scores, grades, ranking and even geography.  Then select a range of schools and include schools where your child's stats fall squarely in the average or above.  IMO that's the mistake families make, not applying to a range of schools.[/quote]

FWIW, my DC got into one of the waste-of-an-application-fee schools mentioned above, but was excited about and would have been happy attending other schools on her list that were much easier to get into.  There are lots of excellent universities that aren't highly selective.  The challenge in this process is to find "safety" schools that look great to your child.  And if you focus on interests rather than prestige, it's not that hard to do -- at least for people like OP whose comments about low-income students suggest that her DCs' choices aren't economically constrained.[/quote]

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