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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Help me understand where DS stands. GPA is 3.75 in a school where average GPA is 3.7. SAT 1540. School average of 1500.

High school very rigorous, among top 20 private high schools in the country so peer group is super strong. Zero grade inflation. But also many in peer group hooked (rich or URM, etc) so naviance not very helpful.

Upward trajectory with grades. EC are strong and somewhat unique but not nationally ranked. Does well in national debate tournaments, but that's not his main EC. No sports. Will have great essay and LOR

I think being middle of the pack school-wise knocks out top 20 schools. But does it knock out top 40?

What I'm asking is where do middle of the pack kids from Riverdale or Horace Mann go to college?[/quote]

Is your son full pay? Does he want to major in the humanities, social sciences or non-premed sciences?

If he wants to major in CS or bust: He’ll have a hard time. His top state CS school will be the match lottery school. (He’ll certainly be qualified but might have only a 20 percent chance of getting in.)

He’ll need to develop a list of public CS programs at schools you’ve never heard of, along with, if you’re full-pay, CS programs at private school you’ve barely heard of.

If he’s full-pay and open to majoring in history, he can probably have a 2 percent chance at the very most selective national universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford); roughly a 15 percent at any given private T40 through T15 school; maybe a 60 percent chance at any given private school ranked 40 to 100; and almost 100 percent chance of getting into private schools ranked under 100.

If he’s a full-pay English or history major, the percentages might be about 10 percentage points higher for any given category of liberal arts college. So, say, 12 percent for Amherst, 25 percent for a Grinnell and 70 percent for a Gettysburg. But you have to look hard at the finances of the lower-ranked liberal arts colleges to make sure they’ll  will last four years.

He’ll have an 80 percent chance of getting into his state flagship or the equivalent (say, SUNY Buffalo and SUNY Stony Brook), but the odds of him getting into the honors program or a lot of merit aid may be poor.

A lot of schools will give you enough aid to make the net cost comparable to the cost of your state flagship, but it might be hard to get enough aid to get the net cost much below the cost of your state flagship.

These estimates are based on a very rough idea of what the US News rankings are and me obsessing over Chance Me and admissions results posts on College Confidential for about a year.

A possible s[/quote]

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