Reply to How did your DC fare applying to top colleges from privates that don't rank or weight grades/GPA?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]New poster - does anyone feel that a child close to what the OP has described would stand a better chance going ED? I saw some stats in the NY Times last fall that some of the Ivies especially have 25-30% acceptance rate on a much smaller pool of applicants, and some schools like Harvard, U of Chicago, Penn, Hopkins and Cornell fill more than 40% of the incoming freshman class from early admits. Especially schools that can lock kids in early. Seems like it is a game changer - and harder to get in regular admit if you guess wrong and don't get in.[/quote]

Yes, it is good to apply early -- it does increase the odds and at some schools, like UPenn, it increases them significantly.  All colleges, even the most elite, pay a lot of attention to U.S. News & World rankings, and their yield is an important factor.  The early application process, even where it is "Early Action" (like Yale, where you can still apply to other places regular admission) and not "Early Decision" (where you commit that you will not apply elsewhere regular), helps colleges manage their yield.  This is the reason why selective colleges use their waiting lists more than in the past as well.

With that said, it's important to know if your child has a good profile for Early acceptance at a given school.  If your child is strong, but six other kids with stronger grades/scores plan to apply early to the same school, that will lengthen the odds for your child.  Do listen to the hints the college counselors give you -- they don't want to discourage kids from reaching, but the Early application coin is valuable and shouldn't be "wasted" either by applying to a school where the odds are very long or a school that the student doesn't really want to go to (but thinks they will get into).

Agree with the posters who say not to worry about unweighted grades and class rank.  The reps are indeed familiar with these schools -- as another poster said -- sometimes even down to the level of what teachers are the toughest graders.  One Ivy has had the same person responsible for the DC privates since the early 1980s -- that rep knows the transcripts inside and out and the teachers to boot.  (I once saw a rep from a top college beam from ear to ear at a school function upon meeting face-to-face a teacher recommender who was apparently famed at that particular college for the insightfulness/eloquence of the recommendations.)

This seems daunting but there really are a wealth of superb schools out there.  It is more important than ever before not to obsess about 1-2 specific schools, because the admissions rates are so low that there is a "margin of error" built in, but to build a good list.  There's so much information out there now that I do think it's possible to put together a great and balanced list.  And with the advent of Naviance, you don't just have to take a counselors' word for the typical profile of an admittee from your school, you can see some data.

Good luck, it can be stressful but it all works out!

Signed,

A Veteran[/quote]

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