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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I read who gets in and why too, and while very insightful, I’m not sure it gives a magic formula.

What I took away from WGIAW it was:

Be very smart and get an A and 5 on BC Calc junior year (especially if female as this illustrates high quant IQ.)
Take the other hardest courses at your school and get As
Apply ED and EA
Be full pay
Be recruited for a sport
Most importantly, admission officers are human and make many seemingly random decisions

Anyway, this “recipe” is not possible for most kids. For my kids, we are going to do a lot of rolling and EA schools and be happy with those schools. We are not getting attached to any one perfect school. I am encouraging my kid to apply to schools they fit their areas of interest but have admission rates above 50%. Maybe they will try for one harder to get into school for ED but that will be balanced with others that are more likely. 
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PP. I don’t think the book gives a formula. I kind of gleaned one from the book and from anecdotes of friends and neighbors. It worked for us. Not saying it would work for others. But maybe it’s helpful for some who like to think in a “what helps” way. Lots of things don’t help. Some things do. Play those cards right and you improve your odds. That’s all I meant. [/quote]

PP Can you tell us what you gleaned from it? What matters and what does not?[/quote]

PP here. Yes! It’s grades, rigor, SAT/ACT, ECs, and applications. I also want to make clear that it isn’t at all about getting into a Top 20 college. It’s about aiming for what you think is best for your DC. You get the formula, maximize the variables in it, and that improves your odds for colleges that you’re targeting. It’s so simple people will think it’s stupid. But we just took each variable in turn during junior year and used our limited time and money on what mattered most, each of those variables. Like we said, we can’t control everything, but for the next 2 montres, we’re focusing on maximizing SAT score. Check. Next. [/quote]

What I got out of the book was partly how many totally qualified students they see, and how they have to prune hard to get to a reasonably sized class. It helped me see that my kid's experience of being put on many waitlists was actually a sign of being qualified but just not having some (likely unchangeable) attributes desired by the school for that particular class.

Also how important it is to tell a coherent story about the student. Want to major in subject X but have showed no interest in it before (through classes, extracurriculars, etc.)? Not a great look. Say you couldn't do extracurriculars because of family obligations but then don't give enough detail about the time commitment? You haven't proven your case and it's hard to tell if you're an involved older sibling or just a slacker.[/quote]

What I got from the book is that at a lot of these schools they have already reserved seats for certain students.  At highly competitive SLACs, if you aren’t an athlete, you have a much lower chance at admission because they are filling a large percentage of that small freshman class with athletes to play on their sports teams. The majority of these athletes will be affluent white kids (water polo, tennis, LAX, sailing, hockey, etc.).  If they are trying to build a diverse class and you have similar demographics as the athletes, many of those seats are already taken when you apply.  You might be one of a 5,000 applicants competing for 15 spots. It is like with independent schools with strong sibling and alum preferences, they may tell you they are admitting 25 kids, but in actuality 18 of those spots are already taken so you are really competing for 7 spots.  That’s what I wish seniors really understood. I blame the colleges and universities for helping create this landscape. If they were more open and said we need to admit between 140-150 athletes every year to fill our sports teams. Out of the 400 students in our freshman class, 160 are athletes and 40 are legacy.  You’d then have a better sense that if you lacked that “hook”, you were competing for one of the remaining 200 spots which will be filled with an eye toward building a diverse class.  As they decide who will make up that remaining 200, they will take into account the demographics of the 200 spots already taken by the athletes and legacy students.  Knowing the typical demographics of the athletes and the legacies would give you a better sense of how under or over represented your demographic is. They might have already admitted a large number of students similar to you. If that’s the case, it is just going to be harder because they may want to balance the class out[/quote]

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