Reply to How is your top student doing with acceptances?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "How is your top student doing with acceptances?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]I know you asked for responses from parent of top students[/b], but my reply might also help.

(fyi I also have a top student...she's just not the one applying to college yet.)

My other kid, the senior, is not at the top; she would be the one that the kids might see as "very good but not quite as accomplished."

She was accepted ED into a [b]top 10 school.[/b]

[b]Because she's not "top" she applied ED[/b].  So that's the first thing.

Second, although she has no hooks at all, [b]she has a compelling story[/b].

Third, she selected a school that seems to really like kids from her school.  High schools seem to have relationships with colleges--I don't know how it works, but I do know that, for instance, Wash U, U-M, Harvard, Brown historically seem to accept a lot of her high school's students, while Pomona and Princeton seem to be near impossible for even the "top" students.  I noticed this by paying attention to the matriculation of the classes above my DC's class (but that only shows where kids decided to go, not where they were accepted), so then spoke with the HS dean to get a better picture.

DC's favorite school, seemed on target due to her stats, but historically the high school didn't seem to get many kids in there.  Oddly, the much higher-ranking school seemed to be a good shot.  DD made the call; she didn't want to roll the dice with the bad odds for her favorite school, and went with her second choice, the high-ranking school. And it worked out.

I told her that if she didn't like high-ranking school, she could transfer.

So just saying all this to say, [b]it's complicated[/b].[/quote]

What is the compelling story for a less-than-top student to get ED to a top 10 school in a pandemic? I understand the HS connection for sure, but I know tons of top students and they aren't getting into top 10 schools, yet. Explain complicated...[/quote]

I believe PP is saying that playing the admissions game is complicated, the compelling story is probably just private.  I completely agree with the point that schools target individual high schools, my oldest took this approach and it worked (not a "top" student and it wasn't a top 10 school, but same logic applies).  Schools return to the same well, because they want the word of mouth relationship, exactly what PP tapped into.[/quote]
top PP here, and bottom PP is correct in that is what I was trying to convey.  BTW we also avoided schools that are heavily in to legacy, because there are a lot of legacy kids at my DC's school and we didn't want to compete with them.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics