I second honors programs at state flagships.

Anonymous wrote:Rice! They don't care as much about your ECs or making the world a better place. Rice, however, wants kids with very high stats, perfect GPA, high test scores, etc.

Would also add JHU.

Rice! They don't care as much about your ECs or making the world a better place. Rice, however, wants kids with very high stats, perfect GPA, high test scores, etc.

Anonymous wrote:So if all the kids with hooks like legacy, athletics, first gen, national awards and pro level art go to HYPS, what is the best schools for normal, extremely smart, hardworking kids with normal ec's? I think I'd like my dc to be surrounded by kids that fall into the latter group.

Anywhere in the T50 Universities and T20 SLACs is full of kids fitting this profile. There are far more high performing kids than there are spots in T10.

Colgate Holy Cross dayidson urichmond

Anonymous wrote:So if all the kids with hooks like legacy, athletics, first gen, national awards and pro level art go to HYPS, what is the best schools for normal, extremely smart, hardworking kids with normal ec's? I think I'd like my dc to be surrounded by kids that fall into the latter group.

I'm not sure what you mean by "normal" ECs, but there are lots of schools that want the best and brightest regardless of legacy and connections and hooks -

MIT
Rice
Northwestern
Vanderbilt
Chicago
CalTech
Cornell
Johns Hopkins
Notre Dame
CMU
WashU
Emory
Harvey Mudd
Pomona
Bowdoin
Swarthmore
Michigan
Berkeley
UCLA
Georgia Tech
West Point
Annapolis
Air Force

And the honors programs at most state flagships will have super smart and accomplished students, particularly these days as more and more families are priced out of private universities.

OP’s kid is probably in 8th grade.

All of the smart kids have hooks. That is what makes them smart.

Anonymous wrote:So if all the kids with hooks like legacy, athletics, first gen, national awards and pro level art go to HYPS, what is the best schools for normal, extremely smart, hardworking kids with normal ec's? I think I'd like my dc to be surrounded by kids that fall into the latter group.

Wouldn't extremely smart have some hook?. What is normal ECs? School clubs?

Is it just very high GPA and test scores?. You really have to look at the top 25-50 schools mission statements and see which ones align more with your kid and apply

These days every top school care about what will you do with the education to make world a better place.

There are hundreds of schools that work exceedingly well for students like you describe. Get a Fiske Guide and see which schools resonate and are affordable. Find schools at a range of rejectivity levels.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Non-HYPS top 20 schools if you can apply ED.

That's not true. I think there are still schools that prefer legacies, athletes etc

Agree. And some kids don’t want to ED so they get passed over in RD.

Anonymous wrote:Non-HYPS top 20 schools if you can apply ED.

That's not true. I think there are still schools that prefer legacies, athletes etc

Schools like Northwestern, UChicago, JHU, CMU, Rice, Vanderbilt, WashU, Emory

Non-HYPS top 20 schools if you can apply ED.

So if all the kids with hooks like legacy, athletics, first gen, national awards and pro level art go to HYPS, what is the best schools for normal, extremely smart, hardworking kids with normal ec's? I think I'd like my dc to be surrounded by kids that fall into the latter group.