Anonymous wrote:
You can tell by honor societies, AP courses, overall junior year GPA compared to cohorts, etc. A 4.34 (average GPA for UVA now) at application signals top ten percent. Also the college counselor knows in order to guide the students to the most suitable schools. Admissions readers are adept at reading the transcripts and can tell. The Jefferson Scholar program (UVA full ride run by alums) specifically asks you to state rank (our school didn't rank either but the head had to answer the question). Also FCPs awards valedictorian to anyone with over a 4.0 (which doesn't make any sense to me) so it's very clear to everyone involved that those 50 valedictorians are top 10-15%.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp, you are describing private school counseling practices and applying them to public schools. What school does your child attend? At FCPS schools, the college counselor is essentially just a resource position. He plays zero role in actual school selection or application execution. The guidance counselors are basically just there to deal with schedule changes and administrative stuff, but they also are responsible for writing a recommendation for the student, often based on a cheat sheet without ever having met that student.

No one at the school is deciding which school a child should or shouldn't apply to, nor are they supporting or sabotaging applications as they see fit.

I know that at private schools, it is common for the college counselor to pick and choose who to present to each top school, but that doesn't happen in public. There just isn't the time or energy to deal with it. Students select the schools and are entirely in charge of the process.

I strongly disagree. When you go in and meet with the guidance counselor, if you say your DS wants to apply to Harvard and UVA, the counselor looks at your child's record and pulls up Naviance to show you exactly what your child's chances are coming from that particular high school, competing against students in the same class. If the college counselor is doing her job job, she will try to provide realistic assessment and direct you and your child to schools that are safeties, solid choices and reaches. They are not going to kill themselves trying to get your child in Harvard when they have 500 other students who need their time, as well. They are also responsible for reviewing the essay, arranging for and compiling the letters of recommendation, as well as test taking advice, putting the whole package together and sending it by email to the selected schools. Their job is to making reasonable suggestions and matches. They don't want their time wasted on applications that will go nowhere.

Anonymous wrote:Had several parents recently explain to me that it's better to send their bright kids to a less competitive public HS like West Potomac, TC Williams, or Edison, in Virginia as opposed to moving to McLean for Langley or McLean. Their rationale is that in-state VA schools make it a "policy" to take kids from the top 10% of each high school in the Commonwealth. So the odds of their child being in the top 10% at West Potomac or TC Williams (especially with a sport like crew behind them) will make them more competitive for UVA or VA Tech than being in the top 25% or so at McLean/Langley. Any truth to this?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Had several parents recently explain to me that it's better to send their bright kids to a less competitive public HS like West Potomac, TC Williams, or Edison, in Virginia as opposed to moving to McLean for Langley or McLean. Their rationale is that in-state VA schools make it a "policy" to take kids from the top 10% of each high school in the Commonwealth. So the odds of their child being in the top 10% at West Potomac or TC Williams (especially with a sport like crew behind them) will make them more competitive for UVA or VA Tech than being in the top 25% or so at McLean/Langley. Any truth to this?

McLean and Langley already have about 5% of their top ten skimmed to go to TJ. So, it should be easier to be top ten there. Plus, it looks like 10% of the class gets into UVA and W&M and more into VT- but all of the top ten do not apply-. If you are in the 10%-15%, you still have a decent chance if your ECs are up to snuff to get into UVA/W&M and if you are top 25% you have a decent chance for VT. Datapoint: My DC was at the 80th percentile at McLean and got into VT engineering (he went and is currently elsewhere). I know this because he missed a 4.0 by .003 and about 20% of his class received the 4.0 award.

They are competitive compared to most other state’s flagships schools, but it is not as hard as people think.

Anonymous wrote:Pp, you are describing private school counseling practices and applying them to public schools. What school does your child attend? At FCPS schools, the college counselor is essentially just a resource position. He plays zero role in actual school selection or application execution. The guidance counselors are basically just there to deal with schedule changes and administrative stuff, but they also are responsible for writing a recommendation for the student, often based on a cheat sheet without ever having met that student.

No one at the school is deciding which school a child should or shouldn't apply to, nor are they supporting or sabotaging applications as they see fit.

I know that at private schools, it is common for the college counselor to pick and choose who to present to each top school, but that doesn't happen in public. There just isn't the time or energy to deal with it. Students select the schools and are entirely in charge of the process.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do all the best NoVa publics still disclose class rank on the transcript shared with colleges? There's your issue; it allows UVA to discriminate against kids outside of the top 10%. It makes admissions job a lot easier, while allowing them to goose their common data set #s, which is how US News calculates rankings.

No dice. FCPS doesn't rank.

Anonymous wrote:Do all the best NoVa publics still disclose class rank on the transcript shared with colleges? There's your issue; it allows UVA to discriminate against kids outside of the top 10%. It makes admissions job a lot easier, while allowing them to goose their common data set #s, which is how US News calculates rankings.

Anonymous wrote:

Of the Naviance chart doesn't support your child's candidacy and the guidance counselor suggests other Virginia Schools that's a good indication the public high school will not support your candidacy to UVA, meaning letters of recommendation will be lukewarm and the 50 or 60 other kids who have the 4.0++ will get preferential treatment.

Let me explain how Naviance works. Teachers upload ONE letter. It goes to all of the schools. They don't write a "lukewarm" letter for one college and then a stronger one for another. It's one letter. Your kid's counselor either didn't explain this or you never asked.

Remember that UVA wants to lower its yield no. for purposes of the rating services. So you can never trust with precision what the admissions officer is saying. The role of the admissions officer (in today's world of crazy ratings) is to get your child to apply. So they can reject them. So the school's selectivity and yield numbers drop.

The fact that you don't know what yield is shows that you should not be telling anyone how admissions works. High yield is a good thing. No one wants yield to go down.

Admissions at public schools tell you who is competitive for admission. They are underpaid and overworked. They aren't interested in more applications.

Contrary to what some think, you now need higher and better stats as an in-state student than OOS.

I saw the links that proved the opposite. I also so the link where they say the top 10% stat only includes the high schools that sent them rank info, which FCPS does not.



Maybe go back to College Confidential.

No need. Kids are both at UVA. Yes, I hit send before I could correct the "yield" comment. But my point still stands that college admissions directors are going to encourage any and all to apply because they want the number of applications to increase so as to drive down the selectivity percentage and improve the yield stats solely for reporting purposes to USN&WR and Princeton Review, etc. If you don't believe that your publicly paid high school counselor isn't trying to direct the right public students to UVA, VA Tech, W & Mary, etc., then there's no point in talking to you. It also happens at the privates. The high school college counselors have long-standing reputations and relations with public universities and privates. They don't want to look foolish by suggesting a student who doesn't have the right record. There are many ways of conveying this information. Long after you and your child is gone, that Langley or McLean college counselor will still be there, still ingratiating themselves to the colleges in the hopes of moving on to a better paying gig at a private and then ultimately go into business for themselves and bring in the big bucks. Like Nina Marks. it's all one big fat happy industry. There's a lot of great books out now on how to play the game. Read College Confidential every day.