Anonymous wrote:No. Top stats kid. legacy by the professional school at Harvard (doesn't count) and triple legacy at Yale (professor relationship). Large donations to both by family. Wanted Princeton. Didn't get it. Was rejected from all Ivies. White kid. Went to UVA and is now full scholarship at Oxford for DPhil. (where meritocracy still exists in some fields).

DS22 was very high stats but otherwise unhooked. We were full pay.

Anonymous wrote:No. Top stats kid. legacy by the professional school at Harvard (doesn't count) and triple legacy at Yale (professor relationship). Large donations to both by family. Wanted Princeton. Didn't get it. Was rejected from all Ivies. White kid. Went to UVA and is now full scholarship at Oxford for DPhil. (where meritocracy still exists in some fields).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You need to determine reaches, matches, and safeties on your own.

For grades, you can try to do some comparison by looking at your high school's Naviance scattergrams for particular colleges. Look at both weighted and unweighted GPAs. (Score info from these scattergrams is less useful now that most colleges are test optional, because you cannot tell whether the score for a particular data point was submitted or not.)

For scores, I would use the last year before test-optional policies became widespread. That would be college class of 2024, for which admission data is included in Common Data Set 2020-2021. You can usually find Common Data Sets for each year posted on the college's website, though not all colleges post their CDS.

Determining reaches, matches, and safeties is about more than matching the student's stats to the school; you also must consider acceptance rate. Find the most recent acceptance rate somewhere on the college's admission website, for college class of 2026, or see if it's listed here: https://www.collegekickstart.com/blog/item/class-of-2026-admission-results.

There is some disagreement on how to use acceptance rates for determining reaches, matches, and safeties. For a high-stats student: schools with acceptance rates <30% = reach, 30%-60% = match/target, >60% = safety. If the student does not have high stats (e.g. scores over the school's 75th percentile), then you need to adjust accordingly.

Honestly, under test optional policies, the uncertainty is simply greater than it was under the old test-required scenario, and this makes categorizing reaches, matches, and safeties that much more difficult. There is wisdom in a more conservative approach: have more targets and safeties than would have seemed necessary in the past.

Which is hard for some, if neither has gone to college for example.

We made the decision to define Safety/Target as a college with:
1. overall acceptance of >45%
2. Collegevine showing >65%
3. SAT in the top 25%
4. Above typical/average GPA
=> Got into all of those

Our Hard Target was a mixed bag, and ended up 50/50:
1. overall acceptance of >20%
2. Collegevine showing >50%
3. SAT in the top 25% or 50% (not below)
4. At or above typical/average GPA

Reaches - mostly denied, but got into 2
1. overall acceptance of <20%
2. Collegevine showing <40%
3. SAT in the 50% (not below)
4. At typical/average GPA

Where do you find 50 percentile SAT number? I only see 25th and 75th.

😳

Anonymous wrote:Short answer is yes, child got accepted to schools that matched her stats and a couple reaches. We looked at Naviance and the Common Data Set mainly. I did find it interesting that when I calculated how many kids were getting in to different colleges (from her high school) the percentages were much lower than what was presented as acceptance rates from those sources.

For example, JMU supposedly had 71% acceptance rate but from her school this year it was only 55%. Also for Virginia Tech it was reportedly 64% but from her school it was only 36%. Even VCU which was supposedly 86% acceptance rate only accepted 64% of the kids who applied from her school.

I’d be really interested to know whether it was because a lot of kids applied who didn’t have the stats, or because they all just had way more applications this year. From her school Virginia Tech was significantly more than last year but not the others.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. But he was a high stats kid, so it wasn't a shocker. I thought he EC profile was pretty good, but the super-highly selective schools didn't seem to agree (with the exception of Northeastern)!

Did your DC go with NU? Are they happy?

Anonymous wrote:Short answer is yes, child got accepted to schools that matched her stats and a couple reaches. We looked at Naviance and the Common Data Set mainly. I did find it interesting that when I calculated how many kids were getting in to different colleges (from her high school) the percentages were much lower than what was presented as acceptance rates from those sources.

For example, JMU supposedly had 71% acceptance rate but from her school this year it was only 55%. Also for Virginia Tech it was reportedly 64% but from her school it was only 36%. Even VCU which was supposedly 86% acceptance rate only accepted 64% of the kids who applied from her school.

I’d be really interested to know whether it was because a lot of kids applied who didn’t have the stats, or because they all just had way more applications this year. From her school Virginia Tech was significantly more than last year but not the others.

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Nope, my high stats kid attended their safety school last year.

-waitlisted at a super-reach, rejected from one other reach
-rejected from 2 targets, accepted at in-state flagship/honors - was a target but they wanted out of state
-accepted at 2 out of state safetys, went to one of them

Turns out my kid is very happy there!

Could you give a little background about generally which high school your kid attended (public/private, county, magnet, etc)

Many thanks and glad your kid is at a place where he/she is happy.

Was in a magnet at a public, we are full pay, and applications were submitted EA in early and mid September. The 2 targets where they were rejected should have been acceptances (based on GPA, test scores which were submitted, ECs, etc).

Like I said, our child is doing well and is extremely happy where they landed. I still fume about those 2 schools. My child is clearly a better person than I am!

Your kid prob. went to TJ, is male and you are probably Asian. Typical story for a lot of Asian kids at TJ. The ones that do get in are working with a college admissions counselor and creating a narrative/story over high school to get into a T10 (e.g. I want to go to med school to solve heart disease because by grandma had a heart attack and btw, here's an app I created to detect heart disease early and oh by the way, I also work with low income people to detect heart disease early so it can be prevented). With very, very, very few exceptions, anyone who gets into an Ivy or a T10 school is doing that.

Anonymous wrote:My kid got into an Ivy. Test optional, private school GPA 95, EC's fine but not spectacular. Legacy, but still: could have knocked me over with a feather. Stats predicted rejection.

And... kid turned it down, for a school ranked towards the bottom of the top 25. His logic: getting into the Ivy seemed like a fluke; he was worried about going to a school where he felt he would be one of the weaker students, surrounded by competitive maniacs. Felt he would be happier at the slightly less insanely competitive school.

Moral of this story: i don't know, but weird things do happen.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope, my high stats kid attended their safety school last year.

-waitlisted at a super-reach, rejected from one other reach
-rejected from 2 targets, accepted at in-state flagship/honors - was a target but they wanted out of state
-accepted at 2 out of state safetys, went to one of them

Turns out my kid is very happy there!

Could you give a little background about generally which high school your kid attended (public/private, county, magnet, etc)

Many thanks and glad your kid is at a place where he/she is happy.

Was in a magnet at a public, we are full pay, and applications were submitted EA in early and mid September. The 2 targets where they were rejected should have been acceptances (based on GPA, test scores which were submitted, ECs, etc).

Like I said, our child is doing well and is extremely happy where they landed. I still fume about those 2 schools. My child is clearly a better person than I am!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope, my high stats kid attended their safety school last year.

-waitlisted at a super-reach, rejected from one other reach
-rejected from 2 targets, accepted at in-state flagship/honors - was a target but they wanted out of state
-accepted at 2 out of state safetys, went to one of them

Turns out my kid is very happy there!

Could you give a little background about generally which high school your kid attended (public/private, county, magnet, etc)

Many thanks and glad your kid is at a place where he/she is happy.