Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter did EA at two schools. One was a reach and one was a safety. She was deferred to regular admission and ultimately rejected by the reach. She was accepted at her safety and it made her feel more secure during the long wait until the end of March/April 1.

The trick is finding really good safeties - colleges you'd be happy attending without feeling like you are settling.

Excuse me, isn't applying to two schools EA a violation?

No, EA isn't ED

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter did EA at two schools. One was a reach and one was a safety. She was deferred to regular admission and ultimately rejected by the reach. She was accepted at her safety and it made her feel more secure during the long wait until the end of March/April 1.

The trick is finding really good safeties - colleges you'd be happy attending without feeling like you are settling.

Excuse me, isn't applying to two schools EA a violation?

Not at all. Applying to two schools ED is.

Anonymous wrote:My daughter did EA at two schools. One was a reach and one was a safety. She was deferred to regular admission and ultimately rejected by the reach. She was accepted at her safety and it made her feel more secure during the long wait until the end of March/April 1.

The trick is finding really good safeties - colleges you'd be happy attending without feeling like you are settling.

Excuse me, isn't applying to two schools EA a violation?

My daughter did EA at two schools. One was a reach and one was a safety. She was deferred to regular admission and ultimately rejected by the reach. She was accepted at her safety and it made her feel more secure during the long wait until the end of March/April 1.

The trick is finding really good safeties - colleges you'd be happy attending without feeling like you are settling.

Anonymous wrote:I think the strategy of applying to a few each of reach, target and safety schools serves many kids well. As they say, reach for the stars, but love your safeties....

The nut we can't crack is where to apply early decision - a reach or a target....

When you figure it out will you please let me know?

Oh I thought you mentioned Northwestern and Wash U. My bad.

OP here: This thread got very off topic, I didn't mean to start an argument about sat scores. Anyway, DD has very clearly expressed to me that she doesn't want to go to a super selective Ivy league school. To everyone else, thank you for your advice.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A 680 isn't fatal, even for Harvard. Harvard's average Math SAT is around 740 and it has its share of 800M scores on the other end. What is more important, is that to be competitive at the top schools, she better be taking the most challenging classes at her high school.

Let your daughter take the lead on the college search. It really is a process, almost like a rite of passage. Maybe she will be "brand" obsessed like most DCUMs, but chances are she will consider a range of factors. I'll bet she makes good decisions and will end up at the right school.

And just who do you think with a 680 is at Harvard? It's a recruited athlete, a legacy, a URM or someone with an extraordinary talent - an Olympic hopeful, a Westinghouse Science award winner, etc. That's not to say that there aren't a ton of great colleges in the US. And you're right there is an obsession with the top 10. Just know who is getting into the top 10. It's not the well-rounded nice kid with above average SAT's, grades, class rankings and solid extra-curriculars. It's the kid with perfect SAT scores, first in class or maybe second, with an extraordinary talent unless he/she has a "hook" as mentioned above. Don't kid yourself.

Well if your other two scores are 800s, a 680 won't kill you. The middle 50% of accepted students at Harvard range is from 2080 to 2390. Thus a 2280 is squarely within the range. OPs scores were 2230, also within the range. "With the SAT, small differences of 50 or 100 points or more have no significant effect on admissions decisions." -- William Fitzsimmons, Dean of Harvard Admissions (to NYT). Harvard could fill their class with kids with perfect SAT scores, but they don't. They often don't take the top kid at a school favoring a lower ranking kid, with lower grades and SATs but with a more compelling case. Schools like Harvard love interesting cases like first generation college students. Harvard made headlines recently by admitting a homeless girl (from WV, I think), who wasn't exactly a Westinghouse scholar. Everybody at Harvard is extraordinary in some way, and if you are, one 680 won't prevent you from being admitted.

I think this response is wishful thinking. Ask any parent whose daughter wasn't a recruited athlete, URM, legacy or who didn't have another hook, what kind of SATs resulted in fat envelopes. I think you will find that it is those schools where dear daughter scored at the 75%ile or higher.

The point is, it's not perfect SATs or being first in your class that gets you into Harvard or any top Ivy. You have got have something different or special. If you have it, a 680 won't keep you out. If you don't have it, a 2400 SAT and being valedictorian won't get you in. Grades and SATs have to meet a high threshold, of course, as a PP pointed out, but after that, grades are not the ultimate decider at this level of school.

I'm not the "and just who do you think?" poster.

But it seems to me that the "compelling story" -- the 1st generation college kid, or the homeless kid -- is really another type of hook, or advantage, or whatever you want to call it, just like being URM or a recruited athlete or a legacy. And I share the other PP's suspicion (although I really don't know this for a fact) that the kids with the 680 SATs are the ones with the hooks.

In which case, this would be cold comfort to OP's presumably perfectly nice, hard working kid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A 680 isn't fatal, even for Harvard. Harvard's average Math SAT is around 740 and it has its share of 800M scores on the other end. What is more important, is that to be competitive at the top schools, she better be taking the most challenging classes at her high school.

Let your daughter take the lead on the college search. It really is a process, almost like a rite of passage. Maybe she will be "brand" obsessed like most DCUMs, but chances are she will consider a range of factors. I'll bet she makes good decisions and will end up at the right school.

And just who do you think with a 680 is at Harvard? It's a recruited athlete, a legacy, a URM or someone with an extraordinary talent - an Olympic hopeful, a Westinghouse Science award winner, etc. That's not to say that there aren't a ton of great colleges in the US. And you're right there is an obsession with the top 10. Just know who is getting into the top 10. It's not the well-rounded nice kid with above average SAT's, grades, class rankings and solid extra-curriculars. It's the kid with perfect SAT scores, first in class or maybe second, with an extraordinary talent unless he/she has a "hook" as mentioned above. Don't kid yourself.

Well if your other two scores are 800s, a 680 won't kill you. The middle 50% of accepted students at Harvard range is from 2080 to 2390. Thus a 2280 is squarely within the range. OPs scores were 2230, also within the range. "With the SAT, small differences of 50 or 100 points or more have no significant effect on admissions decisions." -- William Fitzsimmons, Dean of Harvard Admissions (to NYT). Harvard could fill their class with kids with perfect SAT scores, but they don't. They often don't take the top kid at a school favoring a lower ranking kid, with lower grades and SATs but with a more compelling case. Schools like Harvard love interesting cases like first generation college students. Harvard made headlines recently by admitting a homeless girl (from WV, I think), who wasn't exactly a Westinghouse scholar. Everybody at Harvard is extraordinary in some way, and if you are, one 680 won't prevent you from being admitted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A 680 isn't fatal, even for Harvard. Harvard's average Math SAT is around 740 and it has its share of 800M scores on the other end. What is more important, is that to be competitive at the top schools, she better be taking the most challenging classes at her high school.

Let your daughter take the lead on the college search. It really is a process, almost like a rite of passage. Maybe she will be "brand" obsessed like most DCUMs, but chances are she will consider a range of factors. I'll bet she makes good decisions and will end up at the right school.

And just who do you think with a 680 is at Harvard? It's a recruited athlete, a legacy, a URM or someone with an extraordinary talent - an Olympic hopeful, a Westinghouse Science award winner, etc. That's not to say that there aren't a ton of great colleges in the US. And you're right there is an obsession with the top 10. Just know who is getting into the top 10. It's not the well-rounded nice kid with above average SAT's, grades, class rankings and solid extra-curriculars. It's the kid with perfect SAT scores, first in class or maybe second, with an extraordinary talent unless he/she has a "hook" as mentioned above. Don't kid yourself.

There's definitely truth to this but, just like every year you see DCUM posts claiming "we're totally normal and DC got into Sidwell,"* a few "totally normal, well-rounded, high achieving kids" do get into Harvard each year. And I do mean a handful. The thing is, the odds are just so much worse for them. We know that Harvard takes 6-7% of the total applicant pool, but it takes maybe 20-30% of legacies and some percentage higher than 6-7% for URMS and recruited athletes. So just doing the math, because this pie is limited to 2000 or so kids, the acceptance rate for "totally normal high achieving" kids is clearly way below 6%. And the acceptance rates for "totally normal, well-rounded, high achieving kids" with SATs of 680 is probably even lower, unless the essay and extras really knock it out of the ballpark.

Harvard used to admit a group they called "the happy bottom quarter" or something like that. These were the kids from wealthy families who got all sentimental watching the crew team practice on the Charles. But those days are long gone!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A 680 isn't fatal, even for Harvard. Harvard's average Math SAT is around 740 and it has its share of 800M scores on the other end. What is more important, is that to be competitive at the top schools, she better be taking the most challenging classes at her high school.

Let your daughter take the lead on the college search. It really is a process, almost like a rite of passage. Maybe she will be "brand" obsessed like most DCUMs, but chances are she will consider a range of factors. I'll bet she makes good decisions and will end up at the right school.

And just who do you think with a 680 is at Harvard? It's a recruited athlete, a legacy, a URM or someone with an extraordinary talent - an Olympic hopeful, a Westinghouse Science award winner, etc. That's not to say that there aren't a ton of great colleges in the US. And you're right there is an obsession with the top 10. Just know who is getting into the top 10. It's not the well-rounded nice kid with above average SAT's, grades, class rankings and solid extra-curriculars. It's the kid with perfect SAT scores, first in class or maybe second, with an extraordinary talent unless he/she has a "hook" as mentioned above. Don't kid yourself.

Interestingly, it seems that many parents don't consider the kind of stress such an atmosphere puts on a student. I would prefer that mine not be in such a "pressure cooker" environment.

So if her SATs are optional, and she has all As (o.k., one B), and she presumably goes to one of the top schools in the country, how are you making the assumption that she is "average or below average"?

At our private, our college counselor told us that many schools now consider SATs optional. Yes, most kids take them, but they are not weighted as heavily as grades and the quality of the school. At Ivies and other highly competitive schools, it's a numbers game. If your child has a way of making herself special (maybe she's interested in Asian art and has done internships at a local museum), she may have a better chance at getting in. But otherwise, she's probably at or below average for most of the extremely competitive schools. Our counselor also told us that these competitive schools are not in any way better educational institutions, they are simply more popular because the applicant pool has increased as the US population has increased. Graduate school is where everything shakes out anyway, OP, so don't worry too much about the college process. If your daughter is handling it herself, just keep abreast of what she's doing. Finances are a huge consideration for us, so early decision might not work for us since you can't compare FA packages when you are applying to only one school. If money is no object, consider early decision. Early action has no value, according to our college counselor. It's just a way for schools to increase the number of applicants, and it does not increase your child's probability of being accepted.