Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Surprised when my child received an REA offer from HYPSM that many kids reacted negatively.

Why was your kid sharing this information beyond their closest friends? Please tell me they didn’t post this on social media. If so, they sort of deserve the negative reaction.

Anonymous wrote:That participation in a high school summer program is unhelpful for college admissions. I guess they really are a money grab.

Similarly how little it means to get tons of mail from a college like U of C in terms of admissions.

Finally how unhelpful HS guidance counselors can be.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those with disappointing early results, can you state the major?

Our CCO has basically told the juniors that if you apply for CS or Eng or Business (or Math - apparently that is growing huge), that you need to look for targets that are most other people's safeties. Meaning go down a level (or two), that these majors have very few real targets. So it's only safety and reach.

If you aren't happy with that strategy, look at your transcript, EC list, awards, and who is writing your LOR for other "evidence for a major" in the college or arts & sciences or an adjacent college.

If you do not listen to this advice, you will regret it. And junior year is too late to build up evidence of a major to make any difference. Your transcript probably already outs you as a STEM or business/Econ type anyway.

You can still apply to a target (not a reach that you think is a target) if you apply ED1. Keep in mind that top 20 universities and top 10 SLACs are reaches for everyone.

Anonymous wrote:
The dirty secret is that the college admission process is so much harder for top students than good ones. The good students aren’t generally applying to schools with single digit acceptance rates. They are applying to schools that admit a much higher portion of the student body IE A 1400 SAT with 3.9 unweighted and 6 APs. They are likely to get into their choices and less likely to face judgement.

The excellent/top kid with no hook is likely to be rejected at some schools they applied to. Go to a high performing school and outcomes are worse. However instead of empathy these kids are told things like perhaps they didn’t do a good job on their essays or admissions doesn’t think they will add to the community etc.

Judgement from whom? This is a ridiculous statement. No one should be judging where your kid is going to school. If they are, get new friends.

Anonymous wrote:Surprised when my child received an REA offer from HYPSM that many kids reacted negatively.

Anonymous wrote:
The dirty secret is that the college admission process is so much harder for top students than good ones. The good students aren’t generally applying to schools with single digit acceptance rates. They are applying to schools that admit a much higher portion of the student body IE A 1400 SAT with 3.9 unweighted and 6 APs. They are likely to get into their choices and less likely to face judgement.

The excellent/top kid with no hook is likely to be rejected at some schools they applied to. Go to a high performing school and outcomes are worse. However instead of empathy these kids are told things like perhaps they didn’t do a good job on their essays or admissions doesn’t think they will add to the community etc.

Anonymous wrote:
The dirty secret is that the college admission process is so much harder for top students than good ones. The good students aren’t generally applying to schools with single digit acceptance rates. They are applying to schools that admit a much higher portion of the student body IE A 1400 SAT with 3.9 unweighted and 6 APs. They are likely to get into their choices and less likely to face judgement.

The excellent/top kid with no hook is likely to be rejected at some schools they applied to. Go to a high performing school and outcomes are worse. However instead of empathy these kids are told things like perhaps they didn’t do a good job on their essays or admissions doesn’t think they will add to the community etc.

The dirty secret is that the college admission process is so much harder for top students than good ones

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The athletes get jobs from other athletes. They are top traders and hedge fund managers on Wall Street. The game clock and training give them an edge in high pressure situations

Athletes are not traders at hedgefunds. I work at one and athletes are hired for sales jobs. We want strong math and CS skills at our fund.

Anonymous wrote:Back to the original question on this forum. What we realized, start early in the process of writing the essays, refining, and finding a really good reviewer. There is no limit on the number of schools, between common and coalition you can apply to more than 20. We didn’t want leave a chance and once the essays were done, it was not hard to make the essays relevant to each school. Apply early action every school that allowed it worked for us. And finally, grades sat all to be just one factor we focused more on moving the needle with awards and honors and based on early results that worked in our ds favor. Because it made it easy to write the essays and in the interviews she was able to articulate and steer the conversation towards her activities. Good luck to all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised how mean and judgmental people can be about other people’s kids. Adult snark is one thing, mocking teenagers quite another. Regardless of the anonymous nature of this forum, I don’t understand why anyone feels the need to belittle a high schooler’s character, intellect, or choice of ECs, college, major, etc.

I admit anonymously to being overly harsh about a few kids who appear to have waltzed into tippy top schools to play sports but have not done anything close to the academic work my kid and friends have done (many of whom are still waiting for decisions).

Until I had a kid with tippy top athletic ability and saw the amount of work that goes into "waltzing" into any school . . .

+1. I am hoping my very hard working and ambitious DD, currently an 8th grader, will drop her sport in HS, because it is taking an insane amount of time and hard work will likely not pay off. On the other hand, I don't wan to advise her to do that because she has played it for 7 years, loves it, has many friends on the team, and it would be difficult to walk away. She is a top student at a rigorous school but has very little time for anything else.