Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:white male 1580 SAT (800 math) 4.7W GPA (4.0UW) Eagle, national CS awards, patent for a product he designed, leadership roles and volunteer roles. APs in all core subjects with 5s on exams. Math through multivariable calc. Teachers proofed essays and loved them. CS major
No: CMU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Washington, Boulder (offered exploratory studies not CS)
Deferred then WL: Ga Tech, Rice, UT Austin

Yes to all "safeties" but I don't believe in safeties for CS

Attending and happy at Purdue.

Wow!! Your boy looks amazing!! Don't know what else can the "no" schools asked for? Purdue is great! Congratulations!!

Not the PP but parent of a similarly accomplished kid with similar results. There are just way too many kids for too few spots. Kids with bad scores just go TO so high scores are just one other data point. Unique interests seem to help as well as obviously being having a hook or from an under-represented group. No one really knows. Have you kid apply and see what happens. Trying to guess what your kids results will be is not helpful.

Yes. Engineering and CS are incredibly difficult admits for white and asian young men. Definitely need to start thinking about it by 10th grade and have some kind of thing to showcase talent. Robotics is good. And for anyone interested in mechanical or aeronautical, rocketry. DC did rocketry for four years. Definitely a nerd thing, but far more interesting then going to baseball on a Saturday morning. Him and all of his teammates went on to top schools for their interests - MIT, Georgia Tech, Rice, Cornell.

Definitely think the rocketry was a part of it. There are so many young men who want to go into engineering or CS. And not enough spots. They need to find a space to demonstrate their capabilities. For white and asian boys, engineering and CS are just like sports. They need to find a team where they can demonstrate their skills.

So, if you have a boy, do competitive team science whenever you can.

Also, Purdue is awesome for engineering. That is not a second prize.

similar stats kid and interested in CS. What were the safeties your DS applied to?

Anonymous wrote:white male 1580 SAT (800 math) 4.7W GPA (4.0UW) Eagle, national CS awards, patent for a product he designed, leadership roles and volunteer roles. APs in all core subjects with 5s on exams. Math through multivariable calc. Teachers proofed essays and loved them. CS major
No: CMU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Washington, Boulder (offered exploratory studies not CS)
Deferred then WL: Ga Tech, Rice, UT Austin

Yes to all "safeties" but I don't believe in safeties for CS

Attending and happy at Purdue.

Congrats! I loved Purdue.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:white male 1580 SAT (800 math) 4.7W GPA (4.0UW) Eagle, national CS awards, patent for a product he designed, leadership roles and volunteer roles. APs in all core subjects with 5s on exams. Math through multivariable calc. Teachers proofed essays and loved them. CS major
No: CMU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Washington, Boulder (offered exploratory studies not CS)
Deferred then WL: Ga Tech, Rice, UT Austin

Yes to all "safeties" but I don't believe in safeties for CS

Attending and happy at Purdue.

Wow!! Your boy looks amazing!! Don't know what else can the "no" schools asked for? Purdue is great! Congratulations!!

Not the PP but parent of a similarly accomplished kid with similar results. There are just way too many kids for too few spots. Kids with bad scores just go TO so high scores are just one other data point. Unique interests seem to help as well as obviously being having a hook or from an under-represented group. No one really knows. Have you kid apply and see what happens. Trying to guess what your kids results will be is not helpful.

I wish there is a TO equivalence for GPA. My kid has really high SAT/ACT, but not stellar GPA from TJ due to the tough Math department ... No hooks and no place to hide ...

NP. I understand. In theory, the context of the high school is considered. But, in practice, I don't think this happens at many colleges across the country.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:white male 1580 SAT (800 math) 4.7W GPA (4.0UW) Eagle, national CS awards, patent for a product he designed, leadership roles and volunteer roles. APs in all core subjects with 5s on exams. Math through multivariable calc. Teachers proofed essays and loved them. CS major
No: CMU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Washington, Boulder (offered exploratory studies not CS)
Deferred then WL: Ga Tech, Rice, UT Austin

Yes to all "safeties" but I don't believe in safeties for CS

Attending and happy at Purdue.

Wow!! Your boy looks amazing!! Don't know what else can the "no" schools asked for? Purdue is great! Congratulations!!

Not the PP but parent of a similarly accomplished kid with similar results. There are just way too many kids for too few spots. Kids with bad scores just go TO so high scores are just one other data point. Unique interests seem to help as well as obviously being having a hook or from an under-represented group. No one really knows. Have you kid apply and see what happens. Trying to guess what your kids results will be is not helpful.

I wish there is a TO equivalence for GPA. My kid has really high SAT/ACT, but not stellar GPA from TJ due to the tough Math department ... No hooks and no place to hide ...

Anonymous wrote:My high stats nephew applying for Chemistry (white male) with a 3.9 UW GPA and 35 ACT along with some great ECs (including paid research) did not get into a single UC they applied to (7 of them).

But the ACT score is completely irrelevant since the UC schools don’t accept scores. Test blind.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:white male 1580 SAT (800 math) 4.7W GPA (4.0UW) Eagle, national CS awards, patent for a product he designed, leadership roles and volunteer roles. APs in all core subjects with 5s on exams. Math through multivariable calc. Teachers proofed essays and loved them. CS major
No: CMU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Washington, Boulder (offered exploratory studies not CS)
Deferred then WL: Ga Tech, Rice, UT Austin

Yes to all "safeties" but I don't believe in safeties for CS

Attending and happy at Purdue.

Wow!! Your boy looks amazing!! Don't know what else can the "no" schools asked for? Purdue is great! Congratulations!!

Not the PP but parent of a similarly accomplished kid with similar results. There are just way too many kids for too few spots. Kids with bad scores just go TO so high scores are just one other data point. Unique interests seem to help as well as obviously being having a hook or from an under-represented group. No one really knows. Have you kid apply and see what happens. Trying to guess what your kids results will be is not helpful.

Anonymous wrote:white male 1580 SAT (800 math) 4.7W GPA (4.0UW) Eagle, national CS awards, patent for a product he designed, leadership roles and volunteer roles. APs in all core subjects with 5s on exams. Math through multivariable calc. Teachers proofed essays and loved them. CS major
No: CMU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Washington, Boulder (offered exploratory studies not CS)
Deferred then WL: Ga Tech, Rice, UT Austin

Yes to all "safeties" but I don't believe in safeties for CS

Attending and happy at Purdue.

Wow!! Your boy looks amazing!! Don't know what else can the "no" schools asked for? Purdue is great! Congratulations!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is all goes back to the original response... focus on writing amazing essays that are personalized to each institution. Show, through this writing, how your experiences and performance will add value to the institution. Grades, amazing ECs and top test scores are great but the essays are the bow the ties everything together. Stop whining about your kid's ethnicity and put your energy into shaping those essays.

Naive of you to assume that kids did not do this. Personally not blaming any ethnicity, it's rough out there and a level of randomness that most people underestimate

I agree that there is a randomness to the process. But, I think certain things beyond hooks can tip the scales (speaking from my own experience and that of several students from my son's high school). In my limited sample pool, the amount of effort that went into the essays, plus the level of personalization for each school, made an outsize difference. Interviews also seemed to play a big role in merit.

Georgetown is one of the few schools that is solidly T25 in all 3 major rankings and has great name recognition. They will be fine!
Might as well shoot your shot everywhere RD and wind up there versus cave to pressure and go ED2 to Chicago or Vandy if you don't really want to and never know what might have happened.

Anonymous wrote:Gotta love those kids who got shut out of top schools & weren’t too proud to settle for Georgetown & Boston College.

These were kids who would have wound up T5 in prior years coming from our school. Not my own child so I can objectively say they were very strong candidates.

Anonymous wrote:This is all goes back to the original response... focus on writing amazing essays that are personalized to each institution. Show, through this writing, how your experiences and performance will add value to the institution. Grades, amazing ECs and top test scores are great but the essays are the bow the ties everything together. Stop whining about your kid's ethnicity and put your energy into shaping those essays.

Naive of you to assume that kids did not do this. Personally not blaming any ethnicity, it's rough out there and a level of randomness that most people underestimate

Anonymous wrote:white male 1580 SAT (800 math) 4.7W GPA (4.0UW) Eagle, national CS awards, patent for a product he designed, leadership roles and volunteer roles. APs in all core subjects with 5s on exams. Math through multivariable calc. Teachers proofed essays and loved them. CS major
No: CMU, Stanford, Wisconsin, Washington, Boulder (offered exploratory studies not CS)
Deferred then WL: Ga Tech, Rice, UT Austin

Yes to all "safeties" but I don't believe in safeties for CS

Attending and happy at Purdue.

Similar results here except at UMD-CP.
also differ and WL at NEU and CWRU. Did not demonstrate interest since UMD a more attractive choice.

Gotta love those kids who got shut out of top schools & weren’t too proud to settle for Georgetown & Boston College.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HS Teacher

My top students with multiple waitlists/rejections were all asian males. They ended up at (good) state schools but by and large were rejected by privates.

raise hand.. that was my CS Asian male. Very high stats. Now at a state flagship with merit.

Better deal financially anyway.

pp here.. I would agree.

We had a long discussion about ROI with DS, and he agreed. He will now have extra in his 529 even after he gets his master if he wants, which we can rollover to an IRA for him, and we will probably give him my car.

He's very happy about all of that.