Anonymous wrote:Believe me, the kids competing for the most competitive colleges all know eachother and know a lot about who is applying to what school. Of course, IRL they don't go around chancing eachother -- they save that for College Confidential where they are semi-anonymous. There is a friendly competition going on amongst them though, make no mistake.

Agree. My DC goes to a public school and while she can't tell you all the NMSFs and commended scholars (there are 80 of them) she has a pretty good sense of the scores/profiles of people applying to the competitive schools. And the nmsf/commended scholar list was distributed school wide and definitely of interest to the kids.

Anonymous wrote:Believe me, the kids competing for the most competitive colleges all know eachother and know a lot about who is applying to what school. Of course, IRL they don't go around chancing eachother -- they save that for College Confidential where they are semi-anonymous. There is a friendly competition going on amongst them though, make no mistake.

Well, they may know a lot about their closest friends, true; but beyond that, even in a small school, they don't know as much as they think. There are lot of assumptions, which makes for some surprises when admissions notifications come. My sons, who graduated from a DC independent, claimed to know the SAT scores of their close pals, and they probably did. That said, though, they ended up scratching their heads about the schools where more than a few of their other classmates ended up going to school.

Believe me, the kids competing for the most competitive colleges all know eachother and know a lot about who is applying to what school. Of course, IRL they don't go around chancing eachother -- they save that for College Confidential where they are semi-anonymous. There is a friendly competition going on amongst them though, make no mistake.

DC Metro area has its own competition going on, and it involves state schools. Many kids in Fairfax County have UVA and W&M on their list and so compete against each other for the limited number of slots allocated for NoVA. Yes, there are no explicit quotas, but a state school needs to serve the entire state and so cannot accept all well-qualified applicants from Fairfax.

Not sure about UMD/CP, but something similar may be going on on MontCo. Several of my acquaintances who live in MD reported their kids being accepted there with great joy and relief. It has become very selective, and it's not a 100% safety any longer, especially if one is a MontCo graduate.

Anonymous wrote: As for point no 3 above, I think this is a case where may both be right based on our different experiences, different schools and different students we are talking about. I was not talking about "some random high schoolers," but the kids targeting admission to the most selective schools. One only needs to peruse the College Confidential web site to see just how many students not only care about every available metric, but some probably obsess about it too much.

Okay, then ask students targeting selective schools. You'll still get when asking about their peers. They're concerned only about THEIR OWN stats.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: As for point no 3 above, I think this is a case where may both be right based on our different experiences, different schools and different students we are talking about. I was not talking about "some random high schoolers," but the kids targeting admission to the most selective schools. One only needs to peruse the College Confidential web site to see just how many students not only care about every available metric, but some probably obsess about it too much.

The majority of kids posting on College Confidential are obsessed and are not representative of most high school students. I asked my senior DC who says no one is running around chanting 'chance me'.

Exactly!

Furthermore, those students are obsessed with THEIR OWN stats.

They couldn't tell you how they fair against their schoolmates. Nor do they care. They care only about THEIR OWN chances of getting into that highly selective school. They let the other kids worry about their own chances.

Anonymous wrote: As for point no 3 above, I think this is a case where may both be right based on our different experiences, different schools and different students we are talking about. I was not talking about "some random high schoolers," but the kids targeting admission to the most selective schools. One only needs to peruse the College Confidential web site to see just how many students not only care about every available metric, but some probably obsess about it too much.

The majority of kids posting on College Confidential are obsessed and are not representative of most high school students. I asked my senior DC who says no one is running around chanting 'chance me'.

As for point no 3 above, I think this is a case where may both be right based on our different experiences, different schools and different students we are talking about. I was not talking about "some random high schoolers," but the kids targeting admission to the most selective schools. One only needs to peruse the College Confidential web site to see just how many students not only care about every available metric, but some probably obsess about it too much.