I have three kids- one got into Yale and Brown and two who got shut out of Ivies completely. They had nearly identical stats and activities, the oldest certainly wasn’t “more talented” or harder working than his sibs and so I’ll be the first to say that I do think a lot of it is just luck of draw.

Anonymous wrote:No. Lottery makes it sound random. College admissions is not random. There are actual algorithms in place.

NP. Oh FFS. Both of you. It’s obnoxious. How about this? Once you have top grades, strong extracurriculars and strong SAT/ACT, some kids get in because they do something truly amazing. Like being a Siemens or Intel winner. But for most kids, luck also plays a role, either in the form of being a legacy or URM or having a prominent alum go to bat for you, resprenting an area or having a talent or skill that rounds out the class, or just writing an essay that speaks to the essay reader. Every kid is there for some reason. But those reasons are either out of most kids control (legacy, URM, rural ND upbringing) or impossible to predict (like who will read or essay or what talents/ skills/ majors admissions feels is missing when they decide on your kid).

Every kid who gets in is talented. Many kids who don’t are as talented

Apply to Ivys. If you don’t get in, go to UVA/WM, work hard, and apply to a top grad school. You’ll still get where you are trying to go.

Geez.

No. Lottery makes it sound random. College admissions is not random. There are actual algorithms in place.

Anonymous wrote:BS. I know ONE family - not Ivy parents - and all their kids (4 girls) went to Ivies (and Stanford). Nothing RANDOM. No lottery. Hard work and EXCELLENT grades from a FCPS public HS (not Langley - but top)

No, it's not a lottery for those who have something special going for them, like winning Intel or something, or some hook. It is effectively a lottery for those with excellent grades and scores, but nothing else. A few will get in because someone at one of the Ivies liked something about them, while the rest will get the circular file.

Why does the whole lottery thing rattle your cage so much anyway? Do you feel your kids didn't work hard enough because someone told them the process was a lottery.

Anonymous wrote:BS. I know ONE family - not Ivy parents - and all their kids (4 girls) went to Ivies (and Stanford). Nothing RANDOM. No lottery. Hard work and EXCELLENT grades from a FCPS public HS (not Langley - but top)

What did the kids have going for them besides excellent grades?

BS. I know ONE family - not Ivy parents - and all their kids (4 girls) went to Ivies (and Stanford). Nothing RANDOM. No lottery. Hard work and EXCELLENT grades from a FCPS public HS (not Langley - but top)

Anonymous wrote:So first off, we don't really care if our kids go to Ivy league, SLAC, or good public universities, but we are hoping they would have the capability to exceed or be accepted there.

We come from a LMC background, and went to good colleges, and through hard work are now solidly DC middle class. We want our kids to have a little easier time, and we all these neighborhood families where sibling goes to an Ivy or similar college (for reference, for my entire county, we had one student go to an Ivy league every year; they were featured in the local paper).

So is there some secret sauce on how to setup all your children for having these kind of options? We emphasize that they do well in school, they do some extracurricular activities in sports and music but NOTHING like travel soccer or piano competitions -- we are working parents and those commitments are hard. We might do some enrichment on the weekends like math work books and we encourage reading and such all the time, but nothing very structured. We volunteer with our church for like holiday events, but again not some huge accomplishment for applications.

Are we preparing them enough? Should we specialize in something like a travel sport? Obviously we try to ask our neighbors and schoolmates but they are pretty cagey and just say "lucky I guess" Which I understand, hence why an anonymous forum may work better!

Your neighbors aren’t being cagey. There’d no secret that they’re keeping from you and will be revealed in an anonymous forum. Either they have some hook (legacy, particularly if multiple kids got in) or their kids are especially talented.

“We” can’t specialize in anything. Unless the kid(s) have/has national-level talent, they’re unlikely to be recruited—and the HYP schools you want are very good at sniffing this out. (No matter what people tell you, the days of getting in by starting fake charities are over). Includes the “funky” sports like water polo.

By all means, spend that extr effort on the essay or on getting that internship, but it’s unlikely to yield HYP level results without the factors specified above.

Anonymous wrote:

No adcom would ever say it’s random in a public comment. Come on now.

You're right -- they wouldn't. Because it isn't random. And they know that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the PP: I know plenty of people who went to HYP who are MAJOR jerks, so I seriously question your assertion that “all” of them are nice, kind, and supportive.

Key phrase here is your use of past tense!

You really think it’s changed and now everyone who goes to those schools is kind and supportive?

That's not what I wrote. I said the adcoms look for these characteristics and the kids I MET were kind and supportive. And it was a theme across more than one school my kid got into.

So OP here is a perfect example folks wanting to find any reason possible to slam these schools and the students. Any negative thing they can say or pick apart they will, even though their experience is from 50 years ago.

1. My experience is from no more than 15 years ago.

2. I went to these schools, so my experience is direct and personal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the PP: I know plenty of people who went to HYP who are MAJOR jerks, so I seriously question your assertion that “all” of them are nice, kind, and supportive.

Key phrase here is your use of past tense!

You really think it’s changed and now everyone who goes to those schools is kind and supportive?

That's not what I wrote. I said the adcoms look for these characteristics and the kids I MET were kind and supportive. And it was a theme across more than one school my kid got into.

So OP here is a perfect example folks wanting to find any reason possible to slam these schools and the students. Any negative thing they can say or pick apart they will, even though their experience is from 50 years ago.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the PP: I know plenty of people who went to HYP who are MAJOR jerks, so I seriously question your assertion that “all” of them are nice, kind, and supportive.

Key phrase here is your use of past tense!

You really think it’s changed and now everyone who goes to those schools is kind and supportive?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re: Random

I think that the admissions process is random in the sense of statistics, where different cases have different probabilistic outcomes, rather than random in the sense that there is no process at all. Clearly there are important things to do to be in the range to be considered at highly selective schools (strong academics, other interest areas, etc.) but there are also factors at play that aren't under the control of anyone. The first big one is who else is applying? Perhaps one year, there is only one award winning French Horn player applying and they stand out to the admissions committee, but in a different year there are 100, so no one stands out. The second big factor is the order the admissions committee fills their spaces. Some students may be clear admits for various reasons, but then others are chosen to "round out" the class. I found it interesting that an MIT admissions officer said that they had admitted a fantastic class, but that they could set aside all of those students and admit a completely different, but equally fantastic class.

When you can take a given set of candidates and run it through the admissions process 1000 times and come up with different answers every time (although individual students have different probabilities from 0%-100% admission), I'd call that random.

Exactly. This is what I was trying to articulate; thank you!

You can call it Random, or Felix, or Pastrami Sandwich, but that doesn't make it any one of those. And you have no evidence that the "1000 times different answer every time" thing is true.

Also your french horn example supports the opposite position, because in case A it is one person standing out from the rest, making it not random, and the other case of 100 out of 30,000, making it also not random... and guess how they choose the one french horn player out of 100? I'll give you a hint: not at random.

You can have all your theories and thought experiments you want -- every book, every adcom, every person who has ever been involved in elite college admissions will tell you the selection process is deliberate and highly considered. You do a disservice to applicants and their families when you tell them it is random. It can do real damage and you should reconsider saying it.

Tell you what -- find me one elite adcom who says it is random and I will make a $100 donation to the charity of your choice.

No adcom would ever say it’s random in a public comment. Come on now.

Oh yeah, every elite adcom ever is lying to keep the truth from you, including the ones that wrote tell-all books and the independent journalists who observed the process and wrote about it. Get the tinfoil hat off.

Anonymous wrote:To the PP: I know plenty of people who went to HYP who are MAJOR jerks, so I seriously question your assertion that “all” of them are nice, kind, and supportive.

Key phrase here is your use of past tense!

To the PP: I know plenty of people who went to HYP who are MAJOR jerks, so I seriously question your assertion that “all” of them are nice, kind, and supportive.

Anonymous wrote:So first off, we don't really care if our kids go to Ivy league, SLAC, or good public universities, but we are hoping they would have the capability to exceed or be accepted there.

We come from a LMC background, and went to good colleges, and through hard work are now solidly DC middle class. We want our kids to have a little easier time, and we all these neighborhood families where sibling goes to an Ivy or similar college (for reference, for my entire county, we had one student go to an Ivy league every year; they were featured in the local paper).

So is there some secret sauce on how to setup all your children for having these kind of options? We emphasize that they do well in school, they do some extracurricular activities in sports and music but NOTHING like travel soccer or piano competitions -- we are working parents and those commitments are hard. We might do some enrichment on the weekends like math work books and we encourage reading and such all the time, but nothing very structured. We volunteer with our church for like holiday events, but again not some huge accomplishment for applications.

Are we preparing them enough? Should we specialize in something like a travel sport? Obviously we try to ask our neighbors and schoolmates but they are pretty cagey and just say "lucky I guess" Which I understand, hence why an anonymous forum may work better!

Hi OP. This forum is a terrible one for this question. First and foremost it sounds like your kids are young. I would advise not to put anything into action until your kids are in the 8th or 9th grade. I'm going to take a stab at your question though because my kid will be going to an HYP school and there are definitely things that parents can do to support their child if they want to go to a top school. TBH though the advice will not be that earth shattering. In our case we didn't push for anything our kid wanted an HYP and we made it our business to find out what it would take to see if it was even possible. But I want to emphasize that the kid has to want it and put the work in. For us we have a kid with a very strong work ethic and an innate ability to delay instant gratification to focus on a goal, this personality trait made a big difference.

After going through the process and meeting and talking to some of my kids classmates I have to say it does not feel random, at all. I kept saying to my partner, how do they do it? Each kid brings a unique set of qualities. Even thought this will sound crazy, the one thread that I saw among them all, is that they were nice, kind and supportive. It is not a matter of admissions officers picking the best of a certain "type" - and I will go out on a limb and say that stats - gpa and test scores - are only what gets you across the line for true consideration. IMO with these schools it is the essay that makes the difference. Does your kid have a unique point-of-view? A singular focus on a particular interest? An authentic voice? Adcoms will often pick a kid with lower stats that is more "interesting" than the #1, 2, or 3 student. - This happens A LOT!

There are several places to look to see this - look at admitted students profiles for Ivy League schools on College Confidential and on the school websites. These essays that the New York Times puts out every year, will give you a clear idea of what I mean https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/your-money/college-essay-topic-money-social-class.html.

In terms of the nitty gritty:

Grades are the most important.
Does the high school have a history of kids being accepted at top schools? Our school is a very diverse public school in the area with Ivy admits in the single digits. And we don't have admits to every Ivy every year. What it means is that the admin officers know that the school does prepare kids to be successful academically.
Enroll in AP classes, important because it shows that a kid can do college level work, however this belief about AP classes is starting to change and may be different by the time your kids get to HS
Help your kid figure out their true interests and encourage them to focus on 2-3 things.
Learn how to write well and articulate ideas. I think this would be #2 on my list after grades.
Be a nice, considerate person. Adcoms can smell a-holes a mile away.
Establish relationships with teachers based on mutual interests. Let them know your aspirations and ask them to write a strong recommendation, especially one that gets at the nice, considerate part.
Be realistic about the chances. Apply to a mix of schools and don't fall in love with one (well my kid did, though) Like everyone said, single digit acceptances means it will be tough. I don't think it's a crapshoot though, I just think there are lots of hidden parts to the process and people on this and other forums like to boil it down to the most simple, when in fact it is more complex.

Finally, be wary that there is a lot of bad information out there. Connect with people who are knowledgeable about top tier college admissions.

Good Luck - and there is nothing wrong with asking this question!