yikes! My 25 went to public school and they were about 1 counselor (who did all sorts of things, not just college) for about 250 kids across all grades..
That said, they had a lot of solid group presentations for parents and kids to limit the need for a lot of 1:1 for seniors. I don’t know how they got that many recs done, though! (Pretty much everyone was college-bound).
I do think AOs try to take this all into account, but hard not to be captured by lovely, detailed recs I am sure!
Fair point. But, EA is different so a student might have those acceptances in hand, with no action required by the counselor. Adding, and I gather you are mostly talking about selective schools, plenty of schools accept unofficial mid year grades (often because so many counselors are overloaded)…meaning a student can upload mid-year grades themselves. The school where I work (highly selective) does this. Of course if accepted official grades would have to match.
Yes, that’s how all HSs work. But if the student pulled out of ED and isn’t enrolling, the HS will send the final transcript to where the student is enrolling.
450:1 is the national average per the last NACAC report I saw. There are schools with 700+ students per counselor. And that’s often a social emotional counselor who has limited time for college counseling and/or knows little about college admissions. Plenty of counselors do not send LoRs and/or a detailed school report with apps.
You are making many assumptions about what the high school counselors did. How do you know they filed a mid-year report and additional documents for an RD school? Could it also be that the student had a change of circumstances that necessitated a withdrawal? Not all students at prep schools are wealthy.
Tulane looks desperate or draconian.
Colorado Academy costs $30k/yr, and as my friend who sent 2 kids there says, ‘that’s just the first $30k; they give you plenty of chances to pay even more throughout the years’ They do, of course, have scholarship students too.
I don’t think one person who intended to go to CA will think twice about it because their kids can’t apply ED to Tulane. In fact, it would surprise me if another kid from CA applies to Tulane at all in the next few years. CA will blackball Tulane as much as Tulane is restricting them and the counselors won’t suggest it as a favored school. It’s not like Tulane is as well known as Harvard or Ohio State or Duke or on TV every Saturday for football or basketball. (it is a fine school, but it needs to do marketing to attract applications).
My friend’s son went to Yale, along with 4 friends who had all been friends from Kindergarten (CA starts in Pre-k4, but they only attended CA from 10th grade). That class had 12 (16?) NMF. I play bridge with a woman who was a counselor at the school and she said to me "oh that was a very special class’. It was 25 years ago and that class is still talked about with awe. The counselors know every kid, and know them well.
I don’t think it will be a problem for CA as the students will just settle for Yale or Vandy or Stanford instead of Tulane. It may be the case of one family just not following the rules (there are rich jerks everywhere who think they don’t have to follow the rules), but I really doubt it is common for CA students to take ED lightly and back out for no good reason.
yep, thanks for pointing out the NACAC report data. I didn’t know the national average. The rest is exactly what I was saying (poorly I guess;)
Honestly, that is pretty low tuition for an independent school if you are trying to make it sound expensive..… New England independent/prep schools are often 50-65K for HS…. Even catholic/parochial high schools are almost that near me are 20-30K…
I am confused by this. If a kid has a good chance at Yale, they aren’t EDing Tulane 99% of time.
It i highly unlikely Tulane would have done this for 1 family. I would say the chance is close to 0.
not at prep schools IMO. I went to one ages ago and many kids applied to Tulane. Nobody would have dreamed of applying to Ohio State.
As is everyone posting on this thread. We’re all reading the same article.
The article quotes Tulane as stating this was a “last-minute withdrawal without explanation.” One would assume — yes it’s that word again — that if it were a hardship case, the student would have indicated that and avoided the consequences.
Clarification, per google, tuition is now 42k/yr at CA for grades 6-12.
This is a different geographic region, though the Catholic schools also tend to be in the 20s.
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Link to the CA school profile
Tulane is tied with 3 other schools (quickly looked so could have missed something) for the 2nd most University attended by the graduating class. So, this has a bit more negative implication for upcoming students. Definitely more than just a few are apparently applying here every year (though who know how many are EDing?).
I’m not sure how many EA/RD schools require a midyear report or how it’s handled via the common app, but my daughter had several schools accept her after her ED acceptance. She had withdrawn all apps through their portals where possible and never requested any additional information be sent. But some school still sent her acceptances (including Vanderbilt and University of Richmond - so not just big publics) She was up for big scholarships for those so applied early, so not sure if that impacted anything.
Just saying, I’m not so sure whether the high school was at fault up until they sent final transcripts (which obviously would have been required to actual accept a non-ED school) based on our experiences with acceptances after ED. But do agree that this is probably a case of repeat offender high school not a one off problem.
Yes we are reading the same article, but you are making statements as fact when you are purely speculating. You have no knowledge of what the counselors did or did not do and what documents were sent, and yet you are making claims like “they also made the conscious decision to send the final transcripts to the matriculated school.” You don’t even know that there IS a matriculated school.
Tulane can fill the spot with someone on the waitlist and move on. At most a phone call to the school indicating their irritation. But punishing a whole class of kids who had nothing to do with this is wrong and makes Tulane, which is already student-unfriendly in terms of their admissions tactics, seem even worse.
While anything is possible, and we are just guessing, as you have seen, this is the problem with choosing to apply ED. Applicants who want to wait on merit offers should not be applying ED. Not saying it’s fair, it’s the nature of ED.
ED applicants choose to give up the ability to compare offers and know this when signing the ED agreement. It might happen by coincidence, if a merit offer arrives prior to ED2 results.
If I were a parent who sent my kid to CA and my kid had their heart set/intent on applying to Tulane and now they can’t apply ED - I’m ticked off at CA, not Tulane. One parents opinion.
We’re debating if Tulane should or should not have taken - or even have the ability to take - the action they did and what the public optics of that might be. But at the end of the day CA (and other schools) had students that felt the ED “contract” was fungible. We all know the GC’s sign off on those contracts and it’s supposed to be part of their responsibility to explain potential repercussions.
Sorry - a little tired of victim culture. If CA and their students play by the rules (regardless if we agree on what those rules are!) there’s no story here and no repercussions to future classes.
True, though metro Denver/Boulder isn’t cheap at all…sure, areas that are commuting to NYC/Boston may be more $$, but not sure more rural CT (quiet corner), western MA/NH/VT are much different in terms of COL. That said 40K (vs. 30K) is more like day schools in more far-flung areas in NE.
very minor point all around and not very important:) interesting topic though
We don’t know all the facts.
BUT- I have heard of a lot of (rumored for sure) game-playing with ED, and so I doubt this is a situation of ONE kid in the last ten years from ONE school and ONE rogue GC.
A game that seemed pretty popular for the last few years was petitioning for a Gap year to work, volunteer, become fluent in Spanish, religious mission work, etc. And then once the Gap year was approved, the kid basically spent the summer and fall “enhancing” the college application and applying “upwards”. Of course this required the help of the guidance counselor- resending the transcript, rewriting the recommendations to reflect the “maturity and leadership” the kid had allegedly gained by the Gap experience, etc.
So the kid has as his/her safety school the locked in ED school (they got the advantage of ED if there was one) while still “shopping around” with the benefit of another taking of the SAT, bogus Gap experiences, etc. and the hopes of a better ranked admissions.
I think the number of times a kid has a legitimate reason to back out of ED the colleges are beyond gracious. I know a case where a parent got a cancer diagnosis after the ED admission and the HS senior was going to be the household backstop during chemo, driving younger kids, etc. and so needed a commutable/live at home option. Not only did the college say “of course you are released from the ED obligation” they basically offered the kid a “just let us know when you are ready to enroll if you decide to take a year off, decide to take a few classes at a local U but not enroll as a full time student, whatever you and your family need”. So I think it would take egregious gameplaying over a period of time to get a negative reaction.
No, ours won’t send it to a school other than your ED. They also won’t send midyear report, etc. to any school other than your ED if you are admitted there.