And it’s not just privates - at many of the public flagships, the OOS contingent will be full pay or almost full pay.
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Yes, that too, for sure!! And those, indeed, can be as (or nearly) as expensive OOS, for sure. Good point. I shouldn’t have specified private.
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I love your push on reality checks—I agree that some are useful and necessary, especially on finances and certain requirements that they can still address. And I love the many posters who take the time to describe lesser known schools for students who bring same Top 20 names.
And I really like the idea of refusing to read the tea leaves.
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Yeah, in the greater scheme there is only a narrow slice of the US college-bound population that is full pay private/OOS.
But when you add a filter for colleges that are particularly popular among highly-credentialed kids (including very high standardized test scores, consistently high grades in college-level courses, high results in a variety of competitions for kids, highly individualized and superlative teacher recommendations, and so on), well, there is so much correlation between those credentials and family economic circumstances that this slice becomes a lot bigger.
Then highly-credentialed kids looking at those colleges are even more disproportionately represented in these forums, including because for many other purposes their HS counselors may well be all they need. Again, in the greater scheme, a lot of college admissions is not so hard to understand/predict, it is only when you are looking at these holistic review colleges that get many more highly-qualified applicants than they can possibly accept that the “need” for a lot of advice becomes readily apparent.
So yeah, I am not inherently suspect of highly-credential kids who come here looking for advice about these sorts of colleges, and who say they are full pay. That would be a lot less frequent in the greater world of college-bound kids, but among those kids looking at advice for those colleges, well, the slice gets rather big.
As an aside, though—I do think there is a rather large information gap when it comes to LESS obvious private or OSS options that might nonetheless work out really well for various kids, including but not limited to highly-credentialed kids, and not least kids with good credentials (not necessarily the best, but good) and who are on a budget that need aid alone might not meet.
Helping kids like that find some interesting non-obvious options to consider–including perhaps when their HS counselors are not really able to provide such help–seems to me like one of the most valuable things this community does in the Chance Me/Match Me context.
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Perhaps a little off topic (forgive me if I stray from the T20 discussion a bit) but I just wanted to speak to the Music Performance Chance Me posts.
I feel that these are best served by recommending that the poster move to the Music Major Forum for advice as the process, merit awards and acceptances are very unique to this major. Amazing wealth of knowledge on the Music forum.
For those unfamiliar, it may seem like an applicant is picking somewhat random schools, other than Juilliard which is familiar to everyone. But there are highly sought teachers for specific instruments in certain schools. And programs better known to support (with merit money) undergrad vs grad, or classical vs jazz, or instrumental vs voice. And so on.
While there are so many more variables with a music application and admission chance, some guidance can be given from a music perspective. And rather like an athlete, in many cases while academics need to clear a benchmark, it is not what will get them accepted (or denied) Acceptance will come down to how the applicant performs at their audition relative to others auditioning on the same instrument. As will merit awards.
And just my own perspective in knowing many prospective music majors and musicians of all ages. It is ok for people to give feedback that “music doesn’t make a lot of money so don’t go into debt.” But just know that serious music kids know that very well. Sometimes I feel that posters belabor that point. Know that the students have had mentors and teachers and family giving this advice. It is why music applicants/families are seeking merit money. Because it is not a safety if the cost is untenable.
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yeah, that is more what I mean. You can often tell, even here. If kids are from NJ, have 1540 and have a list of SLACs, and say parents can pay, I see no reason ask them 4 times for financial safety (ok, not 12, but let it be after 1 nudge). If they don’t mention merit, I don’t bring it up.
AND I don’t necessarily think it is our responsibility as strangers on the internet to solve all problems or assume they want advice on questions not asked. I try to take people at their word. They ask for northeast, I give them northeast. They want LAC, I give them that… they want financial advice, i give them want. They want to know if they will get into ABC I give them that. If they want other schools like ABC, I will do that. I may ask follow-ups if I need them to be able to answer their question. Maybe as I always ask super targeted questions myself ..and generally don’t ask questions as nobody actually answers them, but answers random asides.
Also, I will answer slightly differently if I think if it is a kid vs an adult (which isn’t always perfectly obvious).
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This is where I am most guilty, as my children would be eager to confirm. I think that pointing things out, not to belabor, but simply to make sure the issue has been ruled out, can be crucial for some situations.
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I think these are generally good habits.
I do sometimes sense a kid or parent is struggling to come up with a reasonable range of options that fit all their stated preferences, so I might try to suggest ways in which they could consider bending, with examples of what that could mean. But if they are not receptive, then that’s that.
A version of that I find myself often doing is suggesting that if a person is looking at a bunch of mid-size private research universities and/or private LACs at the Reach level, but then only larger publics otherwise, they could consider some privates that would seem to fit their other criteria but are less Reachy, and might in fact offer merit.
But again if they say they are not interested, OK then.
This past year I’ve felt the need to give a couple of reality checks (in fact, one this week). I don’t try and do it to hurt a kid’s self-esteem, but, with this week’s case, the kid hasn’t returned, so the kid may be feeling hurt. But when kids with superlative backgrounds denigrate themselves (particularly in the title of a thread), it makes me think about all the other kids who may or may not be reading who are thinking to themselves, “Dang, if that person’s not awesome, then I must really be cruddy.”
So I guess I’ve taken it as a “potentially hurt one person to help many more” philosophy, because I hope that not only will they make changes here, but changes in their communications on Discord or Reddit or wherever they go in life. Because when I read about the mental health crisis of our youth, I can’t help but feel that superlative kids putting themselves down can’t be good for anyone (superlative kids or anyone less well-credentialed).
And then there are the kids that only have the budget for a $ school, but all the schools they’re looking at will cost them $$$$, and there is no path to affordability. I think it is a kindness to give those kids a reality check. Or the kid with above average stats and rigor (understanding that an average GPA is about a 3.1 and an average SAT is about 1000), but not superlative stats and rigor, who is targeting schools with a single-digit acceptance rate. Helping to re-orient that kid toward schools with a better likelihood of admission is a kindness in my book, not a poor use of our time.
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I would honestly be surprised if the random user reads other people’s posts; I would expect them to mostly concentrate on their own thread.
I started here exclusively on the music major area and didn’t even know of the wealth of non-music info until a couple of years after that, for my second kid.
In general I think that when a parent or student are coming here trying to make a list, we should spend more time helping them figure out what they are really looking for, BEFORE throwing out suggestions.
Even those students who genuinely feel that they’d be happy anywhere have certain criteria, some that they are not aware of themselves.
So I think that the most valuable help that we can provide is to help them articulate and explore their criteria, and only then provide examples of colleges that fulfill those criteria.
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Perhaps I’m unusual in that respect, as I browsed and searched around a lot before I became a member.
But when you arrive at the CC landing page to navigate to your own chance/match me, and if a thread title like the one I have an arrow pointing to was on the front page, it’d be pretty hard to miss the implications of.
This one - she had zero safeties (in my opinion) and she put JHU was her safety.
It wasn’t - she said she was joking but how would any reader know.
But is UCD a safety? To her it was I suppose.
She was clearly a case of school (not major rank) as many are - because when they say or CC - and in CA, that’s acceptance to many but if you want a four year experience, that ain’t it.
I’m not sure what a degree in Ecology will get you vs. another school high ranked in Ecology that is attainable.
But we all think differently.
Honestly, it would be amazing and would elevate the level of discourse here so much if there were an initial period of “clarifying questions ONLY” before anyone was permitted to give advice.
I fully understand that there’s no way, logistically, to enforce this.
But honest to God, sometimes it feels like a race to weigh in and control the narrative, rather than taking a breath, reading carefully what’s being said and what’s not being said, and engaging posters through asking rather than telling. I know I’m dreaming but, a 24 hr Socratic Period would be such an amazing culture shift.
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My favorite- seen it a few times - is responding posters asking “what major” when it’s right there in the first post.
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Sometimes, the student poster makes an unclear statement like “cost is not an issue for now” (emphasis added) or “scholarships would be preferred” or “none” (does this mean no cost constraints or a budget of $0?). So it should not be surprising if others ask for clarification in these situations.
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Agree. Or my favorite- “my budget will depend on where I get in” which is reasonable IMHO. But fifty posts later it turns out the the family will pay for Stanford or Harvard; anything else needs a “full ride” (including colleges which are need only for a family with zero need).
Or a senior wondering if it’s hard to get into West Point now that the family has clarified that there is zero money for college except for grandma’s “college fund” which now turns out to have 5K in it spread among three grandchildren.
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Given that we know that the transcript is the #1 criteria being looked at for most any competitive college, we should make sure to get that straight as a rule. 3.74 unweighted or 4.2 weighted does not tell us much of anything when kids are pushing for the top tier.
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Years ago there was a parent on CC ranting about her kid not getting accepted to the flagship U for engineering. Kid was accepted to Arts and Sciences, but at a college where switching was very, very difficult. We were all sympathetic, offering up suggestions on the language to use when appealing, offering up other U’s still accepting students, engineering adjacent majors in Arts and Sciences which could allow the kid to get a Master’s in engineering down the road, etc.
A few hundred posts later it was revealed that the kid had NOT taken the recommended sequence of bio/chem/physics (which was offered at his HS) because he needed to “protect” his GPA with environmental science, anatomy and geology. The U was pretty clear on how to get into engineering– take bio/chem/ physics. Ignore the “recommendation” at your peril.
Parent was STILL ballistic even when posters pointed out that the guidance counselor who signed off on an engineering wannabee with no physics really had to answer for the pathetically bad advice. And the parent pointed out that the HS only required three years of science- which the kid had fulfilled.
Yup, transcripts matter.
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A bit late to the thread but as someone who does respond to the CM threads when I have a general knowledge about one or more of the desired colleges or desired field of study, I say this:
We don’t know nearly enough about the student, personally, in order to make anything other than an educated best guess. Some answer all the questions on the form and give us the most information we can get, and I believe those students walk away with the best advice on the CM threads.
Other threads go on for pages and pages while we try to sus out the information we need. If we’re lucky enough to get it, 8 pages in, it often changes all the advice that was previously given. Other threads have a student with an entitled attitude, right off the bat - those students are unlikely to take any of the advice given and end up with them “peacing-out” somewhere along the line because they aren’t liking the advice that they are getting.
Back to the fact that none of us of know these students on a personal level. Maybe their grades are “mid” but they have an exceptional personality trait that will be noted in the very personal letters of recommendation that they receive from teachers or from an employer or coach. Maybe they will write a funny, unique essay that makes the AO reader laugh out loud. If you’re an essay reader on CC, you’ve probably seen many examples of essays where you get to the end and feel that you know the student - and those that are more sterile (albeit grammatically perfect).
We can guess but can’t pretend to know what a college is looking for with each admissions cycle. We can base our advice on anecdotal evidence of our own kid’s experience with applying or provide links to data from previous admissions cycles, which is always helpful but there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that we don’t get to put into place.
I think it’s worthwhile to give a reality check to those wanting to apply to T25’s. For some, I think the low admission rates really are an eye-opener and its possibly information that they didn’t have before if they have only been focused on the GPA/SAT thresholds. I don’t have a problem with the “You’ll never know if you don’t apply” response but I think that advice should be given if they are willing to choose one or two reach schools to “YOLO” to and have a healthy list of targets to fall back on.
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