Thanks to those who commented for being part of our decision. Today, my son made his choice, and I know he made the right one for him.
This fall, he will be attending UNC- Chapel Hill, and we could not be happier.
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Congrats!! I hope he had a wonderful four years at UNC.
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Congratulations to all of you!
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Big congrats to your son and your family! I hope you keep us posted about his experience at UNC!
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Congratulations. That would have been my choice and suggestion.
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What did you think b4 he told you - UNC or D ?
You have another kid for next year ? It’s like a tv show with a weekly theme with one season long sub plot 
Congrats to him. He’s going to be a stud no matter what !! Will he study finance or unsure at this point ?
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He decided Dartmouth after the visit, but was not enthusiastic about it. Three hours later, he said he needed more time. No more kids!
In a couple days, I would love to see if we can learn anything more from his process to help others.
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Congrats!
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Congratulations! I don’t know him, but from this thread, I kinda do, and I’m sure he made the right choice for him.
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It was hard for me to accept (because of ivy prestige), but I felt UNC all along was better for him.
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Congratulations! Great choice.
I wish him all the best.
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Congratulations!!! I hope he enjoys every bit of his 4 years as a UNC MC Scholar, both socially and academically! Kudos to your kid for earning these excellent choices and thoughtfully determining his best fit.
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Like others, I am very impressed by his process, and I am very confident he will thrive at UNC.
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Congrats!! I work in higher ed and have experienced A LOT of different campuses across the US and UK and still think there is nothing quite like UNC and Chapel Hill for an undergraduate experience. I hope he has an amazing four years!
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While our process is officially over, the questions we had throughout the process and the decisions we made cause me to reflect.
- How much should past applicant scattergrams influence your applying? What meaning do your high school and their past applicants actually have? Are colleges truly making independent decisions?
- Are reach, target, safety and similar categorizations important and helpful? Should applicants be maxing out the 20 schools on the commonapp as they wish while just making sure they have a couple affordable safeties? Is applying to 6-8 schools the old fashion-way obsolete, or still the smartest strategy you can employ?
- How powerful are the choices of ED, EA, and RD? Are you sacrificing an admit, based upon your choice? Are schools filling their classes with lesser students who apply ED, or in the end are the differences negligible. Is ED even fair? Is RD becoming silly because of spot scarcity?
- How about majoring in business vs. LA or undecided? Can anyone measure the differences in the odds when applying into more limited and competitive majors?
- Is ivy prestige less powerful than ever? Can state schools keep climbing? Will the trends continue or have they gone as far as they can go?
- Should rankings be ignored? What is the right ranking criteria and is any source even close?
- Should stronger applicants be focusing on a merit application processes instead of applying to more schools?
Please copy the question before your reply.
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One of my favorite questions to ask at this point is the following:
If this applicant had made a list of, say, 2 Likelies, 3 Targets, and 5 Reaches, would UNC have made that list? What about Dartmouth?
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I hope it’s OK to give my opinion here. I think, when possible, students and their families should vet the college application list before applications are sent. This might be a way to reduce the number of applications sent.
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- How much should past applicant scattergrams influence your applying? What meaning do your high school and their past applicants actually have? Are colleges truly making independent decisions?
My D’s private day school’s scattergrams were not helpful to us for schools with 25% acceptance rate or lower. It would be more helpful if that information could be sorted by major and hooked applicants. At the time my D was applying to college that wasn’t possible. Thankfully she had good advising that helped us see “around” the scattergrams.
I do think colleges make some decisions based on yield, especially from private schools. We had a few schools where no one ever matriculated from our D’s HS in a decade and they seemed to have stopped admitting students.
- Are reach, target, safety and similar categorizations important and helpful? Should applicants be maxing out the 20 schools on the commonapp as they wish while just making sure they have a couple affordable safeties? Is applying to 6-8 schools the old fashion-way obsolete, or still the smartest strategy you can employ?
I think the list building should start with an affordable, true safety, that the student actually likes, preferably with rolling decision so there is an acceptance early on the process.
I do think that categorizing schools is helpful to manage expectations. And I think parents need to know the psyche of their kid. Will they shrug off rejections from a reach heavy list or will they be devastated? (I’ve seen the later in real life with two friends and it wasn’t good).
My D’s experience applying to 8 schools was that she had 19 unique essays to write on top of a heavy senior year course load and too many ECs. As such I don’t subscribe to the more is more philosophy unless chasing merit. Generic essays aren’t going to fly with the high highly rejective colleges.
- How powerful are the choices of ED, EA, and RD? Are you sacrificing an admit, based upon your choice? Are schools filling their classes with lesser students who apply ED, or in the end are the differences negligible. Is ED even fair? Is RD becoming silly because of spot scarcity?
I think this is very school dependent. We had an AO at a highly rejective flat out tell us to not bother applying unless it was in the ED round. Other schools are very up front in saying that they fill the majority of their class in EA (the UMD, Purdues of the college world).
IME, these aren’t “lesser students” as these schools could fill their class 4 x over with high achievers but they do skew wealthier and colleges care greatly about yield prediction. ED is the ultimate in yield protection.
- How about majoring in business vs. LA or undecided? Can anyone measure the differences in the odds when applying into more limited and competitive majors?
This is another “depends on the school”. Many of the big public flagships that admit by major/division also make it more difficult to change major after the fact so applying to the major you are actually interested in really matters. IME, even privates that don’t admit by major are still tuned in to students trying to back door their way into competitive majors. Schools can also gate keep registering for courses outside your major. Students really need to do their due diligence on this question as some schools are very upfront about limitations and others are not.
- Is ivy prestige less powerful than ever? Can state schools keep climbing? Will the trends continue or have they gone as far as they can go?
First question I think is very industry and location dependent. Some disciplines I would answer yes, the ivies are less powerful but in others, nope. I.e. if my kid had been interested in law, I’d have pushed for an Ivy or ivy equivalent.
I do think state schools can and will keep climbing but I’m totally biased watching what’s happening in my neck of the woods with the midwest flagships. Michigan, Purdue, Wisc, UIUC are killing it and continuing to make big investments and creating industry partnerships. I think the same is true in CA, GA, TX. In engineering, the companies I’m most closely familiar with are recruiting at those schools, not the Cornells of the college world.
- Should rankings be ignored? What is the right ranking criteria and is any source even close?
We found rankings to be a good place to start in building the initial college list and used it for a proxy for selectivity. So there were schools on the list in the T10 all the way to T250. We ignored overall rankings because my kid was all in for engineering so focused more on those rankings. (If she had been more undecided, we would have steered her a different way and to a very different set of schools). Then we did a deep dive into curriculum. IMO, that is something that seems very overlooked by parents and students and there can be huge differences in graduation requirements between schools. Even in engineering ABET disciplines. We also looked at how well resourced the engineering departments were, the depth and breath of their labs/research, etc… IMO, there are way more important criteria than rank and as you hinted at, who knows which ranking is “right” ; )
- Should stronger applicants be focusing on a merit application processes instead of applying to more schools?
This is totally family budget dependent. I wouldn’t begin to make a blanket statement about this one other than to say, if you are needing to chase merit to afford school, there is value on doing research on where it is more likely and focusing in on those schools. Merit seekers are typically going to a have a different list than full pay families.
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Our younger kiddo was the first one to apply to her undergrad college from anywhere in our region. So…there were no past applicants (and even now, she is the only past applicant to apply!).
Our other kiddo was a music performance major, and anything a past applicant did was sort of meaningless because the audition was the number one criteria for acceptance (something his school GC didn’t seem to know or understand…and basically told him that he would not get accepted at the undergrad school he attended).
So…I guess I’m saying…YMMV depending on other factors. I should clarify that our high school is pretty small and in a rural part of our state. So…not a lot to compare. And especially at schools out of this region.
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This was something of a problem with my S24 as well, in part for the reason you gave–too much of importance to the most selective schools is not captured by the numbers alone.
He also applied to some schools where very few people from his HS had applied recently, which of course creates a small sample problem.
Interestingly enough, his ultimate admissions pattern came close to looking like you could draw a line by just raw admissions rate, below that he was admitted, above that he was waitlisted or rejected. Meaning really the crudest possible categorization would have worked in his case. I think the underlying truth was a little more complicated than just that, but it does suggest we did not get a lot of value-added out of the scattergrams.
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