Most colleges are less selective at most, and likely admit everyone meeting some baseline.
Gender differences at more selective schools can also be the result of gendered interest levels in more versus less competitive majors.
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So in some schools they will admit more boys to balance the gender. However, most schools we checked that my kid was interested in (you can look up on individual common data sets), they admitted similar percentages of women and men and didn’t try to even out the incoming class. So while people think being a boy is an advantage, it is so in some schools the same way being a girl is an advantage in others. But for most schools, I don’t think it matters as much.
I don’t recall the exact structure, but it was a sliding scale starting at $85k, with cost being <10% of income for <$150k and >10% of income for >$150k. I expect the losers with the new FA policy are lower and middle class families with >$150k assets. The winners are generally families that qualify for FA and have <$150k assets and generally upper income families whose assets are not high enough to disqualify them from FA.
Old FA
$85k – $0 cost to parents with up to $200k assets
$150k – $15k cost to parents with up to $200k assets$100k + $100k Assets = Under $3k
$100k + $200k Assets = Under $3k
$150k + $200k Assets = $15k
New FA
$100k – $0 cost to parents with up to $100k assets
$150k – $13k cost to parents with up to $100k assets$100k + $100k Assets = $0
$100k + $200k Assets = $5k
$150k + $200k Assets = $18k
We had the same experience. I thought that my S25 might have an advantage at some of these 60/40 schools and we would look at the common data set and the male acceptance rate was lower than the female. I do think there are some schools where it does matter (I believe Vassar and maybe Richmond?) but there are a lot where the male applicants are apparently just not measuring up.
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High stats students will still find that the vast majority of colleges, which are less selective, to be safety or likely for admission.
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I agree with you on this. Often when high stats students claim they can’t find likely/safety schools, it is because the “likely” or “safety” schools they choose are really low reaches/high matches. Finding a true safety isn’t tough as most colleges admit most applicants.
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Finding a likely or safety isn’t hard. I said finding a “target” was harder than in the past (for high stats unhooked students). By “target” I mean schools that are in between reaches and likelies/safeties, where a student’s stats and profile match well with the profile of admitted students, but admission is not as high likely as with a safety.
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If the kid is really high stats (vs. being the Val at a school with 39 other vals) that I don’t think it’s hard. And in fact- it might be easier than it used to be.
Tippy top scores stand out more if a large number of students don’t submit scores at all. Tippy top grades stand out IF there’s rigor, and not because the HS has some weighting system where taking Yearbook as an “English elective” counts for as much as taking an actual literature course with analysis. There’s a whole bunch of schools (not Harvard and Stanford) that actually seek these kinds of students. Truly high stats. No hooks. I don’t think it’s that hard.
What makes it hard is the student (or the parent) who thinks that “If U Penn is my reach, then Middlebury is my match/target and Penn State is my safety”. Doesn’t work that way.
But tippy top grades and scores are exactly what schools like Brandeis, Binghamton (even for non-residents), Case (if you show them love and that you’re interested), Connecticut College, Rhodes, Union, Villanova, Holy Cross, Clark (and a few dozen more) are looking for. You don’t need to have cured cancer and you don’t need to have started your own non-profit to end nuclear proliferation. Be the kind of nice person that a guidance counselor actually wants to write a recommendation for, and take your tippy top everything to one of these terrific colleges.
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For high stats students with unlimited budget, it seems to me that there are a lot of colleges and universities that would be in the “target to low reach” selectivity category.
I think this is more of an issue for students with financial constraints (such as parents not willing to contribute, financial situation not captured well by NPC, donut hole family living in high cost area, etc). Such students may only have “likely to very likely” options within their budget, if they don’t have a fabulous state flagship with a reasonable in-state price.
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You weren’t actually the poster referenced in the post I was replying to. That being said, I still think that most high stats kids will find plenty of targets/matches - especially if they aren’t limited financially. It also helps if students are willing to look beyond the same handful of very popular schools.
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Im also in MA and we are sending a record number of students south this year from our school district, particularly to SEC schools.
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I wonder if this is specifically a northeast thing. There is definitely no such move to the south/SEC at our NorCal high school (where a number of students head to the northeast and mid Atlantic each year). We always have a few going to colleges like UT Austin, TCU, SMU and Indiana, but looking at the latest insta page I see … none headed for what I understand as meant by “the south” here. In the general last few years it looks like one person went to Clemson.
I’m in Washington state and we have had tons of kids head south starting with Covid. My kids among them.
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We had that for a couple of years at our school but it seems to have slowed down. I’ve got one at UVA and one at UNC so I’m living it myself (although these aren’t Deep South).
I’m in a very liberal part of New England and we’ve seen more kids heading North (Canada, Maine and Vermont) than South. Our Southern border seems to be Maryland with a few kids every year going to Tulane and Emory. Delaware has gotten very hot in the last few years.
But I’m surprised (and tickled) to see the interest in Dalhousie, Waterloo, U Toronto, etc. McGill always did well, but the list of Canadian schools is getting more comprehensive and more robust now.
And an interesting trend (at least to me…)-- First Gen college kids staying closer to home than before Covid. What used to be “I’ll go where I get the best deal” seems to have morphed to “My parents want to be able to bring me home quickly in case of emergency”. I find it interesting because that was the pattern when I was in HS… I know several kids who turned down what were essentially “free rides” (back in the day they were “scholarship kids”) to go to a local U when the parents decided they didn’t want them far away. Air travel was still exotic and expensive… a lot of kids who had much more prestigious acceptances ended up living at home and taking the bus to college.
The more things change…
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I agree that we saw quite a few posts with similar sentiments for a couple of years beyond 2020. I wonder if this might be less of a phenomenon lately?
It remains to be seen with this year’s seniors.
But I know a bunch of kids with some acceptances they were pretty excited about last year but were not in driving distance… and they are mostly within a 200 mile radius or so. Trend or just the “end of an era”?
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We are not necessarily in that camp (having been able to deal pretty easily on that basis with COVID and D19 on the opposite coast), but it is a factor in our decisions as to how close the student might be to people we know well enough to be able to ask to help out if necessary. (Have realized that even as immigrants we are lucky enough to have family and good friends in various places around the country.)
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Topics I’ve been thinking about:
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The UChicago program offering an earlier binding ED decision for students who complete their summer sessions is interesting. It’s certainly contra to the “paid summer programs don’t matter much” movement. Yes, UChicago is “more unique than others,” and is also aggressively marketing these days, but will this lead to other, similar offerings?
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On a related note, I’ve been wondering who will be the next Northeastern or Tulane - a combination of an aggressive marketing campaign and an exceedingly high reliance on ED to significantly lower their acceptance rate - and what will they do differently.
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My theory on the AI-for-essays situation is that the personal statement is essentially dead, except for edge cases on either side. The mushy middle of interesting-enough essays will just be caught up in the how-much-of-this-is-AI question and will essentially be ignored. Can schools come up with interesting enough supplementals to really gather useful information going forward?
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Hence my pondering earlier if more colleges will reinstate supplements, especially more selective colleges. I disgree that the personal statement is dead though, again, especially for selective colleges. It is very easy to spot AI, IMO, because it completely lacks personality, even if it becomes more sophisticated. If a student is only capable of generating an AI essay, then it’s going to do them no favors.
However, this makes me wonder if the UCs will tweak their PIQs somehow. If any writing could be AI generated, it’s a PIQ.
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