@NearlyDone2024 Could not have put it better myself! “If anyone thinks this is out of benevolence they are mistaken”. I put a large amount of research in where my child would apply to school. Colby was one of them. I would have done well to do more research because it seems what others are saying is true. The middle class is getting squeezed out. I mistakenly believed that the articles that said need aware schools only look at need when it comes down to borderline candidates or the wait list. I mistakenly believed that because I was accepted to Smith College as a child of middle income parents in the early 90s (I’m not positive Smith was need aware then, but it is now and claims it only looks at need for the above stated reasons-who knows…). Ha! These schools, perhaps even my beloved alma mater, are protecting their endowment. We have need. Fairly substantial due to the hugely rising costs of college. My son who is a 1460 SAT (first and only shot), 5s on all APs thus far and over a 4.1 on 4.5 scale has been deferred by every college he applied to EA or ED. Not Colby, he applied RD. Some of these schools he was in the 90th or higher percentile for stats. He is also has great leadership, blah, blah, blah. I no longer even believe need blind schools are truly need blind. We will be lucky if our very bright boy is accepted anywhere outside our state flagship as he has only 2nd tiers hooks anywhere else (oops-Smith). Something is very broken, shattered even and needs to be fixed.
^^ I honestly don’t think this is simply about $ although I acknowledge the donut hole problem. I know tons of FP kids with impressive stats and great ECs, etc. who have been turned down with stats like this – and better – as well. It’s frustrating because it would have been more than enough 20-30 years ago, and now it’s just the threshold for getting your app seriously considered.
For a whole bunch of reasons, from the common app to the number of kids applying to the desire for kids from different demographics to the fact that thanks to the general availability of info, every serious applicant knows how to “check all the boxes”, it is ridiculously hard to get into schools that would have been reliable safeties back in the day.
Several schools have started to address costs for the middle class but my guess is that by the time those are generally helpful, everyone in this admissions cycle will have graduated.
But I think we are getting off topic for this thread.
For anyone interested, per senior member Data10:
"Colby Income Distribution
Top 1% Income – 20% of students (20x overrepresented)
Top 1-5% Income – 31% of students (8x overrepresented)
Top 5-10% Income – 12% of students (2x overrepresented)
Top 10-20% Income – 13% of students (balanced)
Total Top Income Quintile – 76% of students [who attend Colby]
2nd Highest Quintile – ~11% of students (2x underrrepresented)
Middle + 2nd Lowest – ~11% of students (3-4x underrrepreesnted)
Bottom Quintile – 2% of students (10x underrrepresented)"
Good luck to all the unhooked* lower middle class and middle class applicants for 2024. You’ll need it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/colby-college
*hooks, ALDC+
- Recruited athlete (A)
- Underepresented minority (Black, Latinx, Native American)
- Child of alum (some may consider grandparents; some may limit to alum of the undergrad school) (L)
- Child of major donor or potential donor (D)
- Child of a world leader/celebrity
- Celebrity in own right
- First generation in family to attend college
- Faculty kid from specific college or even another elite college
(full pay isn’t a “hook” per se, but it does give applicants an advantage for most colleges. Colby is need aware. Others claim to be need blind. Look at the data for each institution and decide for yourself if you believe that it true.)
@NearlyDone2024, This in not an easy journey and I wish your student the best possible outcome! I must point out however, that, again, you are sharing old data. The article above, published three years ago, is for the class of 2013. A lot has changed in the last seven years.
I don’t want to get into a back and forth, but these discussions are meant to help parents and students navigate an increasingly complicated process. Sharing outdated information is contrary to that goal. This forum was extremely helpful to me, and I try pay that forward in a small way. That is my only objective here.
The school that exists today, is not the same place it was prior to David Greene becoming president in 2014. Yes, there are wealthy kids at Colby. They are at every elite school. Colby has put policies in place to increase affordability. The old data does not reflect these changes and creates undue stress for applicants reading these threads who are waiting for decisions.
Affordability is a worthwhile discussion. There are several threads that address this topic. I believe your post above was shared in one. Let’s try to get this thread back on topic. - I am not a fan of ED, but most schools use it to fill a good portion of any incoming class. Colby is hardly unique there.
I accepted a long time ago that the top LACs are exceedingly difficult to get into if you don’t have a hook. With only 1800-2000 kids on campus, and with the goal of having fulfilling ECs and diversity, these schools need a lot of athletes and a decent percentage of URMs. Something like 50% of kids at some of these schools play a varsity or club sport. I also did the math when S19 was applying RD to schools and realized his chance, once you took out all of the hooked applicants, was so small. Williams and Amherst were the most difficult for our non-hooked son since they have the largest percentage of URMs and the slots for kids like S19 is just so, so small in RD.
I think he made the RD cut for some of these schools because he was high stat, had really strong recs, wrote essays that spoke to the AOs, offered a little bit of geographical diversity and had reached out to a coach to show interest even though he wasn’t going to be recruited. Other kids who get accepted in RD probably fill a hole the school has after filling half of the class in ED - they might still need musicians, writers for the newspaper, thespians, etc. It’s impossible to know when a student applies RD to these LACs if they will be “needed” to fill out the class.
@xyz123a Thank you for the good wishes.
Colby hasn’t published a CDS for the past several years. We can only discuss data that is released, including the data from the posted article. If we look at the article that started this thread we can see the same strong preference for full pay students remains consistent. 59% of ED admits this year were full pay. Only 22% of ED admits had incomes between ~50,000 to ~250,000. This 22% includes hooked applicants, likely the majority in this income range. What has seen an uptick is the % of Pell grant students. That’s a good thing.
Like you, I think these forums are “meant to help parents and students navigate an increasingly complicated process”. I don’t think it creates undue stress for applicants to know the true odds of admissions vary greatly by financial aid status combined with hooks. More importantly, it lets future applicants make informed choices.
Discussing the implications of the Colby data, both recent years and this current year, is on topic IMO.
@NearlyDone2024, I appreciate your perspective. You are right! LAC’s are a tough admit for anyone and kids should not loose sight of that. I guess I just don’t want students to feel like it is a lost cause. I have a HS senior and I am seeing the stress her friends are experiencing as they wait for decisions and it is heartbreaking. It probably is making me oversensitive to that fact. Maybe my student has found all of the unicorns on campus, but he is friends with at least 10 middle class Colby kids with SAT <1500 who receive strong financial aid packages. I would describe them as average excellent students. Perhaps it is clouding my judgement, or perhaps things are not quite as hopeless as it seems.
@xyz123a I certainly hope you are correct. As I state din my above post I was a middle class student unhooked who was accepted to Smith. I really thought my unhooked (except 2nd tier legacy at Bowdoin) might have a chance based on that and all that I saw when I researched diligently on the internet. My hope, as is his, is waning everyday. Perhaps not Colby, but perhaps somewhere…We’ll see soon enough.
I fail to see the problem here. Your very bright son will get a very fine education at his state flagship, many of which are better than Colby, btw.
There is nothing broken or shattered here, besides having WAY too many insanely priced liberal arts colleges in a nation where incomes and opportunities are on the decline. What you’re seeing with Colby is a market correction. Educational opportunities for the middle class will be fine in this country as long as bright kids can get into their (usually very good) state schools.
@Charlie2772 , one of the things the head of CC at our school (a former AD at a top 5 LAC) told us was that this (distressing) tide has actually lifted a lot of boats, and I think we saw that when we were looking at schools. And some truly impressive classmates of my son’s headed off to schools that gave them good merit aid, and they have not suffered as a result. She noted, for example, that top PhD programs rarely employ their own students and that a lot of talent has taken jobs elsewhere over the last few decades, and that’s been great for their employers (and the students there.)
I truly believe that the landscape HAS changed, perhaps faster than our perceptions of the schools. Frankly, I was really impressed by a couple of schools that I had not thought much of “back in the day”. I say this to reassure you that if your kid is “all that”, there are plenty of places where he will shine.
I am really pulling for you!
@Charlie2772 Congratulations on your child’s acceptance. It is always great to get one under your belt as you wait for others to come in. Wishing him much more success in March! A quick motivational story - friend of my D20 was devastated when rejected from her ED school. She just received a full academic scholarship to a T20 university and couldn’t be happier. Things have a way of working out sometimes.
A large portion of endowments is restricted and is not available for financial aid. The headline number for the total endowment is misleading. Let’s say 75% of colbys endowment is restricted (a ballpark for many institutions) to fund professorships, research, athletics and what have you, only around $200m would be available - and it’s usually only the income from that which is available. And of that, only a portion goes to aid. Someone might know what their unrestricted endowment is.
@xyz123a I wonder if those <1500 SAT kids who got aid at Colby got in ED. Almost everyone S19 has met at Bowdoin got in ED. Many are getting financial aid. I do think it’s the RD kids who have to show up with the really high scores so that the schools can get those averages up as expected.
@homerdog, I can’t say all, but most were RD as they were weighing aid packages from several schools. I find it interesting that these kids actually discuss this. The only reason I know this information is because the conversations make my son very uncomfortable so he discussed it with my husband and I. He is happy to tease his friends over having a higher SAT, but will not get involved in the financial discussions. On the flip side, 3 full pay student from his HS class with strong stats were not admitted to Colby. So it seems that Colby is walking the walk with regard to creating a more even playing field. My info is strictly anecdotal, so I could be wrong.
@cinnamon1212 their financial aid does make them more competitive than “better” schools. They are ranked #4 in the nation for financial aid, below Stanford (3) and above Harvard (5).
Hmmm - then why is it they were offering free applications in December? My daughter received a mailing in December asking her to apply and waiving the fee. Was it a game to increase applications just they they can reject more and up their numbers. I hope not.
@LAS1228 Bingo, they want more people to apply. They clearly do not have enough space for their increasing number of applications, so it gives them the opportunity to get more qualified candidates to reject the rest. Sad but true.
Free applications and self-reported scores decrease the cost of application. This is an impediment for lower income students, so this definitely is a smart move if, as a school, you are trying to attract those students. Some schools tell students to request a fee waiver; others simply reduce or eliminate fees for everyone.
Of course, it also makes it easier for everyone else to throw their hat in the ring. No doubt, Colby finds some great kids this way. But yes, it increases the # of applicants overall and can make it more competitive.
I think that every school that is trying to include a group, – SES, geographic, whatever, – that has typically been under-represented, is becoming more competitive for the folks who have traditionally been the student body.
@homerdog I agree with your assessment. My son was waitlisted at Bates ( for example) as an RD candidate. His SAT is very at the top of the 75 percentile. Same for GPA. However, we are fairly high need. This stats ( and his otherwise strong app) should be enough for straight admission, but were not. However, at Trinity, where he places probably at the 85th to 90th percentile he was accepted ( full need met). I expect he will be rejected or at minimum waitlisted at Colby for the same reason. We are relatively high need, but don’t check any previously underrepresented box as a white male from New England. I’m learning to accept this.
@Charlie2772 congrats on the Trinity acceptance!