Did anyone get anything from the waitlist?
Still waiting as well …
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My D applied RD and was WL at Dartmouth. Luckily, she was admitted to a couple other ivys and a few T25 schools and decided on another ivy. Her T25 results ranged from waitlist to full merit scholarship at parallel schools - which we still can’t understand. It’s a numbers game where there just aren’t enough enrollment slots and I guess different admissions committees use different roulette tables.
Our learning: apply to a bunch of parallel schools of interest. She applied to 20 colleges (my recommended number for someone reading this thread) consisting of:
6 in-state public schools - COA scholarship schools to flagship,
2 private univ with high scholarship potential,
5 T25 schools,
2 ivy equivalents, and
5 ivy league.
Long-term, it’s definitely worth the painful effort and money. I say this as although she wasn’t rejected from less competitive schools vs. where she was admitted. She was waitlisted at less competitive schools vs. she where admitted.
I’ve found placement results can differ for schools which have similar admission profiles. Due to comments on Hamilton College as an alternative, I looked up career placement as its ACT scores are similar to Dartmouth’s. The report provides a high level of detail for each employed graduate, position and employer name but excludes any pay information:
Class of 2022 - Careers & Outcomes Report - Hamilton College
After some searching, I located Dartmouth’s place report. It’s a summary report. Although it provides details, it’s difficult to assess on a per graduate level, e.g. how may attending xxx graduate program at xxx university, how many hired for what position at specific employer.
2023_career_outcomes.pdf (dartmouth.edu)
Although both have a level of detail, I’ve learned the vaguer the report, the more caution should be exercised prior to committing. There’s typically a reason.
Placement was a factor in my D’s application list and final college selection. We saw reports with more and less placement detail and some with no report. (alarming sign)
When position information is provided, I check if they’re college (analyst for several industries) or in sales or non-college level. When company information is provided, I check for blue chip names in their industries as they’re known for their training programs. If both are provided in correlation, then I check what types of positions at blue chip names. For example, at Hamilton, the 2 McKinsey hires were for non-analyst positions. Of the 4 Goldman Sachs hires, 3 were for investment side analysts and the 4th for a financial analyst (budgeting operations which has a different pay and career track).
When graduate education is listed, I look for degree programs and grad school names. Neither report provided a correlation/sufficient detail which was a bit concerning for colleges with this level of admissions selectivity. Dartmouth did state 1/4 of its graduates opted for graduate study and 1/3 of these furthered their studies at Dartmouth.
I don’t think career placement is as important if one plans on graduate study. Then it’s more of what the specific student makes of his/her college experience/performance and grad exam scores.
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Although only 63% of Dartmouth grads reported graduation plans, assuming the remaining 1/3 has the same result, here are numbers for post-BA med school (don’t know if data includes D.O. programs) and law school enrollment:
1,200 class size x 23% attending grad school = 276 attending grad school immediately after graduation. Of this:
10% or 28 attended med school (including unranked med schools), and
6% or 16 attended law school (perhaps some decided to attend law school later. Also, law schools exist with low admissions standards where essentially anyone can enroll in “a” law school)
Due to the rigorous ivy league premed programs, 2/3 to 3/4 of ivy league grads take gap years before med school. AAMC (med school admissions service) data states 137 applied to M.D. programs from Dartmouth last year. Assuming 1/3 were not alumni, and a 70% acceptance rate to “any” U.S. med school, the 28 straight from Dartmouth undergrad seems extremely accurate. It’s inline with Yale’s actual numbers, adjusted for class size:
My D opted for another slightly larger ivy with almost double the number of applicants/acceptances. The numbers are horrific everywhere including top flagship “premed” state schools. Hence why all schools report percentages instead.
What’s worse is that the largest typical weed-out is from starting freshman to the med school application stage. No school likes to report this percentage. One way to ballpark is count the number enrolled in freshman chemistry at the particular college. If it has a strong engineering program, you’ll have to deduct the estimated number of chemical engineering (and some other types of engineering) majors.
I state this so you know placement in life is not perfect from any college, even ultra highly competitive ones. For those who don’t get off the waitlist, your life is what you make it, not a college’s admissions committee which takes a few minutes to review your application.
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