And with the hopes that this won’t be cause for excoriation: A quick look at this article https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-teen-didn-t-know-where-she-wanted-to-go-to-13727513.php and a quick click on facebook reveals her notation that she signed a “letter of intent”, and her mother and father very briefly started and then closed, a fundraiser on their facebook pages, looking for help because “the school she picks will be expensive”. This is beyond sad. There also appear to be 2 younger siblings…
These cases are almost as manipulative as wealthy scams on the other extreme of the college admissions side but you’ll not see this exploitation of the system getting criticised in news because it’s politically incorrect.
“… played on the basketball, volleyball, golf, tennis and soccer teams at Laney. Beyond sports and academics, the scholar also served on the National Honor Society, student council, math team, marching band and academic decathlon. “
NO one can play five sports, take full rigorous load, does five other extracurriculars AND find time to do 65 applications. There just aren’t enough hours in a day.
By the way what’s the SAT score? How many attempts were used to get that?
I completely agree with Post #81. How in the world did this student find the time to participate in all those activities and have High academics? Yet, the academic details seem to be missing from all the articles. As we know, not every valedictorian is the same.
I saw the gofundme and her note. She is looking at debt to attend Penn State Beaver. This is truly sad.
This is a big celebratory article about athletes at Penn State Beaver. They make up most of the 20% who live on campus in the one residence hall.
https://beaver.psu.edu/feature/roaring-success
I saw the clip on GMA as well, and just rolled my eyes — why? I remember when D15 was starting her process, we had a great guidance counselor. Her goal for the college bound kids was 10 applications, with a mixture of safes, medium, and reach. For D19, we had changed schools and they were a bit more laid back. But sheesh. SMH all around.
This is a rather strange choice. You get million dollars in aid and 55 colleges to choose from. Whole world is going crazy over your good fortune but you decide it’s better to attend a college I can’t afford and then start asking others to pay for your choice.
yeah not a great thing. I can understand those applying to all the IVYs but not applying to 50 or so schools. But it is not something that is common and probably has little or no impact on the process.
@Riversider maybe she played them in different years. Not all 5 for 4 years.
It is beyond ridiculous to compare this to the wealthy scams. Who or what is she manipulating? She’s ending up at choice that many have pointed out here is possibly not good for, costs more than the family may be able to handle, and doesn’t seem remotely matched with her abilities.
This is clearly a family which needed more guidance on what was possible for her, given her accomplishments.
The only manipulation is the media spin being put on this.
Agreed that she’s not “taking someone’s spot.” But she is tying up the aid. Most colleges only have so much aid to give, and when the well runs dry, there is no more to give. If we’re talking about competitive merit aid, we can’t necessarily say which other student would have gotten it, but somebody did lose out. And if it’s “first come first served” it would even be easy to identify who would have gotten it.
That said, I don’t blame the student, she was doing what was advised. I blame those who advised her, and the media for the frenzy over the results. Yes, it is newsworthy for the local community, and they should be able to celebrate, but the frenzy at the national level just encourages more students to apply to more and more schools. More apps will result in lower acceptance rates, lower yields, or both.
Naviance has reduced the workload of those responsible for sending transcripts and letters, but combined with fee waivers, it has made it easy and cheap for some students to apply to so many schools. I don’t begrudge the students that feel the need to do this in the chase for merit aid, but I suspect most could eliminate half the apps if they did a bit of research ahead of time.
I did watch the NLI ceremony, and the person introducing her (principal? athletic director? coach?) did use her as an example. He talked about how ‘if she could do it, they could’ and the national attention and the money.
I do think adults pushed her to apply to so many schools (although if the common app for HBCU accounts for 53 apps, that really does change the workload of applying). Penn State Beaver might be the perfect school for her and it may have given her a large athletic scholarship or she might be able to use a lot of her other money there. Maybe her grandparents live down the street and can watch her play. Maybe some teacher at her high school went there and put her in contact with the school.
My daughter went to an expeditionary learning school in Colorado that was a feeder school for Humboldt in California. People at the hs loved Humboldt and introduced a lot of kids to it.
I am familiar with the area in which this student lives. I would equate the schools with the ones in the urban district where my former employer is located. Students that attend these and similar school districts are, unfortunately, often less prepared for college than students in “better” school districts. There is no Naviance in these school districts - students and their parents are typically on their own to try to figure things out. People like @sybbie719 are few & far between … too many schools and their students don’t have the assistance in figuring things out. Some families will go overboard, just trying to see if something will work out for them. Rather than glorifying this on national tv, I would like to see reporters digging into the way students are or are not being guided in college selection … and perhaps raising awareness of the necessity of providing assistance to the students who need it most.
@twoinanddone - she did not apply to the black common app schools. She apparently applied to around 65 schools, but did use the regular common app.
With as much time as she must have spent on the computer, how did she not find CC??
Part of the challenge is that some of you are hating the player and not hating the game. Your outrage is further perpetuated by the fact that there is the world of CC and the rest of the rest of the kids in the country doing the best they can to get through the college process.
She filed the black common app- One application , where you pay a one time $35 fee. In this application, you have the option of ranking your top 4 choices (there are actually schools that will not consider you if you don’t list them as your top 4 choices. The student did not actively apply to 53 colleges. She filed one application, that made her information available to 53 schools. However HBCUs like Howard, Hampton, Morehouse, Spelman, Fisk, Xavier, etc are not part of the black common app.
The student application, transcript and scores are placed in a database which is made available to 53 HBCU schools. the student can then check in to see which schools have viewed, downloaded and printed his/her application. While the student can contact the school directly to express interest in a school, the Black common app can also express interest on the student’s behalf. I am not going to begrudge this young lady anything for simply filing her $35 application.
This is a monster that the media created by first having people report on these stories who know absolutely nothing about the college process. The monster grows because you have families who don’t know any better believing that it they said it on the news, it must be true (how many times have we heard that Egbert got a full ride to all 8 Ivies, having people there for believe that you are getting merit money/)
IMHO, this young lady’s biggest job would be looking at schools that are the best fit for her, looking at all of the financial aid packages, picking out her top choices and see which ones are going to be financially feasible options for her family.
Think about this, in marketing and spinning your product, these stories first and foremost benefit the black common app, who can say, that X number of students have received y number of acceptances by filing one application and paying one 35 fee. Schools get to say that they are more selective because they are more applicants applying. How is this different from the approximately 50 emails, pamphlets and flyers that came to my house from Wash U? We can say that Questbridge pretty much does the same exact thing- it gathers information from viable candidates to present to schools which ultimately make the decision as to whether or not they want to entertain the student application.
Why are you impressed? As a Title I student who is in transitional housing, based on the list of schools where he has been accepted, I really don’t see any financially feasible options (kid may still end up at the local CC, because of the gaps in the financial aid packages)
Unfortunately yes, there are not a lot of resources given to college and postsecondary planning in public schools because schools only have so much money. (At my D’s district 2 public school, the PTA was raising 500k that would pay for the college counselor -this was in the early 2000s. I can only imaging how much they are raising now). Yes, you have many low income/first generation students managing this process by themselves. Even at schools that have CBOs in the school (the school pays for the CBO).
I have read many posts about the GC did not do this or the GC did not do that. Some of you still have no idea as what the GC actual job is- Their first and foremost priority is to serve students who have mandated counseling as part of their IEP as to how the social emotional is affecting the academics and everything that comes with it - writing goals for the IEP as a related services provider, participating in the IEP annual/tri-annual meeting process, working on transition planning and post secondary outcomes of students with disabilities.
This is the priority before college advising, before writing recommendations, before creating schedules. It is very easy that in big schools where there are a lot of students who need related services counseling, you have GCs who do nothing else but related services. I in my early years as a GC, I worked in a title on school with a large SWD population. I had so many many counseling sessions (individual and groups) that my mandates were the only thing I did all day. Trust and believe if there were not students receiving mandates, at some schools, you may not even have GCs (when it comes to budgeting issues, a GC will be excessed before a classroom teacher).
Still nope.
Schools make more offers than they have because they know that not all of them will be accepted. Years ago, my S was awarded a merit scholarship that he turned down. I was under the impression that the school would then offer it to another student, but found out that was not the case. The school made offers based on their understanding of how many were liable to accept based on historic trends. the same is true for need-based aid.
Some schools will reaward the federal work study or SEOG dollars. Some will even reaward their own merit money but many do not. UF specifically says there are 300 merit scholarships awarded each year and they will not reaward if the recipient decides to go elsewhere.
@sybbie719 - I do not believe this student used the black common app. There was another student last year (whose acceptance to over 30 colleges I posted early in the thread) and I wonder if some have confused the 2.
As for why I was more impressed with the young man who seemed to have had greater adversity to overcome, I think that he may have had less support than this young lady from a 2 parent home did. JMO
And having watched the reports of several inner city and/or low income students who have been presented in news stories in the past, many seem to end up choosing schools close to home. The young lady in the OP, despite all her admission successes, also seems to be facing financial gaps.