Thank you so much, Pizzagirl! I have been wondering ever since I stumbled into CC how Champaign-Urbana became Urbana-Champaign. Except . . . that’s how your state flagship refers to itself, at least when it isn’t calling itself what it always has, to wit “Illinois”: The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, www.uiuc.edu
““WUSTL” is some weird CC acronym.”
Go to www.wustl.edu. There’s nothing CC about it – they chose that abbreviation themselves.
Funny…when I lived there…I thought UIUC stood for University of Illinois Urbana Campus. But that was when the dinos roamed!
While this may be true at schools that have merit money, it doesn’t make a difference at need blind schools.
What does merit money have to do with being need blind…or not. If a school is need blind…that means they don’t consider your ability to pay when they consider your application for admission. It has NOTHING to do with the awarding of merit or need based financial aid.
If you’re responding to me thumper 1, I know that. I recruit for Yale and disadvantaged students are my speciality so I know the financial aid arena pretty well. Maybe I wasn’t clear - which could very well be the case. What I meant is to dispel the notion that more ED are full pay. At need blind schools, it is irrelevant whether you are full pay or not in the ED or RD rounds. If you get in and need the money it’s there.
Now for other schools, doing ED depending on merit scholarships to pay is risky. I know a current senior that applied to WashUSTL ED and got accepted. He was not offered enough merit money and now his parents are scrambling to come up with $60,000+ with 3 other kids in the home in private schools. He has no other options. I think after some major negotiating, his mother managed to get $10,000 out of them.
If, and I mean if, he had for example, applied to UPenn ED or one of the other Ivies SCEA, he would have had a much better shot at money if he had gotten accepted.
Actually, the reason for this is blindingly obvious to anyone who visits the WashU admissions site. http://admissions.wustl.edu/apply/Freshman-Student-Admission/Pages/default.aspx
Almost uniquely among the elite schools, WashU doesn’t ask for any essays beyond those on the Common App. It didn’t 8 years ago, either, when one of my kids applied there simply because it required almost no effort to do so.
Colleges that want to increase their applicant pool could learn from this. Simplify your application process, and they will come. And some of them may end up attending your school.
Sure it does – for the applicant pool, not acceptances. In general, those who apply early are on top of their games, and those are generally not the low income folks.
Do you really mean to claim that there is no difference (“dispel”) in the financial wealth of applicant pools, not acceptees (Early and Regular)?
If so, are you willing to share the numbers? (No other school ever has, btw.)
There are schools that sent prefilled applications with minimum requirements. Applying to schools such as ASU or Tulane used to require a few minutes and no fees for applications. It has worked for them.
Simply stated, fewer requirements multiply the growth of your application pool. Insist on lengthy essays and make students jump through hoops with “uncommon” demands, and your potential growth is slower or killed altogether.
This said, anyone dealing with the idiocy of the IDOC requirements will find out that applications is only part of the PITA. The College Board must have employed a number of people who also worked for the ACA. Pathetic!
@Marian, yet WashU hasn’t been able to keep up with the other elite privates in growing its number of applications as much recently.
@PurpleTitan, that’s interesting. I wonder why.
Marketing curve - WashU set out through marketing to meet objectives, but it’s very difficult to sustain.
Fwiw, the biggest growth at the Ivies Plus was 4-6 years ago with double digits but has slowed down to about 2.5 percent in the last couple of years.
Growth 2019 and prior years 2.54% 2.91% 2.58% -0.19% 10.52% 8.33% 10.09%
Half of the Ivy League had a decrease in applications this year.