Just to give you an idea of what’s still available May 1, here is my summary of last year’s list
Most need-blind meet-full-need schools aren’t safeties for anyone.
But she hasn’t heard from all yet.
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There are more stories - I remember two from last year alone.
I’d think the GC might learn more from calling a school where she was rejected that might have been within reach. What you want to know is if there is some glitch in the app — a rec letter that is not complimentary (or is lukewarm), an essay topic that struck the wrong note, etc.
If your GC doesn’t know how to call a college your school works with a lot, that is a red flag. Yes, talk to the head of your GC dept. There is a risk that your GC was not a good judge of something — some element of the app, the list of schools, etc.
If you provide the list, we could probably make a more educated guess at what her final results will be.
This must be terribly stressful. To me it seems horribly unfair that a very high stats student can’t have more schools that are “safe”. I would hope that university rankings stop using yield and acceptance rate as measures of a school’s selectivity. Both can be gamed but are gamed only at the risk of making admissions unpredictable for strong students.
@ClassicRockerDad has some good suggestions. He mentioned a couple of Canadian LACs (although they don’t actually use the term “LAC” in Canada). A third one, Acadia, is also still accepting applications. We visited all three a year ago and quite liked all of them. It is too late for financial aid for them, but even without financial aid they only cost about the same as our in-state flagship here in the US – less than half of the sticker price at New England LACs. If you don’t have anything lined up by May 1, then the nacac list of colleges with openings is a good thing to check.
For now I might be tempted to call a couple of safeties where she was waitlisted and see how you can express interest.
I might add (even if this doesn’t actually help): Just thinking about your situation I feel like I want to scream. If it were my kid I can’t imagine how frustrating this would be.
Thank you all for your good wishes, suggestions, observations and personal stories. So much excellent information. I read with great interest the links for Adison’s story and the other student who wound up getting shut out, as well as some of the personal experiences on this thread. Thank you all for sharing and it seems to usually all work out in the end. . .
As for counselor - I was wondering about her picking up the phone. I thought advocacy was absolutely done in this business. I also thought schools have relationships with colleges (we are at a major high school that churns out kids to these schools). Officially, I’ve received mixed messages on that. . . At first, counselor said they can’t advocate for certain kids because they have to represent all kids equally. Then later she suggested she could pick up the phone for the OOS public school but wanted to “time it right”. She did not mention “phone” connections elsewhere. One of the selective schools we got rejected from is rumored to have ties with our school and takes tons of our kids and our counseling office boasts an excellent relationship. If a call were to be made, I would have expected it would have happened there but, apparently, it did not (or it did and was unsuccessful). Anyway, we have to trust she will do what is best as we have no other choice.
As for school choices, she worked with her counselor and used Naviance for prior history from our school. I don’t know what else to say - counselor did not pressure her to do any other schools or different safety schools and is now saying she is as perplexed as we are at the results. Had I imagined this result, I would have had her throw more in the mix that were automatic acceptances though.
We are in IL- I can look into the spring term for ISS but due to budget problems in the state, all of the universities can be at risk of not getting their funding over the next few years which is why we deemed in-state schools a bit too unpredictable at this time initially. One of the state schools has had to make tremendous cuts in staff, etc - and we did not want to find out there would be trouble down the line once invested and committed.
I will have her look at other possible rolling decision schools. The Scotland option is interesting as is the list of last minute openings - there were some nice schools on there and I will definitely be watching for this year’s list, if need be.
I LOVE the waitlist ideas. Some very creative ideas to gain attention and show love. I also think it makes sense to start NOW. Schools will know if she starts in a couple weeks that she did not get in elsewhere.
As for visiting, we were not able to visit everywhere. I thought we did a pretty good job in seeing 9 of them over the last 2 years - and I never imagined that every school would expect a visit from afar (some of those safety/match schools are the ones we did not visit so their belief that we were using it as a safety as a result makes perfect sense).
Her reach schools are very reach-y - but she has 9 that were match/safety so thought she was covered by volume. She is a double legacy at one reach school but since she did not ED there and we are not major donors, I do not think there is much advantage left on that.
As for applying to so many, there could be something to having done so many apps, that the quality suffered. I don’t see it - her essays are unique per school and, overall, really good (I think) but I don’t have a comparison so maybe they don’t stack up to others. Her counselor has said her essays are excellent (not sure she read every single one though).
SO, in summary - thank you to all for taking the time to post. I especially appreciate your support and recommendations I do hope I am able to update with good news some time soon.
Thanks @Postmodern - THAT is the thread I was thinking of.
Even with the political craziness in IL, UIUC is strong enough financially and has a strong enough brand name that budget fiascos will not detrimentally affect a student’s education there severely.
Your counselor should know better than that. It sounds like the counselor didn’t entirely inform your daughter what a safety school REALLY is. There’s no such thing as a match/safety school. They’re two very different things. A match school is a school where you have a roughly 50/50 chance of getting in. A safety school is the school that offers the scholarship or there’s no question if she would get in. If she’s getting waitlisted or denied for safety schools, then the schools don’t meet the definition of “safety.” Plus if these safety schools are out of state, your chances of getting in drop drastically, because residents are the first priority. It’s the counselor’s job to know these things.
@3littlebirds you appear to be a very nice and humble person.
Once all decisions are in – which might be what the GC is waiting for – I recommend you muster up all the “sqeuaky wheel” you can and get in that guidance office and implore them to use every bit of capital they have with your #1 waitlist. Not saying be “Type A” but let them know you are going to sit sobbing in their office until they make it happen!
I bet they do.
If you are from Illinois did she apply to U of I. Very highly ranked school and her stats should have gotten her in. I know it’s not the state flagship but ISU is a great school and has open admissions I believe. I know someone who decided in late July to go to ISU. Sent in her application in July, accepted and got her housing all within a few weeks time. Moved in mid August.
I know it’s not what you are thinking about for your high stats kid and I still think she will definitely get accepted to one of the schools she is waiting on but it’s nice to know that ISU is an option, and it is a good school.
Hopefully your daughter will get good news soon. Where is she a double legacy? Has she already heard back from that school? With some schools, the legacy relationship only helps In the ED round. If ED is available and a legacy doesn’t ED, the school figures the kid will not attend and the school is being used as a back up. Most of the time, legacies are at least wait listed. It wouldn’t hurt to call the alumni relations office to see if they can be of any help finding out your kid’s chances of getting off the wait list. If it is true, you could tell them your daughter would definitely enroll if admitted.Maybe they can also go to bat for your child.
If you don’t mind sharing your “safety schools” I bet this group could give you a good idea of what happened. Some formerly safeties really are no longer safe for high stats kids.
So very sorry for the additional stress for you and your family. My fingers are crossed that you will have good news soon. I am sure you will find a school that would love to have your daughter, and she will shine there.
- I agree with everyone else: Don't lose hope. There are lots of colleges yet to hear from. Getting a stream of rejections or waitlists is hard on a kid and her parents, but if she's accepted one place she's happy to go none of it will matter in a few weeks.
- School GCs are supposed to be on top of admissions trends, but they can miss sudden changes. My kids' school was (and still is, to some extent) a top feeder to one particular college. In my daughter's class, that college accepted 33 kids (of which 28 enrolled). The kids with ultra-high class ranks were told by the GCs to consider that college their safety. Only two years (and a change in administration) later, the college only accepted 17 kids, 12 of them Early Decision. For the first time in anyone's memory, stretching back to the 1950s, applicants in the top 2% of the class were rejected. The GCs were really caught unaware.
- Among my kids' friends were two girls who had similar types of experiences. One was not really comparable -- a lovely person but not a standout anything, and very shy. The other was near the top of her class. Her school's GC corps wanted her to apply SCEA to Yale. Instead, she applied ED to a LAC she loved, that is very good, but not nearly as popular as, say, Williams or Middlebury, where her stats would clearly put her in the top 10% of the class. She was deferred, which shocked everyone. She then applied to ten other LACs, at different selectivity levels, including several that everyone thought were "beneath" her. And each of them rejected her. Obviously, something about her application package sparked a negative reaction. (I knew this kid well, and I thought that she would be accepted everywhere she applied.
Both of those cases were solved by the school’s GCs (who were very good – these girls went to a private school with an excellent reputation) picking up the phone and really doing some advocating with specific colleges. They got the shy girl accepted off the waitlist at a women’s college, and the high-performing girl accepted at her original ED school – the only acceptance she got.
- I don't know what colleges waitlisted your daughter, but sometimes I think it's the case, especially with a handful of LACs, that if they are afraid you are using them just as a safety, they will put you on the waitlist but happily take you if you commit to come.
When D1 was WL at Duke and Cornell, we also had a very distance cousin who was WL at Duke, Cornell and NU. This cousin went to a top public and my kid went to a private. My kid’s GC told us what to do and she called the WL schools. When the cousin asked her GC to call, the GC said it wasn’t necessary and it wouldn’t help. We told the cousin what to send in and her mother called the schools directly. Both of those kids got off Duke and Cornell’s WL, and the cousin also got off NU’s list. The cousin ended up at NU and my kid ended up at Cornell. My kid’s GC got all of her WL kids off that year. She worked it. The GC called those schools regularly. She told me if necessary she was going to drive up to visit some of those adcoms.
OP - have your kid keep up her grades, she may need them to get off the WLs. I have a feeling she will get into few of those schools.
Again, thank you all for your thoughtful posts. After reading the recommendations from this forum, I asked our GC 1) if she would call the selective school denial to find out why and 2) if we should start working the waitlists. On #1 she said no - she will not call for that info - she said it was a devastating year and my daughter is in good company (which comports with what JHS said although they are saying that about every school). On #2, she said the WL schools do not want to hear from her but from my daughter and she suggested my daughter call and write the schools with effusive enthusiasm for the schools. This is very different from what oldfort said about their GC contacting the schools on their behalf. I guess the difference between public and private.
As for the double legacy question, she did not go ED there and we are waiting for that decision on 3/28 - we have not heard anything yet. I like the idea of contacting alumni relations. Will try that. . .
On safety schools, I think the measure was what is normal for our high school. Certain kids at a certain GPA/ACT have always gotten in to certain schools. I think they rely on that given history in helping determine safety/match schools. Our counselor never suggested an in-state school as an automatic/safety. She seems truly shocked by the outcome so far as well (which I think is what is making us nervous). She reiterated to me that there is no deficiency in the application and that it is excellent.
Thank you again for the positive thoughts. Much appreciated. Hope to post good news soon.
Even at our large public school I’ve heard about GCs calling to get off the waitlist. One was a case where the school thought she wasn’t interested because she hadn’t visited. She had visited, but informally and they didn’t know. It was her first choice school so GC had no problem saying she would attend if accepted. I heard of another case where there was an error in the transcript - a B got typed in as a D! No one noticed. He actually went in person to the admissions office of his first choice (a public university) and pleaded his case. They reversed the decision.
All that said, I think it’s likely there will be good news when you finally hear from everyone. Admissions can be capricious. Both my kids got into some universities that were more selective than ones that rejected or waitlisted them.
My DD was in a similar boat a couple of years ago, and we are also from a IL school. She did apply to a pure safety, and had that acceptance in hand, and also applied to UIUC, but was not really interested in going. They the other results stated to come in, and it was one waitlist after another. I did call her GC, and even he was surprised at the results, since we too used Naviance, and no one with her stats had even been waitlisted. he said he would call, but only if it really was where she wanted to go. We decided to wait it out, and she ended up accepted at a more competitive school, with merit, and she is very happily attending there. I just wanted you to know that it is not over, and that it is possible for a public school GC to reach out, too. He did say he would simply be trying to find out what had happened, and if there was any more she could do, but he was so shocked he thought it was possible an error had been made, or that they really thought there was no way she would go there. He was prepared to reassure them she would attend, and she was not ready to say that yet. Hang in there!
Your daughter sounds like a wonderful student. I know you must be very proud of her. It is a shame that you’re going through this as it doesn’t seem like you’ve done anything wrong. Hang in there! There’s still time for a good match to come through! If you don’t have good news by the end of the month, it’s probably a good idea to bypass your dd’s GC and work directly with the head counselor. Yes, it’s a public school, but you are paying for it via tax dollars. You might need someone with more experience to step in here and help you get this done. It doesn’t sound like your dd’s GC is as on top of this as she should be.
Best wishes for some good news soon!!!