Is it just me, or is it a hard year?

Parents Forum
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<p>gluckie–I, too, am cheap (although I prefer using the terms “frugal” or “clever” to describe myself.) My D applied to 8 colleges. It was definitely not too many, given the circumstances. </p>

<p>Except in the case of colleges that give guaranteed merit aid based on statistics or National Merit status, merit aid is totally unpredictable. The only way to maximize your merit aid is to apply to several colleges you like and see which ones like you back–and like you enough to offer aid. The disparity in potential costs is even greater for students who will receive no need-based aid because of family income. The four-year cost of college for a full-pay student with top scores can easily range from zero to over $200,000 as a result.</p>

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<p>gluckie - you are on the right track basing it on several factors.</p>

<p>S falls into that somewhat “high-stat” male applying to LACs and he has been very fortunate with the results. The FA was better than we had hoped. But he applied to 9 schools because we had no idea where he would be accepted.</p>

<p>He has too many good friends though that fit the profiles of schools and have been WL’d. It’s hard to determine what a match is any more.</p>

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<p>I thought things were harder in 2007 with my oldest as his logical list of matches all had acceptance rates under 15%. It didn’t help that essay writing was not his thing. </p>

<p>Younger son (2010er) did better than expected, I think partly because he understood the game better. He got rejected by the uberreaches, but wasn’t at all invested in them. He was very happy (thrilled even) with his choices. He had many friends who had their hearts set on schools that rejected him, but he felt for the most part they had been unrealistic as they either didn’t have the scores or grades to justify applying.</p>

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<p>"I wonder if the waitlisting rising has something to do with the rise in the applications per student? "</p>

<p>Yes, of course it does—it’s math. Each kid still can only attend one school at the end of the process. If a student who ten years ago would have applied to 5 schools (1 safety, 1 reach, and 3 “matches”) and maybe been accepted at 3 of the 5—is now applying to 10 schools (2 reaches, 2 safeties, and 6 matches) – If he is accepted at the 2 safeties and 4 of the matches, nowadays 5 and not 3 schools will be turned down by him. That is a big jump in schools hearing “no” from accepted students–which depresses their yield.</p>

<p>Schools don’t want to see their yield go down—so they put kids on the waitlist and “store” them until they see how many Yeses they get from the first round of acceptances. </p>

<p>My D’s GC told her to apply to 15 schools! Because of the lower acceptance rates and higher number of WL letters going out. She applied to 7. So far, accepted at 4, WL at 1, denied at 1. </p>

<p>Having 4 (or maybe 5) schools to choose from is not bad–they cover a broad spectrum, too. She still only can go to one of them. If she had applied to 15 as recommended, she wd be saying No to how many? More than 3 or 4 anyway.</p>

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<p>gluckie - We did in fact use basic criteria to ferret out reaches, matches and safeties, starting, frankly, with the comparison tool on the Collegeboard website. Discovering CC helped a lot as we went along. In fact, the other LAC our S did not choose in the end was added to his application list the last week of December, when we finally concluded he needed more matches so that there would be more likelihood of FA compatibility. When he was accepted and visited he loved it.</p>

<p>S had excellent, but not tip-top SATs, very high GPA and class rank in a large public high school and (in our opinion) a very well rounded application EC-wise (sports, music, leadership in organizations, work). But as a white, middle-class male he was hardly “hooked.” So we took nothing for granted. One thing we did not cover was “financial” safeties, so it really was stressful on that front. When it is time to do this over again with our D we will be sure to do that.</p>

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<p>“How did YOU determine which schools were reaches, safeties, etc.”</p>

<p>Google for a school’s “common data set” and check sections C9 to C12 to see the stats of the last matriculating class (this year’s freshmen if the school keeps its CDS up to date). If your scores are below the 25th percentile the school will likely be a reach, above the 75th percentile will likely be more of a safety. Keep in mind that numeric stats can count as little as 20% of acceptance criteria, but will usually count more than that.</p>

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<p>As ORM, S1 applied 12: 2 safety, 4 match and 6 reach. Got into 2 safeties and 2 matches, rejected by 5 and still waiting for 3 more. Our motivation is really “safety”. Don’t want to be in the cold at the end of the game.</p>

<p>By the way, just by looking at the stats can be misleading. For example, certain State flagships are extremely difficult for OOS to get in, like UNC and UT Austin. Last year, a guy we know was rejected by UNC and got into Harvard. I had no clue on how and why…</p>

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<p>gluckie–
I think your logic is on the right track. I had my son apply to more schools than I ever thought I would (15+). We have firm financial aid numbers back from 8 LACs, all ranked in the top 40 by US News. Right now, we have 4 year cost of attendance figures that range from $70,300 to $203,200 as compared to a “list price” of $233,555 (based on $55,000/yr and cost inflation of 4%/yr). Big difference, obviously, and I could not have told you ahead of time how they would rank out in terms of cost. So applying to a large number of schools can quite logically be driven by FA concerns.</p>

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<p>D wanted a particular kind of school in the northeast, and she did not want the pressure of going for reaches, so I helped her with the research to find good candidates. After two trips together (plus she went on one short one alone) and tons of online research (including here), her list was whittled down to 6, 3 of which were EA. After getting into all three EA, she decided not to apply to the 6th, which had a very late application deadline (Muhlenberg). </p>

<p>So it came down to a very short (by today’s standards) list of 5.</p>

<p>We have been quite surprised with her success-- 4 for 4, with good merit aid at all (American, Clark, Dickinson and Goucher). Waiting on Conn College this evening, but they don’t give merit. We are assuming that her essay and letters of rec really connected, because while her stats were solid, they were nothing amazing compared to the achievers on this forum.</p>

<p>This site is so very helpful, but it can also increase anxiety. D was probably more of a candidate for the next-up tier (Vassar, Wesleyan, Tufts, Brandeis) than we thought, but no regrets-- she’s very happy with her choices, and we need the merit aid! She wouldn’t have gotten it at those higher-ups.</p>

<p>Gluckie, your child has fantastic stats. If you can help her find some schools she really loves that aren’t the famous elites, she’ll do great and get some money.</p>

<p>The kids I know who are getting no merit aid and/or nothing but waitlists and rejections are the ones who insisted on only the big-deal, name-brand schools. </p>

<p>I actually enjoyed the whole process, but now I’m ready for it to be OVER WITH! I wish D would decide, so we could all move on, but I fear April will be a long month.</p>

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<p>Thank you so much everyone. I definitely need my D to search out some more financial safeties! I am cutting and pasting parts of each of your posts to share with my H and D. Her short list now only consists of Duke, Furman, Davidson, and UNC. We’re visiting Emory and Clemson over Spring Break, although I think Clemson is going to be on the list no matter what happens on the tour…least expensive school she has on the visit list. Yikes! I need to get out the college guide and pick out some SC schools to look at.</p>

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<p>gluckie - since it’s on your D’s list, I thought I’d let you know that Davidson is where our S ended up.</p>

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<p>aag - I was going to tell you that your son sounds like the male version of my D. I’m so happy to know that he is at Davidson!!! Makes me feel a little more optimistic about this whole search process. :slight_smile: Thanks for sharing that!</p>

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<p>I wish you all the best.</p>

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<p>My son applied to 16 schools:
So far he has been accepted by 5 (UNC chapel hill, U. of south C. NCSU, U. of W madison and UNC greensboro)
out right rejected by Georgetown, USAFA and brown
wait listed by USMA, Washington & lee and davidson.</p>

<p>Still waiting: UVA, Duke, U. of Penn, USCGA and USNA.</p>

<p>I find that the reason to apply to so many is that it has become a crap shoot.</p>

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<p>Not true, because then all colleges becomes safety for a large group of students including HMSPY.</p>

<p>I think correct criteria should be
Acceptance — Stats - Status
< 10% ------- NA - Reach</p>

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<p>gluckie - low income students can get fee waivers instead of paying the application fee. This also applies to the fee for sending SAT/ACT scores. I do not know what the income cutoff is or if a person is limited in quantity.</p>

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<p>POIH- That is why the “can count for as little as 20%” was stated. When you are talking about elite colleges, these type of statistics aren’t very useful since so many qualified (>75%) students apply. The poster clearly acknowledged this and made clear that stats alone can be misleading.</p>

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<p>Gluckie–I did not read every word of every post, but an observation I made when my DD was applying two years ago is that (IMO) the students with the tippy top stats have reach schools and safeties. The schools that on paper appear to be matches (let’s say the top thirty schools in the country however you choose to rank them) are reaches for everyone. They only have so many spots and many qualified kids apply. So finding a school that matches what your daughter is looking for is a bit trickier.</p>

<p>We are just now starting the search for the soon-to-be-senior who will not have the options his sister had.</p>

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<p>drpolarbear: Saw your post…UVA came out last Friday…March 25. Check the SIS portal.</p>

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<p>If you need financial aid, you should try various strategies. You can apply to a number of schools that meet 100% or close to it in need and see what their packages are. Those schools tend to be selective, however, and some of them need aware, so those schools are often reaches. </p>

<p>If you apply to schools where your student is definitely a top student, and that school has a number of nice merit awards, that is another venue for getting money. Even if the school does not tend to meet 100% of need, if your student is up there in stats, he may get a preferred merit within need package that could pay off well.</p>

<p>Then you want to look at schools with low sticker prices, maybe commuter schools where you can meet the cost even without any aid or awards because really you don’t know what you are going to end up getting. The financial safety schools are very important if you are limited in what you can pay. Also in this category are schools that offer automatic scholarships based on stats. NMF status, SAT scores over a certain threshhold, valedictorian awards are all categories that some schools will automatically give a scholarship.</p>