<p>Yes, gluckie, I think there are some kids whose stats are so high that they have trouble finding true “matches.” I think a lot of those kids consider the honors program at their flagship to be the “match.” But, I don’t know.</p>
<p>You are not wrong, though. There is a group of kids for whom there are safeties and “good luck.” I think they tend to get into at least one “good luck.”</p>
<p>“If a school, even a safety, wants you, they’re going to admit you. If they don’t want you, they won’t.”</p>
<p>This is the inescapable bottom line. Schools admit the kids they want the most, and we may not understand the decisions. It often has more to do with the school, and less with the applicant.</p>
<p>Thanks Poet. Right now we have her state schools listed as safeties, but might end up moving those honor programs in those schools to the matches column. Do they make a college search book for dummies? ;)</p>
<p>You’re no dummie.</p>
<p>The dummies are the ones who think they know what’s going on becuase when they went to school they (me, for example), filled out exactly one application. :rolleyes: Those were the days.</p>
<p>Good luck. Sounds like you are in for one of those really exciting, really intense years. Better to know it going in.</p>
<p>gluckie,</p>
<p>I’ve been struggling to come up with a simple answer to the question how to identify a true “match” school. I think there are so many variables with regard to what each student brings to the table that it’s tough to do. Certainly I can say that the most common objective data - SAT and gpa - is where we started. We identified schools of interest to our S in broad safety, match and reach categories, then drilled down into more detail to get a feel for which schools really looked to be in his wheelhouse - a good fit. With regard to very selective schools, e.g. a 20-25% acceptance rate, we considered them matches only where his SAT/gpa was at least near the very top of the middle-50% range,and preferably more like 75%. For him these were Oberlin, Vassar, Tufts and Davidson, any of which he would have been thrilled to have the good fortune to attend. He was accepted by all four. Given this, the fact that his super selective reaches rejected him, and the substantial merit aid he was offered by his safeties, when it was all over we concluded that we had indeed found his true matches. His freshman experience at Davidson, which he finds very challenging academically, but manageable, seems to confirm this.</p>
<p>Ok, I THINK Davidson would be a match. Furman and UNC look like matches. I’m not totally sure about these because of selectivity, but right now that’s what I’m thinking. We’ve got lots more research to do and luckily all summer to do it. :)</p>
<p>Megdog, same for my daughter. She is valedictorian and LOTS of honors, ECs and sports. She got into her 4 safeties, rejected at 4 and waitlisted at 3. It was very hard on her, and having watched her work so hard fo 4 years, it’s been heartbreaking for me too.</p>
<p>This year has been pretty awful for the students applying – my son was rejected from Yale, Princeton and MIT with a 36.0 ACT and #1 class rank – but I cannot agree that the reason he “worked hard” was merely to get into a top school. College is but a way station to success in life and learning to work hard for its own value is, in reality, better training than a mere entry ticket into HYPSM.</p>
<p>MY guess (and that’s really all it is) is that kids will have a better than normal chance of getting pulled off a waitlist this year. I think if there’s a school you would really prefer over all you current choices this year esp it would be wise to stay on the list. Like I said, that’s my guess. Anybody agree with me?</p>
<p>I’ve got absolutely to dog in this hunt at all, but I am curious to see how it plays out this year.</p>
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<p>Yes. Absolutely. The number of total college applicants peaked two years ago, although the number of applications for the top 50 or so schools continue to climb rapidly – this leads me to believe each student is trying to protect himself by sharply increasing the number of colleges to which he is applying.</p>
<p>As the HYPSM group continues to cavalierly reject large numbers of students with perfect or near-perfect stats, I don’t think the schools just below them, in the 10-19% acceptance range, have any clue as to how many of their own best and brightest will remain – many of them are probably expecting HYPSM to continue their trend of cherry-picking for intangibles and leaving many, many academic superstars behind.</p>
<p>Yet colleges, like mutual-fund managers suffer from group-think. So HYPSM will probably underperform in its accepted percentage of URMs, athletes, and women-in-engineering, simply because these folks will suffer from too many choices. This will force HYPSM to go to its waitlist, which should open quite a few slots at the next level down.</p>
<p>The lessor Ivies should have even more openings, because some acceptees will move upward off the high-end waitlist while the yield due to multiple lateral opportunities causes each college at this level to see a lower-than-expected yield. As they dig even deeper into their waitlists, yet more opportunities will appear at the level just below.</p>
<p>This situation is the classic parabola-shaped bubble, similar to the one that marked the peak of the Nasdaq in March of 2000 or the peak in housing prices 3-4 years ago – but this time the unsustainable parabolic rise is in the number of applications per person. There’s no absolute guarantee that it will break this year, but it will happen this way and in the not-too-distant future: there aren’t more students, just more applications – how much longer can the number of applications continue to jump 10-15% a year, as the total number of students continues its slow decline off the peak?</p>
<p>“how much longer can the number of applications continue to jump 10-15% a year, as the total number of students continues its slow decline off the peak?”</p>
<p>Until the price (dollars, time, whatever) of an application is more than applicants will pay!</p>
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<p>I agree that students should stay on a waitlist if it is a college they really want to attend. However, I don’t think they should get their hopes up.</p>
<p>Every year on CC people have had the same speculation that you do – that because of multiple applications, waitlists will open up. And every year – that scenario hasn’t happened. Every year, there are schools that don’t go to their waitlists, schools that are actually oversubscribed and have too-large freshmen classes. </p>
<p>The colleges are pretty smart. They typically know what they are doing, make pretty good estimates for matriculation rates, and accept the right number of students. Sometimes, especially after a year when too many kids say yes, they accept fewer students with the intent of going to the waitlist if necessary.</p>
<p>Also, waitlisted students need to know that they have plenty of company. The size of these waitlists is huge. Even if colleges go to their waitlists in larger numbers than usual, the numbers they take off are no where close to the number they have on.</p>
<p>Also – because of the low acceptance rates, fewer kids are getting into multiple schools. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think it’s wishful thinking to think that these low acceptance numbers will lead to more waitlisted students being accepted.</p>
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<p>You’re probably right. My speculation isn’t really based on the number of applications, it is based on my perception that there are a lot more kids on waitlists. I’ve only been on here for the past couple admissions cycles, it just seemed to me like there were a lot more waitlists this year than last. If that’s true (of course, it’s purely anecdotal on my part) there is likely a reason for it. My guess would be that the schools expanded the waitlists becuase they don’t feel they have the same grasp on yield as they did last year. </p>
<p>For the record, my only wishful thinking is for some of the great kids who got multiple waitlists. My kid isn’t applying this year, and no matter how much they expand the waitlists, it’s unlikely they’ll add a kid who didn’t apply.</p>
<p>My D was in the hunt last year, and didn’t actually get any rejections. She was either admitted or waitlisted. I’m of the opinion that the larger waitlists are a function of colleges getting a larger number of admissible students. Rather than rejecting them outright (which if the NPR story is true is somewhat painful) they waitlist them. Call it a “soft” rejection.</p>
<p>This is the 3rd and last college admissions year for us. I concur that of the 3, the first round with D1 (HS Class of 2004) was a reality check…but, we survived with 4 very viable acceptances. Four years later, we were prepared with D2…especially since she was very focused at looking at strong engineering programs…I joked that she had too many choices…and came down to 2. D3 is still undecided in her area of study, so we cast a wide range of choices…and, with the exception of only 2 campuses, she had visited all the rest. To take the stress off the long wait, she applied EA to 5 colleges and was admitted to 4 of them—1 safety, 2 matches, and 1 high match…whew! In the end, she was not accepted to her high reaches…but, we were pleased that she received admission to two colleges that we feel are perfect fits for her.</p>
<p>To the American abroad in India:
Sounds like your children might be having some of the same PROBLEMS international applicants frequently have:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>teachers in their schools don’t perhaps have the format for writing American letters of recommendation down.<br>
what you can do:
You can find really good info online on writing a LOR for college, on teacher’s websites. Print this stuff out and sit down with the recommendation writers.
The hard point is convincing your children’s teachers to write HOLISTIC letters where they talk about things like intellectual curiosity, your child’s winning personality – rather than simply writing six lines that say “s/he did very well on the entrance exams.” The best teacher and gc websites have sample letters. These are helpful.</p></li>
<li><p>adcoms don’t thoroughly understand the system you’re applying from.
What you can do:
Ask teachers to SPECIFICALLY outline the situation with low grades in the final years of high school, to MENTION it specifically in LOR"S, print out and attach information about your children’s schools with the applications and the LOR’s and if your children’s school has a WEBSITE have teachers mention that in their LOR’s.
(used to work in college advising overseas, can you tell?)</p></li>
</ol>