This year was our family’s first experience sending a senior off to college. It was truly a crazy process!
My son got into comfortable reach schools (and even received a scholarship) when he applied EA and visited several times. He was deferred from EA to RD at safety/match schools that he visited unofficially over the summer or offered wait list when he applied RD.
My take-away lesson for our daughter will be: if she is seriously interested in a certain school she will need to:
- Visit it officially at least 2 times
- Apply ED
- Sit for an admissions interview
- Follow all the school's social media accounts
- Mention that school on her own social media accounts, post pictures of herself on a visit, & tag the school!
I think this is all an unintended consequence of the ease of applying to schools using common app. Kids are applying to 10-15+ colleges and the admissions officers know this! They are left with trying to figure out if their school is just 1 of 5 safety schools on an applicants list. If a school accepts every high stats applicant that comes their way, it will devastate their yield.
What is the solution? I’m not really sure, but one thought might be removing the ability to apply to an unlimited number of schools. If common app restricted the number of applications, that would reduce some of the uncertainty that the AOs face. In the meantime, I think that working very hard at demonstrating interest is vital for a high stats applicant.