Couldn’t you use this to turn a negative situation into a positive? One girl I know had to take time to help tutor her sister during covid since her sister was having such a hard time adjusting to remote classes. She wanted to use the space to state that. This girls an all A top student.
Hi Jeff,
I LOVED your book and your webinars. I couldn’t put the book down and I’ve recommended it to so many others!
One thing I noticed that wasn’t mentioned was the tactics some schools use that aren’t readily disclosed but I think it skews the numbers for prospective students. For example, Northeastern, Tulane and USC will admit a large cohort kids for Spring, not Fall, and they will be considered transfer students.
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Do schools practice this to protect their numbers and admit kids with lower scores but are full pay? Do they still need to report the stats of these admits? Or are they hidden since they are “transfer” students?
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Do schools that practice this distort their numbers to appear more selective and increase rankings?
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Do you see more schools practicing this in the future?
Again, thank you for all of your hard work!
As promised, @“Jeff Selingo” has agreed to give away a free copy of the book to the first 15 CC members that ask a question in this AMA. They are follows: @momartist14, @Lindagaf, @wisteria100, @Mwfan1921, @homerdog, @RichInPitt, @Knowsstuff, @Thorsmom66, @3kids2dogs, @austinmshauri, @lookingforward, @Aguadecoco, @Mom24boys, @Publisher, @Ocean2togo. We only selected those that asked questions.
I will reach out to each of you individually to get the delivery details. Thank you all for the great questions!
THANKS!!!
@JeffSelingo did you get the sense that the RD applicants have to be even stronger than the ED applicants to get in? Since schools take their athletes and legacies mostly in ED and maybe trade 100% yield in other cases for lesser apps, do they need to make up for that by accepting many of their high stat kids in RD?
@JeffSelingo I finished your book in one day. I found it very informative and have been recommending it to every parent of high schoolers.
A question: you mention a couple of times that colleges are looking for humanities majors. Is this true with liberal arts colleges as well? Is the number of humanities majors declining in the US? I was under the impression that English, Philosophy, etc were still very popular majors.
Yes, I think you can. I’m not sure because this is a new question that there is a hard and fast rule on this.
Spin-off from your response above.
Let’s say there’s an amazing student from a small rural school in Oklahoma or Maine or Nevada. Writes a compelling essay demonstrating intellectual curiosity. Unweighted GPA is 4.0. ACT 31. Took all three of the AP classes the school offers. Only 30% of grads go on to any type of higher education. School has never sent a student to an Ivy, NESCAC, or similar.
Can this student be admitted to a top 50 college or university? What is the best way for this student to break through and be noticed by AOs at Emory and Davidson?
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What makes a good HS profile? What information did you often see missing that should have been included, or would have been helpful?
This is a serious question. What did Emory prioritize in applicants after this situation happened?
They largely do that to protect the rankings and get full pays. The only schools that can do this are those who are selective enough to create demand for January.
I don’t know, unfortunately.
Jeff, thanks for being so generous in answering our questions.
Do you have any thoughts or did you hear any chatter about the impact on 2021s of the UCs going test blind, or other UC trends?
Jeff, essay prep seems to be the new SAT prep. Did app readers pick up on over prepped essays or essays they didn’t believe the applicant wrote?
Thanks.
Wouldn’t there be some colleges primarily motivated by other reasons, such as balancing the enrollment between fall and spring semesters? Middlebury has been doing spring admission since 1971, long before USNWR was publishing college rankings.
Of course, if colleges were required to report stats covering all frosh matriculants starting in any term during the academic year, that may shake out which colleges retain spring admission for enrollment balancing purposes and which stop doing it because they were only doing it for ranking gaming purposes.
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Grade distribution was often missing. Most of the time it was more about presentation: hard to read, few graphics and way too much text. These should be easy to scan.
Are you aware of any of the 3 schools using enrollment management software, consultants, or software, at anytime during the process? PS Great book. I highly recommend it; wish I had it as early as middle school, when the seeds of math destiny were being sown.
I’ll definitely be reading the book. I read the WSJ article and appreciated that information.
I greatly enjoyed your book. We are pretty well off and surely will not qualify for need based aid. Still, in order to possibly get a “coupon” discount AKA merit award, should we file a FAFSA? Does not filing a FAFSA more clearly signal to admissions that my daughter will be a more desirable “full payer”?
My D is interested in Davidson but I am not sure if it would be a good fit for her. I have seen it described as the “Dartmouth of the South.” She is smart and a hard worker, but I would say not an intellectual and I don’t think Dartmouth would be a good fit at all for her. Can you talk about what kind of a student would be a good fit for Davidson?