I came across CC 2 years ago when DS19 was still in the 10th grade. We’re Canadian and we weren’t seriously considering having DS apply to attend school in the U.S. (though he would have loved to have gone to MIT or Cal Tech), but the Parent Cafe board provided a resource that I didn’t have an equivalent Canadian access to and many of the topics are universal in nature.
After 2 years of reading posts I admit I got a bit infected with the mindset of what is required to apply to U.S. schools but thought thank goodness we don’t have that craziness here in Canada. Fast forward and DS19 has applied to university this year and while mostly it is just stat driven, the stats required to be admitted to the top schools has gotten very competitive. In addition I was surprised at the number of programs that now have holistic admissions and all the hoop jumping that goes on to get into these select programs. Hiring private admissions counsellors when your kid is in middle school? Yep. Having an outside consultant write your supplemental apps? Yep. Paying to take courses at private credit mills to boost marks? Yep.
We are fairly affluent, live in a safe neighbourhood with the top performing public high school in the city, strongly value education, I’m a stay at home parent, and we entered the EC rat race to a limited extent starting when the kids were young. We have supplemented their education with “after schooling” and summer programs. Both the boys are gifted and DS19 in particular is very high achieving. He was admitted to a highly selective magnate program for high school. Except for not attending an elite private school our kids have had all these privileges weighted in their favour and I thought he would be a shoe-in for any program he wanted to apply to. I also believed that he would get extensive scholarship money. Nope. While he did get a few early offers for admissions to the general arts/science faculties at some of the top schools in our province (and the country), and was offered a few thousand dollars in scholarship, he’s still waiting to hear back from his 2 top choice programs and there is a good chance he will not be admitted. His number 1 choice has a high GPA cut off, holistic admissions, and only takes 60 students. The 2nd one has much larger enrolment but also has a high GPA cut off and semi-holistic admissions (they claim the supplemental app is voluntary, but I really believe you are at a disadvantage if you opt not to do it). I have been sitting on pins and needles for the past month waiting to find out if he will be admitted or not. The first program doesn’t make early offers but the second one has been making a few early offers every month since January. I was sure he would get an early offer. Nope. Hopefully we will know by the end of next week (fingers crossed). So while I think the admissions process to US schools is crazy, a similar system is starting to infect our admissions process as well at least for top programs/schools. UBC’s admissions process in particular would look very familiar to many American applicants.
“I do expect a more sane, rational process that most of the rest of the world manages to accomplish” @roycroftmom You should read up on the crazy processes in many countries re: national exams - South Korea, India to name just a couple. Crazy amounts of stress, suicides, etc. Airports diverting traffic on exam days. I wouldn’t call that sane and rational.
People on CC are experiencing a lot more stress about this than the general public. That’s important to remember. The majority of college students aren’t trying to get into super selective schools.
The stress doesn’t necessarily have to do with trying to get in to super selective schools. There are a lot of other aspects to this process that are stressful.
Technically, no links to blogs and some constraint about OpEds, though you do see the latter linked.
Jym, also possible he made it far, but something like geo diversity or his major affected his final decision. That’s something we never know.
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Whenever you put your direction in the hands of others- adcoms, employment folks, whatever it is- you have to accept the element of the unknown. That shouldn’t mean pot shotting it. Or in holistic, assuming stats and a few titles or awards is “it.” So much of what hs entails is not college level, you’re still at home.
But for top colleges that vet deeper, it helps to be the sort who doesnt assume, who does take the deeper look, doesn’t rely on 2nd or 3rd hand info.
Of course hs can be stressful. It’s a time of increasing responsbilities. But if it’s obvious it bends a kid out of shape, that’s not the sort top colleges look for.
There are so many colleges out there that do focus primarily on stats.
In post #77, by “they” roycroftmom meant British and Canadian universities. If a student has been disadvantaged by prior schooling, the British universities do take it into account, so the admissions are holistic in that sense. However, the admissions are academically based, and an applicant cannot leap-frog another applicant who is better qualified academically by submitting an interesting personal statement, or compiling an impressive list of EC’s. Oxbridge interviews are conducted by academics in the field, not by admissions officers, alumni, or students. The interviews are academically focused. You can view sample interviews on the Oxford and Cambridge web sites. In STEM fields, the interviews include problem solving. In fields such as history, the interviews include written tests with lengthy essays that require analysis + a fact base.
Interestingly, Oxford offers an entire year of preparation at the university before the students who have been disadvantaged by coming from poor schools start the regular degree program. The only places in the US that do this as far as I know are the military academies. Oxbridge has a certain similarity to the military academies in that all of the students in a given major have to take the same baseline program (or an advanced version of it). There are not easier options to the same degree.
Well, college deans and administrators claim students are arriving on their campuses with unprecedented degrees of anxiety and emotional fragility. So while I will agree that perhaps sone students and families don’t find the process stressful, apparently many do, including those who succeed in their quest for an elite admittance. For that, I lay much of the blame on the colleges themselves. Rather than telling the students to be less prestige obsessed, how about telling the colleges to stop worrying about the USNews rankings? Why can’t they admit students, above a certain academic threshold, by lottery, or perhaps even admit a student with a B sometimes? How about admitting students who take risks and fail at something new, not just those who succeed? Or even stop gaming the rankings with spring admits whose scores don’t count and inflated applications and prestige-focused marketing materials? Don’t forget who started this rat race.
That’s the key distinction. Admissions officers are generally unqualified, or at least under-qualified, to select among applicants based on academics, especially considering that nearly all the usual academic metrics are severely weakened in the current environment. With their single-minded pursuit of more applicants in their selectivity race to further boost their perceived “prestige”, the number of applications is at such a level that faculty members, who are the most qualified to select their students, are not involved in the process (other than in arts). Only a few schools, notably Caltech, still have heavy faculty involvement in the selection process.
Caltech is unusual among colleges at the high end of admission selectivity where the rigor of the course work is high enough that “ordinary excellent” students by typical academic stats have a non-trivial risk of having academic difficulty there.
What’s it matter how Oxbridge does it? This isn’t their system. And in the US, there are many options.
Why would a student arrive at a US elite frazzled, if properly prepared? And if the stresses were properly attended to, before? It suggests a fragility. Some comments, Roycroftmom, like non major courses and clubs not mattering, suggesting colleges are saying trying something new isn’t good unless you succeed, or just out to boost prestige, just point to misconceptions.
In 10+ years at this college, I never heard the word “yield” discussed by adcoms. But CC is so sure. Some posters forget these are colleges getting 10:1 volume of apps or worse, historically able to form a waitlist.
Take care of your kids. Guide them well, get help if they need. Look for an understanding. It’s not a lottery.
As an aside, schools whose budgets/revenue projections are affected by low yields (commonly yields below 20%) do pay attention to it . Here’s and example:
It is typically looked at by the dean of enrollment management
Sure, schools look at it. And carefully. It is an important measure of whether they are marketing themselves effectively to the students they want, whether they are offering what applicants want, whether their merit and FA programs are working, etc. And my guess is they also monitor it internally by constituency, so it’s not just one big number that matters. But the big thing at the end of the day was whether they succeeded in enrolling the class that met their internal parameters, which as @roycroftmom points out, can involve revenue.
People on these boards seem convinced that high stats students are rejected for yield protection reasons. I don’t buy it. They may be rejected because there are already x applicants interested in the same program, because their application talks about wanting things the school doesn’t offer, etc. But admissions, much to their chagrin, always gets feedback from faculty on how they are doing, and the pressure is on.
Chiming in just to say, you don’t think kids in Britain are stressed? Are you kidding? They are stressed about their exam results years in advance! (And have spent years studying). Your kid wouldn’t be any less stressed in other systems.
Correlation isn’t causation. According to the APA, 75% of mental illnesses begin by age 24, and anxiety disorders are the most common. Blaming the college admissions process for that is misguided. Colleges are trying to identify and assist students who have issues, but it doesn’t mean they’re the cause of them.
More consistent standards. More uniformly qualified students (US campuses have far more under-qualified students, despite claims by adcoms, and often repeated here on CC)
Fewer mental health issues/cases.
Fewer frivolous activities unrelated to education. Lower cost.
All of the college admissions officials who have visited our school have stated yield is very important to them. So that is 19 officials over 3 years, representing a wide variety of colleges all over the US. In fact, many of the colleges are using a computer system which assesses the applicant’s interest in the school and so rates the applicants (red, yellow, green levels). I am very surprised @looking forward seems unfamiliar with this, as it is both widespread and well known in the industry.
Most college administrators seem well aware of the harmful impact of their admissions policies on students, but at least claim to be unable to fix it. Some have written books about it, or go on national speaking tours to address it. A few have even had college age children themselves, so have first hand experience with it. I wouldn’t want my student to attend an institution that was so utterly blind or in denial about the obvious consequences of its actions. As to why a student would arrive on campus frazzled, @lookingforward, well that is a rather predictable result of participating in an unpredictable, unknown and often arbitrary and corrupt process.That will frazzle young people sometimes. I am amazed at your apparently sincere inability to see this, even at your own college,and the role your employer plays in perpetuating it, but therein is the problem.