Aren’t those conditions common in almost all entry level jobs staffed by twenty somethings with no other experience or technical skills ( as is the case in admissions)? I realize a select few in tech or finance may have far better conditions (or at least compensation), but compared to most entry level jobs, this seems average in stress level.
Are you kidding @roycroftmom? Referring to the whole college application cycle, the college admissions staff are on the road constantly, handling many calls and emails from applicants and their parents, reading hundreds if not thousands of essays, completing their admit/defer/waitlist/deny process and then the many calls/emails from school counselors, applicants and parents if they don’t get in, etc. This is a high burnout job. Sure it’s their job, but it’s very stressful!
Let’s not question the motives of posters who argue that the current US system of college admissions is unnecessarily stressful and doesn’t produce better results, just as we don’t question the motives of the other side. In my own case, my S is very laid back and he secured an EA acceptance to a very high reach school early so the process wasn’t stressful for us. But I do see plenty of other kids and their families stressed out by the process. Some long before they started to apply for colleges.
There seems to be no dearth of applicants for the admissions staff jobs, so I guess some find it very appealing. I might not find it to be, but apparently plenty of people do. Turnover for 20somethings in most jobs is sky high these days. And no, neither I nor my family have ever been burned by the admission system rejections. Just because I personally am not harmed by injustice does not mean I should be blind to it all around me or unconcerned about the impact it has on our youth. Pointing out that there are other weaknesses in the system (AP tests, or whatever) does not absolve colleges of responsibility for the problems in their own system
Lots of entry/mid level admissions jobs open at any given time, it seems appealing to some until they do it for a year or two. Low pay/high stress=low job satisfaction and high turnover rates
@roycroftmom - Many of the applicants are college graduates who were unable to find another job. Its not always a first choice job. Sure it seems fun, but the turnover is incredibly high.
But thats besides the point. You asked how stressful the adcomm job is. Its VERY stressful.
** Crossposted with @Mwfan1921
Biggest source of stress for me after going through the process once and having three more coming behind - higher acceptance rates in the Early Decision round. Many (almost all) schools give a significant bump to kids who apply ED. But if you follow the usual CC advice to find the best “fit”, it leaves you in a real quandary. How do you determine the best fit without at least a visit, not to mention an overnight? But you can’t overnight at 20 schools, can you? So how do you narrow down the 3000 possibilities to the one with the best fit? And if you do find a great fit but it is a match or reach, do you apply to your first choice ED which might be a tough admit, or ED at your third choice where you are more sure about being accepted? At least RD, you can apply to 6 or 8 that might be the best spots for you, then visit Accepted Student Days at the ones you get accepted to and find your spot. But if you apply RD at EA/ED schools, you make the odds significantly longer. Higher ED acceptance rates make it much harder to simultaneously find the right “fit” and get accepted.
HYPSM and several other universities do not need to worry about yield. People who are connected with admissions and have never heard “yield” mentioned probably work in a rarefied atmosphere where concern about that is unnecessary. It is mentioned other places quite often, and admissions officials up through the Director/Dean lose their jobs over missing the target numbers (both with regard to number of students and with regard to the total financial aid required for those admitted).
@RockySoil that is what I find stressful. I think my child has a shot ED at some schools but he would have to visit several more than he already has in order to find a favorite. And, whether to apply to the reachier one ED or the target/match for stats ED, is the question. In addition to the high school suggesting ED is not for everyone and lots of kids change opinions during senior year. It is hard to know what to do. Not sure I blame the colleges, but I wish the Common App limited students further in number of applications sent. That seems to be part of the problem. They can only attend one school.
@RockySoil - I think ED has the most advantage when you’re looking at low-reach schools, and schools where the higher ED rate is not just a mirage. For some schools, if you take away legacies, URMs and athletic recruits, the ED acceptance rate is no higher than the RD acceptance rate. If your kid is unhooked, don’t get caught in this trap.
The college admissions process reminds me of college athletics. There is an arms race going on, and it isn’t just T20, probably more like T60. Everyone is stressed and would like it to be some other way, but no school is willing to change, or applicants willing to say, were not going to be part of it. Or at least enough to make a differerence.
You can’t blame this on admissions. I know a college admissions officer that miscalculated yield and had a nervous breakdown. I know many who are under pressure from faculty/staff/coaches to get students in. They are being tasks with increasing applicants and yield so they do it.
You can’t really blame this on parents. If your kid comes home and says “these are the colleges I am interested in applying to” what do you say “sorry, those will make it too stressful for you, lets choose something less selective”. Sure you can help them have safeties and you might guide them to more appropriate alternatives, but who wants their kid to come back to them and say, I could have got into school X but my parent wouldn’t let me apply?
And to some that say everyone on CC are the ones that are stressed. I completely disagree. Knowledge has been the only thing that helped keep me in check. It has helped me understand why my daughter didn’t get into that school that her stats are higher then most, and given me helpful suggestions of options I might not have thought of. A few of my D19’s friends were dumbfounded and crushed when they didn’t get into any of their top choices and convinced by everyone they would. Maybe they weren’t stressed but they were very disappointed and unprepared.
Bottom line, it is what it is. I don’t think a lot of it is fair, and especially with the recent admissions scandal, you just play the game the best you can because it isn’t going to change anytime soon.
Not all adcoms are twenty-somethings. I’d say the average on my team is 40+, with a close knowledge of admission (in general) and this college (in particular.) Most stay a good length of time.
Yes, the road team may be the younger folks. Or may not be.
The stress is the intensity. Thousands of apps to get through, many of which start well but end up shooting themselves in the foot. It can be 20 hour days. Too many kids who seem to have ignored any self matching, don’t seem to know this whst makes this college it’s own self.
Sure, at some lower end college, a team can be under threat. But this is an organic process, over time. And kids get to present themselves, they write their apps. Informed or not.
We wanted to know how D1 fit. Not just what she wanted, but what the college looked for. That’s not the CDS.
Btw, “interest” isn’t tallying visits. Instead, it shows in the app how you considered, vetted, looked at your own record. And how you answer any Why Us. Even how you choose to present the basics. Do you care? Or you’re convinced it doesn’t matter?
I think one of the reasons posters suggest building lists from the ground (safeties) up is to help families manage stress. People post every spring desperate for outside scholarships or loans because they have no affordable options. If you can afford the residential college experience for your kids and they have multiple acceptances to choose from then you’re already luckier than most students who will be heading to college this fall. I can see how waiting for all those responses can be stressful and not getting accepted to your favorites (or getting accepted without enough aid) can be disappointing. Is there anyone here without an affordable acceptance for this fall? If you tell us your parameters (budget, major, etc.) we can probably offer suggestions.
“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.”
Ok then why do many colleges, even the selective ones hire enrollment management consultants to help with enrollment, yield, planning among other things? Maybe adcoms don’t worry about yield, but the college definitely does.
“In fact, resilience is one of the factors sought by elites.”
If that were the case, why are counseling services at elites over subscribed, teen/college mental health is a serious issue in this country, most kids even at the elites, or maybe more at the elites are fragile, according to research by neurologists, scientists focusing on the teenage mind. Many elites tell their kids at orientation about the many services available. These campuses know what the students have and are going through, they know the kids are not all resilient.
Yale, as elite as it gets has a Psych class, here’s some info on it:
“Yale is offering a free online version of their course, Psyc 157: Psychology and the Good Life. The course attracted over 1,000 students its first semester. The professor behind the course, Laurie Santos, lectures about happiness and expectations, and teaches students how to put positive strategies into practice.”
If these kids were so resilient why would so many take a class on happiness, expectations, positive strategies? Well maybe Yale students know they’re not, and need this course, so credit them for their self-awareness.
as to the anger towards colleges, I do see your point, Fitzsimmons, Harvard director made what he probably thought was an innocuous, fairly straightforward statement:
“There are tests that, at many institutions, are both predictive of first-year and overall grades in college and more closely linked to the high school curriculum, including the College Board’s AP exams and Subject Tests as well as the International Baccalaureate examinations.”
What do you think happened, parents, GsC, students, think, hey if Harvard is saying APs and subject test are more important than grades and SATs/ACTs, let’s take a whole bunch of them.
@Trixy34 " I think ED has the most advantage when you’re looking at low-reach schools, and schools where the higher ED rate is not just a mirage. For some schools, if you take away legacies, URMs and athletic recruits, the ED acceptance rate is no higher than the RD acceptance rate. If your kid is unhooked, don’t get caught in this trap."
That’s what I thought after reading a bit on CC - that ED wasn’t really that much of an advantage. But now I know better - check out the excellent posts of @Data10 on the subject. For instance Harvard, which only offers EA, has stated publically for years that EA provided no advantage. But when the lawsuit forced them to open up their admissions data, it turned out that unhooked kids got in at a rate 4X greater than unhooked RD kids (I believe it was an 8% chance in ED vs 2% in RD), even after correcting for the Holistic reader ratings that their own Adcom’s made. It is unclear whether they were trying to hide that fact or whether they truly thought there was no advantage (sometimes it’s hard to see our own biases), but the effect was and is real. If Harvard, which has no yield problems and is most student’s first choice anyway, is favoring ED/EA than I for one am willing to bet all of the others (except MIT and Cal Tech) are also.
@trixy34 wrote:
Not sure about this, do you have examples? Even at small schools, where recruited athletes make up a large proportion of ED admits, there still seems to be a bump for ED unhooked vs RD unhooked applicants.
Enrollment managers do a lot more than work on yield. They study the colleges’ wants and needs, the prospective field, how to tweak things like programs to satisfy mission. Some of this is marketing, some is related to retention. It’s as much about the student’s success (over the 4 years, to graduation) as the college’s. Obviously, where yield is historically low (or retention and other goals, like diversity,) this is a huge concern. But some great colleges, smaller, will share a service, as opposed to having their own.
Fitzsimmons is also on record saying this is not an AP arms race. A lot can be googled , as you know. The idea is to try to dig a bit. Not wait for the college to tell you resilience matters, but look for the bits that add together. In fact, being this sort is a reflection of how one approaches education. I often suggest kids look for the current students a college touts. When they mention Sally is an x major, they don’t stop there. They don’t talk about her GPA, but what else she does- her various engagements that also form hints. Some colleges talk about the ongoing community interaction, others may speak of research- or it can be all of it.
As to why so many in counseling: it’s partly a reflection of our interests and concerns, today. Colleges (not all, not by a long stretch,) make it available. That’s not an indication more students come in fragile or in dire circumstances. Rather, I’d say, that today we care more about this availability than at any other point.
Frankly, I’m really on the kid’s side in this stress issue. They’re young ans not able to read themselves as well as we adults may be. If your kid is breaking, please get him or her the care. Check your own signals to them. Don’t just blame it on an arduous college app process and blame the colleges.
And if your kid IS breaking, maybe a high pressure environment, where peers come in with a high level of prep and experiences, etc, is NOT the right fit.
Harvard offers no inherent tip for applying Early. That’s what they say. Just citing hooked vs unhooked is far from what makes ED the right choice for many kids. You have to be the right candidate. And that does mean, you have to have some rational and informed understanding of what might make you a contender.
There’s no secret pull, just for applying Early. No extra points added. Fact is, so many studies show the higher strength of the Early applicants (not counting whatever gets an athetic recruit in.) That’s more than can be measured in stats (or an admit rate.) Presumably, when you apply early (the best-match kids, at least,) you have considered what it takes to get an admit, the whole of it, your match. It’s not supposed to be a crapshoot. I keep saying, an underqualified kid has no better chance than in RD.
@lookingforward “Harvard offers no inherent tip for applying Early. That’s what they say. There’s no secret pull, just for applying Early. No extra points added.”
With all due respect, your posts (like this one) are one of the main reasons I misunderstood the ED advantage. You seem to ignore the data out there, for what reasons I can only speculate. I’ll quote the far more eloquent @Data10 in a response to you about this question on a recent thread:
“You are still failing to acknowledge the power of numerical analysis, especially if it does not match college website statements. A highly predictive model with a 0.81 correlation coefficient suggests an individual applicant who applies early has on average a 4x greater chance of admission than an individual applicant with the same reader ratings, same hook status, same… who applies RD . The actual admit rates closely match this model with a 6x greater admit rate overall, and 5x greater admit rate for unhooked. Harvard’s less complete OIR model suggests a similar degree of benefit.”
If you have hard data which you are willing to share with the CC community that contradicts the Harvard studies, please do so. Otherwise, this poster will believe the walk, not the talk.
Sorry everyone for the ED interlude, back to the stresses of Application process!
Data 10 is going on stats found. Not the qualitative process to be admitted. Value his input for what it is. Don’t try to impute more to it than is there. Your C kid won’t get in because Early takes a higher percentage. It’s not dart throwing. Maybe not your B kid, either.
The H ratings are not the sole decision basis. They are shorthand for markers. There is still conversation, as admits are discussed. This is not “top-down,” who got the best ratings. They’re input.
And to know your own real chances, you have to look at more than admit percentages, stats ranges, etc. Holistic.
Believe what you will. Data10 and ucbalumnus are our stats guys. There’s more to it than that.