<p>Actually, Oldfort, I have to agree with you. Looking at the S&P 500 from 1994 (459) to today (1257), there is no way even stocks could have rescued a college planning program. I accede to the fact that the cost of a college education has increased more than 3x the cost of inflation. This, mostly due to the fact that the government will readily give out lots of guaranteed loans – the college just jacks up the price, the government loans the money, the college gets paid, the student defaults but the college is just fine (they got theirs). College costs are therefore like car sticker prices – no one should really pay retail, or should expect to.</p>
<p>I agree with calmom, #199. </p>
<p>I believe that the entire Princeton admissions staff was introduced at the spring visit for admitted students. I don’t think that there could have been more than 7 (maybe fewer).</p>
<p>I could be totally off the wall with my information, but that’s what I was told by my kids’ counselor(s). Those reps know their regions the best, and each applicant is read in the context of where he(she) came from. But I could be wrong.</p>
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<p>Placido240: When you have been alive another 18 years or another 18 years after that, you may have a different perspective on how easy it is to save enough to send someone to a private college, or any kind of college. You may also have concluded that there are times to hold your judgment. Like when you don’t know the full story. And, even, sometimes when you do.</p>
<p>"They may be highly trained professionals but they are going with their gut emotions in many cases, seemingly setting aside all that training to choose a kid that makes them chuckle. "</p>
<p>Gut emotions are not random, just “non-transparent” - the admit still has to fit into the total picture of the class being admitted. Again, each individual admit might (or might not) be random, but all have to build a total class that serves the longer-term interests of an institution. A student, for example, with low stats (relative to others) gets in one year because the admissions department has a long-term interest in maintaining good relations with a particular college counselor who has fed them good (and full-pay) students over a long period of time. The admission might look random to a parent ("how could they possibly accept this student with lower stats and fewer ECs than mine), but actually not be random in the least in meeting the needs of the institution. It isn’t transparent, but isn’t random in the least either.</p>
<p>“would consider admissions “non-random” if the class composition was deterministic–that is, completely replicable, given the same set of applications.”</p>
<p>Among the schools where yield is very, very high (there aren’t many of those) class composition IS deterministic - they won’t end up with the same individuals each time, but they will end up with the same class characteristics, with virtually the same number of full-pay students, same amount of total need-based aid awarded, same needs for a football tackle filled, similar percentages of international students, and on down the line, UNLESS they receive instructions from the college administration, in which case they can turn on a dime. We actually have a modern example of that at Amherst, where President Anthony Marx directed the admissions office and the financial aid office to admit (and matriculate) more low-income students. Without any change whatsoever (as far as we know) in the composition of applicants, without any change in their stats, degree of need, number playing the tuba, etc., in their a-hem “totally need-blind process”, they doubled the number of students on Pell Grants in one year.</p>
<p>“accede to the fact that the cost of a college education has increased more than 3x the cost of inflation.”</p>
<p>Up until two years ago or so, the cost of an elite private college education had gone up significantly slower than the increase in assets in the top 10% of the population (from which the schools draw 50% plus-or-minus of their students). Elite private college educations have (or had) never been cheaper. At my alma mater (#1 LAC) the gap between the amount spent per student and the list price of attendance has never been higher, and continues to grow.</p>
<p>5boys,</p>
<p>When did your son send in his application? Does anyone know if the date of when the application was sent in correlates with being deferred? If you sent in the application in later, were you more likely to be deferred if the admission reps were running out of time?</p>
<p>Do you know anyone at your son’s school that was not deferred from the same school(s)? Did they have legacy, athletics, URM status that could differentiate them from your son?</p>
<p>I am sorry for the turmoil you are feeling, especially with all the research you did. It must be fustrating, but from what I could tell, once a student gets into college, regardless if it wasn’t his/her top choice, that student ends up loving it.</p>
<p>calmom and mini - Quite informative. It seems that RD is better for many applicants than EA.</p>
<p>I would only call the admissions outcomes “deterministic” if the same people were admitted following the (hypothetical) re-run of the admissions process, with minor changes (as mentioned in one of my recent posts). </p>
<p>From the viewpoint of an individual student, the outcomes would not be deterministic if the same assortment of characteristics were reproduced in the group as a whole, but the individual members of the admitted class were different.</p>
<p>^True but less random if we look at it from institutional point of view, in terms of what they need. We, parents and applicants, tend to focus on academic merits. Then it’s all over the place and we say, Oh, it’s so random. I learned a lot following this thread in spite of some unfortunate fireworks.</p>
<p>I think that maybe people aren’t realizing two aspects of the application that matter a great deal: LORs and how the application “reads”. I think the era of the quirky, funny essay is sort of over, actually. It’s a fine line between charming and annoying if you try that. I think that it’s important to read the whole entire application for the sense of “story” and overall “voice.” Not just isolated essays. I think many people cannot resist the temptation to stuff in all their achievements when overall brevity is a plus. And the letters from the teachers are so important. Teachers really do sense if the kid is just doing the minimum to get the A so they can get to their EC. Teachers generally don’t care if the kid is into a sport or a musical instrument. Teachers care about their field, their class and they sense what kids are giving the class just enough for an efficient A and which ones are engaged for the intellectual joy of it, beyond the grade. </p>
<p>I think a lot of high achieving kids get complimentary and sort of robotic teacher recs. I think a relatively few kids get teacher recs that truly take it to a different level, make the claim that the kid is a genuine scholar. I think a letter like that matters more than a 2400 or acing AIME.</p>
<p>It is sort of silly but I think that in some cases for the kids who aren’t D1 athletes or extraordinary at some EC that it really is about approaching high school as four years of learning for the sake of learning. That is a relatively rare attitude out there among kids and I think it gets rewarded.</p>
<p>Success in this game is not guaranteed by being the busiest kid, with the perfect stats. Would that it could be so easy.</p>
<p>Great students will do great wherever they land, of course. Great students can run into problems anywhere – even at top schools. So realizing this, I think that it’s just smartest to tell our kids to approach high school as a four-year opportunity to explore and grow, and not as a gauntlet to be run for Princeton or MiT, et al.</p>
<p>I remember reading The Gatekeepers and thinking, “Wow, my kid’s fate might be determined by whether that adcom had low blood sugar while reading the application!”</p>
<p>Re post #207:
I don’t think EA hurts in any way as far as admissions is concerned, as long as the applicant is comfortable weathering the deferral. As I mentioned before, when my d. was deferred EA from Chicago (a need-blind school), she was ecstatic – the basic response was, “what can she do to bolster her application” … not dismay. On the other hand, she had planned to apply EA to Northeastern – a perceived safety that is probably not need-blind, and perhaps a deferral from that school would have been more discouraging. (She was eventually accepted with a $10K merit offer that came directly from their office of “enrollment management” … but by that time had better offers in hand so did not follow up with pursuit of additional aid money.) </p>
<p>But my point is that an EA application gives the applicant feedback, and it also conveys to the school a potentially higher level of interest – and that in turn may help convert the EA deferral into an RD admission.</p>
<p>I think there is one area where it can potentially hurt, but this is tricky, and it would apply only to schools that do NOT meed full need of all applicants. Those are the schools that use enrollment management strategies to offer financial aid whatever level is calculated to seal the deal with that student – they may offer less to an EA candidate than to an RD candidate, because the EA candidate has signaled greater interest and therefore a potential willingness to come with a lower level of financial assistance. But I think that issue would come into play only for those applicants who are very strong for the given school – the ones who are potentially likely to attract large merit offers. It’s hard to know the answer there, and certainly it is not an exact science.</p>
<p>If the deferral related to finaid, which I highly suspect is many the case, then it is a sting, but what would be worse would be to fall in love with a college only to find that one couldn’t afford it.</p>
<p>To not afford to go to college at all.</p>
<p>The post by sewhappy really bothers me because it seems to be an example of blaming the non-selected student, by suggesting that perhaps the student was “just doing the minimum to get an A” or that the student failed to approach high school as four years of learning. </p>
<p>Based on the range of outcomes known to me, when a student approaches high school as four years of learning, that is rewarded sometimes, but not always.</p>
<p>(Incidentally, to Pizzagirl and epiphany, post #210 is an instance of recommendations being described as “robotic,” not students, but it cuts fairly close.)</p>
<p>While the essays are very important, it is hard for a student to write an essay that is not only authentic to the student, but that will resonate with an almost always unknown individual, the lead admissions staffer for that student’s application. It is possible that people who work in admissions are more alike than faculty in my department, but I can say confidently that an essay that would work very well for 5 of my colleagues would work very poorly for another 5, with all gradations in between when the rest of my colleagues’ reactions are considered. I think this is an aspect that introduces an element of randomness, from the vantage point of the applicant.</p>
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<p>If the student truly approaches high school as four years of learning, and that student also attends a high school of reasonable quality (i.e., one that is able to supply the opportunity of four years of learning), then by definition the student will always be rewarded, because he or she will come out at the end with a positive learning experience. </p>
<p>That student may or may not get into a desired college, but the whole point is getting into a particular college is not the goal – learning is.</p>
<p>I’d also add that in the US, barring financial issues, the student who pursues 4 years of high school focused on the goal of learning will be able to attend college. There is no shortage of spots in colleges and universities – it is just the focus on elite and highly competitive colleges that leads to the perception that college entrance is some sort of random process. Obviously the financial part is a very real and huge barrier for some, but that’s a different issue than admissions.</p>
<p>I’d add that if the student writes an essay that is authentic… that is also a win-win situation. If the admissions reader like it, great. If they don’t… well, who would want to attend school at a place where they don’t like the person for who he is? </p>
<p>Again… it’s not as if college itself is a scarce resource.</p>
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<p>Outstanding post, calmom.</p>
<p>Really.</p>
<p>We so often lose sight of that. The goal is to be educated, productive, engaged, happy. Not to get accepted at Harvard. Harvard may be a great place to get educated, productive and engaged, and maybe even happy, but it isn’t anything like unique in that respect. </p>
<p>When children are educated, productive, engaged, happy in high school they win. Period. That is always the right choice to make. If you do something else in order to have a better shot at Harvard (and the chance that it will make one more educated, productive, etc. than the alternative), (a) it’s still completely iffy that it will succeed, (b) if it doesn’t succeed, you lose big, and (c) even if it does succeed, entering Harvard with a background of NOT making choices in favor of education, productivity, etc., vastly lowers the odds of ultimate success at Harvard.</p>
<p>If you make choices that make you a better, smarter person, you come out ahead.</p>
<p>Reading sewhappy’s post #210 again, to look closely at the context of the statement about students who are “engaged for the intellectual joy of it” and about whom sewhappy writes “That is a relatively rare attitude out there among kids and I think it gets rewarded,” it appears to me that sewhappy is referring specifically to “success” in college admissions, particularly since it is followed by "Sucess in this game . . . "</p>
<p>That is the specific reward that I had in mind. Obviously, pursuing learning for its own sake is rewarding in itself! I would hardly contest that.</p>
<p>I am happy to agree with the component of sewhappy’s post that it’s “just smartest to tell our kids to approach high school as a four-year opportunity to explore and grow, and not as a gauntlet to be run for Princeton or MIT, et al.”</p>
<p>In line with this, I think it is really important to emphasize to parents who are just entering this process (waiting for decisions this year, or applying the next year), that it is possible for a student to have all of the virtuous characteristics that sewhappy mentions–to approach learning for learning’s sake alone–and still wind up being rejected from schools in the very top category. </p>
<p>The “top category” will vary from field to field. In my own field, I am happy to include Northwestern in the very top (nods to Pizzagirl), because I know who is there. But speaking solely in terms of my field, it would not be correct to equate Harvard or Northwestern with Tufts, in terms of the educational opportunities offered. In other fields, that might be valid.</p>
<p>I have the impression that sewhappy, Pizzagirl, and calmom’s children attended a better public/private school than any that were available to us locally, without a 90-minute drive each way, moving, or boarding. At the local high school, there were rare and cherished teachers who responded to an interest in learning for learning’s sake. I feel deeply indebted to them. I would really like to emphasize that! </p>
<p>The local high school is in the “Silver Category” of the Newsweek rating system (or is that US News & World Report? Did they discontinue publication?) However, I had the impression that much more of the school (administration included) was interested in athletics for athletics sake than in learning for learning’s sake.</p>
<p>If I knew only QMP’s results, I would be confident that sincere interest in learning led to the desired acceptances. I think that sewhappy, calmom, and Pizzagirl are all happy with their children’s acceptances (some of them ED or EA).</p>
<p>However, I did not observe this link (sincerity => desired acceptance) to be universally true among QMP’s close friends. And yes, there are many universities where someone who is dedicated to learning can thrive. I went to a school that holds little interest for most people on CC, and can say confidently that my limitations are my own, and not a result of that choice.</p>
<p>And yet, I am a hold-out (in terms of this discussion) that a truly top student ought to be admitted to a school that is top in the student’s field of interest, and sincere interest in learning is insufficient to guarantee that.</p>
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<p>You are not off base with your comment, it is hard to know what they are thinking. We did experience a similar situation with my 1S, about 7 years ago with Univ/Richmond. We visited the campus, my son expressed interest and sent a thank you note, made application, received admission and with no merit aid. He had fantastic stats, an ok gpa. Anyway, when he did not attend, they were flabbergasted - could not understand why. It backfired on them.</p>
<p>This time around we applied EA to all our schools so we could receive feedback and allow us to plan. All our schools are OOS and to visit these schools takes time and money. My son had his top picks but as this process has evolved so has his thinking from only 5-6 months ago. </p>
<p>Don’t spend energy worrying about what you cannot control. Focus only on what you can control. You’ll be happier in the end.</p>