@NDhelp Don’t despair. I have two daughters, both of whom were deferred EA then accepted RD, and both ultimately attended. If anything, given our demographic, they were anti-hooked. Both kept up a dialogue with their AO, which I think really helped.
Thank you. Beyond the LOCI and first semester grades, though, we get the sense they don’t want any other extraneous communications (i.e. additional rec letters, etc). We are rule followers so what else can she really do?
@NDhelp D was accepted into Gateway this REA round. I absolutely think an additional letter would be beneficial. Especially if it’s a letter from another type of source other than school. Clergy, mentor and so forth. Our D had her counselor, APLit teacher and the principal write hers for REA. One too many if you “follow” the rules. I think as long as you aren’t bombarding them with letters, it’s all good.
@NDhelp Depending on the language of the LOCI your daughter already has sent, it may be helpful to emphasize to her AO that if she were admitted to Notre Dame in Regular Decision she definitely would attend in Fall 2019 and immediately waive any other pending applications at that time. Understandably the consideration whether an admitted REA applicant will actually be attending the university is an important consideration for deferred students, as @northwesty has pointed out above. Of course this statement to her AO should only be made if true and applicable, not subject to FA or other competing considerations. Very best of luck and success to your daughter!
@NDhelp I agree with @HM0527. Once you are deferred, I believe they welcome you to update them with anything – such as any new awards, accomplishments in ECs, new ECs, additional recommendations, questions you may have. I am not saying to bombard them, but an email every couple of weeks is fine.
@NDhelp Also, another suggestion: it might be helpful for your daughter to establish contact with your local ND Alumni Club. Local members are an excellent source of information and will be more than happy to help and support your daughter as appropriate:
http://my.nd.edu/s/1210/myND/mynd-start.aspx
Regular Decision for deferred REA students is a long distance run, not a sprint, and meaningful self-campaigning by seeking to add value to the AO therefore is important. Again very best of luck and success!
Thank you for taking the time to reply and making such thoughtful suggestions. ND’s deferral page specifically discourages additional letters of rec - only one teacher rec can be uploaded via the common app portal in addition to the counselor’s letter. I’ve also read countless articles that advise against the “promise” to attend because admissions offices are wary and know the reality of these situations. That being said, her letter does update them with three new scholar athlete awards and new and continued tutoring ventures (both private and service oriented). She has attended every ND admissions event in our area for years, and our regional rep once remarked that a student who sent in 85 letters was still denied. I think his apparent aversion to these tactics should be taken seriously at this point since the last thing we want to do is irritate anyone. Looking into the local alumni chapter is worth a shot but at this point I think they are just evaluating the pool of talent (it is substantial) in our locality.
My daughter (now a ND sophomore too) had been deferred and got in RD. It happens more than you think. Her follow up letter to regional AO was what got her accepted RD. Look at your AO page under the get to know your counselor. Find something the resinates with you and reference it. Maybe it’s his bucket list or words to live by. Use the first few lines of your email to make a connection, then update them on your achievements the first half of the year.
This is your last chance to make an impression.
@NDhelp As far as additional letters, both of my daughters did send one, but I agree that you have to be careful about doing so. You don’t want an additional letter to either be a rehash of what is already in the application or very evidently from someone who doesn’t know your daughter well. Both of the additional recs that my daughters sent were from people who knew them well in a context that differed from what was in the application and spoke to why they would be good additions to the ND community. I agree that bombarding with multiple letters would be a mistake, but if there is one that you feel would enhance your daughter’s application, by all means send it. If you can pm me, I can give you a little more detail about who wrote those letters.
Regardless of the 7% implied admit rate for deferred students based on Don Bishop’s comments, logic dictates that is should not be that low. Since this pool is clearly a tier above the large number of rejected students in the early round, how can their percentage chances be less (or frankly even equivalent) to the RD round which will incorporate a huge number of similarly rejected candidates as the early round. I think that @northwesty (and others above) get it right that the path for a deferred candidate is a very different one, and shaped strongly by how the deferred student manages communication and evidence of intent to enroll at ND.
I do believe it is important to focus our attention on the key message delivered by Don Bishop in the quoted news article:
"Bishop said: “Lower-income households, first-generation households don’t apply as early and want more time to decide and spend more time applying … so the higher percentage of class that you cash in early may create an equity of access in regular action. A higher percentage of those groups come in the regular action pool, so if you overstuffed the first early fruit, you’ve really eliminated — to some degree — opportunity, and we don’t want to do that.” and “We’ve gone out and identified more low-income students, and made sure that they knew Notre Dame was very encouraging to them”.
If this is so, Notre Dame has a responsibility to take corrective action, and to enhance relative admission rates from Regular Decision applicants:
"38 colleges had more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent
…………….Students from …
………The top 1%………………………Bottom 60%
……………………………($630k+)…………………………(<$65k)
- Notre Dame...........15.4%.........…..................……...10.0%"
@NDhelp – lots of good suggestions above, including working it a bit through the local ND alumni club.
Schools like ND these days have a crazy fetish about yield on admission offers. That’s why they are all filling half their total seats via ED1, ED2, SCEA, REA, etc. And also why they admit lots of legacies. Because those devices jack up their yields and also tend to minimize the amount of fin aid needed to enroll the full class.
So don’t hassle the admissions folks. But make sure that ND knows (if true) that your kid would accept the spot (if offered) on the spot. And if that enrollment would happen without needing any fin aid, all the better.
Top schools like ND have a lot of money for fin aid. But they still have a fin aid budget which assumes 40-50% of enrolled students will full pay.
Good luck!
@hpsca I agree that Don Bishop’s comments are pretty important in defining the strategic role of the early admission round vs. regular decision. He is right in his assessments of when various applicant constituencies are likely to apply. Which is why ND has not moved in the direction of Early Decision (not that they really need to given their sky high Early Admission yields), and will keep a lid on how many students will get in early.
I think Notre Dame and Don Bishop are doing all they can to address these issues, recognizing that Notre Dame is competing with many other great universities with enormous resources and high academic reputations for these same students. And just as many amazing students who apply to Ivy League schools pass on Notre Dame because of its Catholic heritage and midwest location, Notre Dame faces a similar uphill battle from an “image” and “fit” standpoint (totally unfair but real) from this cohort of applicants.
The good news is that Notre Dame is on the rise like almost no other university these days in terms of the quality of applicants who apply and the quality of students who enroll. This trend will manifest itself over time across all applicant cohorts, and I think that ND has the money to support the financial aid requirements that go with it.
Bottom line, regardless of early admission or regular decision pools, I believe that Don Bishop and Notre Dame are giving these applicants full consideration in the admission process…consistent with their expectations of successful applicants to the university. I guess, from an optics standpoint, ND could accept fewer Early Admission applications to try to make Early Admission and Regular Decision admission rates about equal. Georgetown, for example, works hard to try to do this. But I think that, given the quality of the Early Admission pool and the fact that these kids REALLY WANT TO GO TO NOTRE DAME, this may not be the best strategy to put together the best class for Notre Dame. And I think it is unnecessary given the focus that first gens, lower income and minority candidates get in the process.
Merit scholarship invites have gone out! My son was just nominated as a “semifinalist” for a 25K merit scholarship! Totally unexpected but very grateful that he has this opportunity! If anyone has any info they can share about this process, I would appreciate it! Thanks in advance.
@CCSavant Thank you for your message, I wholeheartedly agree with you assessment.
@WineLover Excellent news on the potential ND merit scholarship! Congratulations to your son, please keep us posted. Best of luck!
@WineLover Our daughter received notification today that she has been nominated for a $25K/year scholarship and a separate email inviting her to apply for the honors college. I will be watching with interest for any advice! What a day.
@Tea4Two Congratulations to the merit scholarship for your daughter! Just to make sure there is no confusion with readers on this forum: there is no honors college at Notre Dame. There is the Glynn Family Honors Program, which presumably the OP is referring to. Again, congratulations and best of luck!
@CCSavant PS: a rather insightful article on the topic we have been conversing on:
“Stanford University professor Caroline Hoxby and University of Virginia professor Sarah Turner have found that the schools that have made the most progress in increasing their numbers of Pell-eligible students appear to be doing so partly at the expense of other low-income students — specifically, those whose families make just a few too many dollars to qualify for Pell grants.
Members of that latter group — virtually indistinguishable from their counterparts barely on the other side of that arbitrary federal Pell threshold — get substantially less generous school-awarded financial aid. Their representation on these campuses has also fallen over the past few years as that for the Pell-eligible kids has risen.
Meanwhile, rich students remain very much overrepresented.”
“We’ve seen this hollowing out of the middle- and lower-middle income kids, who aren’t interesting to anybody anymore,” Hoxby said. “They’re not particularly well off and they still do need a lot of financial aid.”
I am a semi finalist for the 25K scholarship as well!! Not sure what to do for the 3 minute video but glory to god! :)))