I really appreciate that honesty. I wish more were. So many are cagey about even being need-aware.
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Great read. Totally agree with the number of apps. I told my kids if you need more than a dozen apps you’re doing it wrong. You can only attend one school.
The other thing I agree with is that students can be all over the place and change directions many times. These are 18 year-olds. One of my few rules was that our kids had to apply to one of our flagships or a local school first. It’s cool to talk about going far away to college until it’s time to commit (both kids did go far away).
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22 posts and no one has asked you your approach to visiting 30+ schools.
How did you plan/manage that?
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@IndySceptic , they said they didn’t visit all - that’s how they concluded it helped. But they didn’t say how they picked the ones to visit, eith pre-application or post-decision. It’d be interesting to know.
Yes, I guess they see it as inconsistent with their marketing. But I always just think, right, you have a budget, and there is only so much aid in the budget, so it is OK to admit it usually runs out before you have made all your decisions.
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From the OP:
There were schools visited that ended up not getting applied to, and other schools that were applied to without being visited. @IndySceptic raises a great question though…how did all of those visits happen? Were they during the school year? Breaks? How early did the visits start happening?
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FWIW I think my 25 visited 25ish… but we live w/i a 2-hour drive of most, and a 6-hour drive of all but 2…We saw them all on overnights or day trips over 2 years; some were combined with “vacation” weekends or visiting relatives. A number were 30 minutes away and were just an afternoon jaunt… Benefit of a New England base, which OP did NOT have! 25 had NO idea what they wanted at first!
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We did 19, and none were particularly close. One trip of 7 over a 5 day spring break trip jr year. Another 5 in a summer jaunt to midwest. There were a couple that were on our way to something else, then a few trips over long weekends to pick up the remaining ones two at a time. It’s hard to imagine doing 11 more - mostly because of burnout, but logistically, it could have happened.
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Probably too much to ask for but would be helpful to applicants to know what that means: do they rank students in order of how much they want them and then go down that list, do they do it on a time-chronological basis as they go through the applications (and if so does that mean EA is a funding advantage*), etc? (I guess the same could be asked of how schools decide who gets admitted vs waitlisted)
*I know some schools do state that EA is the best or sometimes only round for merit, but I think those are mostly publics ? Happy to be corrected
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Privates don’t often have EA per se (although some do), but they might have some sort of priority deadline before the RD deadline for full merit consideration. So same deal, really. And then for that matter, sometimes they have Likely Letters which serve a similar function to an early admission.
By the way, I think the one thing we can be fairly confident about from various reporting over the years is that even nominally need blind colleges can be need aware at the waitlist stage. I would personally assume that is a large factor for need aware colleges at the waitlist stage unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Then a few times I have seen need aware colleges say something like, “We admit X% need blind.” That’s not quite chronological, but it gives you an idea.
Most, though, are just a black box. I agree that is annoying, but I also get it–you can’t be criticized (up to and including be sued) for something people don’t even know about in the first place.
ETA:
Just as an example, here are Rochester’s deadlines:
You’ve got ED 1 on November 1, then ED 2 and RD on January 5. But on December 1, you have the priority merit deadline.
As a further aside, I always wonder if this sort of priority merit deadline is also a pseudo-demonstrated interest thing as well. Like you had to have been thinking about Rochester sufficiently far in advance to meet that deadline, not only after ED 1 didn’t work out and you started scrambling . . . .
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Sorry to hear about your issue with Naviance. Yes, it requires a certain “N” to work well and it becomes invaluable at that point. We were also “behind the eight ball” applying to LACs because LACs have FAR fewer applicants. Nothing would appear on Scoir/Maia (our school switched Sophomore year), but our college counselor would verbally give us the historical data (usually only a few kids applying).
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Great question!
The answer is the sheer prestige of Wellesley. She felt lucky to get in and felt that she had to consider it. Wellesley admissions is also a fabulous operation and they were so incredibly welcoming and nice. They made it really hard for D26!
D26 also noticed that I loved Wellesley. I usually kept my opinions on schools to myself so as to not influence her decision, but my love for Wellesley just leaked out, lol. I have gushed about Wellesley in CC posts.
She is going to the University of Richmond.
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Then as an opposite example, you have Fordham who says:
We guarantee full consideration for admission and scholarships for students who complete their applications on or before this date.
The date referred to is each completion date for EA, ED1, ED2 and RD. (This is different from, and a few weeks later than, the application deadline date.) So they are basically saying you get full consideration regardless of application type or date. That said…. One assumes there are naturally going to be fewer spots to be considered for in RD when there are three early options.
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I would say that the schools that contacted us were well-endowed, but not super-wealthy. maybe $400K-$700K in endowment per student. Rich enough to offer a “first class” experience, but not so wealthy that they are immune to “full pay favoritism” as a Harvard or Princeton might be.
Very surprised to hear from the AO and not fin aid.
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I think this is very unfair to the student. If you want the student, take them off the waitlist and let them decide within the allotted time (a week? 2 weeks?) The student met all the deadlines put out there by the school and now the school wants them to promise to go there IF the school accepts them off the waitlist? Why does the school get to wiggle?
I thought if the student was accepted off the waitlist it wasn’t counted for or against the yield number?
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Great questions!
Actually, if you look at the giant college visit thread on CC…..you will see that I posted on all of our trips! Just search my user name in that thread.
D26 did do one trip with her mom, so I did not report on her visits to Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Villanova, Swarthmore, and Lafayette (I am leaving at least one school out) because I was not there.
This started 2 years ago. We did a June 2024 “tour of the Northeast” first in her summer between sophomore and junior years. That same summer, we also went to VA to do 3 schools there (W & L, Richmond, and VT).
In October 2024, we visited Notre Dame during a school break.
January 2025–Gonzaga
March 2025–WashU and Vandy
April 2025–Kenyon and Denison
June 2025–big tour of schools in the Southeast
July 2025–schools in TX.
Also July 2025–schools in MN.
UC Davis was also close to us and we visited twice on random weekends.
Sometimes these were combined with volleyball trips that she was taking anyway. Also, D26 and I loved doing this. Even now that she is committed to Richmond…..we still visit schools. We went to Randolph Macon just the other day. We are basically college tourists. This was vacation for us.
D26 drove her own list with input from me. It may look like a random list, but there was a rationale for each school although admittedly with weird paradoxes (e.g., Catholic schools with women’s colleges).
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What were y’alls’ impressions of Randolph-Macon? It’s a school I’ve been increasingly curious about, but it doesn’t get much airtime on CC.
This is me! Depends on who I’m traveling with as to how much time I get to be on campus vs. just a drive-by.
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Totally agree–it seemed a bit slimey.
These were calls or emails directly to the student asking for a decision within a short time period. 2 days to a week. IIRC, they already had her financial aid award (or lack thereof) already done when they contacted her.
If you agreed to come, you got an offer letter. I forget if the deposit had to be paid before the offer letter came or if it was the other way around. It felt like another ED round but vague.
I am not sure how the “admissions accounting” worked. My guess is that if you say no…..you stay on the waitlist indefinately (which is effectively a rejection?). If you say yes, you are accepted and the school gets a “guaranteed yield” from you.
That is why I called it a yield management tool.
Very nice campus and very friendly people! However, we didn’t do the admissions tour and it was boiling hot so we were only there for about 1 hour. Most of the buildings were closed for the summer. It was a very nice campus–better than I would have expected. The cute town of Ashland, VA (The Center of the Universe, according to the town) is right next to the campus. It is directly on a railroad line, so it might get loud during the school year.
There is lots of Civil War history right around the school, so it does warrant a visit.
It reminded me of a more compact Davidson if you have been there. Shady, red brick campus with a cute town right there. Obviously, not as elite or posh as Davidson.
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What you are describing sounds like an offer of admission from the WL. They call, ask if you want to come, and if you say yes, they send the paperwork. The time frame is really tight. It is not part of the yield calculation, and yes, it seems to be a part of the process for which it meaningfully helps to be FP. No juggling of FA budgets at their end.
If you say no on the phone call, they move on through their list.
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