<p>Hmmm, I have to disagree with the UChicago spokesperson who says that applications are down because of problems with the common app. I suspect that much of the drop across the board is due to cost. Parents and students are finally figuring out that one doesn’t have to take on mounds of debt and attend a prestigious school to be successful. </p>
<p>I agree @Agent99</p>
<p>Meanwhile top California universities are having record number of freshmen applicants.</p>
<p>UCLA - 86,472, +7.5%
UC Berkeley - 73,711, +8.9%</p>
<p>USC (onofficial): 51,000+, +7.87%</p>
<p>@agent99
Agree… more support to your thinking…an 18%,surge in freshman applicants to Case Western this year (over 21,000)…a school renowned for its merit aid packages…</p>
<p>^and more parents like us on CC, educating ourselves about colleges offering merit aid, etc</p>
<p>Case Western was quite aggressive in emailing their waived app fee notice. Is waiving the fee a new approach for them or is that typical? (First time through the process here.) My son is not an Engineering applicant (or anything related!) so I was surprised they contacted him so regularly.</p>
<p>Am not sure of the rhyme or reason of any of these trends. Why did Penn’s apps increase by 14%? Much speculation as to cause of Dartmouth’s 14% decline.</p>
<p>@2018dad—have total figures for UC system been released? </p>
<p>UC System stat for 2014:
<a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/14app.html”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/14app.html</a></p>
<p>CWRU application fee waiver not new for them…similar to Tulane with lots of merit aid and no application fee…will be interested to see application trend for Tulane as well…</p>
<p>@2014novamom, @2016BarnardMom, having no D’s I am not initiated into the Divine Mysteries of Prom Day. From what I hear, mannies, peddies, spa treatments, and elaborate hair arrangements are de rigueur. Our S’s usually wash the car. One year S1 also played 9 holes. </p>
<p>I don’t know why our HS has the prom on Friday, that’s just the tradition. But I can say that I had a hand in creating Prom Day. When I was serving on the School Board the high absenteeism on the day of the prom was brought to the boards attention. Talk about Senioritis!! We thought about imposing the same rule used in athletics - if you miss school you miss the game, but that would have been wildly unpopular. Someone pointed to the precedent of Deer Season - the Monday after Thanksgiving is always the first day of Deer Season in PA and for most schools has always been part of Thanksgiving break. So we added a day to the end of the year and Prom Day was enacted. </p>
<p>The Grand March takes place in the Gymnasium. I find it to be an extremely painful, hours long event. In the past it was in the Auditorium but that venue proved too limiting. The Prom committee selects a theme and decorates accordingly. Decorating takes several weeks and from what I hear entails a lot of Drama. The Grand March involves introducing couples one at a time and they promenade around the gym, stopping at predetermined spots for photo ops. They circle the gym twice, and then name the Prom Court, Pages, King/Queen. By this time a root canal is sounding good and I am very ready for an adult beverage. They then board a bus to one of the area country clubs where they stay all night, have breakfast and come home. From there they go to a picnic. </p>
<p>That’s all I know and much more than I care about. Hope you find it Helpful!</p>
<p>We will leave for JMU tomorrow morning. We will explore Harrisonburg sunday afternoon, and the Choices program is Monday. S has mapped out something like a plan for the classes he wants to see and some profs he wants to meet. We are looking forward to it. </p>
<p>2018Dad, thanks for posting the stats on the UCs. I looked and promptly felt ill. So many applicants!!! DS has all of his eggs in those baskets, though at least one (Santa Cruz) is way in the safety zone, per Naviance, and it’s a great school. </p>
<p>When I logged in, I was thinking I may need to take a break from CC because it’s another month until we hear and already I’m compulsively logging onto school websites hoping I will somehow magically see into the future. I would never make that confession anywhere but here, but somehow I think you all will understand. </p>
<p>I love hearing of all the great things happening with your children! </p>
<p>One unexpected bright spot for us: we just found out DS won a writing award at the regional level. We are especially thrilled because he has been diagnosed with a writing disability. He is the typical STEM student who despises writing, and he gets extended time on all essay tests. Nevertheless, he wanted to submit an essay to this contest. Just this fact of entering the contest was enough to shock us. We never ever dreamed he’d win an award. We are getting a flood of congratulatory emails from his teachers, principal, counselors, etc. They are as proud of him as we are!!! 
</p>
<p>If the UC’s accept the same number of applicants this year as last year, here are the acceptance rates for the 3 most selective UCs:</p>
<p>UC Berkeley: 19.1% (last year=20.8%)
UCLA: 18.7% (last year=20.1%)
UCSD: 33.75% (last year=36.8%)</p>
<p>The big jumg in applicant numbers to the UCs seems to mainly be due to the huge rise in OOS applicants. California applicant numbers rose, but not by a significant amount.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how many applicants there were at Vanderbilt? I can’t seem to find that information.</p>
<p>@vandyeyes–thanks! I hadn’t realized that Tulane and CWRU follow the same approach. Yes, will be interesting to see app & enrollment figures.</p>
<p>2018Dad-thanks for posting the UC info. What will be telling is if the OOS accepted student numbers rise like last year. Proportionally OOS got in at a higher rate than in-state students last year. </p>
<p>Despite the cheery reports in the newspapers, the financial situation in the University of California remains extremely challenging, as they try to deal with the state’s refusal to fund the pension system and manage inflationary cost increases without increasing tuition. Almost the only tool they have to balance the budget is increasing the number of out-of-state and international students. They aren’t supposed to accept such students unless they have grades and scores above the median in-state student, but it is pretty clear that some campuses have greatly stretched the policy as they try to enroll more students paying higher tuition.</p>
<p>Wow @calla1 congrats to your DS on the writing award. </p>
<p>We could use some advice here: My DS’s first choice school considers “demonstrated interest” very strongly. We visited, and he requested an interview, but they didn’t have enough interviewers, and prioritized people who hadn’t visited, so he didn’t interview (which, as I mentioned earlier, he was relieved about). </p>
<p>This school offers only a small number of large merit scholarships, and chances are that he’s going to need to be awarded one to be able to afford to attend, especially when he has a number of acceptances already that will give large amounts for his NMF status. The school he prefers gives a token amount for NMF. </p>
<p>So… we’re thinking write to the admissions officer to reiterate his strong interest and point out that he is a NMF and also a presidential scholar nominee. Is there some way he can work in a subtle (or not so subtle) plea for a big scholarship without it being too tacky? Something along the lines of “Is there anything else I can do or provide at this point to best position my application for consideration for the XXX scholarship? If I’m not awarded a large scholarship, my parents will expect me to attend one of the schools I’ve been admitted to that offers large scholarships for NMFs, but I’m really hoping that I can attend YYY!” Would that be an outrageous kind of thing to send? It’s pretty much true. It’s very unlikely we’ll be able to afford that school unless he strikes gold with their top merit scholarships, unless they offer exceptional need-based aid (expecting us to pay considerably less than our FAFSA EFC) which is obviously very unlikely. Or would it be more appropriate to just say that the school is his first choice, but he couldn’t apply ED because he really needed to be able to compare multiple schools’ scholarship offers, which will hopefully give the hint without overdoing it.</p>
<p>I am OK with the first sentence but not with the second sentence. So, OK to say:</p>
<p>“Is there anything else I can do or provide at this point to best position my application for consideration for the XXX scholarship?”</p>
<p>and then OK to add this: "that the school is his first choice, but he couldn’t apply ED because he really needed to be able to compare multiple schools’ scholarship offers, which will hopefully give the hint without overdoing it.</p>
<p>Just my two cents. I have no experience in this area, but the second sentence that I omitted above just strikes me as going a bit too far. I would be afraid they would just decide not to bother since they would now know he has other large awards.</p>
<p>And, if I have the timing correct, the NMF and Pres Scholar nomination were both awarded since his app was submitted so those are perfect reasons for reaching out again. I think the trick will be to communicate the merit aid message w/o it becoming lost in the communication of great news. Good luck!</p>
<p>Congrats on having so many options!</p>
<p>Oh my, we have nothing like Prom Day or the Grand March around here. </p>
<p>We don’t have Prom Day or Grand March either. As the mother of boys, the closest I get to the festivities is the pre-prom party hosted by a parent of one of the ‘group’. Most of the attendees ride from the smaller pre-party to the prom in either luxury buses or for the procrastinators, large yellow school buses. The large capacity of the buses allows for less drama of limo groupings.</p>