Not sure about what’s the deal with UC Davis but for CalPoly SLO, their selection process is all number based and they admit by major. Some major’s acceptance rate are in the low teens. Also they award some extra points to some geographical area, faculty kids, etc.) and they don’t consider the Writing portion of the SAT and Subject tests. So a kid with seemingly high SAT (700 M, 700 CR, 800 W) is actually worse than a kid with seemingly lower SAT (750 M, 750 W, 550 W).</p>
We have an aquaintance, Her kid is so far 0 out of 3 to California schools (Waitlisted to CalPoly SLO, UCD and UCSD). Her kid’s stat: 2200 SAT, 4.3 GPA.</p>
<p>I will join momreads on this snow day! I think we have about 6 inches. This time DH is home so he can enjoy shoveling with DS :-). </p>
<p>The spring sports season is supposed to open this week but somehow I think DS’s first game tomorrow is not going to happen. Not even sure Friday’s is a go unless all this snow melts AND the field is in shape. </p>
<p>DS is really enjoying this senior year, with snow days that don’t have to be made up. He was named a captain for his spring sport so he was quite pleased about that. He has several good college choices, including three with nice merit money, and at least one with the opportunity to play a varsity sport. In the end I think he will choose Case Western since they are showing him the love both athletically and money-wise. At first he was dead set on WUSTL but he’s since reassessed after reviewing the spreadsheet we made that showed how much he’ll have left over if he goes to CWRU. Guess his deferral from WUSTL during the ED round was a good thing!</p>
<p>I am so grateful that we have had a relatively stress-free time with this whole process, as I know it could have easily been otherwise. Crossing fingers that it is this way four years from now with my daughter!</p>
<p>@2014novamom
Congratulations to your son on his Case Western acceptance. My daughter was also accepted at Case with really good merit aid and it’s now a little bit cheaper for us (couple thousands) for her to go to Case than a UC full pay in-state. </p>
<p>My S was deferred from what he considered his safety. This was the first decision he received and he was in shock . The explanation we gave him was that these schools also realize that with the high stats they are probably a safety school and not the student’s first choice. </p>
<p>They probably want to offer the seat to someone who seems more likely to enroll, and then come back to the other kids after EA/ED decisions are out. True or not, this kept us all from over reacting and it was good news a couple of weeks later when he was accepted to his reach. The safety also accepted him a couple months later.</p>
<p>Another reason could simply be that some of these state schools are so huge and receive such a large number of applications that maybe they just need more time to process them. With this years common app glitches, this seems plausible too.</p>
<p>Thanks @2018dad. He was accepted back in December in the EA round so we’ve known for a while. Seeing the RD decisions actually makes me quite relieved that he was accepted since his stats would make him seem the perfect candidate to be waitlisted there! One thing in his favor according to the Dean’s article that was posted earlier was our full-pay status, I suppose. But then again, they gave him tons of merit money so that can’t be completely it. Although it’s still a little bit more expensive for him to go to CWRU than an in-state school, it’s not significantly so.</p>
<p>Just glad we are almost done! He is still waiting on Northwestern, but as I’ve said before, he only applied there out of a sense of duty to his alumni parents LOL. </p>
<p>Wow, AvonHSDad, I am so impressed! Very cool you went with your D on the Accepted Students Weekend, and even cooler you found your D a prom dress!</p>
<p>I really feel for those kids being waitlisted and redirected from their safety and match schools - that has to be tough to regroup from.</p>
<p>@calla1 - you have amazing restraint!! I’d definitely be checking if I could. Keeping my fingers crossed for your son’s #1 choice today.</p>
<p>Congratulations @PetraElise and all others with good news!</p>
<p>I wonder if CWRU is trying to move up in the US News rankings? Since selectivity is part of the formula, thye could be looking for a larger group of high-stats turn-downs! My son was bombarded by recruiting mail, email, etc., from U of Chicago, Case Western and RPI. It got to be ridiculous. He technically could be accepted at any of the schools, but truly unlikely for Chicago. I figured CWRU was bombarding because many kids from his school do go there, but now looking at the number and quality of kids on WL, maybe they are pulling the same thing as Chicago?</p>
<p>Agree with Maryjay. It looks like Case has jumped on the “Tufts’ Syndrome” bandwagon:</p>
<p>"Right off the bat, we’ll have to define the Tufts Syndrome. A Web search reveals this definition (from no less an authoritative source as the Urban Dictionary), which notes the Tufts Syndrome as being displayed by a ‘School that rejects top applicants because it realizes top applicants are unlikely to enroll.’ Wikipedia further explains the Syndrome as a function of admissions yield, which is the percentage of admitted applicants who actually enroll. ‘Yield protection is an alleged admissions practice where a university or academic institution rejects or wait-lists highly qualified students on the grounds that such students are bound to be accepted by more prestigious universities or programs.’ "</p>
<p>I’m really interested in the “Tufts Syndrome”. If a “perfect” student is declined, is it really because the admissions committee is practicing yield protection, or is it just as likely that the student who’s got his or her heart set on an Ivy is lukewarm about the perceived “safety” and that comes through loud and clear in the essays, level of interest, etc.?</p>
<p>@2018Dad – we are in a high desert area in LA County, so SD is quite appealing to my girls. We’ve attended Comic Con the last two years, and they love the area. The whole family is tired of the desert, lol. She is also waiting for UCLA/UCB, but I’m quite sure she won’t be accepted at UCLA. As an art major, she is accepted/rejected by the art department faculty based on her portfolio. She did a very sloppy job of putting it together (quite unlike her) so I realized she really doesn’t want to go there, and I can’t imagine them selecting her from that portfolio. She’s quite talented, but entirely self trained until this semester. Maybe I’m wrong, and the they will recognize the raw talent. I’m not holding my breath.</p>
<p>I agree on the safety schools not being so safe anymore for top kids. I’ve been really shocked at reading the stats of kids who didn’t get acceptances. D is 4 for 4 so far, and her stats aren’t as good as others who were rejected or wait listed at schools that she was admitted to-- crazy if you just look at numbers. But, I do believe that the rigor of her coursework stood out (had she been at a regular HS, her stats would have been higher-- she has an UW GPA of 4.0 in all HS classes, the majority of which were Honors. But her college courses are included in her HS gpa, and she got a couple of B’s in that coursework). She applied to a range including CSUs, UCs, and LACs, but refused to look OOS. </p>
<p>Her school is also newer-- I believe hers will be the 5th graduating class. In the last two years, there has been a sort of explosion of acceptances at great schools. One of her friends just got accepted to MIT, and last year students went to UCB, UCLA, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, UPenn, Harvard, and numerous OOS flagship schools. There are only 74 kids (she is ranked 8) in her graduating class, so they don’t seem to be dealing with the problem of too many kids from her school trying to all get in at the same place. Her school’s API is, I believe, the third highest in LA County, even though our district is one of the lowest ranked in the state. I think there are advantages to being a high achieving student in a low achieving community-- especially if you have the opportunity to also get quality rigor in coursework. It definitely seems colleges are looking beyond just stats</p>
<p>DS has experienced the practice of schools deferring students based on demonstrated interest or yield protection. He has perfect ACT score and GPA, scored 5’s on all four AP exam, NMF, summer medical research intern with stipend, leadership and service throughout high school. He applied EA to Tulane - wrote the optional essay, attended local sessions but no campus visit. After recovered from the shock of deferral, he wrote them back to express interest to continue with the RA process. As time passed, he felt so discouraged by Tulane’s deferral and mentally wrote them off. By the time he was accepted RA with a $30k/year merit scholarship, he had already crossed off Tulane completely. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I can understand why schools do this to high stats kids. In our case, DS ended up receiving full-tuition merit scholarship to Vanderbilt and U of Miami as well as 1/2 scholarship to USC. So he would’ve had to turn Tulane down - as they correctly predicted. Having gone through this roller-coaster process, I would recommend students to take great care when applying to their safeties.</p>
<p>Well we are signed up for orientation at the end of May, and I just booked the hotel across the street. Things are getting real around here!</p>
<p>My d was deferred from a school where she was dead middle in the stats - to me an admissions no brainer. They eventually admitted her, but by then she had mentally moved on. I think it’s a risk for the schools to defer students! </p>
<p>Being my second time around I knew the safeties were almost the most important schools to find and we found 2 and she showed her favorite a lot of love through touring, then going back to interview.</p>
<p>After this year, it is now “Case Syndrome”. I wonder whether their admitted student profile is going to take a hit as a result of their yield protection, or are they managing that as well. Big data analytics at its finest, I guess. Case is definitely need-aware … I wonder whether financial aid is coming into play. I also wonder if they are using the FAFSA to see what other schools the student is applying to and responding accordingly.</p>
<p>I am sure Case is playing the game a bit, and they had over 21,000 applications to show for it this year. But they have always had free apps and no supplemental essay, so those are nothing new. What’s new is the waitlisting of highly qualified applicants and the aggressive marketing.</p>
<p>I’m also sure that word has gotten out that they are generous with merit aid (even if they are not so generous with need-based aid). This surely must appeal to those families who fall into that category of not being able to pay full freight but not qualifying for enough need-based aid either. It’s certainly become more popular at DS’s school, which is a STEM magnet school, as word gets out about merit money AND its well-regarded engineering programs. DS’s school routinely has 20+ kids accepted to MIT (11 from class of 2013 eventually enrolled) and Case is very attractive to these types of kids (5 enrolled last year).</p>
<p>It’s both. Yield management is a pretty amazing thing. </p>
<p>When D1 (who’s actually at Tufts) was going through admissions three years ago we paid a lot of attention to which schools on her list really wanted to be shown a lot of love. For example, I remember that George Washington came in for a lot of complaining by high-stats students who couldn’t understand why they’d been rejected after writing about how much they wanted to be in DC. Which was pretty much the kiss of death for their applications, because the GW adcoms knew that anyone saying how much they wanted to be in DC was really using them as a safety for Georgetown. </p>
<p>D2 was deferred from EA by one school which I’d been sure would be an acceptance. She’d visited, interviewed, and really was enthused about the school. But the school’s adcoms got it right, because D2 was accepted elsewhere ED. </p>
<p>A couple of years ago, George Washington actually wait listed a lot of the high stat kids.</p>
<p>They then sent out a letter stating that if you were still interested in the school, please call during a three day window in mid-April to speak to one of the Admissions Officers.</p>
<p>One of the high stat kids from my D’s high school didn’t wait for the three day window, he just called right away. They accepted him over the phone.</p>
<p>Another kid called during the three day window and was told by the Admissions Officer that he spoke to that hardly any wait listed students were calling.</p>
<p>A lot of my friends are getting nervous because it is that time of year when the very hard to get into schools release their decisions. My DD’s best friend got a “no” from MIT over the weekend and the parents were just crushed. Today I just came across a great article on how parents should act when they get admission news. Since I know some of you are in the same boat I thought I would share the link it case you find it helpful. </p>
<p>I really love to research and analyze data so last year when a ton of in-state Cal students got denied from our state schools I looked into the numbers more. Proportionally last year out of state students got into our UC’s at a higher rate. Based on the numbers I am seeing this week it looks like that trend is continuing. In my mind there is just one answer- money. I saw a document last month on the budget process for UCB and it frankly made me not want to recommend a student apply there. The UC’s are so desperate for money that the OOS is too attractive to turn down. What really has me angry this year is learning that for some schools like SLO and some UC’s they gave the OOS and International students their admission decisions first before in-state California high schools got theirs. I assume the only legitimate reason for that is so the OOS students get excited about our schools and come and attend them. Typically 80% of California high schools students stay in-state for college. If they are willing to travel out of state they can get some great opportunities. Each of my children have done that and it really has been a positive. </p>
<p>My father taught in the state college system for 35 years so I know it well. It makes me very sad that in-state students have not many affordable in-state options. This year one of my students with a gpa over 3.5 and an act of at least 28 was rejected from Sonoma State. That never would have happened before. We were all shocked with this news. Some of my dd’s friends are reporting not getting into a single cal-state. </p>
<p>Others are correctly reporting that Case wants to go up the rankings and protect their yield. They do that my soliciting a lot of applications from top students and then rejecting them. </p>
<p>In other news sorry for the snow day. 2018dad can concur with me that we are seeing an 80 degree day out here in California. </p>
<p>Finally congratulations on all the good news some of you are getting. The incredible scholarships are just fantastic. My DD last week had a good week. She notified that she is a regional winner for a big computer science award. She will be presented with the award at a conference at Qualcomm so I bought her that dress on ModCloth that has computer code all over it. She is also a finalist for our community’s “Young Latina of the Year.” I am really trying to enjoy these last months with her. </p>
<p>It is so great to hear everyone’s results. Since we are in California, we have been following all the recent UC/CSU acceptances (although my D only applied to UCLA/UCB which are super reaches - she mostly wanted to just see if she could have gotten in) and we are all stunned by Cal Poly SLO results and some UCD results. I think UCSB announces this week - probably more heartache. Many of my D’s friends are now scrambling to look at other schools (many OOS). These kids are mostly in the top 20-25% at our high achieving school, and received acceptances at top flagship schools in other states. Now they will have to see if they can give up the California lifestyle for 4 years. </p>
<p>My D is still deciding between 2 large state schools in the South. Will visit the one she hasn’t seen yet this weekend. Then, decision time.</p>
<p>I also had all of D’s college app portal id’s and passwords. I told her I needed them in case I had to quickly submit a missing document to a school, and couldn’t get ahold of her at school. But really, I just needed to know the results ASAP! </p>
<p>I had all of DS’s portal passwords, etc. (kept them in a shared Google Doc). But I do not look at admissions decisions. To me, that is his news and the result of his work, so I thought it best to let him see the news first. But of course, what works for you and your family is going to be different from ours!</p>