@homerdog It is going to be very hard to temper my enthusiasm and at least try to be impartial when we visit my undergrad alma mater as (naturally lol) I think it would be a great fit. Maybe reading through the decision thread again will help me do that. We already saw a safety and a match last fall, but it’s going to be a rocky year until this is all settled, or if we’re lucky, 9 months.
You can’t really rely on Naviance at all to determine admission. You can see where your kid stands to previous applicants, but it doesn’t help them next year.
Case in point, my son applied to a school where his act score and gpa put him in the “safe green zone” on Naviance. He was a good overall candidate, decent application, full pay, showed interest etc.
But for some reason last year, way more kids applied to this school than had in the past, including some kids that were using it as sort of a safety school I guess, and they had super star stats. So the school admitted the super star stats kids and waitlisted the kids that actually wanted to go there. In the end, none of the kids they accepted or waitlisted enrolled last Fall.
Thats a shame really, because my son and one other kid were really well qualified and suited for the school and wanted to go, but the schools are all hoping to attract to those super stars who probably have more choices and choose to go elsewhere.
So, you never know who’s going to apply from your kid’s school next year with better stats… The more selective schools aren’t going out of their way to accept multiple kids from the same school, it messes with their geographical residence plan. They definitely compare the kids from the same school and pick the best one or few.
Unfortunately, our high school and county does not use Naviance and there is a very low percentage of students who apply to out of state selective schools. So, it is very difficult to gauge chances. For my D, I just had to select schools that seemed to be a good fit and where she was competitive stat-wise and then try to help her craft a good application. But it is getting scarier each year.
Also, it seems like more and more teenagers I hear of do not get summer jobs. Is that just a CC thing or is that common in your areas? I get that some do academic programs or athletic camps/training but I’m just surprised that it doesn’t seem to be as much of a requirement (by parents) as in the past.
@RightCoaster This is why I am freaking out. The admissions landscape is changing too rapidly. The college list will definitely need to be longer than what my junior was hoping. I’m almost sure she’ll add some schools late in the game that we won’t have visited but care about demonstrated interest, etc.
I am also struggling with looking at admitted student data vs enrolled. What happens when a kid is in the middle of the mid 50 for enrolled but, say, at the 25th percentile for admitted. I’m guessing there’s a lot of uncertainty on the colleges’ side too. There won’t be many CDS published before EA apps are due.
If any of non-naviance users want Naviance data points I can compare your kids stats with kids from our suburban MA public HS and let you know how they’d fit in on the chart/graphs.
Your best bet is to use college data dot com, that is a good tool for finding data points. And I’d recommend you look up every single common data set of the schools your kid is interested in, and see where they fit in.
@evergreen5 I’d suggest 2 total safeties at least, like State U and then maybe some school out of state far away with high acceptance rate.
Then more matches.
Fewer reaches.
The reaches seem almost totally unobtainable unless you have the truly rare super star kid. it’ a pure lottery play at best. Chances improve some with a hook of some sort, yet that doesn’t always pan out either.
Thank you @RightCoaster . We do need more matches for sure and we need another trip to visit them perhaps in summer :(, especially lower matches. We saw a west coast safety (lovely but D not thrilled with the academics - we’ll have to talk through this one some more) and our in-state flagship should be a safety, though I noticed that is suddenly becoming more selective for OOS.
The lower portion of top-50 would be a good fit academically but admission rates have become too reachy and unpredictable and I imagine that this group of schools is feeling uncertainty too. Accordingly, my attempts to read the tea leaves are making my head explode.
@evergreen5 My son’s (small, Catholic) school doesn’t have Naviance so I can’t speak to that. But yes, I have been following the decisions for the 2018 kids. And it is concerning. The big increase in apps means more uncertainty as popular schools simply cannot accept everyone from a pool of applicants with similar stats and profiles.
I keep thinking that we are going to further reduce the current list of ten. But S19 might apply to all of them because it is all such a crapshoot right now. And he doesn’t even have any reaches. Our focus has been on CTCL/LACs that offer merit and a few academic/financial safeties.
His potential interest in Penn State main campus is the biggest crapshoot of all. He has the stats and we are PA residents. But based on the CC Penn State decision thread, our “state-related-not-actually-a-true-state-school” flagship campus accepts a lot of OOS applicants while denying in-state students with similar stats. I’d rather my tax money go toward fully supporting PASSHE. But that’s a topic for another thread.
Ugh. Guess I didn’t talk you off the ledge?!?!?
@evergreen5 S19’s list will be anywhere from 10-15 schools. We are spending a lot of money visiting schools to show interest and he’s taking lots of time and care to keep in touch with reps he’s met at our school or at college fairs. Our GC said that having a relationship with those AOs is extremely importantly right now (especially for LACs) and interviewing will be a must. Poor S19 will prob have upwards of ten interviews. I don’t think most people know how important paying attention to each school is. It will be a lot of work on S19’s part but I will help him by keeping him organized …and by paying for all of these trips!!!
We have 6 schools on the ‘definitely apply’ list now. One super reach lottery school, two big reaches, two low matches and a safety. I’ve lurked on the decision threads for the low matches and I feel fairly confident that kiddo will get into one or both, and the safety is a true safety for admissions and financially.
Ideally I would like to add a couple of high match/low reach schools to balance out the list. I’m trying to arrange a trip north to visit some possibilities, but the summer schedule is filling up fast.
We had the discussion about “what is EA, what is ED” and kiddo decided he wanted to SCEA to the lottery school. I would almost prefer that he ED to his favorite big reach, but only if I can talk to a financial aid officer ahead of time and assure myself that their FA is going to fit our needs.
I think that my kid’s psychological advantage is that his EC is acting, and he is used to trying out for things and not always getting them, then occasionally reaching for things and getting lucky. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. He has developed the ability to dust himself off and find something good in the part that he did get cast for.
Our list is still at 0 - D still doesn’t know what she wants in a school yet. I’m hoping that will mean she will be happy met anywhere so we won’t have to stress too much but right now it means I am stressed because I feel so behind in the process.
Spring break has been kind of a bust for D. We had a nice long weekend in NYC last week which I planned at the beginning of the break because D said she wanted time to be home and just hang out with her friends. Turns out the families all made last minute plans (mostly college visit) and none of them are home! This turned out OK for me because I got to spend the whole day with her yesterday. We got lunch, practiced driving, looked a little bit at the ACT math workbook (very little…), booked our visit to Elon, worked on cleaning out her closet (a LOT - what a disaster!) I felt bad she was bored but happy I got to hang out with her. Today a friend si back and they are going to the beach so that will be the end of mom/daughter time.
@elena13 around here the kids try to have jobs, but it’s a small town with one grocery store, one drive-in ice cream shop, babysitting, and that’s about it. There are a couple of other random places that may hire one or two kids. Some work on the family farm. DD is currently in at the ice cream shop but on hiatus for soccer season and she may try to get on at the grocery store instead after soccer. I hope she can work quite a bit the next two summers before college. Her ideal job would be working full time for the summer day camps but you have to be 18 so she will continue to volunteer this summer and next, and maybe that can be a job for college summers.
DD told me to tell her about any and all scholarships, she will write any essays, she is determined to get some. So this week I saw one that is just for our state, and they had extended the deadline from the 16th to today (perhaps too few entries?). 400 words or less, easy topic, 10 kids get money. Started Wednesday night at bedtime, got one paragraph written. Last night she hem-hawed around, got distracted a lot, and finally got the rest done after over an hour. Hopefully not a sign of thing to come for future apps. I reminded her several times of her earlier eagerness to apply 
Anyway, first scholarship app is in, well, second if you count a little tutorial on student loans that a local student loan business puts out and then draws a couple of winners.
@momtogkc Your day with your daughter sounds a lot like how ours go. Study a little, try to clean out room a lot! She is going to repaint her room so we’ve tried to declutter. It’s a slow process what with finding sentimental things to look through, and all the little trinket boxes with random items. And she likes to hang on to her stuff.
I don’t have a good handle yet on how to read the Class of '22 admissions threads. I’ve avoided the Ivy-type “lottery” admissions threads, focusing on those 25-50 schools (depending on how you read them), schools like Smith or Mount Holyoke or Macalester. I haven’t seen much on those threads to make me worry, or at least worry more than I should, that things are getting out of control.
I’m still waiting for Princeton to report its 2017-2018 CDS. Once they do that, I’ll have 3 schools that also report acceptance by SAT bands. My (very) rough rule of thumb is that scores at the 75th percentile increase acceptance chances by 50%, 50th percentile is essentially even, and 25th percentile cuts those chances in half. That’s probably some (mostly?) voodoo economics on my part, an attempt to gain some control over an essentially uncontrollable process. But I think it does put some chances in perspective and isn’t entirely off.
For example, Haverford just posted its Class of '22 admit statistics: https://www.haverford.edu/admission/haverford-admits-class-2022 Obviously, that’s for admissions, not enrolled a la the CDS. They accepted 19% (compared to 20% in the class of '21). Their median SAT score appeared to go up slightly (see class of '21 admit statistics here: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rMpR-FoFaaQJ:https://www.haverford.edu/admission/haverford-admits-class-2021+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us), though I don’t trust their concorded score of 1490. So if you’re at the median, you probably have ~20% chance of getting in. Under my rule of thumb, however, even if you score at the 75th percentile (which was at 1530 for admitted students in the class of '21, an ACT of 34), you still maybe only have a 30% shot of getting in. So, yeah, those admission threads here on CC aren’t going to look great. And if you’re at the 25th percentile (1390 in class of '21), your chances are less than 10% according to my rule of thumb, and I’m going to guess far less unless you have a hook or incredible EC to your name. It also explains why those schools with acceptance rates in the single digits are “lottery tickets,” even if the admissions process from the perspective of the admissions office is totally rational. Kids with 1600 SATs at those colleges still probably have at best 10-15% chance of acceptance.
I think those schools a tier down from Haverford, score-wise, may still be not crazy admissions-wise, even if they’re getting slightly more competitive. That person with a 1480, who might only have a 20% shot at getting into Haverford, would probably have a 60%+ shot at getting into Macalester where the admit rate was 41% and the 75th percentile SAT score was 1480.
I wouldn’t spend excessive time reading tea leaves from the CC2018 admissions threads and making yourself sick. But CDS, ok sure. Have to keep in mind that reported stats and kids subjective belief in their essays/recommendations being fantastic isn’t perhaps how the adcom saw it. Maybe the adcom loved a quirky kid who played oboe from Kansas…who knows what caused the admit/reject decision. Second pt is love thy safety. There has to be a good safety on your list, maybe more. 3rd pt - not everyone is on CC - I know right?? And finally 4th pt - this year or next year is not the worst of college admissions and all hope is lost. I have read the same doom and gloom “its gotten so much worse…omg next year i can only imagine it will be the end times for us!” Call me a cynic but I have heard this since 2010. Every single year is “the worst ever.” I’m not buying it. There is a college for everyone in this country - somewhere. That in and of itself is an incredible blessing.
SAT scores are here from the March 10 test date - I really hope S19 likes UAH when we visit in a couple weeks, because he’s solidly in the 100% tuition category. He did 0 prep… will have him re-take it WITH prep this time to see if he can bump up to the next level if he likes the school after touring. He hasn’t tried the ACT - how different is it? Math was his strongest on the SAT and I heard Englsh is only 1/3 of the ACT? Is that correct?
Ugh @parent2one I just checked my D19’s SAT score after seeing someone had posted her son’s score on FB! This was my d’s 2nd time taking it and her score is worse than last time. WTH. I kept bugging her to do her workbooks, etc. I could tell she didn’t really put much effort into it, but I didn’t want to be constantly nagging. Last August I signed her up for a prep class and she complained that everybody in there was old and some had beards. That might be her this August. I will have to talk to her to figure out if she wants to retake it or just have an average SAT score to go with all of her AP classes that she’s worked so hard on. :((
Remember, the folks posting on the Class of 20xx decision threads are the people who are intense enough (and publicity non-shy enough) to post on College Confidential. I don’t think you can really draw conclusions from what has to be an oddly skewed sample.
Interesting about the increased competition levels at the more selective schools. I’ve been looking at a very different set of schools and am seeing the opposite. Kids with stats similar to my S are getting in and getting substantial merit. I’ve been feeling pretty about things. I wonder where the break point is. There seems to be a big difference in what is happening at the top end schools, and the schools for the average kid.
@dfbdfb there are a lot of internationals posting in the results threads as well and they tend to get turned down with high stats if they need aid. You can’t always tell who the poster is unless you do some digging. I’ve been weirded out by some high stats kids not getting in to certain schools but then I look at their profile and it ends up they are international. On the flip side, though, I’ve seen some acceptances that I’m excited about only to find out the poster is a legacy or a recruited athlete or a URM or first gen. Some of these kids post their stats and then say “I can’t believe I got in!” and they don’t even mention that something else may have helped.