@InfiniteWaves I went to Penn State many years ago - started as a science major, ended with an English degree. I graduated from a small private high school with 36 (yes 36!) kids in my graduating class and jumped right to the biggest college I could find. I consider myself introverted, but made 2 good friends on my dorm floor within the first day and later became good friends with roommates that shared my off campus house. Yes, there are big lecture classes but if you show up and pay attention they are fine. The harder big classes typically have a smaller discussion section led by a grad student where you can get things clarified. And if thereās no discussion section, every professor has office hours where you can go for extra help. The thing is, you have to be proactive ā you have to be disciplined enough to show up to class and sit there and pay attention even though you know no one is going to notice if you skip ā no one is going to seek you out or call you at home to ask why you arenāt coming to class or try to contact you to discuss why youāre failing and how you can get your grades back up. So if you think your kid would be better off with a bit more āoversightā ā even if itās the threat of having profs that take attendance ā then that is one reason to avoid a larger school.
And as far large lecture classes, Iām talking mostly about gen ed stuff like Intro to Psychology or Sociology and some of the science classes I took (chemistry, etc.). As an English major, you are at an advantage because all of the English classes are smaller by nature - there is more discussion and paper writing and that is just not conducive to a huge lecture format. When I left Penn State, I considered two of my English professors to be my friends - enough so that I came back to visit them for years on my way back and forth from grad school. You can definitely have a good relationship with your professors even at a huge school - you may have to seek them out if you are in a lot of large lecture classes but as an English major with smaller classes, even that is not an issue.
And as far as the social scene and getting lost goes, like I said, I came from a high school with 36 people in my class - 36 people that I saw every day, in every class, for 6 years. I loved that at Penn State, there were different people in all of my classes ā even upper level classes in my major were full of different people every semester, so I was exposed to lots of different viewpoints and personalities instead of just seeing the same group of kids over and over. I would imagine that at a smaller school, youād quickly get to know everyone and if there were people you didnāt get along with, theyād be hard to avoid ā that was never an issue at Penn State.
One thing Penn State did do was skew my scale for D19s college visits though - our first visit was to West Chester, which has about 17K undergrads and my first thought was āWow - itās so small!!!ā I think I need to go visit Ursinus or something just to reset my perspective!!!
@Empire007 Her 1420 opens a lot of doors for her. Congrats!
The SAT was recentered in 1990ās, which shifted the scores up a LOT! For example, a 730 in Verbal taken in the 1980ās was recentered to be an 800. Aside from the recentering, this new SAT that our kids are taking has none of the crazy analogies and fill in the vocabulary word to complete the sentence type questions that we had and thus, comparing our scores will be much different. Which is a good thing cuz who wants to compete with their parents, right?
Well, but the problem with the recentering is that parents and grandparents who donāt know that it happened are misled into thinking that their kidsā scores are relatively higher than they are. This probably leads to a lot of the letdowns we see when kids create a reach-heavy list and donāt apply to safeties. The parents think, āHe has perfect SATs and straight Aās, he doesnāt need a safety!ā, but they donāt realize how many other kids have the same scores.
@ThinkOn Thank you! We hope so. I didnāt know about the recentering.
@ninakatarina That is exactly my concern and we donāt want to have a false sense of security so she will be applying broadly. I fully understand schools like Cornell are beyond reach with a 1420. What is concerning is when schools which are really good like Villanova (what in the past one may not have considered a reach) is saying they only accept around 28% of their applicants (what was told to us during a recent visit) then what is considered a safety? In NYS there is state school called SUNY Binghampton and for a few years now, they have turned away or waitlisted some applicants with great stats simply because they get a tremendous number of applicantsā¦
@Empire007 but thatās the terrible thing - if you just look at average scores, Cornell seems like it is not beyond reach with a 1420. Collegedata has them at
SAT Math 680-780 range of middle 50%
Score of 700 - 800 70%
Score of 600 - 700 25%
SAT Critical Reading 650-750 range of middle 50%
Score of 700 - 800 55%
Score of 600 - 700 37%
So someone with a 700/720 would look at this and think they fall on the low/middle range. But if they donāt have any other hooks and they write a bland essay, or their parents rewrite the essay to make them unrecognizable, then they wonāt stand out enough to get in.
1420 is within the range of imagination for Cornell if your kid has a wow factor.
I think another thread defined a safety as a school where your stats are auto-admit, or where your stats fall above the 75% line and they admit over 50% of applicants. A lot of schools that are in safety range have rolling admissions. We plan to have the rolling admissions safety school applications in by the end of August so that the kid has at least one acceptance in early in the process to buffer disappointment.
@ninakatarina I donāt even think itās a wow factor that gets kids into a school like Cornell with stats in the lower 50 percent. Honestly, I think that is the population that includes athletes, first gen kids, kids from underrepresented states, URMs, and full pay Americans and overseas students. I know that plenty of these types of kids are also in the top 50 percent but Iām willing to bet that the bottom 50 percent is mostly these types of kids.
I know CC has limited examples but every single time I see a studentās stats that are in the botttom 50th percentile of an elite school, they are one of the types of students listed above. And, believe me, I spend way too much time on here and Iāve read a LOT of acceptance threads. I never get excited anymore when I find kids with lower comparable stats and big acceptances. I immediately scroll to the bottom of their post to see what kind of underrepresented group they are in.
S19 gets very little, YAY! we had him not check any boxes so the bulk of what shows up are for schools he has actively engaged with. With the exception of Bentley, which sends a LOT, and a few other randoms. PSAT wasnāt earth shattering but S17 did check the box and got a LOT more mail.
School size.
This is an interesting one. I went to a very large school, didnāt need that direct connection with other students in class or with the professors. We have one wired that way and sheās done well, has found her group through her club sport, I found mine through my sorority.
The boys (so far) have gone for schools larger than their HSās but not āhugeā at 4K and 11K respectively And both found their groups. S19ā¦has a list that has schools that range from 2,000 - 30,000! And I think thatās ok. I personally do not think the larger options are best for him. But I can also see where if he didnāt find his group in the 2K school (got shut out socially etc) , wellā¦it would be a lot like HS and thatās not a great thing. My gut is 5-15k is his sweet spot but we will see.
He probably checked every box to get mail and email
He gets emails from the tours
He is on soccer recruiting sites
We are probably in a $$ zip-code. Not in the $$$ zip-codes though.
We got the Harvard brochure. S19 did not notice. I put the brochures of schools that I think he might find interesting on his laptop. He pushes them aside and when he gets his laptop. I honestly think he doesnāt see the mail even though it is stacked on his laptop. I think it falls into the category of dirty dishes. It is one of those things that is invisible to him.
He fortunately has a separate email address for college and soccer recruiting stuff. I have access and I go on and open the emails of schools that I think he ought to be interested in. Then I click on the various links so his āinterestā score goes up. I have a friend who works in a small regional LAC that divies out merit $ to attract out-of-area students (so the school is not so āregionalā and thus higher on the rankings) along with a bunch of other types of āunder-representedā students (might be intended major, sport, ethnicity, full-pay, whatever). He said they hire 2 companies to track all that stuff (and more) and give the students an āinterestā score. Obviously visiting and direct contact would be way better, but opening a few emails seems better than nothing.
Regarding college mailings it canāt all be zip codes. I have 3 children who graduated/will graduate within 4 years. All at the same address. Two with very good test scores. One with top notch test scores. All daughters. Child #2 and #3 marked the same intended major, CS. Child #3 with the top notch scores has received substantially more mail than the other two.
From personal experience, I think the 1400plus level at the Ivies is kind of the sweet spot for regular kids from the burbs athletic recruitment. The kids need to be in that range. And then the sat subject tests need to be around 700 too, and GPA at least 3.6 A few super duper superstars may be recruited at a lower level, but sometimes those kids have other hooks too, like URM. So they get the double whammy hook. I know a kid at one of the Ivies right now and I would bet 1 million dollars that he was not at the 1400SAT and 700 subject test level, but he was a state champion, national competitor, URM, probably low income, etc. A coach can take a few kids like him and then offset his lower scores with a smart kid or two that can also play. At the Ivies youāll see kids on the team with marginal skill set, and Iād wager they are the kids that have the fantastic sat/act and gpa.
My kid has a SAT a bit higher than 1420 but Iād give him absolutely zero chance of admittance at the top 25 schools without a hook. Zero chance. Thatās fine. Plenty of other great schools out there. The only kids from our high school that have gone on to an Ivy or Stanford have been perfect test score types that were also class pres, valedictorian, very involved types.
@liska21 Ok Iām your groupie now because you are so well-informed and have such great info! Thanks as always for your insights. The separate email address is a great ideaā¦wish I had thought of that one! College brochures are also invisible to my Dā¦why is this? I put a few directly under her eyeballs and she doesnāt react at all. Sometimes I think itās a bit of denial/nerves about it all. Weāre still at the point where physically being on a campus walking around listening to a tour is the only way she will tune in and respond. Unfortunately being in California we really canāt tour all the colleges she might consider since theyāre halfway across the country or on the other side of the country. Travel logistics for this summer were last nightās dinner conversationā¦still havenāt sorted it out.
Related to your comment about the email tracking, itās clear that many schools used the same vendor for their email content and Iām not a fan. D is currently inundated with āTimeās almost up to let us know youāre interested!ā emails. So. Dumb. Time is not almost up. Itās like the same group that composes pushy and annoying fundraising emails does these too.
@homerdog I wonder if weāre all underestimating the value of āfitā? When thereās a seemingly anomalous admission or denial, maybe fit or lack thereof was the factor? I guess itās comforting to think that itās something like this. But yes, weād all be curious to see some more granular data about admissions than we get on the CDS, such that you could get a sense of how many spots are taken up by the hooks. I have a friend who donated, along with her alumna sister, five figures to our alma mater with the thinly veiled goal of getting her son and her nephews and niece into our school. Immediately it has indeed gotten her a few VIP invitations to campus events. These kids in question are still too young so havenāt applied yet but Iāll be curious to see how they fare. Meanwhile here I am with my $50 every year-ish donationsā¦hmm. I think my friend, who is pretty well off, figures that paying for an extra yearās worth of tuition via a donation is worth it to get the coveted admission. May work or it may notā¦
Iāve been mentoring a URM female this year with a tremendous life story but low GPA and average SATs. I wrote her a supplemental LoR of high praise and explanation of her story. Her results have been a bit disappointing tbhā¦lots of rejections from various schools including middle-tier LACs, a state school, and two Jesuit universities. She does have a few options but it certainly wasnāt a situation in which three hooks (URM refugee, first-gen, tremendous life story) were enough to overcome modest stats and an EFC of 0. So hooks are what they are, and they certainly arenāt everything.
D17 loved getting college mail and email, and basically collected it all. D19, not so muchāso sheās been very, very aggressive in unsubscribing to college emails, and checking the ādonāt send me any postal mail, eitherā box, where available. As a result, all through junior and the first half of senior year for D17, we got multiple postcards and letters and viewbooks every day, and her college-junk email was in a constant state of floodedness. D19 gets the occasional postcard and has actually had days with even an email in her college-junk account.
Itās made for a very different feel for each of their college searches.
I totally open S19ās email in his ācollege onlyā email. If I see something interesting I let him know and he reads it on the weekends. Demonstrated interest is big at almost all of his schools.
As for more granular info on the class profiles, Iāve worked on this a little for the LACs on his list. I can see the number of kids who applied early and how many accepted. I can see the total number of applicants and how many were accepted. You can do the math to figure out the acceptance rate of the RD kids but be ready to freak out. We are cutting most of his chances in half (at least) by having h apply RD. Then I scour the CC pages to see if I can get stats and resumes of the kids who were accepted RD. Sometimes they will post them and sometimes I send a PM to see if they would be willing to share. Iām also nailing down the stats and ECs of kids at our high school who got into these schools RD but that can be just as depressing.
@SDCounty3Mom as for donations, I have a friend in admissions at Northwestern and she told us that thereās a box they check if the parent has been donating each year. No dollar amount is shown, just the check mark. However, once the donation is over a certain amount, it is noted. She thinks itās something like $20,000. Lol. Bummer if youāve only donated $19,000.
@homerdog Yet more interesting info. I think Iām getting a little too addicted to CC because of all the info it has! A little hard to believe that the $10K donor and the $10 donor are considered the same, but Iāll believe anything about college admissions at this point. ED is such a heartbreaker when you canāt do it. Thatās us too. D will do EA everywhere that has EA, then weāll grit our teeth and go RD everywhere else. Weāre allowing her only one reach school anyway, so Iām hoping the RD results season wonāt be a bloodbath. Iāve gotten spooked reading and hearing anecdotal reports from kids in our community and what happened to them this year. So weāre beating the match, match, match drum now. And likely, likely, likely. D has one clear favorite reach school that she can try for, fully expecting a no, and thatās all we can handleā¦!
If S19 REALLY had a favorite school we MIGHT let him go ED, but heās visited almost all of the schools on his list and he seems to like whichever one heās visited the most recently. We only have two schools that we are for sure going back to in the fall so that he can interview. I donāt see him between now and October choosing a favorite. Thereās really nothing thatās going to happen that would push any school to the front between now and then.
Iām thinking of having him write down the things he really liked about each school he visited so he can recall why heās applying to each one. Then, when the yesās and noās come in, we can revisit his list of what he liked about the schools that accepted him and try to forget the rest.
Well, the U Chicago mailings seemed to work on my S19. He and Dad just landed in Chicago for a whirlwind college visit tomorrow. U Chicago and Northwestern are on the list. Wish I could go too, because I will be so in the dark, but Iām just glad heās finally doing this. We are so, so very behind in the search process. The UChicago mailings have been coming for a long time, and Iām not sure how they started. I kind of think maybe S19 filled out a card at a college fair. All of the rest of the mail, thankfully, goes to his Dadās house, so I just get occasional mailings. I hope it stays that way.
@homerdog - youāre so right about the RD acceptance rates. Thatās why I was joking earlier that my son might end up having to take a gap year. There are only so many bites you can take at the ED apple.
About the Cornell SAT stats - is that just for first-year applicants, or does it include transfers? Because Cornell does take transfers from SUNY schools for some schools/majors. That could explain some lower scores.
I am a URM and attended a prestigious Jesuit university. As a matter of fact, I was the first black woman to play volleyball for my university. I canāt begin to describe the many racist incidents I experienced. But a particular incident occurred multiple times by students, teammates, some of my teammates parents, and even by a couple of professors. That was the assumption that I didnāt deserve to be there because I was a URM and an athlete so I MUST have gotten in through some type of backdoor. Itās interesting how wrong they were. My gpa/test scores were higher than all of my teammates. And according to my admissions counselor I was within the top 5 % of applicants. And werenāt they further surprised to learn that my two parent household wasnāt anywhere near poor. No sob story. No hood. I hope that when my last two head off to college that they donāt go through what I went through. And if they are declined from a university that they donāt blame the URMs or the athletes, but instead reflect on themselves and realize not every university is a fit for them.
@4MyKidz I hope you didnāt misunderstand my post. Our S19 would LOVE to be at a small school that has all kinds of diversity. The catch 22, though, is that there truly are fewer spots for him at these schools since they do pride themselves on being diverse. So, even though itās his first choice to meet all kinds of kids, he might end up some place less diverse since there will be more spots there for kids like him.
@homerdog My post was about racist assumptions. I hope your son gets into his top choice but if for some reason he is declined that you do not automatically fall on, ādiversityā as the excuse.
Thanks as always for your insights. The separate email address is a great ideaā¦wish I had thought of that one! College brochures are also invisible to my Dā¦why is this? I put a few directly under her eyeballs and she doesnāt react at all. Sometimes I think itās a bit of denial/nerves about it all. Weāre still at the point where physically being on a campus walking around listening to a tour is the only way she will tune in and respond. Unfortunately being in California we really canāt tour all the colleges she might consider since theyāre halfway across the country or on the other side of the country. Travel logistics for this summer were last nightās dinner conversationā¦still havenāt sorted it out.