I always find it fascinating how strong the thoughts and feelings are when students start visiting schools. The four schools you and your son visited are often suggested as a group by people, and hearing how differently he found them is truly interesting.
Glad he is excited!
Sounds like your Wake Forest tour guide may have been my senior daughter. She absolutely loves it there.
Oh this totally supports the increased presence i saw on campus
Our senior college counselor at school gave a really great ‘intro to college counseling’ presentation yesterday evening. Am sharing some highlights here in case it’s helpful for anybody. I found it to be very informative.
Recent trends in college apps:
BUT…the average college acceptance rate nationwide is 68%! there’s a lot of great schools out there. Counselor said don’t just look at the ‘top 20.’
Stuff students should do now:
Stuff parents should do now:
Stuff to consider when building your college list:
Counselor then presented a few different students’ profiles w/GPA, test scores, major, where they applied & where they got in.
1 student profile had a 3.99 GPA, 1590 SAT. She applied to 29 schools. All reaches except for 1 in state school. Counselor recommended she consider switching around her list and apply to more likely & target schools. Kid insisted, said, “I HAVE to try!” Counselor said that in March & April, when all of the rejections came in, it was gut wrenching for the student. She only got into the 1 in state school (which is a good school, and student is attending there and doing well). Message from the counselor was DON’T DO THIS!
She also presented profile of student w/2.79 GPA & 22 ACT. Student applied to 9 schools, got rejected from 1, waitlisted from 1, and accepted to all the rest:
The message from that: EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT A PERFECT STUDENT, THERE’S A PLACE FOR YOU!
She also covered overview of different parts of the college app:
Types of apps:
Institutional priorities (hooks) that can affect admissions decisions:
That is a great write up and an excellent overview by the counselor. I really liked the real world examples they used to emphasize their points. I’m not surprised about the # of apps going up - I think it is especially true among high stats kids who may have applied to a handful of reach schools in the past (and maybe got into 1) but are now shotgunning to every top 30. I have a couple of friends whose kids applied to 20+ schools - crazy (and these are kid who ARE NOT seeking merit - that is a different calculus). At some point the quality of the applications must suffer (I’ve heard a lot about “repurposing” essays but how good can that be at the end of the day).
Excellent summary.
For those applying to REA schools, read the small print carefully. There are sometimes exceptions. For example, USC requires students to apply Early Action if they want to be considered for a merit scholarship. That eliminates the ability to apply EA at many other schools. However, some schools have exceptions that allow students to apply to both their school REA and USC EA. Stanford’s REA exceptions state:
It is Stanford policy that you may simultaneously apply to Stanford with a decision plan of Restrictive Early Action and to the following:
- any college/university with an early deadline for a scholarship or special academic program, as long as:
- the decision is non-binding; and
- in order to be considered for the scholarship or program, the student must apply in the early round or by an early deadline.
I disagree with this advice a bit.
My DS2022 was high stats/ECs, qualified to compete with the other outstanding applicants. We were chasing merit and/or colleges with deep pockets for financial aid (MIT/Princeton, etc). I ran MANY MANY NPCs.
He likes his affordable state college, so if he gets rejected every where else, then he’d be happy to attend his state college.
He applied to 19 colleges: 7 of them were for merit: ie. UAlabama, MiamiOH, etc thinking some of them MAY offer him free tuition or more. You don’t know until you apply.
In hindsight, I wouldn’t have wasted his time on those applications because unless those colleges come down to much lower than our state college, he wasn’t going to go to UAlabama/MichiganTech, etc. Except for Alabama, none of them offered as much or more than the anticipated amount of merit.
So son reached for the stars with the other 11 applications, and he was lucky to be accepted to 5 great colleges, some with amazing financial aid (waitlisted at 2).
I don’t mean for “average” stats kids without hooks just applying willy-nilly to Harvard/Columbia, etc.
For my DD2024, she is not very high stats.
But once again, she will be happy with our state college, so she will reach for the top of HER academic profile, reaching for the T30-T100 (with affordable NPCs - especially the ones that doesn’t ding us with 3x the home equity value).
If she gets rejected by them, then she’ll be at our affordable great state college.
==>==> BUT for this kid, we’re letting her use the ED card (which is now the name of the game for some colleges, where they fill up ~60%+ of their class with EDs).
Good luck.
We did this. 21 schools. The list included a few schools that we were confident in the acceptance and all were places that made sense for her. In other words, no school just because was highly ranked. This resulted in a mix of 50% acceptances and 50% rejections and waitlists. The thing is, the results felt completely random and there is no way we could have predicted the outcome.
I’m not sure there is another way for a high stats kid to go about it. She worked closely with the CC to choose a handful of likelies and targets that made sense. After that I was ok with her shooting for the stars. If she wanted to put in the work I said I would pay the application fee.
As for the essays, I am sure there is a breaking point (and that will be different for each kid), but they got better with time. I don’t know she would have been accepted where she ended up if she had applied early. Her essays matured through the fall, she understood better what she was looking for and how she could contribute a school, and her applications became tighter.
You can definitely recycle essays. You can’t simply plug in a previously written essay but you can tweak it. For example, virtually every supplement had a question about community. Sometimes the word count was lower, sometimes there was a particular angle they were asking about. All she had to do was slightly rework the same story.
Also, I was surprised by the number of top schools that didn’t require a supplement. So when you hear kids applying to 20 schools, they did not work on 20 supplements. I think this was the case for half of our schools.
One last note on the essay/supplement: optional does not mean optional. IMO schools use that as a filter.
Ditto.
DS2022’s 1st attempt at CommonApp essay in June after his Junior year was terrible, even with guidance from an essay coach.
“I was surprised by the number of top schools that didn’t require a supplement.”
THAT surprises me.
Northeastern and Wesleyan CT (edited to correct) were the only higher ranking colleges that did not require a supp. DS wrote 38 essays.
“optional does not mean optional”
100%
I’m looking at you Brown University 2minute video!
We didn’t learn about this until AFTER application was submitted, so he only had ?3days to pull it together.
Head’s up for anyone applying to Brown next year.
Additionally, if the student is applying to California public schools, one UC application can be sent to 9 schools. One CSU application (no essay, no test scores, no LOR) can be sent to 23 schools.
We are rolling into a huge conundrum and there is no right answer. Apps are up and this is not because there are more applicants. Our kids do need to apply to many more schools because they are playing the game. Schools have sub20% acceptance rates because of the number of applicants doing this, so if you dont play the game you lose. S24 fits in the middle on SCOIR for all of the schools he is interested in but that doesnt mean that he will get into any of them. We went to Vanderbilt last weekend and they said that 95% of kids who apply are good candidates and they had a 6% acceptance rate last year, 6!!!
S21 applied to 21 schools, most were for BFA acting and there were many different supplements and essays. It is absolute torture but it is what needs to be done.
I believe that this is incorrect as we just toured USC. You don’t have to apply EA to be considered for merit aid. You just have to submit your application by the EA deadline which currently is targeted as 11/1/23.
Well, the BFA and MT world are completely different,
with auditions and portfolios.
So difficult!
Were you told that information by a student tour guide or an administrator? USC started EA this year. You might double check before the fall to make sure the information you received was correct.
The USC website has not been updated for next year’s admission cycle. The information for this year’s admission cycle is
Early Action (EA) is non-binding, non-restrictive, and is not available for majors requiring a portfolio or audition. Students must apply EA in order to be considered for USC Merit Scholarships, unless their intended major does not participate in Early Action.
We mostly stuck to LACs - a lot of NESCACs - I think Amherst was the only one with a required supplement but you had the option of submitting a school paper instead.
I know someone who “panic applied” to Williams, Wesleyan and Middlebury after Ivy rejection because all you had to do was hit submit. There is a lot of that going on too.
I think that one of the Williams posts now said that they have a supplement this year, maybe for this reason?
Williams did have an optional essay.
You’re right; I forgot that Wesleyan did not have a supp.
DS didn’t look at Middlebury.
Told by admissions person in the info session. But could have misheard so will definitely double check. They said the updated info will be posted 8/1/23.
Have heard that BFA programs require a huge # of apps - very competitive and most programs are small.