I think we will see this across the board this year. I believe this strategy is based on the fact the under resourced schools tend to be more diverse, and how UCs chose to counter race blind admissions.
Anecdotally, this appears to reflect ED results this year, at least in our area.
SMU and Clark did
Congrats on Stanford !!
S24 received a personal letter about his application from his SCEA Ivy with a handwritten note from his AO. It definitely felt special! He just received it this week. D24 has not as of yet received anything like that from her ED school.
Not from New England, but similar experience / amount of apps to Rice at our school. Several of D24âs friends who are applying to top schools added it in RD after she got in ED, it wasnât on their radar beforehand.
Rice is one of those schools, as you said, where demonstrated interest & fit matter . We felt fairly confident that with the small number of students who apply from our college prep school , combined with an application that was competitive for any T-20 school, D24 had a great shot if she applied ED. Agree it would be the same situation with Wash U & Emory, at least from our school. We donât seem to send as many to Vanderbilt , which is a similar âtype â of school, though.
Wow a lot going on in this thread - so much good news ! Congrats on the MANY great acceptances !!
Such a great group with a wealth of knowledge! Really enjoy reading and celebrating the wins with you all.
Hoping someone could speak to our situation, which feels like an outlier. We are a low-income expat family in East Asia. D24 has attended a high-resource PYP-IBDP international school on a need-based scholarship since middle school. The school offers no other student near the same level of support, except our D26. (D24 was the first ever student to qualify for an SAT waiver. Blink. Letâs just say, that it took some time to receive.)
D24âs college list is driven by NPC, then major and region. She did not apply to any school that is need-aware, only need-blind/meets full demonstrated need. As I understand it, FA is handled separately from admissions, but from her application/essays it is clear that she is low income. How do you think this plays in? She will be a max Pell student.
The CCs â all 5 of them â for her class of 130 are excellent. A few are former AOs and private consultants, but I know that our situation is outside the box for them.
D24 has acceptances from her EAs. One in particular would be free for her to attend through merit and grants, and she says at this point thatâs absolutely where she will go! These arrived prior to the completion of the FAFSA, but with the CSS data. But I am anxious of how the RDs will go.
Thank you for your thoughts. Mama is feeling a little nervous. Itâs fabulous that she has one that she is happy with, but there are some others she also likes coming out in March.
You can only go to one. And she has it and itâs affordable.
No reason for nerves!!
While we donât know anything about your child - if you applied to meets need and need blind, the cost will of course depends on how the school determines need. And hopefully the NPCs are accurate.
But anything else is icing on the cake. So be proud, relieved and itâs going to work out - bcuz it already has.
Best of luck with the upcoming decisions.
Perfectly said. Thank you for the perspective. Your words were exactly what I needed.
Itâs intense everywhere, but East Asia seems somehow other level.
Itâs going to work out.
You should celebrate. Your kid got into a school that will be no cost to attend AND your child has said that theyâll be happy to attend! Thatâs the golden ticket.
One thing to remind yourself of:
This is really importantâŠAmerican culture is different than in Asia. In the US, generally speaking, it doesnât matter where you go, it matters what you do when you get to college and it matters what you do when you get out of there. MAYBE for the first job out of college, for certain types of majors (like if you want to be a Wall Street investment banker), it matters where you go. But after that first job, most employers only care about what you know, your skills, what kind of team player are you, and whether or not you went to college (not âoh, they didnât go to Harvard, so itâs fast food job for youâ).
When youâre living in the thick of it elsewhere with a cacophony of other parents telling you otherwise, itâs hard to remember this. But it really is true.
Congrats to your family!
I have good news about UGA. We went there on a choir trip yesterdayâsome of you may remember that our last visit there was really bad. We were disturbed by the fact that 90% of young women we saw had long straight blonde hair and were wearing Lululemon shorts, with artificial tans. Well, it must have been because we were seeing all-new freshmen, because this time, we saw a bunch of people I would describe as ânormalââa range of people within the UGA demographics. So UGA is definitely back on the table in our house! (and I wanted to post to make sure I corrected the vision of my previous post).
Congratulations! Education in Asia can be really intense but can also prepare her well for college.
If her HS curriculum is strong, first year of college may be a repeat of what she has already learned and the transition could be a lot smoother. People always focus on getting in but you also need to be prepared to do the actual work.
Your daughter is not only a great student but also seems to have a high level of maturity and emotional IQ. That will serve her well in the future. You must be very proud.
Could not agree more. If she adds even more options this good, great. But she has already won the game, and now she is more in the prize-selection round.
At our HS, Vanderbilt is a notch less popular than Emory, couple notches less than WUSTL. Definitely a similar sort of school in some ways, but I think it is simultaneously has a vibe reputation that makes it not quite as popular with at least some of the high numbers set, and yet is also known as a tougher admit.
And SCOIR data seems to support thatâin fact, it has a pattern that looks a little like possible yield protection, although the sample size is definitely not large enough to be conclusive about that.
That said, people definitely goâit is one of those schools that seems like it could be anywhere from like 0 to 2 for us any given year.
Thanks for all the positive support gang! It all felt quite good to read 
Super proud of the droids,
When I joined this site years ago I didnât especially expect to find community and fiends, yet here we are!
There was some degree of minimized stress for our S24 after he was accepted to UGA and Georgia Tech in-state. However, there are mixed feelings about the prospect of staying so close to home: Tech is 8 miles from our house and even though itâs the perfect school for him academically (Engineering), he was looking forward to going away and being out of his comfort zone. In short, heâs feeling âobligatedâ to go there, which is a tough spot for a parent to navigate.
Lotta fiends here, especially in the politics threads.
Looks like a Freudian slipâŠFIENDS, huh?
S24 was accepted to Maryland and NC State last night - he was so shocked he didnât really react at all. I think they are both off the table as he has others where he seems to like the vibe better, but he may change his mind, weâll see. He has seen NC State but not UMD.
Same in our household, not GA schools but our home state. His siblings went away so that plays into it also. Ugh
My kid didnât apply to our state flagship(s), but many, many of their friends/same-aged children of my friends did. It was really nice last night, seeing ecstatic social media posts from so many of them who got into either Chapel Hill or NC State. Iâve known some of these kids since they were just a few weeks old, and it made me really happy.