Parents of the HS Class of 2024 (Part 2)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
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So our feederish HS uses the College Kickstart definitions, at least provisionally:

For Targets, it says:

  • Target: the admit rate over 25%+ and your academic profile puts you in the mid 50th percentile or higher of students from the previous year.

So for a high numbers kid, being in the mid-50th OR HIGHER is going to cover an awful lot of colleges. So the real filter is it has to be 25%+ admit (and this should be tailored to your sort of applicant, including residency and major/school where necessary).

That’s still a lot of colleges, but then there is also this:

  • Likely: the admit rate is over 50% and your academic profile puts you in the top quartile of students from the previous year.

OK, so there is one of two ways you can have a Target instead of a Likely.

One is that your numbers are in the mid-50th rather than top quartile. But for sufficiently high numbers kids, that may not ever be applicable.

But the other is that the (relevant) admit rate is 25-49%, and not 50+. And that very much can happen.

So what kind of colleges might we be talking about? Well, I shared some good news about William & Mary above, and William & Mary had a reported OOS admit rate of 28%:

So, there you go–that’s a Target and not a Likely, even for a high numbers kid, applying OOS (or in-state for that matter–it is only 39%). Lots of good publics fall into this 25-49% tailored admit range for OOS, or for specific majors/schools, and so on.

What else? Well, ultimately my S24 decided not to apply, but Macalester also happened to have a 28% admit rate:

So that’s another Target and not a Likely.

And these of course would be on the harder end of Targets. Rochester, say, has a 39% acceptance rate:

That is pretty close to the middle of that 25-49% range.

As a final note, Targets like this are great for high numbers kid for a different reason too–they often will not just admit you, they will add some additional incentives. Honors, merit, something like that.

And then I think there is a real temptation sometimes to say, so, aren’t these really turning into Likelies for some sufficiently high number kids? If not Macalester, at least Rochester?

NO. NO-NO-NO. Well, maybe.

NO because it should not be one of your two designated Likelies. Both of those should be strictly defined.

But maybe in the sense that having some more great colleges where not only are your chances probably better than 50-50, but you also have a good chance at additional incentives, is nice.

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I would like to add that the reach/target/likely designations are very much high school dependent as well. Blanket statements that x college is a reach/target/likely for any student with a certain GPA and test score are rarely very helpful (unless we are talking about schools with automatic or near universal admission). There are colleges that are commonly listed as “reaches for everyone” on CC that S24’s counselor considered likely for him, based on his high school’s history with that college. The assessment at D27’s school likely would have been very different because they have not placed a student at these colleges in years.

Given how many families seem overly optimistic about their chances at highly selective schools, I’m sure there is value to the cautious pushback on CC. But it is not always accurate either.

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This is one of those cases where there seems to be an interesting difference between how college counseling is working at different high schools.

The way our provisional definitions work, if a college has less than a reported admit rate of 25% (for the right type of applicant), it is classified as a Reach regardless of student numbers. And the student may then look at SCOIR or whatever and point out no one with their numbers has actually been rejected in recent years.

At that point, this does tend to stop becoming a matter of strict classifications, it just becomes an individualized discussion. If there are actually enough prior applicants for that to be a meaningful observation, then the college counselors may be able to explain, “Yes, people with certain attributes tend to apply to this college, and as long as they have certain numbers as well, they tend to get in.” And then they will help the student assess if they are a good fit. If so, they will perhaps apply and become another success story in SCOIR. And then if not, they will probably not apply and prevent any possibility of becoming a not-so-success story in SCOIR.

But I have never heard of a case of our college counselors saying a school like that could be used as one of the two Likelies. Nope, not that. Because they have seen it before, someone becomes the first not-success at these colleges in recent memory despite their numbers. Maybe the college changed policies in some relevant way and suddenly some acceptances turn to waitlistings. Maybe there was something the college didn’t like that the counselor and kid didn’t predict. Whatever, if the overall acceptance rate is lower than 25%, indeed lower than 50%, the risk of an unpredicted waitlisting or rejection is deemed too high to let it serve as a Likely regardless of prior history.

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This wouldn’t have factored into your personal considerations, but something I’d add is that those chances being, perhaps, better than 50-50, as you say - less likely to be so for an applicant applying for a decent amount of financial aid and more likely to be so for a full pay applicant at the need-aware schools (which quite a few of the LACs in that 25-49% overall acceptance rate are).

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Adding to the degree of difficulty, you’ve got to get to a “Likely” (much better term than “Safety”) in terms of both admission AND finances AND general fit.

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Yes! I really should include that on the standard list of necessary adjustments. Like, if a college was 50-60% admit overall, but also need aware, and you are high need, should you treat it as a Likely? Heck no, no matter the numbers.

Absolutely. Like, the only time we would ever let someone treat a college as a Likely if they needed merit to make it affordable would be if they had a published auto-merit policy for which the applicant was qualified that would bring it within range. Otherwise, if they might get merit but might not, could be a Target or Reach depending on the chances for merit, but not one of the Likelies.

Obviously with those restrictions, “fit” becomes a more flexible concept in many circumstances. Still, this is where some real creativity and open-mindedness pays off. Like, OK, look, this college may not be the exact format you wanted, and in fact may not have the absolute highest-rated departments for your interests. But it does have those departments, a decent number of people major in those departments, and it is a perfectly good school overall. Moreover, you are a skier, and look at the skiing nearby!

Or whatever, but something where this is obviously going to be an affordable good college for your academic/career interests AND there is at least something else that makes it personal to you.

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There were many schools we took off our children’s list, not because we were worried about admission (many of them matches/targets)
but because affordability was almost assuredly not going to happen.

Being a full pay family who weren’t ever going to be willing to pay full price made us take a lot of schools off the list because while admission was likelier than not, merit aid was most likely to be less than what we needed to make our budget.

I think the most ‘competitive’ school any of my children applied to had an acceptance rate of something like 35-40% (not looking it up to make sure). It was the only school that child applied that wasn’t affordable (child accepted to all schools applied to), much less merit aid offered.

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We also started with affordability as a top priority. There were two schools that were going to require a massive specialty merit award to make them work. Several that we could afford outright and several that had generous merit policies. My son has some great choices and he has been very thoughtful and realistic about the process.

I have seen several friends really struggle in the last month when they didn’t start out with the financial guardrails in place.

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I didn’t want to discourage my D24 from applying anywhere based on the COA, knowing she will qualify for some aid. We just won’t be able to compare until we know the true cost. She understands if she gets in somewhere and it’s not affordable after the aid package comes in–it’s not a real option. I think we are considered donut hole families and merit hunters. Thanks to CC community for these terms I never knew before! We are also divorced so it’s a bit harder to predict how things will shake out financially.

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Stirling Castle was one of our favorites. Make sure to do the guided tour.

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I know this is fluff–but I just got up and looked at the UC threads, because they went crazy last night. It didn’t fully hit me until now how many people from Cali are on this site. I feel like people from the Southeast are either unicorns, or totally out-of-it. :smile: I guess I’ll just continue going about my insignificant business over here.

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There are a lot of us! UCI and UCD were the only UCs my kid applied to and they got into both :tada: two decisions to go! I don’t think they will choose until the last minute so it’s still a long road of uncertainty for us.

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It would be cool to do a basic “Who are you?” family poll (so could be kid or parent but only one per family). If someone was feeling ambitious, it could be done both overall and for each HS Class of XXXX, and conducted again every year.

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Agreed. My kid applied EA to Mac, which we considered a target. But based on his profile, the historical Naviance info for our school (all green checks in his zone), and our full-pay status, I sensed it was probably closer to a likely, and he got in with top merit. Looking at the Mac threads here and on Reddit, it’s hard not to conclude that lack of financial need was a factor.

His likelies were public schools with 50%+ admissions rates and Naviance scattergrams showing that everyone in his zone got in.

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But then we would have to change the site name to College Disclosed :wink:

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Yes , our HS is the same, and are other competitive ones in the area:
Colleges such as BC, Wake, USouthernCal, UT austin are matches for many in the top15-20%, and likelies forthe few kids at the very top of rigor etc, and the very top can even have Berkeley, UNC OOS and even specific T10 schools as a matches. The rest of the T10 are always designated reaches for every unhooked kid. Match means 25-75% chance, reach is less than 25, likely is 75-95.
D21 has a close friend from a day school in MA and and they have similar tiers of schools, but a full top 10-15% of the grade have UCB, UNC and a couple of T10s as “match” schools, or roughly 50% odds. They are more of a “feeder” HS than the top 2 in our area.

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D24 got letter in the mail today from Austin College. She did not get one of their music scholarships. Letter said there was a lot of competition this year for it.

This afternoon, she told us that she’s going to say no to U of A. Explained her reasons to us. DH and I feel they’re sound reasons to not attend there.

It’s now a decision between Southwestern and Austin College.

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which U of A?

Good luck in making a decision on the final two. I’m still thrown that Austin College is near Dallas, not Austin :slight_smile:

It’s great the journey is nearly over - and both I’m sure will be great for her.

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I am sorry to hear about the music scholarship, but good for her for narrowing down her options. She clearly has thought things through carefully. From what I’ve read over the last year, you’ve done a terrific job coaching her throughout this process while also letting her come to decisions independently from her parents (especially her impatient father!!!).

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Univ of Arizona

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