I really love your son’s thoughtful list of options and how the differences between his schools give him a true choice by including schools in different locations, with different sizes, and different focuses, but I also see common threads between the schools on his list. He has incredible options so far! Bonus that his acceptances are the ones you like best!
I also am really impressed by how many applications your son submitted! The supplements for Wake Forest alone were so daunting my son ultimately didn’t even apply! Wake is very much a fit school and I am so glad they saw something special in your son.
This strategy worked out well for D22 as well. We very quickly realized that the first thing she should compromise on (if needed) was geographic diversity.
Congratulations on Carleton and Wake Forest! Carleton was one of my personal favorites among all of the many LACs we toured.
When S24 was rejected by Williams, I also wondered if it might have helped him had he been able to write a “why us” essay. But in the end I decided that his personality came through very well in his personal statement and that his reasons for choosing Williams were probably not unusual or compelling enough to have made a difference. That said, if I was an AO, I would find a “why us” essay helpful.
It has been informative to watch yesterday’s many LAC results at S24’s (private) school. S24 was hesitant to submit an ED2 application earlier this winter, and I agreed with him. After working so hard on so many applications, it seems unfair to never get to see how they would have played out. It would have been nice for him to consider a complete set of options. But at the time his counselor was adamant that S24 should pick an ED2 school, especially given that he was interested in LACs. The counselor said that he didn’t like the chances of students from our school at LACs in the regular decision round and that he had seen extremely strong candidates get rejected.
It all worked out well for S24 who is thrilled to have been accepted at his ED2 school. And after watching results come in yesterday, I understand his counselor’s perspective. In the early decision rounds, several students from S24’s school with somewhat uneven academic profiles and no hooks were accepted at top LACs. I was a little surprised by some of the acceptances, actually, relative to the many rejections of highly qualified candidates that I see on this board. Last night, however, was a different story and brought a wave of rejections from LACs, even for very strong students. I don’t know if this pattern is specific to our school or not but I am glad in retrospect that we followed the counselor’s advice.
This happens every year at our school. It’s hardest for the kids who get deferred and find themselves unable to move on since “there is a chance.” A rejection is preferable to a deferral IMO. If there is no clear ED2 then maybe it’s ok to hold out, but if any have a slight edge that is the right path. Your CC advice was sound.
PS - I think ED2 should be illegal. It does zero for the student and the colleges have some responsibility for the state of affairs. Honestly, I feel the same way about EAs that release after the RD deadlines, but at least those let you see how things shake out.
As schools start to fill larger and larger amounts of the freshman class with ED I and II applicants AND recruited athletes it’s leans a very narrow window for RD students to be accepted. The whole process is broken when students have to apply to 20-25 schools and schools have over 1000 kids on a waitlist.
@NiceUnparticularMa, @sbinaz , @beebee3 and @kaslew,
Congratulations on your child’s achievement and being proud parents! While I initially hesitated to disclose my location, OSU is actually in-state for us. With one child already in college on the East Coast, we’re considering relocating there to be closer to both kids.
Although OSU is renowned, I’m uncertain if my child would thrive in such a large environment, especially as an in-state student potentially sticking with familiar friends. She tends to be timid and follows her peers blindly, which concerns us as parents. We want her to develop independence and make her own decisions. Unfortunately, her current friend circle lacks academic motivation, and opportunities in Columbus seem limited.
In our view, in Columbus, opportunities are more attainable for children with leadership abilities and outgoing personalities, but it’s not universal, as we’ve witnessed during our 25 years of living here. However, it can be challenging for those lacking these skills.
I know, cost wise OSU works out the best but we’re ok to spend if this thinking opens up more opportunities. As east coast is full of opportunities.
I’m torn about whether my concerns are justified. I strongly believe she would benefit from a more driven peer group to truly excel, given her inclination to follow others.
congrats on his great acceptances! This quoted part is really interesting to me, because my kid LOVED that Amherst and Williams wanted academic papers instead of yet another personal essay (in fact at Amherst he submitted THREE papers, because they wanted yet more writing from homeschoolers). He’s not a reluctant writer at all when it comes to academic work, but really hated supplemental essays. I think for him, a school can tell a lot more about what he’ll be like as as student from his academic papers than from most of the essays he wrote; I had a very hard time breaking him out of a weird, stilted “what I think colleges want to hear” voice. (It’s very frustrating for me to watch–I feel like I could knock out a couple of killer college application essays before lunch–but I have a lot more experience with that style of writing). Anyway, just a “they’re all so different!” sort of thought. Congrats again, best of luck with the last few, and with the decision stage! ETA: I’m totally with you on the ones with no supplement at all, though–HOW are they making these decisions?! Colby doesn’t even offer interviews.
My task this morning: frantically map out potential college visit scenarios for later in April while feeling sort of silly about how we’re spending spring break revisiting colleges he’s already seen instead of any of the new-to-him ones. Why won’t they all release decisions at the same time?! On, like, February 15 or so preferably.
I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, I think my kid is great, and schools would think so, too, if he could just tell them more about himself! On the other…the school my kid is attending (Wes) has no supplements, but the cultural fit for my kid was so evident from his activities and common app essay that another essay might have hurt—sometimes less is more!
My kid also applied to Amherst and was thrilled to submit an academic paper rather than write another essay. And the essay he submitted was on a very specific subject that very closely related to strong themes in his application, so it definitely said a lot about him, even if it was academic writing. (He got in ED2 to Wes so had to withdraw the Amherst app, so no decision to report. Congratulations to your son!)
ETA: The common app essay is long, so it’s a significant piece of writing, presumably on something that is personal. So I think schools can get a lot out of that without asking institution-specific questions.
I completely agree regarding ED2. It only benefits the colleges.
I suspect that the LACs’ decisions make perfect sense based on their yield models. These LACs regularly take multiple kids from our school and have good data on them. I suspect that a kid who applies in the RD round from our school fits one of three profiles:
(1) They are an uneven student who added the school in the RD round just to give it a try. Such a student can be easily identified based on the academic record. Maybe occasionally a student of this type will be accepted if they fit an institutional priority, but most will be denied.
(2) The student is a strong student who is not sure they really want to attend a LAC. At our school, there are a number of strong students who have counselor support for an Ivy+ application in the first round and would prefer such a school. If they are deferred or denied, they may add some competitive LACs to their RD applications. I suspect that such a student is less likely to yield because they may well have many options in the RD round, and it is not clear that they truly prefer the environment a LAC has to offer.
(3) The student looks solid academically and does prefer LACs but struck out in both the ED1 and ED2 rounds. (Most LACs offer ED2, and counselors at our school push ED2, so a student with a LAC preference would typically submit both an ED1 and an ED2 application at our school.) After two failed rounds, there is a decent chance that such a student has something in their record (recommendation, essays, …) that the LACs don’t like.
It would make sense for all three of these student types to have a lower acceptance possibility than an early decision applicant. Now there are obviously students who do not fit any of these molds and would not be well served by this model - but we are talking about optimizing bottom line results for the LAC.
Now this model would not work equally well everywhere. It works particularly well for a school like ours, which has good counseling that ensures mostly rational student behavior and a privileged student pool with few merit-seekers. But I think it is useful in that it shows that you can have an observable ED preference that is the result of an effective yield model rather than other more nefarious strategies.
There is a good bit to go on in the applications already, but there are SO MANY great kids out there applying, it seems like more information would be better. But maybe that’s easy for me to say, since I’m not the poor admissions counselor reading my 4000th “why us?” essay! Ironically one of the papers my kid submitted at Amherst WAS a personal essay, albeit one he wrote for a class. He’s taking a film as literature class and wrote about watching horror movies with his best friend on an outside screen in the backyard during the early days of covid. He complained mightily about how even in a CLASS he was having to write a personal essay, but then his teacher ended up loving it and I was like, “You know…with some edits this could be a great common app essay…” but he was pretty much done with what ended up being his common app essay by then and was having none of that
I still don’t understand why this the case for ED2 specifically? It seems to me that without ED2, they’d just take the same number of kids in a single ED round, making RD similarly difficult.
My own kid did benefit from ED2, as it allowed him to apply to a super-high reach that he really liked in the first round of ED, knowing that he had a second shot at his very close second choice ED2. These two schools were far and away his top choices, so he was comfortable with the commitment of ED (and loved the “I’m done!”-ness of it). Not applying to the super-high-reach in ED would have left him with a big “what if”; instead, he got rejected, happily moved on to the second choice school, got in, and hasn’t looked back.
I recognize all of the privilege built in here—ED is not a fair system overall. But I don’t see why the second round is particularly problematic.
On the bags, for flying, I prefer ones that are slightly smaller so easier to carry. We have been happy with these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08GWP7YNP though they were a few bucks cheaper last fall. I bought six to move a kid out of college by plane. Fit the comforter, pillows, blankets. Even rolled up the foam mattress pad, duct-taped, and brought it home (I think it’s on S24’s bed now). The only stuff we took to goodwill were the fan, plastic boxes, plastic drawers, and a bulletin board.
Congrats to those with happy news! For the disappointed, there’s a lot that can be said, but I’ll sum up with these turns in the path as being part of life’s adventure.
Same! Daughter was a bit of a unicorn for east coast schools and was accepted at Lehigh and Syracuse - (and half tuition at Syracuse which was a great surprise). Waitlisted at Wisco which already has a ton of west coast kids.
I don’t love ED overall but my particular issue with ED2 is that there really is no clear benefit to the student. With ED1, the student gets an early answer and avoids the whole RD process. With ED2, the student still needs to submit all RD applications - and pay the application fees! - but then never gets the benefit of finding out how they would have done. In theory, if the ED2 admissions chances were substantially higher and ED2 allowed the student to get into a school that would otherwise be out of reach, then there could be a benefit. But I am not convinced that is the case for many students. ED turns the whole application process into more of a strategy game rather than an exploration of fit. And I say this as another parent of a kid who had a successful ED2 outcome.
I see. I think this is where it really is kid-specific. My kid had no desire to compare; he did a ton of research, knew what he wanted, and valued being done early. The idea of having to go on a bunch of visits in April and make a time-pressured decision was not appealing to him; he truly could not care less that he didn’t get to find out whether he got into the two additional RD schools he applied to (he had a few good EA acceptances). ED2 was a true blessing in a stressful senior year.
And while I don’t think his school would have been out of reach in RD, I do think being in the smaller pool of ED2 was helpful and increased his chances, especially given his TO status. And the opportunity to be strategic—apply to the high reach, don’t live with regrets—was very much to his advantage.
I’m biased as I have a student at Wake, but it does give a very unique combination of liberal arts college academics with the social scene of medium size university that might be a good fit for your son. My student hasn’t had a class with more than 50 students (including the typically huge introductory classes for STEM), and most less than 25 even as a freshman and contact with professors is excellent . Very LAC like. But then the students get big time ACC sports and a very active social scene (not just parties, it’s a school full of extroverts and athletes, so club participation is high).
Anyway, your son can’t make a bad choice with the options he has.
On the other…the school my kid is attending (Wes) has no supplements, but the cultural fit for my kid was so evident from his activities and common app essay that another essay might have hurt—sometimes less is more!