No idea but I can see WL getting larger - because if schools are giving longer to make a decision, then they have later uncertainty.
And if you offer a WL on June 1, as an example, it’s likely the WL yield is even lower - because more kids will have settled in and thus they’ll need to approach more to fill empty spots.
That’s just my hypothesis but I have no idea of course.
Congrats! Mac seems like a real gem.
Sorry about Bowdoin and Amherst. But it seems like Bates has extremely high student satisfaction. The kids that go there really seem to love their school, which is an imperfect metric that I nevertheless value particularly highly.
Waitlists will probably be at least as big as they usually are - if not bigger. Until recently I didn’t realize how huge some WL are and was particularly surprised at the size of the WL at a school like Williams where, in a typical year, they take fewer than 10 kids off the WL. Do you really need 2,000 kids on the waitlist at a school where the class size is around 500?
Luckily, S24’s waitlisted schools are all lower in preference than his accepted schools. We will see if it changes this week. We still have several to go.
I generally agree with @George_Orwell’s comment. S24 is a “sandwich” applicant. What surprised me was how poorly he did in Boston (3 waitlists and 1 reject) and UC schools (3 waitlists). All of them I thought would be target schools - GPA/ACT above 75 percentile and lots of kids from his HS got accepted in the past.
Attended the first admitted students day this weekend. UMich did a wonderful job and must have left a good impression on me because I keep humming the Victors fight song. (It’s very catchy.) Upon reflection, while eating dinner on UMich’s State Street, our son thanked us for the way we handled the college application process and told us to keep up the great work with his younger brother (S27). That felt so good to hear because, like so many families going through this process, our ultimate goal was to find a college without crushing our son’s confidence or his enthusiasm for his next steps in his education. As we wait for his final three decisions this week, looking over the other 9 results, we’re so fortunate that he considers all of his acceptances to be a great fit and one of them is solidly in his top three overall.
He focused mainly on curriculum (he has very specific academic interests: International Relations w/ EU regional focus, Energy studies/Earth Science-rare Earth minerals, and German language) and secondly, he wanted a school with some combination of strong school spirit, lots of international students, and/or adventurous extroverts. It seems like those types of schools, by and large, loved him back. He was accepted to BC, UW Madison, UMich LSA Honors, Wake, and Middlebury. He was WL at CMC, BU, Notre Dame’s Keough, and UChicago. I do feel like “fit” (both in the curricula and in the social sense) came through for him and we made that our focus during the entire college search and application process. Thanks to everyone here on CC because your input and real world experience helped us narrow down our list of schools that best fit our son. Every school on his list was one where he could see himself thriving.
I agree with this. I will be guiding my next child to take the test at least twice but to aim for soft matches and safeties only. And we will continue to save a decent amount in the 529 every year as we have done so far as parents. That seems to be the best strategy for families like ours.
Glad you had a great time! We did ours a week ago and also loved it. Congrats to your S24!
For a student interested in LACs or private universities, diversifying locations becomes much trickier if the family needs financial aid. Relatively fewer schools in the Midwest or South are need blind and/or particularly generous with financial aid. And merit awards rarely come close to the financial aid packages of a Williams or Amherst. Grinnell stands out as one notable exception with an endowment that matches top East coast LACs. But it’s also a tough admit.
That describes my kid as well and results are as I expected. Admitted to the CSUs and UCs with 20-50% acceptance rates and denied at the 10% admit rate SLAC. It helps that (I believe) there is no yield protection and a less-competitive major. I also think the SLAC denial was good, it was a poor fit in some ways.
Kiddo says they are still undecided but is doing a lot of follow up engagement on one while ignoring the others so it seems pretty clear.
Yes. I typed something similar, but then deleted it because I feel like I talk about need aware admission too much 
But I definitely think it’s been a factor in both S19 and S24’s results, and midwestern schools are much more likely to be need aware and to do merit aid instead of just need-based than coastal peers with bigger endowments and locations a lot of kids find more attractive. Incidentally, S24’s FA packages so far line up pretty much exactly by how selective the schools are; i.e. his most generous FA is at his most selective school and then right down the line to least generous at least selective. He’s very lucky in that a few of his reach for everyone schools have gone his way, but I definitely wouldn’t have advised him to put his list together counting on that. Which makes list-making tricky.
I am also at quite a zen place, possibly aided by some wine last night. But seriously, I’m happy with her options and it’s in her hands. And I’m good with that.
This has been the experience for many kids at our high school in CA (very high performing public). Especially for the instate schools.
To be sure, if you are properly defining things, what I would call Targets will not necessarily generate a 100% admit rate. That would be more what you would expect from Likelies. To be honest, the fact my S24 has been admitted to all his “Targets” indicates we likely misclassified at least some of them (meaning they should have been Likelies), but our thinking was better to be conservative and have great choices than the other way around.
Yeah, obviously the highest endowment per capita colleges tend to rely least on net tuition to balance their operating budgets, which leads to more generous aid. And at least many of the higher endowment per capita colleges are famous colleges in popular coastal markets. So that is obviously a real issue for families who need the most generous aid possible, and I completely understand why they would buy more “lottery tickets” among whatever schools they can find with NPC results that look doable.
Awesome news!! Congrats to her!
I just did math, so I have to share. Illustration of how unpredictable I’m finding things this year: Of the schools we’ve heard from with sub 20% acceptance rates, DS is 3 for 7. Of the ones with acceptance rates between 20 and 50% he’s 1 for 4 (and it’s not a case of not demonstrating interest and making those schools feel like safeties, I don’t think: he interviewed everywhere he could, submitted music supplements, wrote a LOCI in the case where he was deferred EA, signed up for online info sessions, etc). So…yeah. I don’t know. Like…if he hadn’t had schools he was already happy with EA, his list would have looked less reach-heavy and now it looks like that would have actually yielded worse outcomes! 3 for 3 with schools at or over 50%, btw. I’m glad the next kid won’t graduate for 7 years!
We are down to:
Bellarmine (brother attended there)
St. Olaf
Bates
Mt. Holyoke
waiting on Hamilton
Also waitlisted and Reed and Smith, but I think she will turn both of those down.
I’m honestly happy with any of them.
Thanks - I’m good with the results, to be honest. I’m happy with the places she got into, and kind of glad that she didn’t get into a couple of them. And congrats again to your daughter - lots of great options!
So to me, understanding these are not actually independent probabilities, none of those individually (3/7 sub-20%, 1/4 20-50%, 3/3 50%+) looks particularly strange. The discrepancy in which way the first and second groups “broke” is arguably a little anomalous, but then raw acceptance rates are really pretty far from individualized odds estimates anyway.
And of course your 20-50% strategy “worked”–he got accepted to one! Your sub-20 strategy “worked” even better, but even assuming he chooses one of those, the other two will end up superfluous.
So to me this looks like a list that worked well within the range of reasonable expectations, except maybe a little “unreasonably well” on the reachier end (which is obviously fine).
I’m biased, but am pulling for Wake!