I just added up all of the academic merit offers that DS has received and they total over 350k in value spread across four different schools. One is a match and three are safeties. One match offered no merit aid even though it has a higher acceptance rate and similar admitted student profile than the one that did offer it. He was not admitted to the one hard match that he applied to or to the reach, so those are off the table. Given that the FAFSA is still “in process” as of last night, he will be making the final call by early next week from these offers assuming no need based aid. Certainly not an outcome we could have foreseen simply looking at common data sets, but he has good choices and he only needs one.
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That’s amazing!!!
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Berkeley Portal Astrology turned on, it’s really like getting a mini Likely Letter right before announcement Ivy day announcement. go Bears!
S24 was admitted to Vassar! This is continuing the pattern of him doing well where I privately think he would really thrive. But he is going to have to reflect on his own priorities to generate a manageable short list for April visits. Great problem to have, of course, but a problem nonetheless.
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Similar situation but the key to that strategy is locking up the comfort of having a great safety / likely like Canadian non holistic schools or in-state guaranteed
Right. I’ll add - S24 applied to 3 additional match schools that his GC thought he had a very strong chance of being admitted to (Wisconsin, U of R and Wake) but he withdrew his applications after being admitted to UVA. So his original list wasn’t quite as reach heavy as it seems.
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The whole game theory of optimised admission makes adding multiple EAs (presume your S24 was admitted to UVA EA cycle as well) to complement the likeliest/safeties (Canada and/or In-state guarantee) a critical factor to achieve:
a) a much more relaxed state of mind early in the process
b) be in a position to be somewhat aggressive in terms of the ultimate number of reach schools.
Good luck for Berkeley/Stanford/Ivy day (which I presume we share as our remaining reach schools).
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My son (Vassar class of 2025) has had a great experience. Feel free to contact if questions arise (though I’m sure that with your exhaustive research you have things covered 
)
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My son’s close friend has declared that he has got in to UCB based on this portal astrology. I truly hope it is true.
Thank you! The same to you. We have 2 tomorrow and 2 on Ivy day. Whatever happens I’ll be glad it’s over.
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Good luck to the fellow Brown ED applicant and parents! It’s been a long journey and we are so close to be done.
S24 has a few more decisions to go this week. Hopefully Stanford and UMich shows up this week so it can be over this week.
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S24’s portal astrology says he is rejected while his friend is in. There was something similar for UNC about PID which turned out to be true for S24. We will see.
Some will say we’re lucky to be in a good space. It’s all about how to game the holistic process and schools’ institutional priorities. Easy for billionaires and athletes, reasonable for smart strategists with good grades, potentially lethal for everyone else.
Thank you so much. Best of luck to your son as well. Here’s hoping all the decisions come in this week so, at a minimum, the long wait is over. Of course, then our kiddos need to decide so there is that “fun” to look forward to . . .
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It makes sense to plan ahead and request absentee ballots. Or register to vote at college.
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D24 is going through the “fun” right now as we have some great options to choose from and it is anything but 
It’s never a dull moment
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Well, we still say ‘Vassar’ around this household. Wesleyan and Skidmore have become (just for now) dirty words. Vassar came in roughly where
Bowdoin did financially. Better than Midd, worse than Swat and Williams. And all the NPCs were just dead-on accurate. Error margin of less than 5%. The aid packages at this group are very generous, and if it weren’t for the NPCs, D24 would likely not have applied. Her final tally: 8 accepts (including 4 reaches), 2 waitlists from need-aware target/likely schools.
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UCB applicants have good reason to. The portal astrology successfully found a way to predict admissions the last three years in a row. Meaning in hindsight their method perfectly correlated to reported admissions.
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Vassar FA was surprisingly good for S24 given that my oldest crossed it off the list immediately because it was by far his worst package (and they were not at all open to matching or coming closer to peer schools). This time around it’s still the second worst FA of his schools that meet need, but those are pretty much all in a pack. Including the ones that are supposed to be no-loans, interestingly. “No loans” feels like a bit of a gimmick that doesn’t actually mean anything right now…there’s only about a $1300 dollar spread between schools that say he doesn’t need loans and schools that package loans in. Except for Colby, our outlier this year.
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That sounds great. It’s nice to have the freedom to choose without the financial consideration.
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