Congratulations to all of the kiddos getting their final
Answers this week, and hugs to the kids that are now waiting into the summer for those waitlist results. It’s so hard to even imagine this dragging out any longer. D24 was deferred Vanderbilt in ed1 so she had to scramble to get her other applications in and interviews done. A ton of second guessing happened and fear that she had completely misread her safety/target/reach ideas. After an additional 4 months of agony she finally has her answers. Surely they could have just told her in December and saved us all the stress 
. She had a great week at Emory scholars week. We head to uva for admitted students tour next Tuesday. This week she was WL at BC and admitted to Colgate, wake, and tufts. Followed by Georgetown and Vanderbilt. That wraps up our college application season and I can go back to sleeping at night! Now how to pick??? Anyone else been struggling to sleep well these past few weeks?
Looks like there might some movement w/FAFSA? But our household can’t figure out from the FAFSA website what the information we’re looking at means. I think maybe it means that D24’s data was sent to the schools she requested? Who knows…at this point, when it comes to FAFSA, we’ve all got better odds of gazing into a crystal ball. 
My S24, who already applied to way too many reaches, keeps talking about how knowing what he knows now, he could have applied to even more! As we discussed a bit above, I think it is hard for the kids at this point to resist the temptation to see this as a big game where you score points with every admittance. As opposed to what it really is, the process of finding the one, and hopefully only one, college that you will actually attend.
But if it helps at all–Harvey Mudd and Northwestern are easily Ivy equivalent in terms of competitiveness for selection. CMU too depending on the school. So he proved all there is to prove.
And yes, the Ivy League is literally just an athletic league where the geographic scope was determined by where it would be reasonable to bus for football games. It happens (thanks to the nature of that location) that most are colonial colleges too, but not all colonial colleges are in that football league. And Cornell was not a colonial college, it was from a much later wave of university foundings, and in fact Northwestern is older than Cornell. So plenty of colleges like Northwestern could have been Ivies if they had been close enough for football games, they just weren’t. And for the record, Northwestern ended up in a rather better athletic league . . . .
Again, though, this is a bad day to be trying to combat Ivy-related peer competition sentiment, basically the high tide point of the entire year for that sort of thing. But I think soon enough the kids who opted out, or had very limited participation, will remember why that was a perfectly reasonable decision.
And for that matter, the kids who get admitted to one or more Ivies today may understandably get a rush of excitement, but they will also start converging on the same place soon enough. Because they can also only attend one school, admittances elsewhere beside the school you choose will in the end not really matter, and the Ivies really are just schools. Good schools, and kids should be excited about going to a good school, but that is really the sum of it.
And I say that not to diminish their excitement, but to point out that there is really nothing of remotely permanent importance happening today that kids who are choosing other good schools should fear missing out on.
College application is a big game of strategy, optimising time and resources, understanding and playing colleges institutional priorities, assessing one’s realistic chances, and ultimately finding a school where one has opportunities to learn, make friends, develop as a person, and prepare for professional adult life…….all at hopefully an affordable price.
Caltech, MIT, UVA are fantastic schools, but having written so many essays like all of you, means one absolutely wants to find out the final responses. Best of luck to everyone……, but it is also a zero sum game for those applying to the same remaining schools on my list.
Check the school portal to see if they’ve received it- ours went to processed on the FAFSA site but it was a week later that her school portal showed that it was received- not sure if FAFSA says sent.
College is a match to be made. Not a prize to be won. It’s hard for teenagers to realize when they are all trying to flex and pose in front of their peers, but when you’re much later in life, nobody gives a rip how many college acceptances you got when you were 17-18 yr old.
Congrats to everyone’s kids on the amazing schools they all got into.
If your kid considering holding out for a waitlist spot, make sure you put down an enrollment deposit somewhere. And go look on the WL school’s CDS to see how many people they took off of the wait list last year. That’ll give you a clue to about how likely it is to get a spot to enroll.
Strangely, D24’s FAFSA has been processed, and S21’s has not. Ugh.
Last of the decisions we were waiting on. D24 accepted to Hamilton with practically a full ride (need-based)! They only expect work-study, and are also covering all her books, etc.
Now to wait on her to decide …
Colleges are focussing on new students first to get packages out the door.
Any other parents feeling physically and emotionally drained at this point? It’s been a roller coaster the past 2 days for D24 and tonight it ends. Hoping it doesn’t come to a crashing stop but also realize this is what’s likely so we’ve been bracing for the impact Thankfully she has some great options and one that she admitted was one she was really hoping for. Anything today will be a happy surprise but nothing that she was banking on. Good luck to everyone still waiting! Will join everyone on the decision side of this journey tomorrow!
For example, in Yale’s 2022-2023 CDS, they offered 1000 students a spot on the WL. 780 accepted a WL spot. Only 9 WL students were eventually admitted. That’s a 1.1% admittance rate.
Whereas at other schools, they might admit a lot more kids off of the WL. So your odds would be much higher.
But if your kid is on the WL at a place like Yale, have them guard their heart and they would be wise to not count on the WL spot turning into a “Welcome to the freshman class!” message.
Yup. I’m very glad that C24’s last decision comes today and this phase will be over. They will, I suspect, end up admitted to 7 schools, and they already have three top picks they’d love to attend, so it’s just a matter of choosing.
I am the teensiest bit bummed that all of C’s reaches came out this week and unless we get a big surprise today from NYU, they’ll all be rejections. But I’m also struck with how closely their admittance record tracks their own development this year. When they created their college list, they were unsure whether they wanted a BA or a BFA, and hadn’t quite zeroed in on the kind of campus they were looking for. As the year has progressed, they realized they wanted a small liberal arts school, and the schools they’re gotten into fit their personality/needs really well, imo. At this point, we know they’ll end up somewhere great for them, which is pretty cool.
and apparently, also hard for many of the parents of my D24’s classmates to realize, as evidenced by the steady stream of social media announcements each time there is an acceptance. One parent actually posted a photo of a collage of acceptance letters 
Note: I’m not talking about anyone here on this thread, where we’ve all been following the journeys and are genuinely curious about results…just dogging on the social media blasts from parents who seem to be living vicariously through their kids.
Since it’s an only once in a lifetime chance, debating whether to tape the video of looking at the remaining three schools. Maybe the grandchildren will laugh about this all….some day
That’s awesome! Both S21 and D24 processed, but she needs to add UCLA. The kids’ SAI’s were almost night and day and the data that was input was the same. I’m pretty sure S21 doesn’t have a ton money, as he had to get a loan last semester. I can’t wait corrections can be made because ours is just adding the college. However, it is still nice not to have to make corrections.
I haven’t even filed ours yet for S24. Luckly CSS was good enough and we are told to file FAFSA soon, but no rush. We are still waiting the dust to settle. Perhaps I also need to file tax this weekend. Too many things to do!! I need spring break of my own!
Good points! Agree. And I think the big Ivies are not for everyone – I went to one and the class sizes are huge your first couple of years. I didn’t get to know any professors until junior year. My husband went to one as well – but we both thought a small liberal arts college would be a better fit for our kid. The professor/student connection is so valuable – my student knows all of her professors quite well and I feel like that builds confidence and sets you up for success when applying for jobs, grad school, etc, and also for when writing your senior thesis. Anyway, thanks for making those points and also for noting that many other schools are equally in demand in terms of selectivity (especially those NESCACs this year!!).
It feels like every generation has to figure things out themselves. When our kids get to our age, they will feel the same way. The competition for prestige has gotten a lot more intense but I remember it was also there 30 years ago. Maybe it was as intense as today but we didn’t have a way to display it.
All I can do is try to guide S24 as best as I can without dismissing the competition that he thinks he is in. He will see it more clearly in a few years.
Congrats! A full ride to Hamilton would be hard to pass up. It seems like an amazing school, although I know your daughter has other excellent options as well.
Dreading ivy day! Hopes r not high. Will be glad it’s over soon. Funny things been happening tho- The beginning of the admission cycle we were getting a lot of mailings from elite colleges. Lately, however, we have been getting a lot of mailings from colleges we have never heard of. They are places that you can still apply to and have rolling admissions, and very high acceptance rates. It’s almost like they know that some of these kids have only applied to reaches and no safeties are scrambling after not being accepted anywhere. Thankful we have an acceptance but this seems to be a smart strategy maybe on their part for the kids that either missed deadlines or failed to pick a safety!