Ahhh, okay – I got this a week ago, and it’s still waiting in my inbox to be read, lol.
Oh, bless. 
Insert rant here about [ gestures-to-all-of-this ]
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Ugh. I’m sorry! What a pain. I hope he makes it home soon!
I am wondering if my daughter got the Pitt video. She didn’t say anything but then again, she’s not a big “sharer”. It’s possible she watched it already and just didn’t think to tell us about it. It’s also possible she didn’t even open the email yet. She takes after her dad in that way. They both have about eleventy billion unread emails in their inboxes. It makes me anxious just to see that very large red number floating over the app. Somehow they both manage to pull out the important stuff though.
I might ask her about it but she just woke up and seemed a little grumpy, so I’ll give it a few.
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My kid only told me because I said “I got an email from Pitt today” and they said “oh, so did I” then we looked at it together. TBH if I hadn’t seen all the posts here I wouldn’t have mentioned it, and not sure they would have told me!
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Maybe I should do the same! I got two emails from Pitt yesterday. They’re really doing a lot of marketing. She hasn’t been informed of any merit or honors yet, though. One or both of those things would move the needle WAY more than videos and emails.
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We are getting a ton of mail from my daughter’s safeties as well. One of those won’t have honors info until next year so we are just kind of putting them on all ‘simmer’ setting for now - haha!
My daughter did a few interviews this week and last. Random question because we are now in this weird ‘in between’ phase……
Do you think there is a real connection between the vibe of the interview and the vibe of the school?
Same here - except D26 is below the Honors average stats and I don’t know how they determine merit but I assume similar. Her acceptance came super fast and it got my hopes up that they really liked something about her application, but that is my mind going to places that are likely just wishful thinking and not reality 
That’s a good question but I doubt there’s much a connection between the vibe of an interview and the vibe of a school. I imagine the vibe of the interview would depend so much on the interviewer who may or may not be a good representation of the people who currently attend the school. But I don’t know. I would be curious to hear others’ responses to this since my daughter isn’t doing any interviews.
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My daughter’s SAT is within range for honors, her GPA is just slightly under the average but she is at a very competitive HS with no grade inflation. So I don’t know. I was hoping she could sneak in there! Who knows what the applicant pool looked like this year. She also applied undecided which I think might hurt in terms of honors/merit, or at least in finding out early. Those first offers probably go to students that applied with a major and would fulfill an institutional priority and/or make a good mix of majors and diversity.
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In general I don’t think so. A good student interviewer could portray the vibe of the school, but I’d think it would be far more common that they didn’t because for many of them it is still an unnatural and sometimes awkward interaction with a kid they don’t know. Alum interviewers seem even less likely to portray the vibe. And admissions reps are adults who are simultaneously selling the place so hard to say.
That said, D26 did have one that likely portrayed the vibe at the end. She asked a question about something she was curious about, and the interviewer student lit up (my words not D26s) and started telling her all about that because it is something she does a lot. I think it did give a sense of that aspect of the school. D26 was proud of herself for that question.
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D19 only did one interview and she didn’t get a great vibe from the interviewer, but got a totally different feeling when we toured campus. Just like some people say a poor student guide can lead to a bad impression, I’m thinking that of interviewers as well.
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This just made me think how funny it still is for me to see IG posts saying “X is going to (great school) undecided and to play (sport)”. Coming from education systems in two countries where you need to know your major before you go and no one gets recruited for sport. No one would post that they are going to Cambridge or Oxford “to row”! The concept of “walk on” doesn’t really exist simply because that’s the only way to join a sports team there.
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So my D26 has been very focused on vibes at practically every school on her list. However, there was one school that she wanted to take off her list because of vibes, but that I encouraged her to include (no supplemental essay helped) because it offered a couple of programs that I thought she might really like. They do track demonstrated interest and offer interviews. I encouraged D to do the interview with an admissions officer, and she reported back that they ended up talking about those programs and that, actually, she liked the school now and was happy to apply.
Long winded way of saying that I don’t think there’s a direct connection between the vibe of the school and the vibe of the interviewer, but that a good interview can make a positive difference. But I’d probably try to ignore a negative interview.
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The significance of athletics is a major differentiator in the US higher education model. I actually had teammates in college who came to the US from England and other parts of Europe because they could play at a serious level here and continue their education. According to them, had they stayed home, they would have had to choose to either go pro and end schooling or drop down even further in the level of quality of play. They chose US schools because they thought it was the best way to do both in our sport.
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The motivators are really interesting. From my home country, people tend to come to those colleges that will give them athletic scholarships (US education is completely unaffordable for most families there) but also because there is just so much more money so better training, facilities etc in sports in the US than at home, where sometimes they don’t even have funds to send all Olympic qualifiers to the Olympics and some training facilities are just nowhere near an internationally competitive level. There is one particular sport where almost all of our olympians have been trained through the US college system.
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Up until recently at least, women’s soccer national teams across the globe were littered with women who played in college in the US. It was the best place for good women to develop and play at a high level. That may have changed some with the proliferation of women’s pro leagues in Europe, not sure.
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That is also a wealth issue. There is a lot more money for sports in Europe and the developed world than in emerging markets (with the notable exception of there always being tons of money for cricket in India). You may have fantastic women soccer players in ..I dunno, Burundi or Congo or whatever, but they’re almost certainly not going to hit international standards playing at home.
Agreed.
The differences are huge.
Take for example the rowing house at Oklahoma and compare it to the Cambridge rowing house. I picked rowing because I know that’s big in the UK and it’s not even a top sport for Oklahoma like football. Having seen some NFL facilities top college programs have better facilities/support than their pro counterparts.
Also I’ve never seen anyone but an undergrad compete in D1 sports they generally don’t have enough time to do much else. A bit different in the UK.
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Well, rowing is big for Oxbridge but rugby, football (soccer) and cricket overall are much bigger sports in the UK. The unis that are good at these are names that might be unfamiliar to many in the US, example Loughborough and Cardiff for both rugby and cricket.
We are in the same situation here. Pitt was a reach for S26’s stats, except for his SAT. But the acceptance came in 2 weeks, so we got our hopes up for merit too. We are not expecting honors though.
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