I think it’s more like Michigan. I think the last time I checked it was about 1/2 the class filled in EA. Definitely much less than UMD if I remember correctly. They’re also like Michigan in that they seem to like full pay out of staters, so if that’s you, you have a slightly better shot than other out of staters (so like highly unlikely vs highly highly unlikely, lol).
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The whole process is so weird. If we win and D26 gets into either of her top 2 choices, we have to pay about $360-$400k over the next 4 years.
If we lose and D26 settles for UConn, tuition is free and we only pay for housing/food = $15k/yr so only $60k.
Winning is losing and losing is winning.
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We may face this same dilemma. One of D26s top choices we can literally cover 4 years of tuition with what is in her 529 plan, so we’d actually have significantly more discretionary income than we currently do if she goes there next year (she’s in an expensive private school now so basically all that tuition is money we’d just have). If she gets in and chooses one of her other top choices it would cost us almost $60k more per year than that school! I’ve been thinking of it more as her win, is my loss. But same same.
Pyrrhic Victory 101
Class size: Tens of thousands of parents
“Why parents are secretly hoping their kids get accepted but also rejected by the school of their dreams”.
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Hey - class of 25 parent here who often lurks on this thread. Just chiming in re: UNC-CH as we were also an OOS family last year. Unlike a lot of schools, they have a hefty amount of rejects from their EA applicants rather than deferrals. This surprised me, as I expected my S25 to get deferred, so I read more about it last year than I otherwise might. For context, my S25 had a 4.0 unweighted (4.26 weighted, we only get .5 for AP classes, no plus up for honors - he was a straight A student in all honors and AP classes), with a 35 ACT, Eagle Scout, co-captain of Varsity Track team and four year two season athlete, was applying to a not particularly popular major (urban planning), his essays were solid and his recommendations should’ve been excellent. He was rejected outright from his EA application, when I would’ve guessed that compilation of facts would’ve gotten him a deferral. (We do come from Northern Virginia, and UNC-CH does get a huge amount of applicants from our area and we know it’s very competitive generally OOS, I assume it’s only more so given the number of applicants coming from our school district.)
I have no idea if that makes any difference to your calculus about applying, but when I dug in I found out that they really don’t do much (if anything) in the way of deferrals. In one regard, it was nice to not keep hoping (it had been my son’s top choice) and to just have a finite list of schools to work from earlier (he applied EA everywhere, and got in everywhere else - Pitt, Virginia Tech, UTK, Clemson, UCONN, and JMU) so at least he wasn’t still wondering and hoping into the late Spring.
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so much to catch up on this thread! I love how active it has become!
Unexpected twists for S26. He got admitted to Ole Miss (which we knew he would, I think they accept more than 90% 
) but he really wants a specific cohort program there. We knew that that application would open up after admission to the university. So the email with the cohort application comes yesterday and it says they had an EA deadline of Nov. 10 
. oof, we did not know. Major fail on our side and I thought I knew what I was doing. In order to attend he would need a scholarship that this program has available. We will see how many they still have left in RD. Once I saw this yesterday, I called S26 to tell him to check his portal and start on the app.
Ensuing conversation once I got home last night:
me: so, did you start the cohort app?
S26: oh, no, I forgot
me: umm, what did you do all day?
S26: nothing, play xBox.
Oh, son …… Maybe the affordable in-state safety is the way to go 
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If the NPCs we ran are correct, my D26’s ED school (her favorite) would be considerably less expensive than the RD school I prefer for her (unless she gets merit which is highly unlikely). So I’m not sure which school I should root for 
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As King Pyrrhus once said: “Another such victory and we are lost!”
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Update:
Season 1 has been watched 
The beauty of being so far behind on these- I do not have to wait years in-between seasons!!
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Was just thinking about your point about higher scholarship amounts at some schools for higher GPA and how that system rewards grade inflation. There are some schools that still do not grade inflate as significantly as most (virtually nobody, if anybody, has a 4.0 at D26s school and they have no weighting), so those students would get less money from such colleges than if their high school scaled up all the grades. Just realizing that in some places, this could be yet another pressure point on schools to give out more As.
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Same issue with grade inflation at colleges.
Schools who have a curve found their kids were at a disadvantage when applying for jobs or grad school.
For example, law school admissions is based almost entirely on GPA and LSAT. They dont really differentiate a school with grade inflation vs ones that don’t.
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Annoyingly, many of these schools award merit based on the GPA printed on the HS transcript, regardless of whether it’s weighted or unweighted. Our HS doesn’t put weighted GPA on the transcript, so my kid’s 3.98 unweighted doesn’t count for the highest level of merit at these schools (“4.0+ GPA”)… it doesn’t matter that she would have significantly more than 4.0 if you weighted it as other schools do…
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My law school was notorious for not grade inflating back in my day, but it was a “prestigious” school so employers knew that and even the bottom portion of the class got good job offers. I imagine that would not be the case for a less known school.
My D26 would also get more aid if her school graded anything like a typical school. While I think the structure is flawed, I personally am not going to complain because D26 is advantaged in so many ways in this system that it feels morally bankrupt for me to complain about the few ways that she is not on a personal level. My kid is lucky to have all the things she has going for her that she does (fairly well off and highly educated parents, fancy well resourced private school with incredible counselors, and on and on). I wish every kid was so fortunate.
That said, the system is wacked!
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This is definitely the case w/the 2 NM colleges that D24 applied to. Their merit scholarships are based on unweighted GPA, not weighted, + SAT/ACT scores. And at my kids’ high school, there is zero grade inflation. So a student who took maybe an easier course load but got all A’s WILL get more $$ there.
At UAH (Univ of Alabama-Huntsville), which we took a serious look at for D26 (usually there’s at least 1 student from our small HS that attends there each year), their merit scholarships are based on weighted GPA & SAT/ACT scores. UAH allows & encourages HS seniors to take the SAT/ACT multiple times in order to earn more merit $$. It’s like some time in March or April, I think that’s their SAT/ACT score deadline.
Some ‘buyers’ do take into account the rigor of a student’s coursework/high school. Several weeks ago, the YCBK podcast interviewed the dean of the honors college at U of A (AZ, not Alabama). The dean said that they definitely consider difficulty level of the student’s coursework. And I would swear there’s some mention of it in the regular college application on the U of A website (i.e., not the honors college, but reg app).
Definitely a situation where the phrase ‘your mileage may vary’ applies from 1 college to another.
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NM Tech is like that (New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology, in Socorro, NM). It’s known amongst employers for having very difficult coursework, where they (employers) are totally content to hire a student with a 2.0 because even the students who squeaked by with passing scores in all of their classes are considered by some employers to know more than the average engineering grad elsewhere.
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Same for my daughter’s school. Very rigorous and not a lot of grade inflation. They don’t show a weighted GPA and don’t rank. They also structure the courses so that most APs are only offered in 12th grade, none offered in 9th, only two (music theory and CompSci) offered in 10th and a few offered in 11th (and would require doubling up on math or history classes to take more than 1 junior year). While the school profile spells all this out, it does seem to be affecting merit amounts where class rank and wGPAs with APs more heavily weighted are taken into account. It does not seem to have been an issue for admissions though.
The good news is that virtually everyone coming from her school has said they were extremely well prepared for college - more so than a lot of the 4.0, 14 AP valedictorians/salutatorians in their classes.
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While the details are different at D26’s school, the thrust is the same as you laid out. No issue with admissions. Frankly, the admissions data from her high school is ridiculous, with the vast majority of students attending colleges with sub-20% admissions rates last year (let alone the percentage that were admitted to such schools). And they are very well prepared for college work.
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Hi All.
I can’t remember how to start a new post! I haven’t posted since 2023, I think. Please help! 
My S21 graduated this past May from Elon University. I now have D26 heading off somewhere next Fall. She applied to 11 schools and has been accepted to 5 so far. She is considering 3 of the 5 and we’ll see if she gets anymore acceptances. Then we’ll take the top 4 and attend Admitted Student Days in the Spring to make a decision.
The HS Class of 2021 was much more active than this group. It was Covid and so much craziness going on with with admissions, though. S21 applied to 20 schools (accepted to all) because there was just so much uncertainty.
I love reading about kid’s college journey’s. Best of luck to all!
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Please let this thread be Alabama- free 
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