I’m really surprised that TSU seems to support this type of behavior (the article that @ChangeTheGame linked was released by TSU Media Affairs). Also surprising that they seemed to bite onto the misleading concept that the student really received over $10M in Scholarships.
It’s clearly cultural. I bet a lot of these schools were open enrollment…
What’s sad is that this is a star kid from a lower performing school who had several offers and chose a school where the press release mentions how proud they are that 3months after graduation 52% graduated had ‘some form of employment’.
I applied to jobs at 500 convenience stores across the country and reaped 10 million dollars in salary! I’m taking the $25K/year job at the store a mile from my house. 8-|
Adding. Rereading my own post I recognize how snarky it is. I’d just rather see articles about underserved high schools that have fantastic college graduation rates. These places exist but they don’t get much press because looking at outcomes more than four year later isn’t as flashy as the scrolling lists of acceptances or the cardboard check.
Agreed, @Sue22. Would love acknowledge the success of these students down the road when they graduate college and find employment. Hopefully they can attend schools that help with retention and graduation.
TSU’s six year graduation rate is 43%. Over a quarter of the incoming class drops out altogether, I.e., they don’t graduate from TSU at any point or transfer to another school. Getting into a ton of colleges is not useful if you never graduate.
Good one @Sue22. I am sad that it takes away from the student going to college when a larger number of students at that school don’t go to college. TSU has had a pipeline from Memphis high schools for a long time but I agree that the celebration is better when talking about college graduation since so many African American students start college but do not finish. It is definitely something cultural being seen, because the student will be celebrated for her hard work and achievement back in my old neighborhood and will not be asked about the overkill of applications. I received full rides from all 10 schools that I applied to 25 years ago and I was held up as a standard, and that student is being looked at as a standard today in her community. I just glad that I was way too lazy back then (even though I worked 25 hours a week) to have ever done more than those 10 applications which I thought was overboard back then.
TSU’s graduation rate as well as many of the HBCUs graduation rates are lower than the National Averages many due to the large numbers of poor students that are served at those institutions. Over half of the students don’t finish due to running out of funds to go to school. I saw it in action at my own HBCU as 100 kids dropped from my class within 1 semester and the vast majority occurred due to never having enough money to go but going anyway.
My guess is that this strong student has no real guidance about how to choose a college and TSU offered a “full ride”. She probably doesn’t know that a 52% employment rate is abysmal, that a 43% 6-year graduation rate is low, that its funding isn’t very good per student compared to UT (which she could choose but would likely have cost more - we don’t know by how much and whether it was affordable but the student couldn’t establish whether it was affordable even if not free or unaffordable, or even whether it was a better value). If her high school is a feeder to TSU she may have been encouraged by others who came before her or by familiarity.
@changethegame: you probably had to type each application. Here, just by sending the Black CommonApp, your application is automatically sent to 53 colleges. But after that it takes some effort. Not very selective colleges only require the basic common app (no supplement), that’s 20 more. I suppose she also applied to a few TNPromise colleges, plus UT and TSU. After that, I’m stumped. I guess that she thought, I’m on a roll let’s keep going???
I am curious: why do people care so much about this? Why does it matter what some other kid/family does that would be wrong for yours (and mine also, BTW)?
I care because I like to discuss the trends going on with college admissions and I once saw the world through a very similar scope within an inner city school. I am not mad at what the students are doing, but talking about the culture differences with college admissions (and trying to understand the “why” even when we don’t agree) brings us a little closer together.
@MYOS1634 It was an electronic typewriter so it could have been worse:)
I’m curious: Why does it matter what people choose to discuss, especially when some who aren’t familiar with the college application process might benefit form learning the potential problems with applying to an extreme number of schools. Some have pointed out that shotgunning applications without researching things like a school’s retention, graduation and employment rates, or the amount of FA that continues after freshman year could lead to a potentially bad decision re: which college to attend. There are plenty of conversations on cc discussing what people do. There is simply no need to chide posters for participating in a conversation of their choice. As others have said elsewhere, there is no need to participate in a thread if one doesn’t want to discuss the topic. Critiquing the posters or the discussion may be seen as off topic.
I don’t have an issue with people making their own choices, even when I think they’re poor ones, but that doesn’t mean I think we should publicly celebrate them as if they’re choices worthy of emulation. I feel the same way when I see a story about an exceptional athlete with high need and Ivy-worthy stats who has accepted an athletic scholarship to a directional university. Not my circus, not my monkeys, but let’s not pretend this is a laudatory strategy.
Agreed everyone’s path is different. However, I do have a question on holding a spot at a school that you never intend to go to. As it is a numbers game for the colleges, are spots being withheld from other students who would attend? As the college process seemingly gets more difficult to navigate, I feel for those students who do not get a spot due to situations like this. I get casting a wide net but… Again, not our path but I feel for others.
@sunset88 - at the lower tier schools with very high acceptance rates and low yields, it probably isn’t an issue. When students are accepted at multiple higher tier schools, it would be courteous for them to decline the ones they clearly do not plan to attend. That said, by May 1 if they haven’t accepted, the school can assume they don’t plan to enroll. What’s not ok is for students to double deposit.
It may be an issue if a scholarship offer is involved–thereby denying a more serious applicant from receiving a scholarship offer.
I was looking back at some of the other methods of putting in college applications and I believe that it is probably all technology involved. My daughter kept track of her admissions decisions through Cappex and they have a way of applying to 125+ schools with one application (for free). Most of the schools are really small private colleges throughout the US, but it changes the math if one application can apply to so many schools so cheaply. If the student got accepted to 200+ schools and only filled out 10 applications for example, that is not much different from most of our own kids from an application standpoint. If the student filled out 100 applications and got a ton of fee waivers, that is a lot of work being done (shows work ethic), but there may be better ways to use that time. The kids got the ultimate prize (A good shot at getting a college education) so I am happy for each of them, but the hard work has truly just begun.
It is similar in a way to the news articles about students who are admitted to all 8 ivies. The Ivies are radically different from each other: urban, college town, rural. Would someone who likes Brown’s open curriculum be happy at Columbia with its rigid core? Doubtful. It is merely for bragging rights. Research and decisions need to be done before submitting applications unless the student, or possibly the parent, is looking for boasting rights to their family, friends and neighbors.
Some of the shotgunning of all the Ivy’s May be an attempt at getting better aid from more generous schools, but surely not all.
Possibly, but I think colleges do pretty well calculating yield on those and on acceptances.
Except UT-Tyler, of course, which should be in the college hall of shame for awhile.