One of the reasons it’s good to split up is then you have a place to GO. If your roomie is driving you nuts, go hang with your friend! If your friend is the roomie that is driving you nuts, it gets very personal, very quickly. My D24 and her friends are all going to different schools so at this point it is moot but the rule will persist for D28.
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At my son’s school they make you find a roommate if you want any say. Your choices are: (1) find a roommate, which you can do via posting on the discord server and saying things like “I’m generally neat, get up early, like to study to music, prefer to live in dorm X or Y” so you can find someone similar or (2) just pick a room when it comes time, and hope that whoever else picks a bed in that room has similar sleep/wake hours or neatness/sloppiness factor. This made me so frustrated. Why add that stress? Just have the kids fill out some basic facts and have the computer match them up based on whatever.
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I agree - why add that stress? It’s unfortunate that the school won’t help with this - having a good or bad roommate that first year can really affect how the student feels overall.
We went and visited my D this weekend and I asked her about the two boys from her HS who were matched up as roommates. She said that they did end up rooming together and that it seems to be going fine so far(they are also first year students).
My D felt that, based on the people she’s met and talked to this year at her school, and the friends she knows who are at other schools, that the school-selected roommate pairings were working out the best, followed by kids who knew each other from HS and chose to live together. The kids she knows that are having the most issues are those who tried to find a roommate from the other admitted students, either over social media or at accepted student events. She thinks that you just don’t find out enough of the important stuff that way before deciding to room together. So that was her take on things.
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My kid had great luck as a transfer with the message board method. 3 of the 4 students in the shared apartment are staying together next year. I think they all indicated they were LGBTQ friendly and not into drugs or alcohol. (And as transfers, hopefully parents weren’t filling this out) Seems like a basic match on those issues is fairly important.
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That financial need/social mobility and stories about unique setbacks in life drive admissions decisions as much as they do. I’m just glad I didn’t steer DS toward Ivy Schools like so many of the other parents I know did with their kids. Otherwise, this would be a very somber time indeed.
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The very large majority of colleges with low admissions rates, including all Ivy+ are need blind. More importantly, the social mobility indices of these colleges are pretty miserable.
The colleges which are focussed on social mobility are colleges like the CCNY or Boruch Colleges or UT El Paso, with Social Mobility indices of 51%, 49% and 39%. That index is the likelihood that are graduate will increase the income percentile by at least two percentiles.
On the other hand, the highest in any of the Ivies is Cornell with 16%. Harvard has 11%, and Princeton comes in at the bottom with 8.7%. So Ivies and other “elite” colleges are actually not engaging much in social mobility.
They actually don’t. That is an urban myth, one that has been repeatedly debunked both by AOs and by the admissions statistics. What drives admissions are wealth and accomplishments.
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I wasn’t referencing Ivy League schools, but I can see from this site why you might assume that I was given the volume of posting about them.
Because you mentioned that you didn’t steer your son to Ivies, I assumed that it was because of that first statement. On the other hand, what I wrote also goes for most private, low admission colleges.
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I’m referring to the practice of yield protection that some schools use. hth
I am not following your comments at all. Can you clarify?
I didn’t understand how pervasive the practice of yield protection is.
With that said, DS24 will be fine. I’m just responding to the prompt.
This thread isn’t about selective admission, yield protection or anything along those lines. This is for sharing knowledge of what happens after admission decisions are done.
I’m just speaking from the parent’s perspective, so if my comments are a bother, please feel free to delete them. I don’t work in higher ed.
I think we’ve all gone off track… Let’s get back to the thread.
Yes, officially, please get back to the OP. Posters are free to start a new thread about yield protection and Ivy admission. Thank you.
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Don’t limit yourself to in-state public schools thinking it’s the cheapest option. We had a comparable out-of-state school that offered enough merit money to make it cheaper than our in-state school and was also closer. We had a private school that gave enough to make it comparable to our other choices. It blew my mind.
Don’t choose a school on money alone though, if you are financially able to do so. There are so many factors that matter in your student’s success. Listen carefully to what your kids tell you, and guide them as needed. Most importantly, make sure its a school they can see themselves be happy at for the next 4 years.
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Feel comfortable contacting schools and departments after acceptance to get more information.
All three of my kids contacted the schools to which they’d been accepted in order to get more information about programs, opportunities, logistics, etc. By and large, they found the schools to be very receptive and responsive to student outreach. They got a lot of information that helped them make their final decisions that way.
All my kids said: ask your admission officer your questions first. They will either be able to give the info or they will know who you should contact and act as a liaison to the right person.
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