<p>Pizzagirl, it isn’t just Boston - this was the rainiest March in years all over the northeast.</p>
<p>PCP, Ever heard of “Tufts” syndrome? Your S’s rejection is a perfect example of that “policy”. The Adcoms at Tufts and JHU HAD figured out that he WOULD be accepted elsewhere[ and they got that right] so why would they offer an acceptance to someone who showed a lack of enthusiasm for their colleges and would inevitably end up would not end up going there if accepted? I hope you will not mope over having fewer “trophys” to celebrate, when many kids would have done anything to be accepted at Chicago and Caltech.</p>
<p>what I would REALLY like to see is more students withdrawing applications to schools they would not end up attending after getting into their “dream” schools EA.</p>
<p>Rhode Island is having the worst flooding in 200 years! Mass isn’t doing much better. My basement is flooded again and probably will stay flooded until later tonight.</p>
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<p>Agree. I guess FA is an issue that requires RD apps.</p>
<p>How about a ‘match’ system like they have for medical residencies with schools and applicants ranking each other and best ranking match wins. Take all the silliness of having top kids with 10 acceptances and those just below with 10 waitlists/rejections out of the system. I’m sure this has been discussed many times before.</p>
<p>Guess FA would still be a problem. Having gone through this roller coaster for the first time, it seems very inefficient.</p>
<p>I am not sure why people continue to think that if a kid gets accepted to schools after he gets into his “dream” school that he is denying admission to some other kid to their “dream” schools…Use some common sense and some basic understanding of statistics and yield and you will see that this just isn’t true.</p>
<p>The schools know their yields and know that the yields are pretty constant year after year and send out acceptances fully, fully aware that they have accepted kids who will turn them down. So let’s say WashU accepts 3,000 kids for 1,500 spots knowing that generally they have a 50% yield They have a long waitlist (let’s say 4,000) and a really long rejected list for the 25,000 applicants (18,000). If they rejected a kid outright, it isn’t because another kid “took”" their spot! They were rejected because he didn’t fit what they wanted in their class (doesn’t mean the kid is a failure we all know reasons for rejection). If a kid is waitlisted it means that he fits their profile but wasn’t in in the top 3,000 applicants. WashU seems to have a pretty good idea what their yield will be and they accept kids that they know are 50% likely to go elsewhere. Does this mean that their are some kids on the waitlist who were 100% certain to choose Wash U were “denied” by having a kid who ranked WashU 2nd get in? NO! the waitlisted kid just wasn’t in the top 3,000 although WashU recognizes that they could be a good student for their university anyway. Why do they have a long waitlist…well many students decide not to hope for admission and take their names off of the waitlist so that is great self selection and then when they have 100 spots open up they can now cherry pick amongst the remaining waitlist for students that fit their needs (ie pay full freight, more art students because less than expected signed on, more kids from Idaho because only have 1 in the current yield…etc). </p>
<p>Thus, many schools with years of stats and evaluation, even those with low yields, do not need to go deep into their waitlists. Wash U and tufts both famous for having the “tufts syndrome” sometimes only go down 50-100 kids on the waitlist at the most. Even Yale only has something like 80% yield yet only pulls 10-20 kids from the waitlist some years. Are you telling me that the 20% that turn down Yale have denied a place to a kid who wants it more? No, being waitlisted should be understood that the student is deemed to be “good enough” for the school but not in the top group.<br>
We need to teach our kids to take rejection for what it is…rejection…don’t say to them…o somebody else took your spot…this is life, this is what makes success so sweet is knowing that it is up to you to succeed or fail. If you believe that failing to get into the college of your choice is completely arbitrary, determined by others “robbing you” of your spot…the same logic applies to where you do get in. All you can do is tell your kid to do the best they can to show why they would be a successful student at the college of their choice…if they get rejected or waitlisted they failed to convey this as well as they would have liked…that’s it, not that they are a failure overall, but yes, they failed to get this particular objective. Move on.</p>
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<p>…Indeed it has, as I have been an affirmative contributor to such discussions, several years ago, and again recently on the Harvard forum.:)</p>
<p>That said, I agree with fineartsmajormom: the Elites over-accept in order to not miss out on candidates they consider both prime for their campus and those most likely to enroll. It’s just a guess on their parts, obviously, but they use the best indicators they can – including the candidate’s possible “overqualification” for their campus, combined with either “less interest shown” or FA needs (esp. for need-aware schools). It does not mean that someone rejected from Tufts but accepted elsewhere is definitely the victim of Tufts syndrome, however. Maybe the candidates was considered overqualified, maybe underqualified, or just not the optimum fit or the best choice for the balance sought in the class that year.</p>
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<p>Ah, but it might be … if the other kid is also an oboe player from the same town and the college didn’t want to admit two oboe players from East Smallville.
It also means that kids get in off the waitlist, which opens up spots at their schools, and thus the whole summer melt phenomenon – which is disorganized and inefficient. I think that you figure out which schools are your rank order at the time you apply, and then you withdraw as soon as you’ve got one of your top picks. Otherwise, it feels very much like trophy hunting to me. But that’s just me, and YMMV.</p>
<p>I know a kid who has gotten accepted at West Point. Yay! Great for him!
Yet he’s still keeping his applications in at some top tier schools (all in the top 25 or thereabouts). I don’t think that’s very nice behavior, at all. I think it’s far classier to withdraw and just leave the whole thing open – not waste adcom members’ time if he won’t attend, and let other kids get in on “first dibs” instead of through waitlisting. </p>
<p>Sorry, I do think that if someone gets in on EA for something like Yale, MIT or Chicago, assuming finances are OK, they should count their blessings, gratefully accept, and move out of the way.</p>
<p>^^^ I do agree with that. I could see someone keeping one or two schools on because of indecision, but there is no reason not to withdraw other schools just for trophy hunting.</p>
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That’s fine if you’re the kind of organized, steady, consistent person who can make a rank order and stick to it. Not everybody is like that. I guarantee you if you’d asked our son to rank the nine schools he’s applied to once a month for the past six months, you’d have six different orders (though the bottom couple would probably have stayed the same). And the actual results may affect a student’s preferences in unexpected ways; sometimes you don’t know what you really want till you know what’s really available.</p>
<p>If you’re absolutely sure that school X is your top choice, and you’ve gotten into school X, and finances are not an issue, then sure, you should withdraw from the others. But there’s nothing wrong with not being absolutely sure–and you certainly shouldn’t withdraw till you are absolutely sure.</p>
<p>Both my kids pulled several apps after good EA news, but for merit/FA/having choices come April, they both kept several irons in the fire until they had a decision. Both had a #1 or #2 choice on their list that was RD. Neither kid did not want to do ED for various reasons, preferring to focus instead on EAs.</p>
<p>With S2, we all wanted to keep some LACs in the mix vs. midsize research universities because we felt they might be a bit better at keeping kids from falling through the cracks. Applying to three top ten LACs was probably not a great idea for implementing this strategy, but frankly, S2 picked those LACs because he liked them and what they had to offer. He didn’t realize til yesterday they were T-10.</p>
<p>S2 got an acceptance letter from URoch today. FA/merit to follow. He was pretty pleased.</p>
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<p>But if you bothered to go EA some place, obviously that place had more appeal to you than any other place, no? Otherwise, why else would you go EA? Unless it’s gaming of the system to try to up the acceptance rate?</p>
<p>I’ve never seen any description of EA, on a college admissions site or elsewhere, that suggests that applying EA is tantamount to a declaration that that school is your favorite, or that it puts you under any obligation to go there. It just means that (a) it’s one of the schools you might be interested in attending, and (b) you’re ready to apply. If you think it’ll help you get accepted, obviously that’s as good a reason as any to do it, and I don’t see why that’s “gaming the system.”</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess you’re right.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, first very few schools even offer EA, most places have ED where you are obliged to attend. But basically I see EA as having the shoe on the other foot. It’s an opportunity for the college in question to have months trying to entice you to attend. At least that’s what Chicago has been doing. Every few weeks we get another goody from them. At least this year, there’s no question that Chicago was easier to get into EA than regular admissions. Until my son actually visits Chicago he has no idea if it’s his first choice - and he wanted to put off the visit till the spring so he could see it at its best.</p>
<p>As for ordered lists - with a reach heavy list my son refused to think about favorites at all. He felt he liked all of the for different reasons with the exception of Harvard which he did to make his Dad happy. He didn’t want to fall in love with something and not get in. In fact he kept forgetting he applied to Brown, which had been recommended by a friend, but he never actually visited.</p>
<p>So we are pleased with the final results:</p>
<p>Accepted:
American (Honors, Presidential scholarship), Vassar, Tufts, U of Chicago
Rejected:
Georgetown, Harvard, Brown</p>
<p>No from Ivies. While this means no more FA options to compare, I’m really glad this is over (the WL on MIT notwithstanding) :). We went out and celebrated this milestone. After we returned home S1 got a call from his assigned Caltech mentor. What timing!</p>
<p>Post 2010: So, PG, are you saying that if they get an Elite EA acceptance they should just accept it, not wait for RD decisions? (Eliminating the concept of financial comparisons for the moment.)</p>
<p>Here’s a quote from a kid who does <em>not</em> need financial aid</p>
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<p>I think traditional yield patterns will not hold if there are more kids like this applying to 30+ colleges. I realize she was not accepted EA at Stanford but seemed relevant given earlier discussion.</p>
<p>But how can you automatically accept EA when you don’t know what all the options are going to be? My son was admitted to Georgetown EA. He found out in Dec and it actually affected all of his decisions regarding where else he applied (i.e. “I got in to GT SFS, so I don’t need to apply to X, because even if I got in, I would go to GT.”) Unfortunately we were very naive in thinking that FA would be similar at each place - at least in the ballpark. Then in April, we found out that he would get no FA from GT. Wow. I was not prepared for that. I was also not able to send him to a $55K/yr school, and even tho his heart was set on it, I could not advise him to take on that kind of debt for undergraduate school. </p>
<p>He also applied to a LAC which has a nationally ranked debate team (he was a HS debater), where he was accepted and offered generous scholarships. So, although he was accepted EA to GT, and regular to his second choice Yale, he is at Wake because financially he did not have another choice. That’s why a kid would apply EA and not attend. We were terribly disappointed, but never felt we were somehow obligated because of the EA, and it never crossed my mind that he might be taking someone’s spot at either school.</p>
<p>I guess I was thinking about situations in which FA wasn’t an issue. </p>
<p>Gtown SFS would be the ideal school for S’s interests (long shot though it is) so if he got in there EA I could see just calling it a day. I’m hoping both my kids make use of ED to be honest. </p>
<p>The waitlist use and summer melt is out of control though. It shouldn’t be this way.</p>