I understand why they choose 1/1 or thereabouts. When they get back from break, they want to get started on RD apps. It has to end at some point and this forces kids to have their ducks in a row before leaving for break. A good lesson for life. And a good way to weed out.
I had to work all day on my vacation, sitting with my laptop at the kitchen counter. So a kid having to do it is a good lesson too. As for vacation cabins, we did not plan trips this year as I had no idea of what to expect. Nor am I planning spring break for the same reason. Family sacrifice for a good cause.
In the end, he finished early. I’m glad the deadlines come. Now they can get on with their real lives!
This thread has me thinking (always a dangerous thing, ha ha)-how many kids apply to schools who actually match up with the average class makeup?
For instance, the University of Georgia has an admit rate of 56%. Around here people constantly talk about how difficult it is to get into (and I’ve heard numbers thrown out of 30% admit rate on other sites). But how many kids really match up with the average admit numbers?
So yeah, a school might have a “competitive admit rate”, but are they chasing straight numbers or are they fishing for a more accomplished student body?
What’s the advantage to a more accomplished student body, really? Does it make sense to hunt for those kids?
It’s not like they’re richer or happier than “average” kids. What’s the payoff?
Retention is 22.5 percent of the ranking. They use six year graduation rate (80 percent) and first year retention rate (20 percent). More accomplished students are more likely to graduate in six years. Unless the school is a terrible fit, they are more likely to stay until the second year too.
Student selectivity is 12.5 percent (65 percent test scores, 25 percent class rank and 10 percent acceptance rate). For the first two, you target high scorers and for the last one, you encourage more applications.
Graduation rate 7.5 percent -Which seems like double dipping but this time they say they control for scores and financial status.
Thank you for pointing out the impact of retention and graduation rates. This is not only a ratings thing, the govt is also looking at this metric https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjZyfy1sovKAhVP2mMKHQCmCCQQrAIIEigBMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftalk.collegeconfidential.com%2Fparent-cafe%2F1780973-how-to-take-your-pet-everywhere-p6.html&usg=AFQjCNFvN2wXZWF3PgqVrHg20FiI7GHKbg and schools are responding.
So why shouldn’t a school go after a student who might have a greater likelihood of returning and graduating if they enroll (and apparently family income correlates highly with retention and graduation, so it isn’t just the quality of the student). So why not send a teaser email with an extension or free app offer? Maybe the a student was deferred from or denied an ED application. Maybe they were deferred from an EA. And now a school sounds like they “want” them. This marketing could put the school on a potentially desired student’s radar. Enrollment management is big business. Attracting desired students makes perfect sense.
My D has received these e-mails from just about every school she expressed interest in - requested info from website, opened an online app but did not finish it, etc. Most of them are small LACs. These often lose students to either big state schools, or more prestigious universities when they’re used as a safety, so I can see why they’d extend the deadline to anyone interested… These are often the schools that end up on that list in May, that their freshman class is not filled yet… And like pizza girl said, e-mails are cheap. It’s just business…
Deadlines have never been 100% firm. Back in the dark ages my brother sent in his Stanford essay postmarked a day late. He wrote his essay about procrastination. And yes, he got in.
Perhaps that’s the point: why should college adcoms make it easier to have GC’s proofread essays/supplementals? (Hint: kids spend an inordinate amount of time crafting the main essay, but then will blow off the supplemental questions – and it shows! If you were an adcom, what would that tell you about the student’s interest?)
If a family is wealthy enough to have a vacation cabin, they are smart enough to make a deadline. (Personally, I’d make all the deadlines Dec 15, but that’s just me…)
I’m old enough to remember that when my oldest child was applying to prep school, the schools definitely hadn’t opened all the application packages which arrived by snail mail (remember that?) They would tell applicants not to worry if the school couldn’t confirm the receipt of an application a week or so after the deadline.
When my oldest child was applying to college, I remember getting a few letters from colleges not on the list some timeafter the date apps were due. I wondered about it at the time. Does anyone know if the College Board or ACT lets colleges search for high scorers? Because I thought, you know, if some employee’s bonus depends upon hitting certain metrics, such as the average test score of students applying, or the number of applications from certain groups, that would explain the very targeted letters to parents mentioning merit money after the deadlines.
My kid graduated from college more than 10 years ago. She got letters like that from UChicago and MIT. We’d visited UChicago and sent it scores. Its letter said if there was a legitimate reason she couldn’t meet the deadline, please get and touch and explain. The deadline might be extended. MIT’s said the equivalent of "you sent us your scores, so you must have wanted to apply; maybe your app got lost in the mail. (Apps were mailed back then.) You have an extra 30 days. " She’d sent scores and one teacher who thought she should go there had sent a LOR. Those were the days in which MIT favored female applicants.
Some vacation cabins are just that - cabins. In the woods, without internet, without a lot of luxuries. Guess i just come from a different financial class than the rest of you and know a lot of people who have barely winterized cabins. Sometimes it is tradional to go to these places, as a family, when the parents have time off, when the siblings are off from school. I don’t think the family has to sacrifice for just one kid to go to college, to change vacation plans or holiday traditions, and the kids could get it done early, but my kids weren’t favorites of the guidance counselor, and if they’d needed help (they got none), they would have been at the end of the line, scrambling to get it done over the vacation break without any help.
Getting anything done in december before the school let out for the holidays was impossible. The guidance counselors were focused on finals, the kids who were flunking out, their own holiday plans. My kids were in finals. No one would have had time for December 15 deadlines.
I do think the schools should set deadlines and stick to them, and the anewer shold be ‘sorry, you were late and missed the deadline’. For everyone, the same answer. If the deadline is Jan 1, that’s fine, just not convenient for many because questions can’t be answered on the holiday. Computer crashes, fafsa questions. If it is a year like this year, nothing can be done for 4 days and people spend all weekend worrying.
When I’m king, I’m going to make the deadline Feb 1.
“Some vacation cabins are just that - cabins. In the woods, without internet, without a lot of luxuries. Guess i just come from a different financial class than the rest of you and know a lot of people who have barely winterized cabins.”
Having even a modest cabin in the woods without luxuries is still a “second home,” and not at all representative of the population at large. Anyway, you know going in that January 1 is the deadline - it’s not like it’s sprung on you - so there’s really no reason (barring illness or the like) that a reasonably organized person shouldn’t be able to plan his / her time to beat that deadline. It’s kind of like the people who are out shopping on Christmas Eve - what, did they just announce yesterday that Christmas was December 25 this year? You’ve known it forever - plan accordingly.
Most I know were summer fishing cabins in the north woods, and were winterized so they could be used for hunting too. Not million dollar renovations but fun for a holiday getaway. I do know people with ski condos, but most rent them out for the prime weeks of Christmas and New Years, and use the money to pay for college!
In the '50s or even the '90s, were application deadlines Jan 1 or were they in the spring? Of course computer submissions weren’t a problem and even if one did put the application into the mailbox at 1 minute passed midnight it probably was still considered mailed timely.
There is 1% version of the cabin in the woods that I have heard about from friends: African safari or southeast Asia or Galapagos vacations over winter break. Those trips have to be planned well in advance so either those kids have a very strong chance of getting in ED or EA (legacy and/or development or recruited athlete) and/or they have their applications done before 12/20 (when private school break started this year).
I think it is silly for the deadline to be Jan 1. The schools are closed and the adcoms not likely to start reading apps until they get back to work on the 4th. And if they really wanted to read apps during their holiday break, they can read those that came in prior to Christmas. Plus, the hs guidance counselors are not around either, so if a kid has a question for them (understanding that not all kids have responsive gcs), those can’t be answered. Would make more sense for the deadline this yr to be sometime this week when people are back at school.
oh please. All deadlines are silly. There is nothing holy about April 15th (and indeed- if you file in Massachusetts during a year when Patriot’s Day falls out on April 15th you get an automatic extension). No matter when colleges published their deadline, someone would be on a cruise with no internet connection or ill with pneumonia or taking a dog to the vet.
Applying to college isn’t something a kid has to do every year. One year- one year- in a HS kids life- he or she will have to plan ahead before the African Safari to get all the applications in.
This is truly an absurd problem to worry about.
If the deadline were January 15th, the kids who ski over MLK weekend would be complaining about no internet service at Vail or Aspen.
The University of California has had a November 30 deadline for several decades. And yes, that meant many/most high school seniors were spending Thanksgiving weekend cranking out the essay (while their GC’s were on holiday and unavailable). But as PGirl notes, that deadline just didn’t sneak up on folks – it’s been that way since the ~middle of the last century.