What's happening with my college decisions?

Applying to College
1

Hey guys! I’ve gotten a few decisions back and I’m very confused about what’s happening. Obviously, it’s hard to pick out specific factors about why I was waitlisted/ deferred/ accepted without reading essays, but I was wondering if you all had any theories about my decisions. I’m getting nervous about my other decisions!

Basically, I was wondering, if schools like Rice & Emory are giving me their most prestigious awards, why would I get waitlisted at schools like Barnard and Bowdoin? Could it be demonstrated interest, or would these different types of schools be looking for substantially different things (prioritizing ECs vs essays vs demonstrated interest, etc.)? Just bad luck?

Some basic info: I’m valedictorian, I have a superscored 1600, I have no idea about my teacher recs, my counselor rec was good, I have two versions of my common app essay (one was sent to UVA, Columbia, USC, Mason; the other to everyone else), my ECs are pretty good, Asian upper middle class female

Full Rides, Merit Aid, &/or Honors: UVA (Echols), Rice (Presidential Trustee), Emory (Scholars Finalist), Mason (University Scholar), Mary Washington (Full Tuition), Marymount (16k/year)
Accepted: USC (not selected for merit interview)
Waitlisted: Barnard, UChicago, Bowdoin
Rejected: none yet
Waiting on: Columbia (deferred), Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Brown, Stanford, Georgetown, Vassar, Duke, Stanford, GW

Thanks in advance!

2

Within the realm of top-end stats applicants, different super-selective colleges look for different things in the subjective criteria (extracurriculars, essays, etc.). From the outside, these look “random”, even though insiders of the colleges’ admission offices know what they are looking for.

But it looks like you have some good admissions and scholarships at schools that you considered desirable enough to apply to. Assuming that some of them are affordable (after scholarships, if necessary), then you have had a successful result.

3

Don’t over analyze. You can only attend one school, you have some awesome choices already, plus many applications still pending. I would hardly consider your situation bad luck. Bad luck would be having no options.

4

Because Rice, Emory, Barnard, and Bowdoin are distinct institutions, each of which has its own admissions goals. You cannot expect all of them to admit the same candidate any more than you can expect four excellent bakers to make precisely the same cake when handed the same list of ingredients.

Kick the rejecters to the curb, ditch the unaffordable ones with a slightly sad good-by kiss, and line up the affordable admissions offers for a more thorough review.

5

@mooseyellow - first of all congratulations on the wonderful choices you have!

As to making sense of it all – when you look at Chicago, Barnard and Bowdoin, you are looking at schools that only accept a small fraction of applicants. They are NOT picking the “best” students who apply - they are choosing from an applicant pool filled with amazing students, some of whom are academic superstars, but many of whom make the cut because they bring other desired qualities to the college.

And yes, they are each looking for “substantially different things”.

All of these colleges, big and small, also need an array of students with different interests and talents-- so the college is also looking at what niches a student might fill on campus. So it isn’t just a matter of how much value they might place on EC’s, for example – it could be a matter of which EC or what type of EC. Maybe a college needs a certain type of athlete or musician. Maybe a college is trying to increase geographic diversity, or take in more first-generation applicants – or whatever.

When I look at your college list I see that you had very high aspirations and also a LOT of colleges on a list.-- I count 22 colleges? Good range of safeties / matches/ reaches – but half the schools have single-digit admission rates, and it is hard for me to imagine that with all those applications, you were able to differentiate answers on college supplements enough to show why you would be a strong fit for one particular college over another.

Again, you have great options— but college admissions would be a total mess if all selective college ended up picking the same students during the admissions rounds. They need to be picking students who are highly likely to attend if admitted – part of the task during the RD round is to select the exact right number of students so that the class will not end up either overenrolled or severely underenrolled. There’s an art to that-- one I am not privy too – but somehow a lot of colleges are getting that right. Both Barnard & Bowdoin have yield rates above 50% – meaning that half of all RD admits are going to be students whose top choice ends up being Barnard. Chicago’s yield is around 75%. They don’t get that way by concentrating their admissions decisions on high stats applicants who are likely to be applying to Ivies and looking at piles of merit aid at other schools. So yes- from the point of view of the ad coms, waitlists are a great option for students who look like they will probably be accepted and choose to attend somewhere else — if they are mistaken, then they will hear from you after April 1st and if for any reason they still have spots in their class come May 1, they can always give you a call.

6

Thanks guys! I’m definitely over analyzing, and I appreciate the feedback!

7

You have great options (right now, based on all your fantastic choices, I’d choose based on fit and cost between UVA Echols and Rice’s Presidential Trustee!)
You probably matched what someone was looking for at these schools, but didn’t match it as well at the other schools, or perhaps at these other schools there were several students with a similar profile. Or you may have clicked with a reader. Or they may know that someone with your profile will/will not likely attend. Don’t overthink it. It’s impossible to know. And you certainly can’t base any prediction wrt Ivy Day off of those results.
Enjoy. You got really, really good choices. Any preference so far?
And in any case: Congratulations!

8

Waitlisted because you have not shown enough demonstrated interest & those schools know that you will have multiple prestigious options. And you do.

9

Maybe yield management at Barnard. They may think you won’t attend. @Publisher Bowdoin doesn’t consider applicant interest (so it doesn’t matter if you’ve visited, etc). This info is available in the Common Data Set for each school. Barnard foes consider it, but it is a lower priority than most the other factors.

10

But all schools consider yield. And Bowdoin realizes that this applicant will have better offers. Plus, I do not believe that a small rural LAC like Bowdoin doesn’t consider applicant interest regardless of what is or is not listed in the common data set. Besides the way to demonstrate interest in Bowdoin College is to apply ED. If OP had applied ED to Bowdoin & was not accepted, then I might buy the reasoning of others offered above.

11

@Publisher, lots of students that are accepted to Bowdoin pick it over Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore or any Ivy; for those students there aren’t better offers - it’s ranked #3 this year, so yes they deny plenty of perfect scores.

12

Yeah, I’m not sure there are better offers than Bowdoin… for a kid who wants to study in Maine, for instance. And aside from location, it’s a top LAC, which means those willing to dig for this type of info may realize it is quite hard to beat for an intellectually focused undergraduate education.

If part of that was in reference to the fin aid/scholarships – if Bowdoin would have been a lot more expensive – then yes, Rice/Emory/UVA, heavily discounted, may then comprise better offers than Bowdoin.

I suppose it’s possible the adcoms at Bowdoin worry about kids getting into NESCAC rivals, or Swat, Haverford, Wellesley, Pomona… as well as the Ivy League, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, etc. – other very prestigious schools. They may worry from a prestige angle, but from a quality angle, it’s probably hard to beat an education at a top-10 LAC.

Regardless, OP, you have already won, as long as you like (they fit you) and can afford the schools that have already admitted you.

13

OP already has better offers. University of Virginia Echols & Rice Presidential Trustee scholarships.

Waiting on better offers from Harvard, Yale & Princeton. Stanford & Duke.

14

Agreeing with pretty much all of the above points, and adding:

One more time: give the AdComms some credit. They actually do have some idea what they are doing: building a school community, year by year. They see the whole applicant pool, they know who they have accepted in the last couple of years, and what their priorities are going forward. They have experience figuring out who will accept their offer. Things that look capricious from the outside can actually make sense from the inside(eg, the famous tuba player example). And they are pretty good at knowing who will fit in to their community.

During application season we watch where the tippy top kids we know best- who are all applying to all the colleges that you have applied to- and where they are accepted. Most of the time it actually fits the kids better than the kids themselves realize at the time.

15

When my kids were little and invited a bunch of kids to their birthday parties, and some didn’t show up, they would worry about why. I started to tell them to be more happy about the kids who DID come.
Same thing…you applied to these colleges for a reason…be happy with the ones you were accepted and forget the others.

16

I think “yield management” is an overly simplistic rationale. Both Barnard and Bowdoin have equivalent admission rates and yeilds, so basically the ad coms at each school are presented with the same problem – although Barnard’s larger size might give them a little bit more leeway. But in the end it’s math – they have a 50% yield so in the RD round they are going to select twice as many students as they have space for, and they also need to use selection criteria so that they are selecting students who are 50% likely to come, knowing full well that the academically strongest applicants are going to have other options. So each is going to have to hone in on applicant qualities that kind of scream out the answer to the “why this college” question. Beyond that, those two colleges are very different – so there probably isn’t going to be a whole lot of overlap between them on admissions decisions – very different locations & campuses, co-ed vs. women’s, a stand-alone LAC vs one tied to a large research university. So the same things that might catch the eye of the ad com at one school might be reason for the other to give the student a pass.

But the point is, it’s not as if the school is waitlisting an applicant on the rationale that it sees itself being used as a safety – just that their task is to select the students they need and who are likely to come out of a huge volume of highly qualified, very impressive applicants. And so each has to use its own filtering criteria.

17

Just in case anyone is wondering how Ivy Day went for me:
Accepted: Penn
Waitlisted: Harvard, Princeton
Rejected: Columbia (applied ED, was deferred), Brown, Yale

18

Congrats! you have quite a few great choices. Let us know what you pick!

19

Congratulations! Penn v UVA is a tough one, esp with that scholarship!

20

I’ll be attending Penn! Thanks for the help everyone.