What financial advantage, GJ, in applying to a college you know little about, other than it’s got generous aid (and maybe prestige?) We want these kids to bring themselves closer to their goals, not just apply and pray the college’s dart hits you. Lol.
It’s not all about being a great hs kid. You don’t get in because you won the hs game. It’s college.
Totally agree with @menloparkmom. The common app has definitely contributed to this overreach/disappointed issue. When kids are applying to 15+ schools, and everyone is gunning for the same “elite” programs, the acceptance rates plummet. I also took the comment in context of this thread.
Where did I say, LF, that a student should apply to a college they know little about?
Youve said several times that finances make generous colleges desirable. And I say, if it matters, be informed. There is no FA advantage if you can’t make yourself a viable candidate. It’s not a crapshoot.
Through these two threads, I keep thinking of the Coca Cola scholarship competition. It’s a very generous award. But you get further if you can understand what they look for. I get that many kids apply for it, they need the money. But its not random. Without some understanding of what Coke looks for, you may be reaching and disappointed.
““My question is : can he take a gap year and use the same materials on the commonapp to apply next year?”
Still no answer?”
@Mmrosa You should start your own thread to address your question. It is outside the scope of this thread.
Our approach was to pick a few colleges and give our best on the applications rather than apply to 15 or 20 top colleges, hoping one will stick, and also have one or two in the bag first before going for the reach. I know the pressure and temptation to go other way but we stuck to our approach. I am good at doing it my way and not listening to others: that’s my strength and weakness.
Also learned during Stanford summer internship that Stanford was looking for good, motivated non STEM kids, and this was more than a lip service , so he crafted his application with this thought in mind.
That’s like pointing out that the best shot a poor person has of becoming rich is winning the lottery.
HYP, etc, may have excellent financial aid these days, but they still have admission policies that favor the well off – and the children of “savvy” parents like me. Because “savvy” isn’t just about research to select a college … it is something that begins wih the enviroment the child is raised in from infancy. The vast majority of the famlies who need the aid the most aren’t even in the running for those schools.
HYP is actually may be the best shot for upper middle class families who have not saved enough to pay full pay, but have earnigns too high to qualify for need based aid at most colleges. But those aren’t’ due to policies in place to favor the poor --those are due to policies geared to that upper class group who are dead set on a private college education.
Because the steep admission criteria for HYP does mean that anyone who has a snowball’s chance of getting in probably also qualifies for a full ride at schools listed here – http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2006094-2017-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html — where students very definitely can get a decent education – but these aren’t the schools that most upper middle class families have in mind when it comes to selecting a college.
@calmom Point taken. I mispoke when I said that an elite school was their “best” hope for a good education. The schools with full ride scholarships are excellent options. I was only saying that I can understand why a certain segment low income families with very high achieving children, who have very little to pay for college, would gravitate towards the meet full needs schools – those schools happen to be among the country’s most selective.
But “meet full need”, while selective, is much broader than HYP prestige level. It does include many schools with admit rates in the 30%-50% range. (Still highly selective, but not crazy-high) And when combined with merit money at schools tha leverage their aids, the high-stat applicant might actually get better aid at colleges that don’t guarantee aid to all comers, but engage in preferential packaging for students at the top of their applicant pool.
@lookingforward because you get the best, most diverse class. Years ago many underprivileged students wouldn’t even think of throwing there hat in the ring, now they do. I guess you can’t support that.
The Coke Scholarship is a wonderful thing for students who win it. But there are only 150 Coke Scholars in the country, which means that there are more than 10 times as many places in the Harvard admit group as there are Coke Scholars. Also, the Coke Scholarship is $20,000 (one time, as far as I can tell). That amount is very meaningful, even for families that are full pay. But talk about over-reaching!
A major reason for overreaching is, of course, an incorrect assessment of how one measures up against the rest of the applicant pool. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to be sure of how a given student - especially an excellent one - and that student’s application will rate, and for all the focus on measurable stats in this forum, I can’t imagine they are as important as people here seem to think. In any case, my own daughter refused to apply to any school that was remotely a “safety.” I think her idea was that if she didn’t get into a school that was up to her academic standards, she would take a gap year and try again. (Her standards were more about the student population; she wanted to end up at a college where she would be fairly average.) Although I think she is pretty darn amazing, I knew there were a lot of other amazing kids out there and really could not be sure how she would make out in the application rat race. Luckily, she was admitted to many wonderful schools, so her strategy turned out not to be an overreach. But it could have been. I don’t doubt that there are a few kids as talented as my daughter who also submitted a bunch of applications to selective colleges and didn’t get into any of them. Did they really overreach or was it just have bad luck? Also, smart kids without money who aren’t NMFs and don’t want to go to the South or to a huge university are generally best served by meets-need colleges, which are hard to get into. Is that overreaching or just financial reality?
For the super-selective schools that everyone likes to write about here, top-end stats merely get the applicant into the game; assessing how the non-observable and subjective factors (essays, recommendations, etc.) compare with the rest of the applicant pool is far more difficult or not really possible.
However, overreach often occurs with applicants applying to schools that are not super-selective, such as the mid-level (in selectivity) UCs, where some applicants think of them as “safeties” or “matches” when they are really “high matches” or “reaches” for those applicants. Some reasons for such overreach are listed in post #0.
What would she do during the gap year if she did get shut out?
It is probably most common for college-bound students from poor families who do not get into the good-FA schools (or have issues like uncooperative divorced parents that prevent good FA) or go to full-ride merit scholarship schools to go to the local community college or state universities because that is what is affordable. Or that is all they have heard about in the first place (counselors in high schools in low opportunity environments where few go to any college may not know about FA at highly selective schools or full-ride merit possibilities). But that is not overreaching – usually more like the opposite in terms of college admissions (though finances are the main selection criterion for such students).
My point remains: if you set your sights on a competitive college- especially if it’s of acute significance to get the aid you need- be on your game. Or you likely won’t be getting in. Applying isn’t what makes you a finalist.
If 70k kids apply, and the unqualified are eliminated (whether for academic reasons or the holistic muster,) you don’t get a “best, most diverse class” for having waded through more unqualified kids. It only works when the college drums up is a more diverse pool of kids kids who do match.
Beyond calmom’s D (and a few others,) I’m curious how the rest of your kids did match themselves to what their targets look for. Especially considering how many on CC emphasize that a kid shouldn’t make choices based on what the colleges want, should just be themselves.
As a practical matter, those who need the most FA are most likely to start out with significant information disadvantages with respect to college preparation, college selection, and college application, so they are much less likely to successfully “match themselves to the super-selective college” (if they even apply beyond the local community college or state university) than those from more advantaged environments, such as high-SES or elite private high schools with well running college admissions express trains, counselors with relationships with college admissions offices and who know enough about what each college wants to be able to “match applicants to colleges” well in making recommendations to students, counselors and teachers skilled at recommendation writing and essay reviewing, etc…
So it should not be a surprise that “SES diversity” at most super-selective colleges means about half of the class from the top 3% or so income (i.e. no FA), while those from the bottom half income (i.e. Pell, maximum or close to maximum FA) make up only a tenth to a fifth of the class.
“much less likely to successfully “match themselves to the super-selective college” …than those from more advantaged environments, such as high-SES or elite private…”
Part of my ongoing point is that even “advantaged” kids arent doing this. Sometimes, CC so focuses on how much of the class has wealthy parents and seems to assume that it’s the wealth that got them in.
Not. There are plenty of wealthy kids who get rejected. Based on their full apps.
And plenty of lower SES kids are earning their spots (at those competitives.). Yeah, they may not be in pricey ECs, lol. But they’re still activated in valid ways.
@ucbalumnus My DD applied to Clemson, She was at the average stat wise, she was waitlisted, she was really disappointed. Was Clemson a match or a reach? We thought it a high match. She was accepted at UF//Florida State/Auburn/U of SC where she was sitting at essentially the same place stat wise. Where those matches? We certainly viewed them all in the same category as an OOS flagship. According to our HS’s Naviance all of those schools were a reach, particular the Florida schools, which had not accepted anyone from DD’s HS in years. So was she really lucky and accepted at the vast majority of what should have been considered reaches?
@lookingforward I am confident that we assessed DD’s “fit” reasonably accurately for the schools she applied to by reading the promotional materials/website thoroughly, visiting when possible, looking up specific professors and what research they were doing, reviewing degree requirements and AP credit. No, we probably didn’t look for fit from the schools’ perspective; we didn’t tailor her application to specifically match their publicized mission statement or even the perceived desirable attributes. We broadly assumed that most schools in this category where looking for kids who would be active members of the community, could thrive in a large school environment and were resilient. I don’t think you can broadly apply the same criteria that is used for determining fit at elite schools to the types of schools my DD targeted. I think determining safety/match/reach for OOS publics/large research universities is a completely different game and rather difficult to assess. I am not sure we could have done much beyond having higher stats or being a resident of SC to ensure admission to Clemson. But that is just our family’s experience.
To some degree, I can speak for lower SES smart kids and what they are likely to do. I was one and so were many of my numerous cousins. We did not aim for the ivy league in hopes of getting a full-ride because it was long shot then and a longer shot now. Our college experiences span from the late 80s through early 00s. The first strategy was go to the closest state college while working part time and living at home when possible. I had cousins and a sibling use this strategy in several different states. Some transferred to flagships when the opportunity arose.
The other path has been to get need or merit aid at a LAC close to extended family. Several of us, including myself, went this route. You can get a decent amount of personal attention at a small private school, which is pretty helpful when most of the people around you are from a different SES with very different expectations. It was also good to have family near by for emergency support and a temporary escape to what felt normal.
My siblings and cousins who did not go to college now have children following these paths too. My own kid gets to be a legacy.
Yes, many advantaged students fail to make full use of their advantages (or they do not meet other standards for admission even if they “match” what the college is looking for), and a few disadvantaged students manage to overcome their disadvantages and either figure out how to “match” themselves to super-selective college or get lucky in just happening to be a good “match”.
But the advantaged students clearly succeed at a far greater rate in terms of getting admitted to super-selective colleges, as evidenced by the percentage of no-FA students versus the percentage of Pell students.
But whatever the college says or claims – this is intentional. The “100% need” colleges function on the assumption that X% of students admitted will be full pay – that is built into their budgeting – and if they are “need blind” then they need to achieve that distribution through setting admission standards and priorities that favor the advantaged students.
I don’t see any way around that --bottom line, no matter what they say, private colleges are designed to serve paying clientele.