Schools that were safeties or near safeties a generation ago may be reaches today for a student with a strong profile.
100% agree with #76, particularly with the financial part, particularly in states with lousy community college systems that either donât have branch classes in lower population counties or that have cut CC funding to the bone.
AlmostHere, PVB was in admissions 18 years ago. Back then, as an example, H had half the apps.
Of course an admissions counselor can keep up with changes. But I find many of the declarations and promises to be marketing. They donât line up with what Iâve seen. PVB seems not to believe in Need Blind Admission and overestimates how waitlist is used, as well.
It doesnât matter if anyone agrees with me, as an individual. But proceed with caution, donât assume, do the direct resesrch to try to understand. Donât take what some private counselor says as gospel, some insider info worth the hefty fees.
And thatâs something too many kids donât do.
@PurpleTitan This was one year Program separate from colleges. Wanted to improve the level in this language before college so during college, the level could be increased through study or internship abroad offered through college. My kid wanted to go to Stanford rather than save money. But we can also afford full pay although I donât like doing full pay.
I watched that video, starting at the point mentioned above. I think that he is mostly correct, however, he assumes his listeners have a greater level of sophistication than they do. Iâm especially concerned about what he says about the WL. I absolutely agree with some of what heâs said, but he didnât provide enough context. Yes, they might be using the WL more for yield protection, but he didnât say that most schools barely use the WL at all, especially selective ones. Now, maybe he drove that home earlier, but I can see families watching this and walking away with skewed perceptions.
@lookingforward PVB is still in the industry as a consultant and admissions advisor, and very few colleges are need blind. Even meets-full-need schools are not often need blind. One âtellâ in the data is if the percentage of Pell students and the percentage of students not receiving aid stay steady year after year.
@âYoudonâtsayâ The audience for that video was guidance counselors, so yes, assuming a certain level of sophistication in the listeners.
@gallantjill Definitely like your daughter than my kid. Lol. But I have to tell you our decision would have been different if it was between UC Irvine and Honors College. In this sense, I am willing to pay for some prestige associated with Stanford name. But we could afford it. If not, I wouldnât.
As for overreaching, I feel we actually under-reached if anything because our kid could have applied to HYP also, but he just picked one reach school so he would not regret not even trying to reach high.
Yeah, but now hundreds of cc readers will go to it who donât have that level of sophistication and take away from it only cherry-picked things that fit their preconceptions. Iâm just disagreeing a bit with lookingforward, who seems to think his stats/knowledge is dated.
Applying to too many schools leading to less time spent on each application. Many students are even rejected/waitlisted by matching school because of mistakes or poor essays in the applications.
âFew students and parents know to look at Common Data Sets.â
Few students and parents even KNOW what a Common Data Set is!!!
Let alone to look it up.
So many unfortunate application mistakes are a result of parents and/ or kids NOT knowing how much they dont know.
I didnât know what this was until after my daughter had submitted her applications.
âMaybe itâs just that while constructing the class of 20 Whatever admission is faced with an abundance of kids who would thrive at such schools but they just donât have the space for all these kids?â
THAT is the crux of the problem for tip top students applying to ANY highly competitive college. And by that I mean ANY college listed on USNWRâs top 50 Universities or top LACâs.
Those Colleges CANâT accept every outstanding âqualifiedâ student.There are too many of them applying.
Hence the importance of building a college list from the bottom up.
Top students and their parents, should spend MOST of their time looking for the colleges where they are statistically likely to be admitted AND where they can afford to go to.
After that is said and done, then they can apply to any âLottery collegesâ. Cause that is what they are
"When acceptance rates are posted in the common data sets and US News, do these not include acceptances from the wait list? "
Yes they include wait list acceptances.
Here are examples from Dartmouth.
scroll down to page 7
Most colleges are need blind for individual applicants, but most do not give good financial aid.
Obviously, some colleges adjust their admission criteria to target a need profile that fits their FA budget, but that can be done without looking at an individual applicantâs financial need.
âIn my opinion the unweighted GPA should determine the starting point for all college match searches.â
Truer words were never spoken.
Many DONT know that most colleges have their own formula for reformulating and determining an applicants GPA.
A common mistake (and itâs rampant on CC) is to assume that admission to the most selective colleges is simply a purely meritocratic award for best credentialsâmeaning not just grades and test scores but also ECs, essays, recs, and the whole kit and kaboodle. Itâs notâas college admissions officers keep telling us. Admissions committees donât simply make an ordinal ranking of best, second best, third best, etc all the way down to nth best, where n represents the cutoff line. There probably is something like an informal cut-off insofar as applicants below a certain threshold are more or less automatic rejects. But some of the most selective schools tell us that most of their applicants are above that lineâtheyâre students with very strong credentials who would likely succeed if admitted. The problem for applicantsâand the luxury for admissions officersâ is that this pool of perfectly suitable applicants is larger than the number of admissions offers that can be made. At that point the process isnât one or ordinal ranking, bur rather of âassembling the class we want ,â which is at least as much about mixing and balancing the kinds of applicants who are admitted as it is about making fine gradations about whose credentials are marginally stronger. Itâs not random, but it is highly subjective, and to that extent highly unpredictable, at least from the outside.
I believe it was the director of admissions at Harvard who once said, âWe donât want an entire class of class presidents.â Not that thereâs anything wrong with being class president⊠But they donât want a homogeneous class. They want a mixâsome quirky, some pointy, some well-rounded. Some potential future Presidents of the United States but also some mathematical geniuses and some gifted poets and some just overall stellar students from a diversity of backgrounds. And being in any of those categories doesnât necessarily get you in, even if all your other credentials are in order. You may be a certifiable mathematical genius but if theyâre already offered admission to 10 others like you, they might just pass you by in favor of a poet, or just a well rounded stellar student from Omaha because up to that point they hadnât admitted anyone from Nebraska.
@ucbalumnus How can a college send out offers that meet a certain financial aid budget without looking at the accepted studentsâ financial need?
To me, a new-comer, the interesting thing is that, from the stats listed by CC posters alone, most of the time, I could not distinguish the ones that were accepted to TT schools from the ones that were waitlisted and/or rejected. Thus, the seemingly randomness and definitely opaqueness of college admission process for highly selective schools, are maddening.
I am preparing my rising junior to have a good âappetiteâ, not to limit himself to only a handful TT schools and to believe that pursuing knowledge and happiness can be done at many places and in many forms.
Perhaps it is the parts that are missing from the stats posted on CC that help differentiate an applicant: essays, actual recommendations, etc
@AroundHere one top college I know builds the bulk of its class (85%) with no regard to individual financial need. At that point, it reassesses its FA allotment. If thereâs money left over, it can take some kids with financial need. If itâs all used up, they take only full pay to round out the class. Sp, itâs need blind to a point.