<p>I cannot believe how many priority/special/exclusive application offers son has gotten on-line. If it wasn’t for the transcripts that the Guidance department has to send and the cost of sending SAT’s I would encourage son to do them all. I’ve opened up a few of them and they’re a heck of a lot easier then the common app. It makes me wonder what the A students are getting!</p>
<p>The work-load is starting to kick in. Son’s staying up late working on Calculus. Me, I’m going to bed!</p>
<p>^^I too am astonished at the number of applications (priority etc) my “B” student is receiving…</p>
<p>some of them are ridiculous and are starting to “smell” of Wash U syndrome…I mean, give me a break; U Chicago??? for a “B” student???</p>
<p>Univ of Chicago has sent us by far the most mail of any school. Some days we get two separate postcards from them. S has never shown any interest at all in this school, but the mail keeps coming.</p>
<p>U Chicago spent a lot of stamps on our kid. Stanford and Yale, too. You just have to laugh.</p>
<p>Okay…feeling better today! Spent hours with son going over online apps, common apps, supplements, school forms, essay…filled out all the transcript requests for each school…and ds has to turn in at appt with GC. Submitted all, now up to highschool to send their packets and wait wait wait. Once ACT results come out, need to decide which/both to send if superscores apply. Visits set for his days off in the next month…and he emailed a couple club coaches about meeting them during our visits.</p>
<p>School having an application event today where students can come and work with their counselors to punch this all out; but he wanted to play in his hockey game instead so only reason we got it all done yesterday (threat/bribe?). I feel good about having our part almost done; but worried he will be deferred from most schools until his senior first semester grades are in. So far, he’s doing well knowing that might well be the case.</p>
<p>Good for you! Really by most standards he is well ahead of the game. Congrats!</p>
<p>ddd, you sound so much more optimistic since that first visit to the small school you liked! Has your son decided whether to pursue a large school or not?</p>
<p>@Rodney - what is Wash U syndrome. My D has been getting lots of mail from them. </p>
<p>Silly us - we thought it was because they needed more minorities. Are they known for sending info to students they don’t really want just to drive up their numbers?</p>
<p>^^My own personal definition of Wash U syndrome is an attempt to increase selectivity by making less than qualified students think they will be considered, and, therefore, enticing them to apply…thereby, reducing their admission rate to 10-15% of applicants…heck, they don’t even accept qualified students most of the time…</p>
<p>great school, like UChicago, but a “B” student doesn’t have a chance so why would either of them send mail/priority apps/etc if not to artificially increase their selectivity?</p>
<p>I’d argue that Wash U syndrome isn’t exactly for the purpose of driving up numbers artificially. They could do that enough with their ED policy.</p>
<p>Although it is for the purpose of decreasing acceptance rate, it’s also to get the school’s name out there. Would Wash U really be a very well-known school if it didn’t have such a big advertisement campaign and lots of students applying? A low acceptance rate is useless if the given school isn’t well-known.</p>
<p>This is exactly what Chicago is doing now. It has been oft-said on this board that Chicago accepts more students outside the top 10% than any other elite university. This is true, and will probably continue to be true, so it isn’t necessarily contradictory that they’re trying to recruit applicants with lower GPAs, even if the majority of them will not have a good shot of gaining admission. However, that isn’t the point. If Chicago would only try to recruit the 3.9 GPA/2200+ SAT students, then how would it ever spread its name among the general population? What Chicago and Wash U are trying to do is to create prestigious names for themselves among the general population, and this is done by getting a lot of common people to apply and henceforth rejecting the majority of them, furthering an image of prestige. Of course, this isn’t very ethical, but corporations are not very ethical entities… and there’s no denying that US universities have essentially become corporations. This is no justification of course; on the contrary, it’s a harsher condemnation.</p>
<p>phuriku - wonderful post and so true. I would also add Tulane to this group. I believe Tulane had the most applications of any private university in the country in the last cycle - and of course - they reject most of them. As you said, this increases their selectivity as the percentage of accepted students drops and also increases their name recognition and perceived prestige. Tulane has accomplished this through their “personal application” which is presently landing in the e-mail inbox of high school seniors nationwide. It’s a great fast and easy app - perfect for an A student looking for a safety school - but I am afraid that many B students who don’t have a chance of being accepted really believe Tulane has singled them out as being special - and they apply. Of course, pretty much all students will experience some level of rejection throughout this process. It’s the soliciting of students for the sole purpose of rejecting them that angers me.</p>
<p>^^yup, got that one too…</p>
<p>Don’t want to change the current thread focus…just wanted to say “hi”.</p>
<p>How have I not noticed this thread before! I’m right here with ya’ll. Glad to know there are other parents feeling for the kids reaching for things that might be just beyond their reach, either academically or financially due to scholarship cut-offs, and how frustrating that can be.</p>
<p>Welcome kerrbo! I look forward to seeing your questions and/or vents.</p>
<p>Phuriku, although I agree with your view that this is unethical, I don’t share your implied view that corporations have lower ethical standards than noncorporations. Corporations are run by people and people have widely varying ethical standards, whether they are in corporations or not. </p>
<p>In the college process, you will read of unethical practices by colleges, parents, kids, athletic coaches, tutors, private guidance counselors and so on. </p>
<p>Indeed, I think CC has become so popular and helpful in significant part because so many parents would rather ask questions of strangers in confidence than trust their friends and neighbors with their kids’ stats and intentions.</p>
<p>
Yes, corporations are run by people, but their structure neatly dissolves normal human ethical responsibility. If the officers of the corporation behave unscrupulously in order to maximize profit, they can plead that they are only doing their duty to the stockholders. The stockholders, on the other hand, can plead with perfect sincerity that <em>they</em> did nothing at all. The result is that things are done that none of the parties involved would be willing to do on their own individual behalf.</p>
<p>I call it “karma laundering.”</p>
<p>“Profit maximization” is just an excuse for unethical conduct motivated by personal greed–you will never find an example where theunethical conduct benefitted the corporation, but not the individual wrongdoer personally. And none of them honestly believe that the stockholders would vote in favor of unethical conduct. I think it is no different from the ambulance chasers who justify their conduct as on the basis that their clients needed them to do it, or the swindlers who say their victims should hav eknown the deal was too good to be true.</p>
<p>Everyone can always come up with an excuse to justify their behavior. These days, individuals often use the evils done by vast corporations or the government to justify their dishonesty. In the college context, I am sure the parents and kids who do unethical things jsutify it on the basis that “everyone does it”; or “the college deserves it because it charges so much” or my son deserved and needed that acceptance more than the other kids.</p>
<p>
Starting at the end, I absolutely know Tulane is not soliciting students for the sole purpose of rejecting them. Tulane is not in the same circumstance as Wash U or Chicago. In order for Tulane to raise the academic profile of incoming classes, they have to get better students to come, students that normally pick Wash U or Chicago or Vandy or Duke, for examples. One way to do this is to cast a very wide net to students with high test scores, high GPA’s, etc. I am sure students with somewhat lower credentials get on these lists too. Tulane does not create the list, they get it from an outside source obviously. They know that most of these students will choose to go elsewhere, but if some percentage that would never have considered Tulane without the personal/priority app choose to come, the class is better than it would have been. This is exactly what has happened for 3 years in a row now, after recovering from Katrina.</p>
<p>Also while it does indeed appear that they have an increase in selectivity, they have a corresponding decrease in yield. I think neither statistic is meaningful because of Tulane’s strategy, but if one is going to make it sound like they are trying to gain a more positive image on the one hand it is only right to mention the negative aspect.</p>
<p>I just don’t understand what is wrong with a school trying to improve itself by attracting better students. That is one of the missions of a university of high caliber, is it not? And it is a very hard thing to do due to entrenched perceptions, perpetuating statistical self-selection on the part of the students, the damned ranking travesty, etc. Chicago and Wash U can’t go much higher in stats or ranking. Tulane, on the other hand, has much more room to benefit from a strategy such as this.</p>
<p>fallenchemist - 2 hour+ response time - you’re falling down on the job! 
First - you know I like and respect Tulane the university - it’s the admissions practices I’m not so fond of. Here’s my beef - most universities like to “cast a wide net” because they do a holistic review of their applicants - in other words - their decisions are made on more than just GPA and test scores. With Tulane’s personal app - there are no teacher recs required and no essay - just a brief personal stmt on an activity. So, you can’t really argue that it is a holistic review - the decisions are primarily based on GPA and test scores. That being the case - I would prefer that when Tulane buys a mailing list from CollegeBoard or ACT - that they target kids with an ACT above 28 or a SAT above 1200 - kids who do have a chance to be admitted. Sending these personal apps to B students with lower test scores serves no purpose - other than what I described in my previous post - boosting Tulane’s number of applications and selectivity.</p>
<p>I agree with you 100% that Tulane’s approach is getting the typical Vandy/Duke applicant to apply to Tulane as well.</p>
<p>I agree with you 100% that when some of these students are rejected by Vandy/Duke they decide to attend Tulane.</p>
<p>But I have to caution you that Tulane is getting a bad rep for sending these personal apps to unqualified students. If a student decides on their own to apply to Tulane and is rejected - that’s life. But when you solicit their application - knowing they are not qualified - I find that repugnant.</p>
<p>HI Rockville - Yeah, slowing down in my old age. I agree with you that if they are starting to cast the net too wide, that doesn’t make much sense. There really is so little gain from having a low acceptance rate, doesn’t seem like it would be worth the expense. However, I am not sure I would go as far as to say it is repugnant, although clearly you find it so. I say that because if Tulane’s 25th percentile for the ACT is 28, which I think it was last year, then there are a fair number of kids that could get admitted with 26 or 27. Same idea for SAT of course. But I do understand where you are coming from.</p>
<p>I would only add that a lot of kids that are not rejected by Vandy/Duke decide to attend as well. That has been documented on here numerous times. Of course your scenario is often true as well, no doubt more often. Just clarifying. I know you like Tulane. I probably wouldn’t mind seeing them tone down the pitch to the marginal applicants also, because like you I know how kids can really get their hopes up if they think they have a good shot at a better school than they originally thought.</p>
<p>Mercyhurst is still his first choice but after viewing their current club hockey roster, not too optimistic he’d make that team…still likes the idea of hockey on campus to be a fan! Mich State coach at camp he went to gave the best advice…pick the school you like first, because of the 21 hours a day you’re not playing hockey…and you should pretend the hockey rink blew up or program discontinued or he got hurt and decide if you’d still want to go there. He still likes it.</p>
<p>We are visiting a mix of schools, size-wise and all closer to home than Mercyhurst so will be interesting to see what he thinks. Ohio State (where his sister goes), Xavier (where dh and I went to grad school), Miami (where dh and I went for undergrad) and Dayton.</p>
<p>He also visited Virg Mil Inst in March for an overnight. Liked the structure as knows he needs it but maybe too intense a program…too bad no in-between. They have a club team but not too good and cadets told him he’d have no extracurricular time his first year anyway…and it’s a little far and removed communication wise for his taste. He’s applying there anyway just to keep the option open if he changes his mind.</p>
<p>I told him the same thing I told dd two years ago. You’re allowed to change your mind, you’re 17…but if you miss deadlines and change your mind in Feb, then your options are gone. He turned in requests to GC yesterday, who was impressed he was ready. Still needs to find out if rec letters are ready and if they are automatically included in transcript packet or if he has to request that they be sent. I’m excited he seems to have taken an ownership role in the process and has answers to all my questions. At the very least, I think we’ll find a place where he’s happy and a place happy to take our money!</p>