<p>Admission chances are an Achilles Heel for a few super-selective schools (HYP).
The heel is struck if too many potential applicants start asking, “Why bother?” So, the Harvard website artfully states,</p>
<p>Academic accomplishment in high school is important, but we also seek people with enthusiasm, creativity and strength of character… Most admitted students rank in the top 1015 percent of their graduating classes.</p>
<p>The reality is that most admitted, unhooked applicants probably rank in the top one percent of their graduating classes (with scores and ECs to match). If you don’t, then your enthusiasm or “strength of character” is unlikely to compensate. Even if you do, admission is still a crap shoot (with the true admit rate, for unhooked applicants, probably less than 5%).</p>
<p>Aid is a similar Achilles Heel. Many middle class families are squeezed out of selective private schools … notwithstanding the pitch you’ll hear about admitting top students “regardless of their ability to pay.”</p>
<p>The Greek scene can be an issue at school, the social climate at some schools that have rigorous workloads and serious students as a large piece of the population, lack of housing, bad neighborhoods surrounding the school, suitcase schools, lack of school spirit, lopsided male/female ration, too preppy, too “goth”, artsy, too homophobic, too “gay”, too liberal, too conservative-particularly Christian schools, too rural, so city that student life is compromised, not need blind in admissions, does not give good fin aid, gives out lots of loans, too hot, too rainy, too cold, not easily accessible, higher than avg crime stats for incidents on students and suicides, heavy use of teaching assistants.</p>
<p>But what is a detriment to some student/family’s concerns, may be a point in the plus column for another. </p>
<p>I often suspect that the dorms can be somewhat of an Achilles heel for even (especially?) the top schools, since they tend to skip them on tours and make it difficult to see actual dorm rooms vs. the one uninhabited “show” room.
I understand the logistics of many people touring is an issue, but the schools known for great dorms had no difficulty showing us actual dorms on tours or thereafter.</p>
<p>On the other hand at my ivy alma mater, they acted like it was a huge deal and a favor to me as an alum, that the operations manager showed us the inside of some of the dorm buildings – but not any individual rooms. We had to contact individual students to see their rooms. Now dorms aren’t necessarily a deal breaker but considering what they are charging per square foot (probably close to the highest rents in the country!), I think there is some deliberate glossing over there.</p>
<p>Well, yes, they would need to get specific permission from students to show their dorm rooms. That could be an issue. Sometimes the tourguide will have obtained permission and access to a dorm room, sometimes not. My kids would not be likely to ever give permission of that sort. and come to think of it, neither would I. My house is not on the area tour list either.</p>
<p>Yes, of course, they would need special permission to enter individual rooms. I get that, but as I said this did not seem to be a barrier in the schools that had great dorms. What I had an issue with is that the dorm buildings (common areas) were not at all accessible, neither on the tour or when requested thereafter at many schools.</p>
<p>I saw some really bad dorm rooms in the tours with my 4 kids who have gone through the process, so I didn’t notice any differences between those schools that are supposed have great dorms and those that did not. Also, it’s not as though the premier dorm was the one shown on tour either. It was always a random room except for the show room.</p>
<p>Yes, and sometimes it is hard for the tour planners to know which way to go. A friend recently toured Univ. of Alabama for the Honors program, which, as all CC readers now know, offers free rides plus money and stuff to some high-stat OOS students. Their tour was only for already-accepted, but not committed, Honors students. The tour guide did not mention the sports scene at Alabama, even once, evidently in the belief that this particular group of potential students would not find it a draw. Ironically, my friend’s son is a two-sport varsity athlete and loves sports, and that is one of the reasons (along with the money) that he was about to choose Alabama over his other options.</p>
<p>The apartment at my son’s internship last summer was really fabulous. I personally wouldn’t mind living in an apartment like that. I mentioned this to a coworker who’s son attends the same school and he said that his son’s dorm/apartment was really awful - it looked to be the same as when he attended decades ago. The quality of dorms and apartments on campus can vary widely from building to building or even floor to floor.</p>
<p>Hanna - yes, the financial barrier is removed via finaid. Now it’s just a question of sufficient space in selective clubs so that anyone who really cares about that aspect can find a place.</p>
<p>They proudly show a dorm room at one of the seven sister’s colleges that D1 visited and was admitted to. They claimed that it was typical, and it was quite large with beautiful woodwoork and a lot of closet space. I think it is rare that a college can brag about their housing, though :)</p>
<p>One of the things we realized as we visited was that if we kept careful track of what each school bragged about, we could go back and ask questions in that area of the other schools who maybe hadn’t mentioned it at all… and that often exposed the “Achilles heel”.</p>
<p>Was it Bryn Mawr? Our tour guide showed us her room – she had a single that had an entire wall of bay windows atop a window seat area that she had put tons of pillows on – was a great space for reading / studying. It was a magnificent room with beautiful woodwork and closet space. Probably nicer than 98% of people’s bedrooms!</p>
<p>The people I know who went to Princeton varied between club guys and independents. None of them seemed to think one way or the other was important. </p>
<p>My understanding is that you eat your meals at the clubs, hang around there shooting pool or bs’ing if you choose, and have your parties there on Saturday nights and on major party event weekends.</p>
<p>One big difference from fraternities is that no one lives at the club (except sometimes a couple of the officers). Most princetonians live in the dormitories on campus. You can have roommates in a suite who are independents, and from different clubs, and who room together as upperclassmen, but don’t eat together. There is a natural self selection of roommates, but its not as homogenous as you might think. </p>
<p>I believe for most party weekends a club member who is a friend can get you admitted to the club party without much trouble …but I am not certain about that. </p>
<p>I think Ralph Nader hated the clubs, but I’m not sure about it. Some of the criticism of the clubs over the years had to do with people of high social standing being excluded from clubs they had anticipated being invited to join. And some had to do with some discrimination perhaps, but I would suppose that if Ralph Nader had trouble joining a club, it would have been because people didn’t want to eat lunch and dinner with him.</p>
<p>My impression is that there are plenty of neat guys and gals at Princeton who are not members, as well as those who are, and that they get along just fine. THere is no social purgatory that you are doomed to endure if you fail to join a club, or are unsuccessful in joining your top choice. </p>
<p>I also think there is no tradition of hazing, but am not certifiably certain about that.</p>
<p>It amazes me when I see people asking about religious pressure at Catholic colleges. I have undergrad degrees from 2 different Catholic colleges, and never once set foot in a church at either one of them. And zero people asked me zero times to go to church. The required theology courses were far more historical and philosophical than religious. If you ask any Catholic priest what he “majored” in at the seminary, he’ll probably say philosophy, not theology. I dare say most Catholics don’t even own a Bible.</p>
They gave the impression at our tour this week that upperclassmen in the eating clubs lived in different housing from those who had meal plans in the residential colleges or who had apartments with kitchens. I suppose they might live with people in different eating clubs, though.</p>
<p>Agreeing with #23 CJaneRead about the dorms being an Achilles heel to many campuses, especially those that only show the newest residence hall or one limited to honors students.</p>
<p>Thanks for the posts to crime statistics. I spent time reading through the JHU crime pages, and they were eye-opening. We did not visit an accepted school in Maryland, and crime was one of the reasons, even though it isn’t right in Baltimore. Just feels too foreign to have to deal with that level of crime.</p>
<p>It’s funny how they spin what their strengths are like any good salesperson. If the school has gorgeous dorms like many women’s colleges or even large ones like my daughter’s at HC, they will go on about the space, comfort, ease in doing homework, etc. If they look like the prison cell we saw at another college, damp, dark, gloomy, you are told, how little you spend in your room, how the much nicer junior/senior dorms are right around the corner (I guess they spend more time there in later years) and “it’s a right of passage”. : )</p>
<p>I do feel in the end, make sure what is important to your son/daughter does get addressed. If I hadn’t asked (and not assumed) about FA with study abroad, I would have thought it was included and my daughter would have been very disapointed later. One college after getting a lot of negative feedback it seems is changing that next year (providence), so making it known why you crossed a college off is helpful also. You never know what might be changed.</p>
<p>The funny thing is that the Achilles heel issue becomes a non-issue when your child finds “the school.”<br>
It is interesting to hear the different schools explain away - the ones that do it best own up to the issue and explain how they try to address it - like Penn with their campus security (I kept telling my d that there are policemen everywhere FOR A REASON). At Cornell the issue was their nickel and diming for everything - someone on our tour kept asking how much each thing they bragged about cost extra - the tour guide was quite flustered and finally just said that all the additions were worth the extra cost.</p>