<p>I posted this message on a college discussion page but wanted to share it with other parents to see if they're feeling the same way. This was my response to an admissions rep letting us know that there were over 6000 EA apps which was 55% increase over last year and 116% over 2 years ago.........</p>
<p>Thank you for sharing those numbers with us. They are staggering!! There has got to be a way to cut down on the numbers. The kids who are good students that would have gotten in 3 years ago now almost have no where to go unless they "settle". The high achievers are using very good schools as safeties which has to hurt kids who really want to go to a particular school but can't compete with the "high stats". I don't envy the admissions offices across the country. The whole process is incredibly draining on everyone. But, isn't making it easier and quicker to apply part of the problem? I would think the numbers must be creating a drain on resources and making it difficult to determine who really wants to attend.</p>
<p>We tried to make up for not having "perfect" stats by visiting schools more than once and interviewing. We'll see if that makes a difference.</p>
<p>We live in NJ and haven't received the letter yet. My daughter's friends all heard yesterday and were deferred. The B+ kids really seem to get lost in this whole process.... They want to attend higher end schools but can't compete with the high achievers. My friend's son just graduated. He admits that there's no way he would get in now.... Just a view from a parent who has spent the last 3 years researching options to try to make up for not having a high achiever. Mind you, a B+ student on 3 varsity sports and the yearbook with community service is no slouch:-)</p>
<p>There are plenty of options for B+ students, and they are not "lost". The Ivies may not be among them but believe me, there are educational opportunities -- very, very good ones! -- besides HYPS ! Be glad you have the kid you have, and believe me, they will do well.</p>
<p>freshstart119, I think (?) you are talking about Northeastern. Yes, there numbers have gone up a lot! My son is a freshman there as is kataliamom's daughter. One thought: NEU tends to me more competitive for kids from the New England/Mid Atlantic region. Same thing here with CA kids trying to get into some CA schools. Has your daughter considered looking in regions which may want kids from your area??</p>
<p>I'm right there with you! Even from NJ. My kid is real bright and has worked hard jr and sr year but his resume doesn't stack up to some of his brilliant and super motivated classmates. His weighted GPA has improved to about a 3.9 weighted, which puts him.... at the top...... of the 4th decile in his class! Realistically, the kid is not getting into a top 10 school. The good news is there are many many very good schools around. We visited Penn, and told him that if he loved the school it would be worth taking a shot as a super reach (double legacy and all) but he didn't love the school. I agree it is difficult but I don't feel sorry for my kid because he can't go to an Ivy League school. His classmates that just got into Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn and Brown have pretty amazing records of achievement, and in many cases so do their parents... and "friends." </p>
<p>My son wants to stay close to home, so he is applying to Lafayette, Lehigh, Bucknell, and Gettysburg, and a reach at Tufts. Also Dickinson and James Madison. Already in at Northeastern, a school he visited and loves. Didn't even visit Haverford. On a trip to New England we noted the signs for Wesleyan and thought, "hmmmm... close enough.... naaaaa don't think so"</p>
<p>You're right about the stark reality on the ground: because of the numbers of students graduating from HS, B+ students are getting squeezed out of a tier of college that they might have been admitted to even a few years ago.</p>
<p>But I also think that there's another kind of competition going on as well: colleges themselves are engaging in something like an arms race to improve faculty, programs, facilities, research opportunities, internships, foreign study options, and more. There are great faculty teaching at all sorts of institutions because their job market makes getting into an Ivy look like a cakewalk, for example. </p>
<p>B students have choices of many fine institutions. US News has an article on their website called A+ options for B students that lists schools with strong academics and only moderate selectivity.</p>
<p>To answer both posts, we are not looking at HYSP. That's way out of our league. Yes, my D applied to NEU. She's been deferred so far which I actually took as a good thing. We haven't heard from Fordham yet but that's the school were most of her friends were deferred. My D wants to stick between Mass and DC so she can get home easily. She applied to 10 schools of which we definitely know some are reaches but were encouraged to apply to. We're waiting on her other EA schoools; Loyola and Stonehill. I'm expecting a deferral from Loyola and hopefully an acceptance from Stonehill. I really didn't think the kids like her in her school were shooting for a reach in Fordham which is actually my daughter's number one choice. They go to a college prep catholic high school so many of them are applying to the catholic lacs. My daughter wants photography so that ruled out Fairfield and St. Joes.</p>
<p>Sorry, I don't buy the argument. The high achievers who apply to a large number of schools and use very good schools as safeties do not change the odds for the rest of the students. Even the very highest achievers only attend one college at a time. </p>
<p>The issue is that more kids are applying to a very limited number of well known, elite schools. As the population has grown and more kids go on to college, the name brand schools have not grown equivalently in size. In fact many have not increased enrollments at all. More and more solid students are going to schools without the big name recognition. A student who might be in the upper third of college applicants just cannot expect to be admitted by schools that have their choices of kids in the top tenth of a percent of applicants. By the way, if the B+ kids cannot compete with the super high achievers for admission, what do you think would happen when trying keep up with the academics which are designed for those students?</p>
<p>Thanks for the additional responses. Yes, I am very familiar with Colleges that Change Lives. In fact, my daughter had a great visit at Clark U in November where she sat in on a class, ate lunch with a student, met coaches and interviewed. She said everyone there treated her very nice and the teacher spent a lot of time with her. I'm hopeful for a positive result there but we would need to revisit for her to appreciate Worcester. I really like Kalamazoo from the book but my D doesn't want to go west of Philadelphia:-)</p>
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I'm hopeful for a positive result there but we would need to revisit for her to appreciate Worcester. I really like Kalamazoo from the book but my D doesn't want to go west of Philadelphia:-)
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<p>There's a certain irony here, that the OP complains that all the ED apps are making many colleges more selective earlier; yet their own applicant doesn't want a college west of Philadelphia. </p>
<p>Edad, I appreciate your position. Some of these schools however have just become more selective over the past 3 years. I doubt that the academics have changed drastically over that period of time.</p>
<p>Does anyone know the factors contributing to the remarkable change in numbers at Fordham? Have they recently started to accept the common app, gone SAT-optional, or undertaken some sort of different marketing?</p>
<p>I'll take a stab at the increase at Fordham. More kids want to be in a city, and if NYU and Columbia/Barnard are reach schools, Fordham is a nice safety/match. My daughter visited Fordham, and got an invitation to apply EA with the application fee waived. If they handed out lots of those invitations, then I imagine their numbers would increase.</p>
<p>I think part of the problem is that there is something of a myth about EA increasing chances, whereas most ad coms would probably like to see midyear grades of students who are not on the very strong end of their applicant pool.<br>
So the problem is only partly that the competition is tougher -- it is also that the B+ student simply isn't able to present complete documentation early in senior year.</p>
<p>EA is an opportunity for the college to establish a relationship with the strongest students in its applicant pool early in the process, so as to gain a marketing advantage -- the school knows very well that it is a safety for those students, but the will make an extra effort over the next several months to convince those admitted students that they have something to offer in terms of personal attention and financial incentives that outweigh the attraction of more selective schools. If, as the EA school hopes, the EA admit is waitlisted or rejected by their dream school in the spring, then the EA hopes that the dejected student will by happy to rush into their open arms.</p>
<p>Where does that leave the deferred EA student? Simply on hold, because there simply is no advantage to the school to accept that student early. An early acceptance ties up spaces before the ad com has had a chance to see the lay of the land by evaluating the full applicant pool; and if the student is in the mid range of the applicant pool or below, the EA school has nothing to offer in the way of tuition incentives (i.e. merit aid) -- so why commit? How does it possibly help the college?</p>
<p>Calcom, I think you hit it right on. MarathonMan, Fordham did have what they called a Choice Application which was an abbreviated application and they claimed it was by invitation only. We applied using that...</p>
<p>I think this problem might be more of a female problem. I don't see it among the boys I know. Also, if you look at some the 2006 ED admits--there are more than a few 3.5's out there--at Ivies and others. In fact, lots of perfect grades and scores were deferred.</p>
<p>Just saw an e-mail reply from a Notre Dame admissions rep stating that their EA numbers are up 46% over last year. They were very conservative in awarding acceptances & many kids who would have been admitted EA last year were deferred this year. Averages from this year's EA candidates are top 3.1% class rank, 1442 SAT, and 32.7 ACT. "You can also assume that less quantifiable factors such as a student’s rigor of curriculum and extracurricular involvement also got better. We just don’t have a handy stat to show you that."</p>
<p>ND has a tremendous yield & is not a safety for anyone, which is not the case at Fordham. So it's like comparing apples & oranges. But I'd like to know if this is a trend all over.</p>
<p>I agree with freshstart that it is tougher in admissions for the B+ student, and more so for the female student, as cheers mentioned. </p>
<p>I think something even tougher, is being able to financially afford the school today as a B+ student from a middle class and even upper middle class (depending upon how that is defined, and where one lives in this country) family. I think that many students apply to more schools now b/c of the relative ease, uncertainty of acceptance, and unknown about amount of merit aid/financial aid and final cost to the student and his/her family.</p>
<p>Isn't this at least in part a non-significant artifact of the increased ease of applying using online applications? If every student applies to 8-10 schools rather than 6-8, and these are equally distributed among schools (I know they are not), won't every schools applicant pool increase by 20-25%? Looks impressive but not really meaningful.</p>
<p>"By the way, if the B+ kids cannot compete with the super high achievers for admission, what do you think would happen when trying keep up with the academics which are designed for those students?"</p>
<p>My guess is that they'd do just fine. Some, even better than their high performing peers. Judging from what I see in my kids' high school, there are lots of B+ kids that are as bright, even brighter, than those with higher grades. There are those who have uneven abilities and end up with lower gpa's--the mathematician who didn't do well in AP English will soar in college when he is able to take high level math classes and the talented writer who struggled through math will eclipse his peers when allowed to concentrate on English and history--some have slipped at different points along the way but have shown overall high ability, and some are still to grow into their potential.</p>
<p>I can understand why a selective school chooses the kid with a demonstrated record of high achievement but I reject any suggestion that a B+ kid can't handle the academic rigor of an elite school.</p>
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I really like Kalamazoo from the book but my D doesn't want to go west of Philadelphia
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Agree with Katliamom...there are plenty of options for B+ students. Being from the Midwest, we're not bombarded by Ivy hysteria so we tend to take a broader view of things. If you've found Kalamazoo an interesting option, I encourage you to take a closer look at the CTCL schools. My S. is a freshman at K College, also a recruited athlete, and is having an excellent experience...loves it. He was similar to your D. in HS, three-sport varsity athlete/captain, very respectable stats, but not stratospheric. That "Colleges That Change Lives" title truly applies to many of those schools. K is bringing out the best in S. already. It's been very academically challenging, but within a cooperative, caring environment. S. made the first quarter Dean's List while in-season for his sport and is more self-motivated than I've ever seen him. He claims being a B+ student is a thing of the past.</p>