<p>FyreCracket, wow…agree with you 100%
S has been fortunate to receive some early notices, nonetheless,
I think schools should either hold true to their notification date or just say that they have rolling admissions. This process is stressful enough and I think all this likely letter, early writes etc adds tremendously to the angst</p>
<p>Best wishes for good news for your D this week</p>
<p>15 years ago, the only likely letters I knew about were for athletes. I remember a close friend mentioning one 12 years ago and we thought that only athletes got them. Now, they are part of the college app scene. </p>
<p>I think it’s because those schools later to send acceptances have found that some kids bond to an earlier acceptance, and these schools want their foot in the door at the same time.</p>
<p>I’m on my fourth kid and never heard of this before for non-athletes. It wasn’t as common in my older kids’ generation, not for them or their friends. DS received a likely to Columbia and an early admit to Williams. He is neither a URM or an athlete. I do believe that the Columbia application truly played to his strengths with its collection of short answers and they may have recognized a fit, not sure. I had thought that both these schools would probably reject him although I don’t know why I thought that exactly. Finding out earlier allowed us to do some homework, figure out that we would definitely need an east coast trip in April, etc. so I think it was helpful. I do think it got those schools into his head. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but I do think the March 29 admit date makes it very tough for families who need to visit schools, etc. There isn’t enough turn-around time to May 1, in my opinion, so early notification can be helpful.</p>
<p>I can understand how likely letters can increase anxiety - seeing those around you get in when you haven’t gotten anything can be nerve-wracking (the same thing happens with PhD admissions - students go crazy as they see their peers hear back, often weeks before the others). But I would hope that the students who feel anxious about this go online and see what the stats are on likely letters - that few students actually get them, and that it does NOT mean you won’t get in. Unfortunately, the students who do this are still more anxious than they were before, assuming that they won’t get in. I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen students on here saying something like, “I know that the likely letter is sent to a tiny handful of students, but does not getting one mean I’m going to be rejected?” They know that it means nothing for their chances, and they know the statistics, yet they’re freaking out so much that they ignore all logic. To me, that says more about them than about LLs.</p>
<p>It’s not right to shift all the blame to colleges, either. The reality is this: these colleges are trying to make a great class, and it’s hard to do that when you have no idea how many or which students will enroll. This is exacerbated by the absurd # of applications that students are filing. For example, FyreCracker indicated that her daughter applied to no fewer than 12 schools. That’s a lot; I think the most common recommendations are 8-10, though the # students applying to more than that has seen dramatic increases in recent years. And why are they applying to so many? Because it’s impossible to know which ones they’ll get into.</p>
<p>In other words, admissions are competitive because so many students are applying to so many schools, and the students are doing that because admissions are competitive. It’s a cycle over which blame should be distributed, instead of just on the colleges themselves.</p>
<p>Early programs are great if just because they help the college to gauge how many students will enroll; they do help to inject some sanity back into the process. I wish all schools did SCEA; anything that increases their yield will directly or indirectly help to inject some sanity, by adding more certainty, to the process. LLs can substantially help yield (mainly when the college sends a lot of them, as Dartmouth does), so in a way, they do help to add some sanity back into the process. But it’s most effective when everyone does it. Unfortunately, not all do, and so we’re stuck in limbo, where some send LLs and some don’t, which makes the process even more confusing. Either all should do LLs or none should. Same with early programs.</p>
<p>I’ll add this: if you get a LL, please be gracious and don’t advertise it to your peers if they’re applying to the same schools or to similar schools. For that matter, even if none of your peers are applying to elite schools but are still waiting to hear back from colleges, show them courtesy by not shoving your acceptances in their faces (even if it isn’t a likely letter, as in the case of colleges with earlier notification dates like MIT and UCLA), as it only increases their anxiety. </p>
<p>Parents, same goes to you: if your son or daughter gets a LL or applied to a college with an earlier notification, please advise them not to advertise it, and please don’t start bragging to other parents until after the notification date; it increases their anxiety too. I know that can be hard, but for the sake of other parents and their children, keep quiet about it for a little while. (When I was in high school and heard back earlier than my peers, I told only my two closest friends, who had applied only to public schools and had been accepted already; on the other hand, my mother was practically yelling it from the rooftops.)</p>
<p>How would one know if the correspondence received is a “likely letter”? How can you tell a “likely letter” from a plain old advertising informational letter? Is there specific wording used?</p>
<p>I feel like early writes make so much more sense than likely letters. When I got my early writes from Swarthmore and Smith, I was so glad they officially admitted me rather than leaving open the possibility that I could later be rejected/ waitlisted:)</p>
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<p>I got into Penn, Stanford and Columbia without receiving any likely letters. I didn’t apply to any other ivies except Harvard, where I was waitlisted.</p>
<p>THE PROCESS IS TOTALLY BROKEN!!! Mass marketing to give false hope to students whose applications are actually never read by the admissions committee ( we live near Princeton and know people that are hired for 4-5 months to vet the applications before they are actually read) , admissions rules that are changed mid stream , likely letters, and the worse factor of them all is the COMMONAPP! Until the method is changed, the same thing will continue to happen. From this experience we have become jaded and will never make the same mistake again with our son. The colleges need to be straight up for what they are really looking for. Then the playing field will be fair. Let’s stop the madness and the unnecessary stress we are putting on our kids.</p>
<p>@Smileygerl: For Columbia, the opening line of the email was, ‘I am writing to inform you that your application to Columbia University has been carefully evaluated and that you have earned designation as a likely candidate for admission to Columbia College.’</p>
<p>So that was pretty clear.</p>
<p>Just to add to the discussion, in my case, I found that the likely letter I received made me very much want to go to that university and just added to my love for the school. What’s more, it made me begin planning my life around it, so in my case, it was a very successful marketing measure. That being said, I’m very grateful they did this, even if it might seem manipulative - it was such a relief!</p>
<p>I think the number of likely letters increased a few years back, when universities started to send them to academic-types, rather than only to scholar/athletes. QMP received a likely letter preceded by a phone call in January 2006, and ultimately selected the school that “likelied.” It was a considerable relief after an SCEA waitlist elsewhere (followed by the addition of a few more universities to the list of places applied).</p>
<p>The number of likely letters is appreciably smaller than the number of students who will be admitted. I don’t think that the students who receive likely letters are necessarily better overall than a number of the students who don’t. Rather, I suspect that the universities are using the academic likely letters in order to recruit students in particular areas of study that are under-represented in the applicant pool, on a relative basis. Based on a sample size of 1, a likely letter from one university means that the odds are high overall, but doesn’t guarantee acceptance everywhere.</p>
<p>When I was applying to colleges (4 years ago), I never heard of someone receiving a Likely Letter…it seems like a strange concept to me. Does anyone know if they have these for graduate and professional programs, too?</p>
<p>“know people that are hired for 4-5 months to vet the applications before they are actually read”
orthomab, could you please explain in more detail what these people are doing?</p>
<p>What will you do differently as a result of your new knowledge and experience?</p>