I agree with everyone that Michigan is not a safety, especially OOS, AND that our CGO needs to do a much better job!
@CU123 I’d assume UMichigan, UVA, Ut Austin, and UCB are not safeties for OOS students regardless of stats. Same for GTech. And some majors at other state flagships (like CS at UIUC).
@intparent, you need to add UCLA, UCSD and UCSB to that list, and some majors at Cal Poly SLO.
I think two huge trends are in play here (among others):
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Early admissions is much more important today. Schools now often lock up a higher % of the incoming class in early decision. So the much higher number of applicants (who are submitting more applications) are often competing for a smaller number of RD spots. For example, I know this happened at Wake Forest last year. During the process, it decided to take a larger number of ED applicants than in previous years. So RD admission rate dropped pretty significantly.
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A lot of high-stat applicants are adopting a sensible strategy of applying ED (or similar) to their top choice (usually private) and then applying EA to several top-notch publics (UVA, UNC, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia Tech, Georgia, etc.). That way they maximize the advantages of early admissions. So now those publics have an astronomical number of applications. Look at the numbers for UVA and GT. There’s really been a dramatic change over the last 5-10 years.
So OOS safeties and matches are much harder to find. And someone getting advice based on info just a few years old might be being misled.
Actually, there are still plenty available for high stat students. But most such students do not want to go to less selective colleges even with big scholarship money (e.g. AAMU, UAH).
This. There are TONS of OOS options. Just not the top 5-6 that they would prefer. But if they look for fit instead of just names they recognize, there are many choices for a high stats kid.
So glad my NMF/high stats student did look for fit–and won an intense scholarship competition for a full ride for four years. I won’t say which college in order to preserve some anonymity, but it appears it’s the perfect place for her in just about every way, despite it not being particularly selective. A lot of other super-achieving students don’t get it, but hey, who cares. I know she’ll thrive, and I also have little doubt she’ll be a top student there.
It’s too bad that both students and parents get so caught up in prestige that they don’t explore the great opportunities that are out there.
The problem is not the competitive nature of the applicant pool as much as it is the pressure to apply to MANY schools. You HAVE to- as the kids find who get turned down by 8 out of 11 schools - but even THOSE kids are holding down TWO spots they won’t take.
That was DS. But because of the 8 reflections, This year, DD also applied to 10? Schools and got accepted to all but two - no at Yale and Waitlist at Lehigh (didn’t visit). Got merit money everywhere except Cornell and VT- but she did get in. That means she took merit money and a spot from Case Western, Northeastern, RPI, Clemson, Stevens, and Rowan. I have heard of SOME schools actually offering merit scholarships when they take kids off the waitlist - I’ve never heard of that before. I think yields are way way off.
@momofsenior1 I knew someone would come up with an example but I can see that if they didn’t think she would actually attend. I can almost guarantee that she came off the waitlist if she showed interest. UM doesn’t want to be used as a safety. Show me an 4.0/36 that was outright rejected.
of course their essay could have gone like this, which would also garner a rejection.
Dear UM,
I think I am a great fit for your school and Ithica is a great town…
Happens more than you think.
My son refused to apply ED or EA. Makes me wonder if he might have gotten into his reach schools if he had. I’m thrilled with the choice he did make. So much to do, I may be in the minority, but I figure smart kid will get what he/she needs even at a lower tier/prestige school and I am more concerned with them building lifelong friendships and interests than the academics. A prestige school will undoubtedly open doors but so will connections and common interests with them.
4.0/36 girl from our school rejected at Berkeley, in-state. Going to UCLA w/Regents so can’t be the application, since it’s the same for all UCs.
@Gudmom She didn’t “take merit money” from someone else just because she was awarded merit at multiple schools. Colleges offer more merit than they pay out because they know all students won’t come, and they are trying to entice them. They offered money to students they want. That doesn’t mean they would have given it to some other student with lower stats!if she had not applied. And she didn’t “take a spot”. Schools will just go to their waitlist if their yield is too low. In the end, they will enroll the class size they want to have.
@TTdd16 Glad your D is happy with her choice, but you won’t know for sure how it works out for her for a few more years. 
I’ve seen it both ways — kids who took the big scholarship and were very happy, and kids who weren’t as happy later on that they had picked the less expensive option.
My experience with an international son in a competitive international high school is three drivers of this trend: one is the continued trend of students believing they must apply to highly selective schools, two is the common app makes 15 or more applications easy and three is that the schools must adjust by managing their yields. This has led to selective schools having an overwhelming increase in applications and them increasing the priority of an early decision application process (possibly disadvantaging students who require financial aid), and many other schools deferring, waitlisting and then rejecting kids who thought it was a safety school. In many cases, the essays may not have shown an enthusiasm for the particular school. In our case, my son did not really have a dream school so probably went too broad with his applications and we worked through the process more slowly after applications went out. He decided upon UVA and I am thrilled with his decision. But he did get rejected by a safety school who deferred his EA decision and my son did not send any followup. I had to encourage him to quickly deny admissions and waitlist spots in schools no longer of interest so spots could be opened. The end result is that the perception that admission decisions are becoming much harder to predict - at least among his classmates.
@cu123 You make a good point about not knowing if there are any screw ups on the rest of the application. I would doubt it in the case of this particular student, but I did hear a story two years about a perfect stats kid getting rejected from a parent’s alma mater where they were huge donors. The parent called admission and complain up a storm. It turned out that for the common app essay, the kid wrote something to the effect of, “My accomplishment speak for themselves”. Period. Nothing else. Our admin used that as en example to remind the volunteer alumni interviewers that we also were not seeing the whole picture and to never promise outcomes.
I do think think think it matters that kids “hold down” a spot and merit money. Not everyone can decline offers as they come in. My daughter only rejected two schools out of hand, and we insisted that she only contact the one that was her true safety - a much lesser program In her major. She was leaning strongly towards two schools, but only one of those was affordable for us, so we left the other options on the table for her to consider until the last week of April. So yes, I felt that she was “holding down” spots. I know they draw from waiting lists - but I think of the kid whose top choice was Clemson or RPI, and I feel bad that they didn’t get merit aid because there was a layer of higher-stat apps above them, many of whom would not really commit. And the kids who got in off the waitlist - I’m sure it ends up a happy thing, but it just stinks that they didn’t get i off the bat. If Our KIDS have stars In Their eyes over some prestige schools, so do admissions officers. If I worked admissions, I’d take a look at the stats of our accepted class from last cycle and thjnk really hard about taking too many “reach” kids - and I mean, reach for the school. My friends so is a great example. NMF, second highest GPA /600 (they don’t do salutatorian)…applied OOS to GT and got rejected; a kid from his school who was considerably below him statistically with no obvious hooks got in. He wasn’t applying for FA. They assumed GT said “safety” and didn’t bother. He got into Purdue and Merit money at RPI, but ended up taking a meet scholar special from OU. He is a very linear thinker shall we say, and he decided that getting PAID to go to college was a pretty good deal. He didn’t care about prestige except for the fact that he was “saving” MIT for graduate school, but for the program, not the ranking. His Mom and I were a little wounded because these were our smart boys, we just sort of pictured them at more selective colleges. But we got over ourselves pretty quickly when the next kids applied two years later. Looking $300K in the eye for ONE kid, merit offers from step-down schools and strong state programs start to look pretty smart.
@cu123 You make a good point about not knowing if there are any screw ups on the rest of the application. I would doubt it in the case of this particular student, but I did hear a story two years about a perfect stats kid getting rejected from a parent’s alma mater where they were huge donors. The parent called admission to ■■■■■ up a storm and it turned out that for the common app essay, the kid wrote something to the effect of, “see my accomplishments, they speak for themselves”. Period. Nothing else. Our admin used that as en example to remind to our volunteer alumni interviewers that we also were not seeing the whole picture and to never promise outcomes.
True story: superstar student at D’s MIDDLE SCHOOL was thought a shoe-in to the county’s STEM magnet high school, which is absolutely always ranked near the top of all high schools nationwide. The student really stood out in a sea of GT students at the middle school. When the student was not accepted, students and teachers were openly shocked. Later the student revealed that their essay simply said, I don’t want to attend, please don’t accept me.
They just had felt pressured to apply.
Wise choice on that student’s part. Wise in addition to smart.
I think essays and references also play a big role. I’ve read some of the posts of rejected 4.0 UW/36 ACT/1600 SAT kids and if they acted like their messages, I could see some teacher saying, you know kid is really smart, but not too bright in the whole person test.
My oldest who likes to argue with teachers found out one of his “referencing teachers” just submitted a form letter that basically said “Tommy (name changed to protect the guilty) is a good student who does good work.”
I think that some essays probably come across as 500 words of “See my accomplishments, you would be stupid to reject me.”
Some highly competitive scholarships like Stamps etc do not have “runners up” in the wings if they are not accepted. I talked to admissions this week in person at University of South Carolina and they confirmed that those who don’t accept the Top Scholar designations did indeed deprive other students of scholarships. Trophy hunting is real, and it is a part of the problem.