I think you misunderstand how it works. @asij2018, it doesn’t matter if your son declined quickly or slowly. No one else was going to get his spot (or his merit money) before May 1. Students should take their time, and in my opinion keep their options open until close to May 1. There is no penalty to them or to other applicants to do so. Schools aren’t accepting and giving merit to your kid, then turning around and offering it to the next kid in line immediately if your kid says no.
Just going back to the original question - no… of my friends with seniors (maybe 15-20?), all of the kids got in somewhere. Not necessarily their top choices, of course. I’m in CA so I think our picture looks a little different than East Coast (e.g., kid disappointed to not get into UCB but did get into UCI, or another kid who didn’t get into UCSB but did get into Cal Poly, that kind of thing).
Here’s a U of M (Go Blue!) admissions story re: my niece. Her father (my brother) did his residency there and both my parents went to grad school there in the late 1960s – so good strong roots.
Anyway, about eight years ago she applied engineering OOS and didn’t hear back. She called and they said they never received application. Resubmitted. Still no word so checked in and there was another snafu re: her transcript. Fixed that. Finally, much later, they notify her she’d been accepted BUT in the meantime she had accepted big scholarship and Honors Engineering at Purdue. (She’s a super smart cookie.)
Prolly would have got to Michigan but once all the mess ups happened she just wasn’t feeling it. Also gotta figure with something like that maybe it was in the stars not to attend. . . .
Loved Purdue though ended up kinda hating engineering (but she finished it) and taking a lot of Chinese classes and moved there for grad school in computer science. Go figure.
I think you’re overestimating the importance of numerical stats and assuming they’d admit an applicant with “perfect” stats unless there was some glaring defect in the application. But that’s not what they say they do, and I’d be inclined to take them at their word—after all, they have no reason to lie about it.
Michigan’s CDS is pretty clear about what they’re looking for: “very important” are rigor of secondary school record and academic GPA. 'Important" are test scores, essays, recommendations, character/personal qualities, and first generation. Note that’s a lot of factors that are of equal importance to test scores. “Considered” are ECs, talent/ability, alumni/ae relation (i.e., legacy), geographical residence, state residency, volunteer work, work experience, and level of applicant’s interest. “Not considered” are class rank, interview (except for some schools/colleges within the university), religious affiliation, and race/ethnicity (at one time they considered this but are now barred by state law from doing so). And the evaluation is a holistic one, as their admissions website clearly indicates:
So what does this tell us? Well, first, a perfect test score is not as important as rigor and academic GPA. And perfect test scores coupled with a perfect academic GPA in a rigorous HS curriculum. are no guarantee of admission, because in this holistic multi-factor balancing they could easily be outweighed by other factors even absent a glaring defect. The admissions officers might be unimpressed by the essays or recommendations which count just as heavily as the test scores… They might not like applicants who come across as too brash or cocky, or who seem to be cookie-cutter replicas of 1,000 other students with similar stats and similar backgrounds and similar interests that they’ve already admitted… They may pass over some high-stats OOS applicants because their in-state/OOS ratio is becoming unbalanced (note that they get roughly five times as many OOS as in-state applicants, but they’re trying at this point to maintain at least a 50% in-state entering class). OOS legacies and first-gens also get a boost over OOS students without those hooks, and they value geographic diversity, too. Also keep in mind that they have specific enrollment targets for each school/college within the university, so if, for example, they’ve got far too many highly qualified applicants for the engineering school, they may end up turning down or waitlisting some extremely well qualified OOS applicants for engineering.while admitting some slightly lower-stats students to other schools and colleges.
Also at the end of the say I’m not convinced they care that much about fine distinction between, say, a 3.9 and a 4.0 UW GPA, or a 34 or a 36 ACT. In the eyes of some, “perfect”: may be better than “merely outstanding,” but I tend to doubt that a school like Michigan gives you bonus points for being “perfect” as opposed to merely outstanding. They’ve never said so, and it’s hard to see what purpose would be served if they did
@coolguy40 Not only would Vanderbilt be a great option financially for a $65k/yr income family, it’s likely Michigan would too, as it is meets full need for that income level, with some strings.
Vandy wouldn’t even include loans.
@sushiritto problem is that there is always an exception or someone who had close to perfect stats that you can show me, but when most of the top privates are flat out rejecting more than half of their perfect stat applicants and then you show one applicant who has (kind of) but not quite perfect stats being waitlisted we’re not in the same universe. If you want merit admissions go to the public universities, on the EXTREMLEY unlikely chance you don’t get admitted (with perfect or even near perfect stats) to one you’ll get admitted to another of equal rank.
That has never happened in our school. 100% of the kids go to college. 30-40% are accepted in the early round to Ivies/MIT/Stanford/UChicago. 10-15% admitted to the same ones RD, and 40-45% go to pretty awesome colleges (UMichigan, NYU, Georgetown, Tulane. Emory, GT, Wake Forrest, Case Western, Boston College, Tufts, UF)
That situation is definitely the college counselors’ fault.
@“Cariño” I live in a really high achieving part of Northern VA and I can tell you that aside from our magnet public h.s., not a single high school has a 100% accept rate with a distribution like the one you have mentioned. My son has a bunch of classmates with 4.4s and 1500+ SATs who were outright denied or waitlisted to UVA. Our school had numerous kids “over reach” without admission to state flagships or top universities this year. They are high stats, high achieving kids. It wasn’t necessarily the GC’s fault (but the whole concept of having one offer any assistance is laughable in my public school network).
Small elite private schools have such numbers, No public HS would have those numbers.
It is a private prep school. Top 20 in the country.
Believe it or not.
Our ACT avg is 32! Crazy!!
You think there’s just one? Talk to the hand. =;
Whatever, your rants against public schools (“there’s a crisis”) are becoming infamous on CC. Again, one trick pony. I’m not doing all the research for you. I found one quickly. The public school decision threads have a plethora of high stat students being denied admission.
@AlmostThere2018 My kids would have been fourth generation legacies at Michigan – both parents, uncle on one side and aunt on the other, 2 grandparents, and one great grandparent. One of my kids applied and got nothing but a courtesy waitlist. Her stats were a little light (around the 50% mark at the time). We were OOS, so I suppose that might have been a factor. Anyway, just saying, I know in your example the kid got in, but “good strong roots” aren’t necessarily that much of a help at Michigan.
@Carino,
USC does not offer a “full ride”.
The most they offer is full tuition +$5000 stipend [ Mork]
Most of the tip top kids at Menlo also are accepted at multiple colleges.
My DS was accepted at 13 top 20 colleges, including 4 Ivys, but enrolled at USC with a full tuition scholarship.
the 20% figure I posted also referred to the number of Menlo students who enrolled at the Ivy, etc, etc colleges you first quoted, not acceptances.
@BrianBoiler Everything is possible, but given that a) UMich was one of the first schools to which he applied (so it’s likely that UMich essays would be recycled later, not the other way around) and b) I and at least one another person saw the essays, a mistake like that highly unlikely. As far as the references, I believe in our school the teachers write a generic reference letter which is not college specific. I believe so because one of the reference writers volunteered to do a special letter for one of the schools, since she has a relationship with the admission office there (she’s been teaching high school for approximately forever).
I think you underestimate the first gen/low income hook that’s independent of the race. My kid goes to a very high achieving school (average math SAT is 750, verbal - 710) where about half of the kids get free lunches, but there are very few URMs. The school is majority Asian with a good sprinkling of white ethnic, many non-US born students too. You can see a very clear pattern in admissions results.
Agree with @2more2go. Colleges report the numbers/percentages of first generation college students, and I believe it’s a growing factor in admissions decisions. There’s been a lot of negative media attention about colleges accepting a large percentage of students with high incomes, and colleges have responded by making a push for first gen students, who often don’t have as high of stats students from families who are better off. I do think that’s one of the reasons we hear of some kids with very high stats who are getting turned down in surprising numbers this year, rather than any inherent flaws in their applications.
@TTdd16 I just want to make clear that for the first gen and low income students that I know the stats (GPAs & test scores) are very impressive as well. Where they may lack is in the ECs - sometimes because they have other demands on their time and sometimes because there is no one to put some polish and the right spin on their achievements. I was in that situation 20+ years ago, and I can tell you that the landscape has definitely changed. Impressive stats + a 25 hrs a week job at the local pizzeria would elicit only a yawn from college admission offices. Now it seems that it will put you at least on par with someone who has the same stats + some EC awards and might even give a leg up.
@sushiritto I like how you’ve changed the vernacular from “perfect stat kids” to “high stat kids”. Feel free to defend your alma mater all you want.
@CU123 Perfect stat, high stat, is essentially the same thing to me. 35 vs 36? 3.98 vs. 4.0? Six of one, half dozen of the other, especially for those schools that do holistic admissions. Once a student hits the top stratosphere, then it’s about the rest of the app.
As for alma mater, bad assumption. Not one of the schools being discussed on these threads is my alma mater. I just think it’s NOT cool to “grind an axe” over and over on several threads, when the subject of public schools is brought up.
You’ve made your point, public schools are in crisis. They’re not.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
May I remind users that the name of the website is College Confidential. There is no reason a user should be asked what HS s/he or his/her kid attends nor is s/he obligated to answer when asked. And to keep it up for 10 posts?!? 
10 posts deleted.