<p>Not what I’ve heard from a Brown admissions person. Did s/he outright lie? Here’s the context: An interviewer asked whether it helps to say in an interview write-up that an applicant’s first choice is another school. The Brown admissions person said they totally disregard that info – because they cannot predict who will be accepted at another school and the chances that they will be denied are higher than 80%. </p>
<p>I agree that what Redroses says might be the case at exclusive private schools, where the HS counselor has a direct line to the college admissions rep. At most high schools, I doubt it.</p>
<p>Vinceh’s analysis makes sense to me. Given the vast ocean of applicants – 20,000, 30,000 kids – I think the legacy kids we’re talking about are a just a drop in the bucket, not statistically significant enough to dramatically affect yield and result in admissions policy.</p>
<p>The private high school is certainly where I faced this most often. But I also worked at an inner city school where adcom wanted to know which of my top URM students they would yield and I’ve worked at a top W. Coast public where there were many negotiations as well.</p>
<p>" My job was to know adcom, to regularly talk to them about our candidates and to land my charges in the best possible place. It was a negotiation, I told adcom who they would yield and if I didn’t keep my word, they held it against me and the school."</p>
<p>Well, maybe you shouldn’t have presumed to speak for the student and his/her family. Who are you to tell an adcom what a student will and won’t do? It’s not your kid or your money. I would resent a GC speaking for my kid in that fashion unless i / my kid authorized it. If my kid wants to signal “I love you and I’ll come,” well, that’s what ED is for.</p>
<p>I don’t mean this meanly at all, but how can you speak for them like that?</p>
One of the things parents are paying for at these schools is their track record at getting kids into the best, most elite schools.</p>
<p>Of course the GC is not deciding which school the student will attend. They have met multiple times with the student and family, and have been told school A is the first choice, school B is second, etc, and then GC goes to work using their network. It’s a win/win - schools get their yield up, GC’s get the kids an edge, everyone is happy.</p>
<p>So basically, one of Redrose’s top kids would get the green light at say Dartmouth RD, because there is a back room pledge to attend, but that same kid would not be admitted to Penn, Columbia, Brown, let alone HYPSM (or maybe yes H as he’s a legacy?) because all the others knew they weren’t first choice? That certainly isn’t the way it happens for most kids at that level who tend to be admitted to multiple rival schools without having to declare their preference ahead of time.</p>
<p>Really though, as has been pointed out, if a school has under a 50% yield, it expects to lose half of it’s admits so it can’t be worried about the likelihood of each individual kid to attend. So maybe some GCs are negotiating like that but it has to be few. I honestly don’t think I’d want my kids at a school like that as I can envision situations where it would actually hurt. If colleges come to expect a commitment from the student beforehand, they’ll never let anyone in from the school who doesn’t give one.</p>
<p>And I think the Williams/Amherst cross admits are a great example, you can’t get more competitive than that.</p>
<p>Amherst would love to “steal” one back Mythmom.</p>
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<p>Sally, I’m not sure if this is the same person you are talking about, but from what I’ve heard, there is a married couple that one is in admissions at Amherst, one in admissions at Williams. Is that considered a mixed marriage? :)</p>
That seems like a conflict that shouldn’t be allowed. They could share information about students - “you accept Tommy, we’ll accept Suzie” type of thing.</p>
<p>I know many counselors and they do what I did at different levels depending mostly on the number of students they are assigned. At many top private high schools, a college counselor has maybe 30 students they are working with. At publics and parochial schools it can be hundreds.</p>
<p>As sylvan commented above, the job involves finding out what the student wants and advocating for them. That is what you’re paid for. That is a key thing that draws families to a school.</p>
<p>Are colleges worried about yielding a single student? It’s a little more complex. Harvard knows they’ll take about 8 from Exeter as a hypothetical
case. A counselor will help them sort out which 8. If Tommy wants Yale you’re not going to talk him up at harvard. It has worked this way for well
over a century. Years ago it was the head of school that called the
president at ivies to discuss which boys he would be sending. It has evolved into counselors, many of whom have been adcom, doing the
negotiation.</p>
<p>Counselors have different relationships with different schools. Some let them get closer than others. But in the end it’s simple, each wants the best outcome for their organization. I’ve done my job well if I’ve gotten my kids where they want to go. They’ve done well if they’ve gotten great kids and a high yield. Win/win indeed.</p>
<p>Didn’t read all of this, so sorry if someone already made this point, but FWIW:</p>
<p>At the schools I’m most familiar with, from what I understand legacy is considered a tip factor, but mostly if the kid applies ED. Assuming this is correct, if the kid applies RD, there is a good chance that the school is not his first choice, and if admitted to a more appealing option he will go elsewhere.</p>
<p>So if you are an admissions officer at one of the "elsewheres’, and your school seems to be at least as attractive to the kid based on his application as his mom’s alma mater is, there would be no reason to deny the kid based on his elsewhere-legacy. Your chances at yielding him don’t seem more highly diminished in this case versus an unconnected applicant. Actually your chances may be higher. Since he didn’t apply to the other place ED to avail himself of the legacy bump, that school is likely not his first choice. However your school might be.</p>
<p>The Amherst admissions director is a Williams alum, and used to be the Williams admissions director. I’m glad that Williams and Amherst missed the memo on this legacy disadvantage (although there was no chance my kids would have applied to Amherst - I would have killed them first ).</p>
<p>This is a problem that affects how many kids again, in the context of the thousands and thousands of applicants? I am so tired of every CC discussion devolving into the tiny world of HYP!! Let’s see – the same colleges who are reviewing the apps of Questbridge folks and oboe players from Montana and farmers daughters from Nebraska and half of Westchester County are simultaneously deciding how to stick it to a perfectly qualified (and full pay) kid just because her parent went to a similar elite school. What elevated self importance!</p>
<p>If you were a selective college that cared about yield, what might you do to improve it? It seems to me that one of the best possible methods would be to find out, in advance, which highly qualified applicants would actually matriculate if you admit them. How can you do this? Clearly, the best way is to ask them–probably through an intermediary, like the GC. Another way would be to look at “expressed interest,” or to study other clues that might tell you what the students is likely to do, based on your past experience. If you are, say, Bowdoin, you might realize that you rarely get high-scoring applicants whose parents attended Ivies, but that you do better if their parents attended LACs. If yield matters a lot to you, you might take this into account in terms of who you admit.</p>
<p>It seems to me that a lot of the disagreement here stems from doubts about whether adcoms can actually make reasonable predictions about what students will do or what other schools will do. It also seems to me, though, that they may have the experience to make pretty good predictions about these things.</p>
<p>One of the easiest ways to increase yield, would be to admit more students for which the school is a reach. But I think much more than yield, colleges care about the caliber of their admitted class. So I contend that the typical super high-achieving kid from Springfield, U.S.A. or even Greenwich, CT, , whether a top-school legacy or not, will be accepted to multiple selective schools–not to all, because he may not have the particular talent needed at a particular school in a particular admissions cycle, but to several that have no idea where they stand on his list. This is evidenced every April on the acceptance threads on CC where many top students list their results.</p>
<p>And Pizzagirl I agree, this should not be a discussion just about the Ivies, etc. but since most people know those schools and their competitors, they serve as examples for how things work.</p>
Encourage ED (the ultimate declaration of love) and / or ED II.<br>
“Reward” ED and / or ED II with noticeably higher acceptance rates.
Measure demonstrated interest (visits, web site visits, chats with reps in the area, etc.)
Look at the “Why College X” essay in detail to really understand whether the love is true or just boilerplate.</p>
<p>Trying to ascertain that someone doesn’t love you by guessing that they <em>might</em> love someone else – on the basis of nothing else other than a parent went elsewhere – just seems so very roundabout. </p>
<p>Who said that all kids are drawn to where their parents went to school? I have twins, one applying ED to legacy school – and the other wouldn’t touch the school with a 10 foot pole. (Nothing against it, just not right for her.)</p>
<p>See , that’s the point I was making, if you "feel the love’ for alma mater, you are likely applying ED there to max chances of getting in. If instead you are appying RD then it is not #1 or you need to compare $$. Either way, it’s not at all obvious you are heading off to alma mater at that point.</p>
<p>Actually by this reasoning, if being a legacy hurts anyplace, it should hurt at the legacy school, when RD’ing there, rather than at the rivals.</p>
).</p>