It really is interesting to see the difference in what gets sent to the accepted students - as well as how long it takes to receive it. My D23 was accepted to 9 schools and received mail from all 9. Some have continued to send mail even after the first piece arrived (I suspect because she hasn’t committed anywhere yet).
And yes, 10.7% was the actual admitted rate this year. I’ve seen that number quoted on multiple sites.
The info is correct, it is written in their congratulating letter addressed to the parents:
“Congratulations! You must be very proud of XXX’s many accomplishments and admission to Boston University. With an admit rate of 10.7%, this has been an extraordinarily competitive year for admission to the University and we are confident that XXX will be a positive addition to our community.”
My D was very surprised and thought it was more around 20%. Anyway, she wanted to decline the offer yesterday because she committed to another school but did not find how to do that on her portal, unlike other institutions where it was easy to find the space where to click. It’s sad because it could help those on the waitlist, but even by googling: “how to decline BU’s offer” she couldn’t find any info. Weird.
I would not worry about it. BU rarely takes people off the waitlist and they overenrolled the past 2 years. Also, I hear schools wait until after May 1st to offer spots to those on a wait list
Some schools make it easy to decline, others don’t.
Congrats on the acceptance and on your daughter committing! D23 received a bunch of acceptances in the past 2 weeks so it feels like we are back to square 1 as the new schools have replaced her top 2 choices that she was accepted as EA. We have 3 school visits in a row next week including BU and Vassar and I fear a decision won’t be made until April 30th!
Let me know what she decides and why. it’s always interesting especialy when our students applied to almost all the same schools. Have fun visiting. D wanted to put all this process behin her: in one month, her IB exams start and she wanted to focus on that now.
Question for the group:
We’re thinking of visiting BU but it may depend on merit aid. Is BU generous with merit aid?
We will not qualify for need based and are full pay. However, BU is more expensive than some other schools that are currently on D24’s lists. It’s not at the top of her list because she doesnt know a lot about them. We do want to explore all her options but not if we’re expected to pay $64k for BU.
She’s a top student and wants to study business (#3 in her class, 4.0 UW, 35 ACT, leadership, varsity sport, internship at Big 4 accouting firm, blah ,blah, blah ).
I wouldn’t say they are generous with merit aid, but they do give some. At some schools almost everyone gets merit, and at some schools there are only one or five people who get merit. BU is neither of those:
https://www.bu.edu/admissions/tuition-aid/scholarships-financial-aid/first-year-merit/
I would not count on getting merit, but it is worth trying for if you really like the school.
BU has changed the merit/need aid mix in recent years with more going to need based grants.
We fall in the donut hole of too much income to qualify for need-based aid but not enough to pay full price. We focused only on schools where merit was a possibility.
To find the number of students who receive merit, you should go to each school’s Common Data Set (which you can find by googling Common Data Set and the college name). There you will find a chart under section “H2A. Financial Aid” which indicates how many students received non-need aid in the year (this was for 2021-2022), and the average amount of their award. This is the one for BU:
I found this information immensely helpful when my daughter was building her list of colleges. In this example, 214 students equals 5.8% of the enrolled full time freshmen who receive non-need based aid.
Despite these low odds, my daughter did apply because she is Hispanic and we saw that BU gives merit to some students who receive the College Board National Hispanic Recognition award based on their PSAT score. We were surprised when she was accepted to see that she not only received $25K for that award, but she also got another $20K from the College of Art in recognition of her portfolio that she submitted. We were also surprised to see that BU would stack awards, so she was offered a total of $45K/year.
This is not the norm however, and your student may not find it worthwhile to apply to a school where less than 6% receive merit aid. That was our decision when considering WashU, given that their CDS shows that only 2% receive merit aid. Keep in mind that this data lags by about a year, and as @TomSrOfBoston says, many schools are moving away from merit and putting more dollars behind need-based aid (which makes college even less affordable for those of us in the donut hole).
My son finally made his decision and went with UMD. He also declined his spot at BU for journalism. Hope that helps someone. Good luck to all of you!
Attended the admitted student day this past weekend and D really liked it. Her only reservation about committing is that she sort of felt like the COM school is more geared towards PR/marketing and Journalism and not so much in Film (she would be a Film and Television) major. The other school she is considering is a conservatory style film program - so very different.
She prefers BU’s location, size and academic rigor but is wondering if she will have faculty and classmates who are as passionate about film as she is.
Anyone have more insight into their Film program- i know it highly ranked.
We didn’t qualify for any aid either and we were really hoping for some merit. My D23 was accepted but she didn’t get a dime. Her stats were 4.0 UW, 4.8 W, 34 ACT, strong ECs with leadership, yada yada.
My D23 applied to BU’s Comm program but also applied to schools that offered marketing as a major/concentration in their business school. She was accepted to a several that are more affordable and/or generous with merit compared to BU’s 80k+.
Good luck to your daughter next year!
Does anyone have any info about their waitlist, specifically to sargent?
No and keep in mind that last year they took 3 people off, and the year before they took 1 person off. They sent a letter out before admissions were released including the following statement – we have been significantly overenrolled for each of the past two years, it was absolutely critical for us to plan for yet another increase in yield. As a result, we had no choice but to significantly decrease the number of students to whom we offered admission
