Buying a lottery ticket: A lesson from CC

Parent Cafe
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<p>"Thirty years ago I was accepted by a top journalism school with NO AP courses. I wasn't the school newspaper editor, just a copy editor. I didn't write a column for a local rag....Today with that resume, I'd make it into a Cal State."</p>

<p>I've had a similar reaction. Then it dawned me that with my passion for learning about opportunities -- a passion that I had back in h.s. as well as now -- if I were a h.s. student now, I would be following lots of advice from boards like CC and I would be doing far more things than I did in h.s. back in the 1960s.</p>

<p>Remember -- lots of the opportunities that students have now simply were not available to us middle aged parents. There were relatively few summer programs, merit scholarships, etc.</p>

<p>When it comes to opportunities for URMs and females, doors were just beginning to open for such things. Heck, when I applied to college, Yale was still single sex, Harvard refused to fill more than 25% of its class with women, and Davidson had just opened its doors to black students. </p>

<p>It still was ok for employers, and medical and law schools to discriminate against women applicants.</p>

<p>Anyway, I have the feeling that if many of us parents who hang out on CC were h.s. students now, we'd compete very well in the slots for the top colleges and top merit aid. :)</p>

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<p>Well, in some ways it's easier than it was 30 years. </p>

<p>The "hyperselectivity" (a cover for admitting wealthier students - my alma mater today has a smaller percentage of students on financial aid than it did 30 years ago) at the "leading" institutions, coupled with their declining success (relative to other institutions) in sending folks on to grad schools, med schools, and law schools has led to a bonanza at the next 50 colleges and universities in line. Their rejects, every bit as academically talented as those they are accepting, say their own admissions officers, are doing great at those 50 other schools, so great in fact, that the quality differences between them are disappearing rapidly. Who would have thought 30 years ago that Hope College would have biology students being published in peer-reviewed journals at a much higher rate than any of the Ivies, or that Kalamazoo College would have higher rates of grad. school entry in the sciences than any Ivy but Princeton, or that Smith would have as many Fulbrights as Yale, which has double the student population. When I was growing up in the northeast, Duke and Georgetown were known as basketball factories, and no one took them particularly seriously (I'm not saying they weren't good, only that the perception in the northeast was that they weren't), Vanderbilt was thought of as a finishing school where they sat on white porches and got drunk on mint juleps, Northwestern a school for midwest preppies who couldn't get in anywhere else, and, in my high school, NYU was the (expensive!) safety school for those who couldn't get into City College, and get a quality education virtually for free. Washington University? Don't make me laugh. And Middlebury??? Guidance counselors at my high school used to threaten students with the thought of being banished to Middlebury, as if it was outer Siberia, if they didn't pick their grades up. Now students - top students -attend all of these institutions with pride!</p>

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<p>The fallacy, of course, in assuming that if your odds are one in twenty at any single school on your list that by applying to twenty you're likely to get into at least one of them, is that the probabilities are all indepdendent, i.e. JHU doesn't recalculate your odds of acceptance just because you've already been denied at Northwestern and Stanford...</p>

<p>And not to beat a dead horse... if there's some sort of "flaw' in the package, i.e. a less than enthusiastic teacher reference, it will work against you in precisely the same way at every single school you apply to.</p>

<p>I can't imagine living through a senior year with 20 applications to go unless I were prepared to become a full time secretary and project manager. My kids were up to their eyeballs with 6-7 well thought out applications-- even just adding the local branch of our not terribly tough to get into state school as a super safety, both financial and otherwise, put them over the top.</p>

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<p>Thank goodness that most (not all) folks in the northeast have a much broader view of the world than they did 30+ years ago.........:)</p>

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<p>But Mini, the information you provide above (which, if I were a HSchooler, would find extremely interesting) is very insightful - but you make it your business (or are in the business to know these things...) -Much of this kind of information does not get filtered down to a large percentage of the HS population applying to schools. Instead, among many of the brightest students and their parents, it seems to have become almost a knee jerk reaction, encouraged by USnews/Princeton Review rankings and yes, sites like CC, to head straight for the top 25 Uni's and LACS and apply like mad. Smaller colleges, like my alma mater, which has always been a very fine LAC and is now (unfortunately) an "it" school, adopted a very aggressive marketing campaign to the point where it makes many us retch and also wonder at the type of students it is now recruiting...</p>

<p>3togo - I don't think my suggestion (knee jerk though it was) suggests collusion or the need to specify choice hierarchy. It simply lists which other schools a student has applied to. Colleges can infer what they want from that list.</p>

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<p>True - but notice that we were as "jaded" about northeast schools as we were about those outside of the northeast - and some of those perceptions were likely matched by the realities. Those schools ARE better today, much of it do to the "hyperselectivity" of the uberscholarae.</p>

<p>Crash - I'm with you. Past a certain point, increased selectivity - caused by overapplication, and coupled with ratings madness - is not a good thing, either for anyone or for any school. Yale gains absolutely nothing by increasing the pool of applicants in the 35-95%tile of family income when they are going to reject 95 out of 100 of them anyway, and the applicants don't get anything either but a bad taste in their mouths. People quickly forget that, even for SATs (no, I won't go on a rant), that, percentilewise, a a score of 1280 is much closer to a 1600 than to a 1000, and there are diminishing differences as scores get higher than that. I mourn when selectivity goes up at schools I really love (like Earlham, Smith, Whitman, Grinnell) when it means that students who would flourish at the school, and truly love the school, and give back to the school, are shut out by students who attend as dejected rejects from the uberscholarae, which, in my judgment, generally offer an inferior product - or at least not one particularly worth a premium.</p>

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<p>"uberscholarae" I love it. Although, it sounds like a disease. Probably with no cure in sight.</p>

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<p>Digmedia, well put. Revoltedmom and texdad, the first thoughts I had of the college application process (and I didn't get involved with CC until son's decision was pretty much made), was that the system is really broken. I have written extensively on another thread long ago about the "sales job" that is done by admissions departments at colleges. Many college admissions reps stood there and told kids about the student that wrote themselves into the school with a winning essay when their stats alone would not have gotten them in. They didn't say that it was a student five years ago that did it. They made it sound possible. So, I sat there and watched kids who didn't stand a showball's chance sit there and drink it in when they should have been told the straight story so that they would focus on schools that were better matches and where they stood a chance. They would have known they were in the one in 20 application group that digmedia talks about instead of the one in 10 qualified group concerneddad talks about. The only kids I know that should consider a top 50 school a safety are those in Texas within the top 10% who are guaranteed admission to UT and can swing the finances. As has been said, to not have a realistic safety you love is definitely playing a very long shot.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
3togo - I don't think my suggestion (knee jerk though it was) suggests collusion or the need to specify choice hierarchy. It simply lists which other schools a student has applied to. Colleges can infer what they want from that list

[/quote]
I would still guess (a big guess; I am not a lawyer) that this causes privacy issues ... the schools should not (can not?) be floating the names of their applicants around ... the application is between the school and the applicant and should be decided on its' merits at the school. If the schools shared info on the attributes of their applicants without using names that probably would work (the common data set). </p>

<p>I read all these suggestions assuming I am the applicant. I do not want the school sharing my info with other schools (it reduces my power in the admission process). I do not want a formula or matching process (this removes the power from me again). I do not want a limited number of applications (it reduces my options). I think the current system has a bunch of warts ... but I haven't heard a better suggestion yet ... and it will probably stay ugly until we get through the boom of applicants.</p>

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<p>Quote from crash: "Students who apply to all six Ivy's for instance are clearly looking less at a good fit (what that school's academic and social culture offers them vis a vis their particular interests and talents) than they are simply attending an Ivy league school."</p>

<p>Crash, you flunked your first cc quiz. There are eight ivies. :)</p>

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<p>If you apply for financial aid, some of the schools may well be right there on the FAFSA. Unlike Collegeboard's with the SAT scores, FAFSA has up to 6 names on the form, and it is available to all 6 colleges listed. So those who apply for financial aid may as well list those schools as they are right there to peruse.</p>

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<p>sokkermom - Ha! Ha! You are right (anmd I went to Harvard for a miserable semester, too, where I was taught by an inept teaching assistant the entire time!) ... Clearly, my personal bias is with smaller LAC's for the BS degree...</p>

<p>And no, etogo, I don't think any stats should be shard...just names of applicants.</p>

<p>Anyway, here's the thread and a sample of one of the many respondents that got me riled....</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=46102%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=46102&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>ACCEPTED: Purdue, Auburn, American, Fordham, George Washington, NYU, Cal State Northridge, San Diego State, Cal Poly SPO, Sacramento State, CSULA, Case Western, Bowdoin College, Williams College, Vanderbilt University, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University</p>

<p>WAIT-LISTED: WUSTL, Carleton, Occidental, Dartmouth College, Carnegie Mellon University</p>

<p>REJECTED: UNC Chapel Hill, Northwestern University, Tufts University, Brown University, Yale University, Claremont-McKenna College</p>

<p>STILL WAITING: Princeton and USC</p>

<p>ATTENDING (definitely): Georgetown (HOYA SAXA!)</p>

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<p>"Revoltedmom" ???? You want to go through life as "Revoltedmom" ?? :)</p>

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<p>I've got a twist on Crash's suggestion -- how about such a registry for everyone that uses the Common App? I'll bet a lot fewer kids would apply to 15 or 20+ colleges if they had to do a separate app for each. I know my own son dropped U.Chicago & Brown from his list because he didn't want to do the extra work for their apps -- it wasn't that he was lazy, he did plenty of extra work for two top college choices that required extra written submissions -- it's just that his interest in Chicago & Brown was more at the level of casual curiousity, not strong enough to justify the extra work in his mind.</p>

<p>If there are issues of collusion, they begin with use of the Common App .... I mean, how much more colluding can there be than a general agreement among colleges to use the same application, with the same essay. Actually, the common app site could merely maintain a registry that discloses the NUMBER of colleges applied to, without even disclosing which particular colleges. So Harvard wouldn't be able to find out whether their applicant had applied to Yale, but they would be able to see whether the applicant had applied to 6 other colleges or to 16. And students who didn't want that sort of info revealed would have to opt out of using the common app..... and colleges could protect themselves by trying to differentiate their apps, including essay topics, and questions asked both of the students and of teachers making recommendations. I'd love to see a college recommendation form that asked some unanticipated or out-of-the-box questions -- one of my son's colleges, a top choice, actually did that, though I admit my son's approach was to simply ask his teachers to write a single letter of recommendation with those particular questions in mind.</p>

<p>The bottom line is that the current system doesn't really require students to give much thought to the process, and except for the potential financial barrier, it is just as easy to apply to 10 colleges as it is to apply to 1. I can see how a student who is dead-set on getting into an Ivy can decide that its worth $600 to apply to all 8..... but then again, there is something very wrong with an any-Ivy-will-do attitude, because it shows that the student has given very little thought to what he actually wants out of college.</p>

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<p>Calmom - I like your thinking and the way you've refined my idea down - because you are right, the common application makes it so easy to "stuff the box' so to speak...but then, another thought popped into my head reading your entry - and that is why would some colleges not want to change the current system? What's in it for them as things currently stand? Particularly in regards to the Ivy's and top LACS and publics - That thousands of applications keeps them in "the most desireable" category? Or is it the funds generated from application which can be sizeable (10,000 apps x $50 = $500,000 in unrestricted funds... but then again, you have to hire more people to wade through all the applications....?
It's a very interesting dilemma - but a sad one, too</p>

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<p>
[quote]
And Middlebury??? Guidance counselors at my high school used to threaten students with the thought of being banished to Middlebury, as if it was outer Siberia, if they didn't pick their grades up.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Ouch, Mini! Thirty years ago, Middlebury turned me down (5/1000, 1490 etc.). I'd like to think they were a little selective at the time.</p>

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<p>Yeah, the problem with odds is if a school takes 1/20 kids there are some kids with 1/2 odds, some with 1/5 or 1/10 odds and lots with ZERO odds.</p>

<p>My idea would be have an absolute cap on the # of schools to which one could send one's standardized test scores. Say, 10 schools max, coordinated between ACT & SAT so it would be a firm cap of 10.</p>

<p>USC and Bowdoin do not belong on the same list!</p>

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<p>Yet another good idea, SB MOM. </p>

<p>Again though, what is/arr the deterrent/s toward fixing the current system - or rather, adjusting it? Or is it simply that "over submission" is a problem that has become acute just in the last few years so people are only now realizing it?</p>

<p>Do college administrators and admissions officers peruse CC/ - If so, I'd love some insights from them.</p>

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<p>"Ouch, Mini! Thirty years ago, Middlebury turned me down (5/1000, 1490 etc.). I'd like to think they were a little selective at the time."</p>

<p>You gotta remember - this was a bunch of New Yorkers. But guess you just weren't mean to be among "The Few, the Proud."</p>

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<p>P.S. To be fair, I don't remember anyone from my high school ever going to Middlebury. Same was true of Princeton (for 25 years!), this in years we )Stuyvesant) sent two dozen to Harvard, and 12-18 to Yale. I was the only one to get into Williams in 4 years, and that was off the waiting list. Some of it was real anti-Semitism; some it likely perceived anti-Semitism, and it's sometimes hard to separate which was which (except in the Princeton case, and Williams before around 1970.)</p>