So, with college acceptances for RD beginning to come out, I’ve noticed that my class is exponentially more competitive than our previous class and every single other class that came at our school before - it’s not even close. We’ve already admitted 14 kids to Georgia Tech EA (probably more RD too) whereas last year only 2 kids were admitted EA and RD. We also have 3 kids already in Ivies (Penn and Dartmouth x2) as well as 1 to MIT whereas last class had 0 to the Ivies or equivalent, and we still have RD to go.
My question is what in the world happened? Did our school get pushed up the ranks? I mean, that kind of increase is insane. Our last years Val is going to UGA, while our Val this year is going to MIT.
Most likely a simple reversion to a statistical mean. Too few over the past few years for the quality of your school and kids.
Offset by a bumper crop this one year. It then looks about right over a longer sample.
And it can be a random super talented class this year. It’s only 10 or 20 students out of hundreds or thousands coming out of your school over the past decade.
There are too many schools involved to be about a change in their application reads. Especially considering the unique individual school goals, all converging around a change in school status.
But it could be about something at your school.
Do you have any new counselors at your school in the past few years. New principal?
A new program to help with applications?
Did the English teachers jump in to help you work on essays. Or any new super talented writing teacher assigned to your class?
Was there a new science teacher or headmaster/dean that started with your class?
It seems to be an uptick in prestigious stem oriented schools.
Also was there any unique club or program started by many of you. Say a successful anti texting and driving campaign or some app you all worked on together ?
@privatebanker yes, indeed. one of our family’s favorite series, “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.” That’s Sunny Baudelaire, the cutest little human next to my not so little humans ; )
@privatebanker We have 6 counselors, and 5 of them have been constant. We did bring in a new one from the highest ranking school in our county (sends numerous kids to Ivies, Oxbridge, etc. each year). She’s not the head of the counseling department (should be, not up to me though), but I’m sure she’s had some impact. Still, she’s new this year only, so I don’t think she made that much of a difference for our class.
That’s the only thing I can think of really. I didn’t know how much more competitive our class was, and it kind of shocked me.
USNWR changed the methodology they used for their most recent guidebook. It is possible colleges are somehow reacting to that by casting a wider net.
We often hear of students and posters on these boards feeling that their school somehow gets overlooked. Whatever the reason, it is nice to hear the OP’s story and think that - despite the fact that there are more schools than seats in the T20 or so - “getting overlooked” isn’t necessarily a permanent situation.
Perhaps you just have a particularly accomplished class? Perhaps the new guidance counselor shared some helpful tips with the other guidance counselors? The fact is you will never know so don’t spend too much time and energy thinking about it.
I think many schools have been experiencing the same thing. For example, my school typically sends about 10 people to T20s and the rest either go to CSUs, Community College, or end up on the streets. This year, we have around 30 people going to T20s after the ED/EA round. That number will more than likely increase after RDs come back.
@GoBears2023 The number of spots hasn’t changed. So there can’t be a wave of extra seats going around.
Structurally. The only universal thing I can think of is if the extra students in these two schools mentioned here, perhaps have a higher number of Pell Grant level applicants.
If so, then USNWR accomplished in one year what it took a hundred years to accomplish. If so, good for them.