Classof 2015: Waitlisted!

Parents Forum
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<p>Allow me to try and elaborate with a different analogy: Colleges practice “yield management,” just like airlines do. Airlines want to fill every available seat and also get the most money they can from each passenger. They use mathematical models to try to optimize that yield, using historical data from previous passengers.</p>

<p>A college also wishes to fill every “seat” with the highest-stat kids available, while staying within its financial aid budget – while they may indeed accept full-pay students with slightly lower stats, they try to maximize the best stats from each group, full-pay and scholarship grant candidates. </p>

<p>Scholarship grant candidates, ideally, help the college fulfill multiple goals: there are plenty of poor students in this country, so priority will be given to 1. URMs; 2. athletes the school needs; 3. first-generation college students; 4. females in engineering (still very underrepresented) and finally 5. those with killer academic stats or significant awards or significant community service involvement. So your ideal “free ride” candidate will be a black first-generation-of-college female going into engineering who developed some significant inner-city community service project. As long as her academic stats hit close to the bottom 25% threshold of the class, this candidate will likely be accepted everywhere she applies.</p>

<p>The least desirable “free ride” candidate will be a poor white or Asian male with parents who went to college, who is interested in engineering, who had minimal community service involvement (perhaps because he had to work to help support the family) and whose academic stats only hit the mid-point of the incoming class. Poor whites or Asians with near-perfect academic stats will probably get into a top-25 school, but almost certainly not HYPSM, where the typical academic stats are so close to perfect that these candidates add little the school can’t already get from full-pay/half-pay families.</p>

<p>Yield management, however, is based on a mathematical model that uses historical data to make decisions. I think most of us have been stuck at airports or perhaps been offered money to be willingly bumped, because some unexpected factor caused the yield management results to go haywire.</p>

<p>By the same token, college yield management very likely assumes a certain growth rate in the number of applications per student. From an individual college’s standpoint, each HYPSM college might expect its percentage yield to fall slightly while colleges near the bottom of the top 25 or top 50 might actually see their yields rise for a few years since those that used to accept admission to higher-ranked schools find they can no longer get in to those colleges as acceptance rates plunge. Quite a few colleges this year have actually reduced the number of initial acceptances, implying that they expect higher, rather than lower yields.</p>

<p>However, as word continues to get out on how bad acceptance rates get, each new cohort of students increase their number of applications at an exponential growth rate. At the same time, the total number of different student applicants continues to fall. This creates a long-term potential air pocket. In the short run, however, let’s merely consider that the average student applying to a range of top competitive schools applied to 8 schools rather than 6 (a 33% increase). The chance of acceptance has dropped 10-12% due to tougher admissions standards, yet that will still leave the average competitive student with 20% more acceptances – not necessarily their top choices, but selective colleges none the less.</p>

<p>The system is not prepared for an overall decline of 20% in acceptance yields, which will be much higher for some schools. There could be a huge rush to admit the waitlist candidates, which will open up spots at other colleges, who will also be scrambling to take students off their own waitlists.</p>

<p>Since the number of students on the waitlist is much smaller than the number on the accepted list, and since colleges wish to fill every open seat, it is quite possible that this year (or next year or the year after), colleges will discover that their own yield management software went haywire and that they will have to accept one-third or more of the candidates who choose to remain on their waitlists.</p>

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<p>what a great explanation! Wow.</p>

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<p>LoremIpsum,</p>

<p>On what basis can you make these assertions, considering that HYPSM and most of the Top 20 schools practice need blind admissions? They would need to know the applicants financial status in order to engage in these practices. Are you implying that they are not truthful?</p>

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<p>Great analysis LoremIpsum! </p>

<p>Child #4 had the best stats/package of all 4 of mine and ended up on 3 waiting/alternate lists! I cannot even imagine 8! Yikes! This thread really put it all into perspective for me. Many thanks. Good luck to all WAITLISTED applicants!</p>

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<p>Applications are first read by your area representative. They know the schools – or the areas in which the schools reside with “new” schools – and know the area’s demographics. It also becomes pretty clear looking at an activities list and usually the essay what a person’s socioeconomic bracket a kid is in. Finally, there’s Mom and Dad’s job: when she writes physician and he writes VP of a Fortune 500 company, you know these folks will be full-pay.</p>

<p>You can also look at this backwards: the full-pay parents will almost always have their kids enrolled in expensive well-known feeder schools.</p>

<p>The specifics of who among the poor gets prioritized is from one or more studies; one of the recent threads here linked to them.</p>

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<p>^With no supporting evidence, it seems to me a stretch to assert that adcoms are making an organized effort to use subterfuge and demographic backdoors to get around commitments made to need-blind admissions (mandated by their Board of Directors). You do not suppose this practice, theorized to be practiced across all of the most elite learning institutions in this country, would pose a moral dilemma for at least one of the hundreds of adcom members?:</p>

<p>A moral dilemma as they are asked to cross-reference the address of each application to this “money map” as a determinative factor in their admissions decision? </p>

<p>A moral dilemma as they are asked to assess and prioritize applicants based on the job titles of parents to determine likely family income? </p>

<p>A moral dilemma as they asked to examine a high school students EC’s with an eye towards what this says about their family income instead of what it says about the character, passion of the applicant?</p>

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<p>Well, first of all, not all top colleges are need-blind, many are only need-aware. Second, most colleges already do this with international applicants. Third, most adcoms who look at thousands of applications can get a pretty good sense of an applicant’s general economic situation without making an overt effort.</p>

<p>These people are aware that their endowment funds have taken massive hits in recent years. When it comes down to splitting hairs between an overabundance of qualified applicants, you really don’t think that subconsciously they will slightly favor the one that is more likely to attend because finances are not a pressing matter?</p>

<p>Finally, the ECs, if not the academic stats, will always favor the student whose family or school had the resources and/or connections to pay for special coaches and test prep experts and to arrange for impressive internships, co-authored research papers and the like. A holistic approach that emphasizes such ECs over perfect academic stats always favors those with access to greater resources.</p>

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<p>^Well, if you are revising your premise from a deliberate yield management practice that disadvantages poor whites and Asians, to instead some subconscious bias against poor non-urms that permeates adcoms in order to protect their FA dollars, you will make it harder to refute. I have no window into adcom subconscious, nor do I have any insights into the endowment pressures on individual adcom members (if there are any) that would manifest in such a bias. It still seems speculative no?</p>

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<p>Here are the results of one study:</p>

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<p>[How</a> Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others](<a href=“http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html]How”>http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html)</p>

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<p>^This is an opinion piece that references some research. The Espenshade and Radford research sited in this article specifically excludes wealthy institutions - like HYPSM - and would therefore also exclude the other well endowed (lol to myself) Top Tier, need-blind institutions including Northwestern, Duke, mid-lower Ivies, etc, etc. This article, and the research cited, may give support to some your premise, but does not seem to support your statement: </p>

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<p>And infact, the reasearch seems to me to suggest almost the opposite. Poor whites or Asians probably are more likely to receive a positive admissions outcome from wealthy institutions such as HYPSM and the other wealty need-blind Top Tier schools, and less likely to receive positive admission outcomes for the rest of the private eites that are need aware.</p>

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<p>Our GC contacted Brandeis for us and got some very helpful information. We now know our D’s exact admissions rep and her e-mail address. D is encouraged to submit not only her statement of interest, but also any pertinent new information since she made her application. </p>

<p>They do not promise to release any waitlist results before May 1, so she is absolutely planning on committing to another school by then, and she is working very sincerely at making a good choice among her current acceptances.</p>

<p>Now my D has really good information, including the waitlist acceptance stats for Brandeis for the past few years, to make her decision on putting in her waitlist supplement. It is her choice.</p>

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<p>Whites and Asians with perfect scores are almost universally being declined admission to HYPSM, regardless of income. I know because my son is one of them: 36.0 ACT, 240 PSAT, dual 800 SAT IIs, 1/400 class rank and “best student of my career” letters of recommendation. Rejected at MIT, Yale and Princeton. He was far from the only one.</p>

<p>Of course whites and Asians with those stats were admitted to HYPSM (yes we’re quite satisfied). However, they all had something extra in the EC area that one rarely got unless one is well-off enough to attend an elite feeder school. With special coaching, special planning (beginning in 6th or 7th grade) and special connections, one brilliant kid can compete in a multi-state or national competition or co-author a research paper, while the next one, equally brilliant, looks around sophomore or junior year when he starts considering college and discovers it’s too late to seek out such opportunities to “prove one’s self.”</p>

<p>In my son’s case, he was accepted at Brown, Amherst, Williams and Northwestern. Silverturtle was rejected at several of the HYPSM but got into Brown, Columbia, U of C and probably a few others. There are plenty others with perfect or virtually-perfect scores who are in the same boat: go through the Yale and MIT acceptance threads, look at the stats, the ethnicity and the list of schools where they did get in (or got rejected from), you’ll see it’s a trend, not a rare exception.</p>

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<p>^ You quoted my statement out of context, leaving out the relevant comparison. I simply said that the research, referenced by you, indicated (and contrary to your point) that non-urm low income applicants are more likely to receive positive admission outcomes from wealthy institutions such as HYPSM (and other wealthy need-blind institutions) than they are likely to receive positive admission outcomes at less wealthy private need-aware universities/colleges. </p>

<p>I am not sure that anecdotal evidence based on your son’s unsuccessful admission decisions, with perfect stats, from HYPSM should be considered convincing support. Looking through the far from random samples of CC results threads are also not terribly illuminating. All I was looking for was support for your premise that the need-blind admissions process at HYPSM (and other wealthy need-blind institutions) is not really need-blind.</p>

<p>I have also seen convincing arguments concerning the cost of presenting a “special” application to HYPSM. It was my impression that this was of concern to many elite adcoms and that the impressiveness of summer programs at universities or traveling to africa to feed starving children are now being judged more reasonably compared to working full-time summers. This is the stuff of speculation though, and difficult to resolve.</p>

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Not sure it matters, but I think Silverturtle is an URM.</p>

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<p>Note to parents of waitlisted kids – BE SURE to deposit at a school by May 1st. You can wait til April 29th or 30th to deposit in case a WL school starts moving early (this happened to a friend of ours four years ago). Noone knows how waitlists will pan out, and you don’t want your kid closed out of the acceptances that are already in hand. Yes, you may lose a deposit if your kid gets off a waitlist. I know of one student who lost two deposits. </p>

<p>If your S/D chooses to remain on a waitlist, enlist the GC. Send an update. Then let it go.</p>

<p>Most importantly, encourage your student to focus on loving where she’s been accepted. Do not make plans around getting into a waitlist.</p>

<p>S1 had one waitlist, S2 had two – both took them as a “no” and moved on. </p>

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<p>Ya know, I hesitate to add to the pain parents feel right now when the admissions process didn’t go the way they or their kids hoped, but not even the vaunted science superstars or 2400 SAT URMs get into everywhere they apply. And it’s okay.</p>

<p>I have one of those mega-stat kids who won several of those big national awards. He didn’t get into Harvard or Cornell, and Caltech waitlisted him. He wasn’t coached, he went to a public school (though one with an amazing program) and he ■■■■■■■ on the web to find profs to ask about studying with them. Cost: public transit from HS to flagship, a few college textbooks, internet access. Most of what S did was self-taught and self-motivated. I will admit that living in a major metro area helped.</p>

<p>When the goal is admission to a specific set of colleges, anything less is viewed as failure. When the goal is stretching oneself and learning, there are any number of opportunities that can fulfill that desire.</p>

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<p>We have an interesting double-filter system in place that effectively excludes the vast majority of poor and lower-middle-class whites and Asians from getting into HYPSM:</p>

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<li><p>Raise the acceptance bar so high that perfect stats aren’t enough, one has to also have spectacular ECs that only those with money and connections can afford.</p></li>
<li><p>Significantly lower that bar for URMs, many of whom are likely to be from poor and middle-class families.</p></li>
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<p>End result: So-called need blind admissions that manage to carefully exclude perhaps half the population. As far as I am concerned, if you set up a system that excludes half the population, you do not have a truly need-blind system, you only have a rigged game, sort of like in politics where you never get a real choice, just the illusion of one.</p>

<p>The initial bar for the next 20 colleges just “below” HYPSM, at the 9-18% acceptance rate, is still manageable for the moment, but is being inched higher every year. </p>

<p>Please understand that I am truly grateful for being in a position where multiple top colleges are willing to provide my son a world-class education at 90-95% off list price. But at the same time, I can see that the system is hardly the pure meritocracy that it’s always been made out to be.</p>

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<p>He’s supposedly one-quarter Hispanic. I read somewhere on CC that he didn’t mention this fact.</p>

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I feel a little weird discussing this whole issue, especially pertaining to one kid’s application. So I’ll bow out by saying that “supposedly” is sort of a bizarre abverb to use in this context. </p>

<p>Every time he lists his stats on here he puts 1/4 hispanic. I have no idea whether he put it on his applications or not, but I’m fairly certain he knows his own geneology.</p>

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<p>Of course he does. I said “supposedly” because I saw someone else’s post about what Silverturtle had said, which may or may not have been correct.</p>

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You wrote he’s “supposedly” 1/4 hispanic. Not that he “supposedly” didn’t list it.
Okay, yeah, I’m being AR. :slight_smile: I know this isn’t the SAT Writing Section.</p>

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<p>“So-called need blind admissions that manage to carefully exclude perhaps half the population.”</p>

<p>Need-blind refers to financial exclusion; you’re describing other reasons for exclusion.</p>

<p>“I can see that the system is hardly the pure meritocracy that it’s always been made out to be.”</p>

<p>I suspect few believe it’s a meritocracy.</p>