" He applied to the school he ended up applying to last because he wanted to spend spring break having fun with their optional essay. "
What school would he be applying to over Spring break? That seems awfully late in the process?
Thanks for the suggestions. We have 9 schools on the list. Probably will add 3-4 more. But thinking about EA is probably a good idea. We need to discuss that aspect. We have started to discuss some easy ideas. Trying to see if she can get a hook going. She is 2nd gen, but not far removed from immigrant status in the family.
The odd thing was she took an extra AP junior year. It hurt the overall GPA, but paid off on the ACT.
“I guess what I was trying to get across was that obsessing about 1-2% points if a school is in the 5-10% range for acceptance is not worth worrying about. If a school is highly selective who cares if its rate is 5.5% or 8.9%. Either one is a crapshoot.”
It really isn’t that much of a crapshoot.
Pay enough attention and you can get pretty good at figuring out where your kid is going to get in. For my three kids (so probably about 30 apps total) I probably was wrong on only 2 or 3 apps total. But paying attention is more than just eyeballing the admit percentage or the average ranges. Since the average is just a blended average for all kids.
Is your kid applying early? Are your kid’s stats 50% level? Or 75%? Or 75%+? Or a legacy? URM? Recruited athlete? In-state or OOS? Did you express interest by visiting campus?
Once you adjust for your kid’s profile, you could easily have a 20% admit school that is basically a safety. Or a school where your kid’s odds are a tiny fraction of the overall admit rate.
Paying attention really helps build the app list and the app strategy on early/regular. The typical/generic reach/match/safety can be way off if it isn’t tuned to your kid’s situation.
Sorry, I should proofread my post. It was winter break. Deadline was early January.
BTW I agree the difference of 5% vs 10% vs 15% acceptance rate is not worth worrying about.
IMO - if your kid has two safeties - their lists can be as reachy as they like - as long as they are willing to attend the safeties and have their eyes open about the reaches.
FWIW, my kid who got into Harvard was a legacy, so I knew his chances were somewhat better. He also applied the year they announced they were establishing an engineering school and were planning to hire a lot of new faculty. (Then the economy tanked and it didn’t happen, but I’m sure they looked at a CS kid that year and it was more of a plus than it would have been the year before, or the year after.) OTOH the same year, RPI had had an acceptance rate of over 60%, that year Newsweek listed them as a “New Ivy” and the acceptance rate plummeted to something like 40%. He still got in, but you just never know what will happen.
When I look at the difference between 5% and 9% one thing that I see is with 5% after legacies, athletes, first gen goals it leaves very few slots for exceptional but non-hooked kids. With 9% they probably have similar numbers in the athletes and legacies so it leaves a lot more slots (but still not a lot) for other exceptional kids. I also think it has a lot to do with how you think, If you are more a left-brain thinker then the numbers might be something you want to use in your choices, if you’re more of a right brain, then it might not mean as much.
Unless those single-digit selectivity rated schools are expanding their student population, the number of students being admitted each year is relatively consistent while the selectivity changes all the time depending on the number of applications. The supply remains constant but when the demand expands, we naturally think the supply is somehow shrinking when in fact it isn’t. The overall percentage of legacies, recruited athletes, development cases, URM’s, etc. at these low selectivity rated schools has remained relatively constant for the past few decades. I think what has added onto this list of hook in recent years is the FLI, the first-gen, low-income. Even with this added hook, I’m not sure whether the total percentage of hooked admits has really changed. The rest of hooks could have been reshuffled to accommodate the new hook.
The idea of looking at 5% vs. 9% to gauge your admissions chances isn’t going to work. Like I stated earlier, the difference between the low selectivity rated and the higher is simply that the AdComs at the low selectivity schools have more piles of applications to go through.
Even at schools where adcoms admit that 90% of the applicants have the qualifications to be there, acceptance rates are still a crapshoot. I wouldn’t treat any schools with under a 30% acceptance rate as a reasonably sure thing, even with stellar stats. One’s odds might be a bit better at some of them, but definitely not a gimme. Not even all kids who get the tippy top national STEM awards get into all of their choices.
Cast the net widely, make sure the essays AND short answers both tell the story you want to portray and demonstrate genuine interest in that school, and make sure you have more than one safety. There is much to be said for having CHOICES come April vs. having only one acceptance.
If FA is important to you, run the EFC, NPC if applicable, and if you have multiple kids in college at the same time, run multiple FA/family scenarios to make sure you can swing it. If you have your own business, expect that the EFC will be higher than the calculator might indicate. You don’t want to be in the position where a student is accepted at only one school and that school is also unaffordable for your family.
As others have said, admissions tats simply give you an indicator of competitiveness. Doesn’t mean you won’t get in to tippy tops or that you will get in to 25% schools.
What it did for my S was get him interested in several similar schools (because you’re likely not getting in to all of them) in different “admission tiers” . Don’t get your heart set on a particular school, but rather a type of school.
It proved to be a good strategy as he had a favorite and liked many of the peer schools. Didn’t get accepted to his favorite, but did gain admission to several peers so he had great choices and would be happy at any of them. Then it became about the best fit for him (totally subjective).
Interesting to note that he was top everything in HS (academic, athletic, and EC leadership) but did not get in to the most difficult schools (measured by admission results). So no HYP Duke, Vandy etc. He did get in to several of the next tier (20% range). The reason I mention this is, although he had an outstanding HS career, their was nothing “unusual” in his resume. President, captain, mentor all that stuff is great. He was. But as an unhooked kid (didn’t want to play sports in college - probably could have) he needed that something different to stand out from all the other worthy, outstanding students. It’s just the way it is.
Good luck and enjoy the process,
“Interesting to note that he was top everything in HS (academic, athletic, and EC leadership) but did not get in to the most difficult schools (measured by admission results). So no HYP Duke, Vandy etc. He did get in to several of the next tier (20% range). The reason I mention this is, although he had an outstanding HS career, their was nothing “unusual” in his resume. President, captain, mentor all that stuff is great. He was. But as an unhooked kid (didn’t want to play sports in college - probably could have) he needed that something different to stand out from all the other worthy, outstanding students. It’s just the way it is.”
To me, this illustrates why you need to be cognizant of a school’s admission rate when trying to determine if it’s a safety, match, or reach. #27’s son had the stats to get into HYP, Duke, Vandy but that didn’t make them match schools, not by a long shot. With their low admission rates, they’re not a match for any unhooked applicant.
It’s really hard to know as a biased Mom what is good enough. My older son was doing stuff with computers that I thought probably was probably equivalent of being an Intel finalist, but we couldn’t be sure. Hence the two safeties along with a reach heavy list.
When people on CC are obsessing about small percentage admissions rate differences between top colleges, what they are generally doing is arguing
– that my college is better/more desirable than yours,
– that in order to lower its admission rate your college “cheats” or does something else nefarious that my college would never do, or at least not do quite as much.
In the real world, no one cares about this who isn’t in high school, or the parent of someone in high school, or maybe a recent grad of one of the colleges.
As the parent of a high school kid, you may want to care about admissions data to this extent: understanding that the 5.3% or 8.9% admissions rate may be a blend of various sub-rates, and you (and your child) may want to understand which rate will apply to your child. There is a meaningful difference between a college that has no early admissions program and no significant athletic recruiting or legacy preferences, and that offers admission to about 10% of its applicants, and another college that also offers admission to about 10% of its applicants, but that includes 1% of applicants that are athletic recruits essentially admitted Early Decision on a 100% basis, 5% of applicants who are legacies 50% of whom will be admitted Early Decision, 14% of applicants who are other Early Decision applicants more than a third of whom will be admitted in that round – all of which adds up to about 8.5% of total applicants – leaving the remaining 1.5% of acceptances to come from the 80% of applicants (plus, perhaps, some deferred ED applicants) who applied Regular decision. That last group does not have anything like a 10% chance of admission; their chance of admission is less than 2%. 10:1 and 55:1 are meaningfully different odds; 3:1 and 55:1 are very meaningfully different odds.
The only admissions data that we looked at were from the Common Data Set reported on-line by the college admissions office or institutional research office. We wanted our older child to be well within the top 25% of the previous year’s enrolled students in test scores and GPA for every school. He was. That made other factors the deciding ones – factors (EC’s, awards. etc.) that aren’t necessarily easily quantifiable.
The CDS was only relevant for our older child, who was aiming at the general curriculum and ultimately majored in economics. The CDS was not critical for our younger one, who was applying only to art colleges and schools. The portfolio was the most critical criterion in admission to art schools, assuming the academic record is solid.
We essentially had 4 applications in the following order: two to OOS Honors Colleges with full or nearly full merit money, one reach which our son (ORM, non STEM with 3.9 gpa, top 25 and 33 ACT) hoped but did not expect to get into and one common UC application with boxes checked for UCB, UCLA, UCSD and UCI. I told my kid honestly that he had just as good chances to get into the colleges he applied to as top 10 gpa students in his HS because IMO his ECs and achievements were more interesting, focused and unusual compared to top students in his HS and that his essays would be the key. Turned out he got into all colleges and was only one who got into his reach school out of 70 kids who applied from his HS. Did not use College consultants because I thought they would discourage him from applying to his top choice and try to soften the fresh voice of his essays. In other words, I thought they would compare my kid to the kids with perfect GPAs and test scores and unconsciously give off wrong vibes.