Agree 100%. And my daughter was able to visit zero colleges of interest before Covid (and has been able to visit zero since Covid). Edited to add: hope she is able to visit a few top choices (of those she has gotten into) in March/April.
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Goodness! I never heard of this business of sending fee waivers so that a kid would throw in an application just for the hell of it.
I did kind of resent the early application deadlines if you wanted to be considered for merit scholarships. My kid wound up having to send in four applications (and pay 4 fees) to schools that he knew by Dec 15th that he wouldnât be going to. Frustrating. At least the REA answer came in time to not have to put in the ones with Jan 1 deadlines.
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What an unreasonable opinion and a selfish one. Great that you are obviously full pay. However, you do not get to dictate other familiesâ application strategies pre- or post- Covid.
My college senior applied to 17 schools her application year in search of a full ride. I donât understand how that can be considered âgreedyâ when all of those competitive scholarships targeted had sub 2% award rates and full pay was out of the question. Where is the greed? Do you even understand the meaning of that word? She didnât take anything anyone else was entitled to or was looking to obtain more than is reasonable. And she didnât create any additional work for anyone (Naviance and common app makes applying widely very easy) and certainly not for anyone who was not willing to support her applications. The schools that limit number of applications tend to be those filled with parents like you - private schools filled with happily full pay families. Good for you all. Youâre in a very tiny minority.
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@hillybean You repeatedly use the word, âgreedyâ and itâs unnecessary and offensive. People have made the effort to explain to you that in a normal year, their kids wouldnât have felt compelled to apply to so many schools. Rather than graciously accepting the information, you continue to go on attack with the word, âgreedy,â repeating how your child applied to so few schools. As adults we can agree to disagree. Youâre being rude.
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All I have to say is: Donât. Worry. About. What. Other. People. Are. Doing.
It doesnât affect you. Have your child put in the best application(s) they can, and then let it go. Itâs now out of your hands.
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I was talking about schools that canât even fill their seats. To have a âhugeâ waiting list, a college has to have a decent waiting list to begin with.
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I agree some of these types of schools are likely to extend their commitment date, similar to last year. But the more selective schools wonât.
I was listening to a presentation by a UCLA AO last spring, and someone asked if they were going to extend their date beyond May 1 (many schools had already extended). He about choked, said no way because they would over-enroll then. I expect they would have the same issue this year.
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@evergreen5 I found notes from one meeting in which this topic was discussed. This is from a free webinar with a national college counselor who is focused on selective schools. (I donât want to say the name because there is of course the chance I may have mistakes in my notes. If thereâs an error in my account, at least I wonât be misrepresenting anyone!)
Students with strong test scores will be advantaged. If you donât take the test, invest the time you would have spent studying into building your resume because there will be a little more scrutiny of applications that donât have scores. Other parts of the record will become more important; this is not the year to slack off. Colleges will want to see that students have challenged themselves academically. Think hard about recommendationsâit may be especially important to discuss academic ability. Colleges may want to see senior mid-semester grades.
So: based on my notes, it sounds like they think grades etc will matter more in applications without scores.
The 2 colleges my son applied to did ask for mid-semester grades, so that part at least is verifiable.
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The issue of whether more applications will increase the odds of admission (to any one of the schools) for an applicant isnât as simple as s/he may think. The math tells us that the probability is increased only if a) the admission standards or practices of the colleges s/he applies to are substantially uncorrelated, and b) the quality of her/his application to each of those colleges is fully maintained. The reality is that a) is often untrue because s/he tends to select similar colleges (in each of her/his bucket of âreachâ, âmatchâ, or âsafetyâ) to apply to, and b) could be false since it would be difficult to maintain the quality of all applications if thereâre more of them to prepare.
In 2018 my son applied to 10 schools in 2020 my daughter is applying to 15. I am expecting a lot of wait list activity too and will encourage my daughter to keep an open mind if she is wait listed as there will likely be strange yield numbers this year. My son did a gap year in 2018 and I wonder if kids who donât get in anywhere they want will take this approach and reapply next year.
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I think people are confused. The US population of high school aged students has been declining. Our birth rate has dropped significantly. The âfall off a cliffâ starts in 2026. A lot of discussions of lower schools shrinking, closing, or being rolled into other colleges.
Just because top schools get more apps doesnât mean itâs tougher to get into a top school. The number of kids that scored +1500 on the SAT with a 4.0 GPA hasnât increased. All it means is that the AOâs job is tougher. They have to weed through more apps but not necessarily better apps. Theyâll still enroll the same number of kids.
The logic to apply to more schools because you canât visit due to Covid seems backwards. Why would you apply to more unknowns? Youâll just have more choices of schools you canât visit.
I can see more international students applying because of political shifts but I think theyâre still underestimating the travel restrictions for 2021 and possibly beyond. Plus, are all these kids full-pay? Doubtful. Even the T20 schools like to have some full-pay students.
Shopping for merit isnât greedy unless you can afford to be full-pay and even then itâs smart shopping to seek merit. If youâre full-pay then good for you but very few are.
S20 and S21 received a ton of marketing collateral and waivers. There are schools out there that love to get applications so their acceptance rate looks great. Northeastern jumps to mind from S20âs app cycle. Vanderbilt, UChicago, and WashingtonU also come to mind.
Itâs a free country. Apply to as many schools as you want but in the end you can only attend one college. I think the sweet spot is 5-10.
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My child also applied this year.
I agree with your post wholeheartedly.
Furthermore, from my experience, once a student applies to more than 8 schools the quality of applications go down. Essays become reused, optional questions are skipped and demonstrated interest becomes laughable.
People should do exactly what they want to do. Obviously, this is happening more often during COVID, but be assured, it happened 20 years ago, too.
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Went through this last year and will again this year. Having more acceptances to weed through isnât necessarily great either unless you absolutely need to have FA/merit to go to college. Having to choose between 15 schools you didnât visit vs 5 schools you didnât visit because of Covid doesnât really move the needleâŠUNLESS you absolutely need merit. In fact, it makes it more difficult.
Not sure waitlists are all that much better either. Sometimes itâs best to choose a path and set sail rather than keep waiting.
My advice to my kids was find 2 or 3 local schools just-in-case none of your acceptances that you didnât get to visit donât âwowâ you or be prepared for a GAP year. They can always go to State U and transfer after a year or two.
That said, S20 ended-up at the only school he didnât formally visit although weâve visited Atlanta. His visit was move-in day at Georgia Tech. So far so good.
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The difference for this year is that almost all schools are test optional, so the score does not limit the pool of apps that will be otherwise good. The number of good apps will be larger than in the past.
For example, from Brown,
âOur standards are exceptionally high as they always have been,â he said. âIt was not a 22 percent increase in inadmissible applicants â it was a 22 percent increase in the quality weâre used to seeing.â
Brown accepts record-low 15.9 percent of early decision applicants - The Brown Daily Herald
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I cannot imagine a top school making any other comment than the additional apps were predominantly strong onesâŠ
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Sounds good but not buying it. Scores never limited the number of apps in the past. Anyone could apply. Someone with a 1000 SAT couldâve applied to Harvard in the past. It just wouldâve never made the review pile. This year it will make the pile because its test optional and wouldnât be reported. It doesnât mean the app would be any better or worse than in the past.
Again the number of +1500 SAT/4.0 students hasnât increasedâŠitâs actually probably decreased as the number of high school aged students decrease.
The quote from Brown is somewhat disingenuous. It implies that they didnât get enough quality apps in the past because test scores limited who applied. If thatâs the case then why havenât schools always been test optional? Hint: Stats matter for prestige.
Pretty much any institution or business will spin any stat to be positive and paint them in a better, more prestigious light. I canât imagine any school saying âwe received more apps this year but the quality was about the same or lessâ.
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Yes, that will be problematic for those mid tier and lower level schools that will not have waiting lists. A lot of kids I know in this category have been accepted to every college they have applied to. The only issue theyâre seeing is while theyâre all getting merit, the merit is less than the same school offered last year. Maybe that will change as the try to fill their seats, but if they need revenue to fill those seats, then they canât give the store away either, and there is less financial aid to go around everywhere thanks to covid. The lowest level schools will either have to consolidate or will close altogether and thatâs sad.
This is our position. There are WAY too many unknowns about what will be projected for fall and happening in April when a deposit will be made. My S applied to a high number of schools (especially targets) mostly due to Covid uncertainty. We would have toured his application schools in the Northeast last summer and narrowed those down if not for Covid. We hope to check those out in April. We will be examining past Covid practices and future plans at all of his accepted schools.
There are a couple other reasons for his list expanding - including getting the opportunity after numerous cancelations to achieve a great test score but too late to submit for early round, his highly competitive major, and some self discovery along this extended application process (which started last June). With some breaks, he wrote essays between June and December, so he had sufficient time to make a quality, authentic presentation to all of his schools.
The virtual offerings we found deficient and most of them were beefed up after his list was solidified (when the schools were still focused on the 2020s).
I expect that schools are accounting for this increase in applications by certain students and adjusting their admissions and wait lists accordingly. They will have clues from the common app and the pool.
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this is exactly our strategy too. To the person above asking âwhy apply to more schools?â itâs because we didnât get a chance to narrow down the list of which schools my son likes or doesnât. He applied to 15 schools, and for the sake of discussion letâs say he gets into 4-5. We can then really focus on that handful to figure out which is the best fit, whether or not we can travel. We would have done that âweeding outâ ahead of time in a normal year.
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