Decision times / Likely letters

[chronicidal]

<p>And the waiting begins. Update/add to this list!</p>

<p>Schools that send likely letters (in Feb/Mar) - approximate number
Brown - 75
Dartmouth - 500
Harvard - 100
Stanford - 121
UNC - ?
UVA CAS - ?
Williams - 200
Yale - 120</p>

<p>Admissions decisions - time and method
Ivy League - 3/31
- Harvard - after 5pm - email
Stanford - early April
MIT - mid to late March
UChicago - early April
UVA - on or around 4/1</p>

[hikids]

<p>What kind of likely letters? I am guessing that the athletic letters have already gone out in Oct (I believe that is the norm but may vary by sport). So I am assuming you mean for academic sorts of things, great physics student, art student, or some sort of singularly spectacular kind of activity – starting a $1,000,000 dollar business etc.). Unfortunately, I do not know, but felt we might want to clarify this a bit.</p>

[blackeyedsusan]

<p>My son received one from Cornell last year.</p>

[Sheed30]

<p>chicago said late MArch i think.</p>

[sybbie719]

<p>Dartmouth sends ~ 500 likely letters in ~ 3 waves starting in February. </p>

<p>Williams does not send likely letters. The send an Early Write letter informing the student that they have been admitted.</p>

<p>Amherst sends Early Write Letters.</p>

<p>from article:Schools’ ‘Love Notes’ Quietly Say, You’re In</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Grinnell College in Iowa began sending out “wink” letters, which assure recipients that they are “one of a select number of applicants” whose accomplishments “merit special recognition.” Translation: You’re in!</p>

<p>“If you’re among the first colleges to admit the person, there’s a higher level of excitement,” says Jim Sumner, dean of admission and financial aid. Nearly one-quarter of students who have received a “wink” letter end up enrolling at Grinnell, a number Mr. Sumner is pleased with, given that they’re a tougher group to recruit.</p>

<p>Other schools are moving in the same direction. Barnard College in New York City says it is “strongly considering” sending out “likely” letters either this year or the next. Barnard would join Dartmouth, Smith, Clark and many other colleges that also rely on some version of the early letter.</p>

<p>Most Ivy League schools generally send out such letters only when pursuing an athlete who may be getting sports scholarships from non-Ivy institutions. In fact, all the Ivies are bound by a rule that requires them to mail out their acceptance letters no earlier than April 2. Dartmouth says its “likely” letters aren’t a violation because they don’t outright admit the applicant, they just hint at it.</p>

<p>All of this presents high-school seniors with some new options as they’re shopping around for colleges. Earlier this month, Kyle Breidenstine got a letter from Clark saying he had been admitted, although the Worcester, Mass., school typically doesn’t send out acceptance letters until the end of March. Mr. Breidenstine, the letter went on to say, is eligible for at least $44,000 in scholarship money from the school.</p>

<p>Now the Shoemakersville, Pa., senior says he will use that letter as leverage to get more aid from his second choice, Elizabethtown College – and Elizabethtown is all ears. “There are many occasions where we will see offers from other institutions” that beat Elizabethtown’s, says Kent Barnds, dean of admissions and enrollment management, “and we have a committee that assesses how badly we want that student and how we might want to react.”</p>

<p>Still, students who get promises of acceptance as well as scholarship money should be careful not to accept too soon. Wait until the other schools send their offers and then “fax them the original offer from the likely letter and see if they can match it or do better,” says Francine Block, a private college counselor in Holland, Pa.</p>

<p>The letters come in many different flavors. Williams College sends out what it calls “early write” letters. Shipped to students at least a month before the rest of the admissions results are circulated, these letters are the equivalent of an acceptance.</p>

<p>Every March, Smith College contacts its best candidates with early scholarship notices. In addition to all but promising admittance, they offer $2,500 a year in scholarship money and a paid campus research job.</p>

<p>That was enough to sell Jaci Eisenberg, now in her first year at Smith. She had been leaning toward the University of Chicago in the early part of her senior year of high school, until she got the scholarship letter. “That kind of cinched it,” she says.</p>

<p>[CollegeJournal</a> | News & Trends](<a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights)</p>

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[copefan5]

<p>sybbie, we’ve talked before. they don’t send out likely letters to deferred applicants, right? iirc they look over deferred apps for like 1-2 days in march.</p>

[sybbie719]

<p>Cope,</p>

<p>They look at deferred applicants during the RD cycle (remember that students are sending updates to their applications- new scores, recommendations, essays etc). I have never heard anything about a separate process for deferred applicants.</p>

[bluebayou]

<p>cope:</p>

<p>it’s highly unlikely that a defferred will recieve a likely letter, unless something was missing from the ED app. I think Michelle Hernandez wrote that deferreds are re-reviewed after the RD apps. Of course that was ten years ago under a different Dean of Admissions so today’s process could be completely different.</p>

[oldfort]

<p>Princeton indicated that they will utilize likely letters more this year because of discontinuing ED process. Princeton has traditionally used likely letters early on for atheletes.</p>