My youngest is now a Junior in High School so we have begun the process. In 2009, one of my older children graduated from high school. He was accepted in several colleges, One acceptance was an Ivy, wait listed at another Ivy, offered a full 4 year scholarship at another school and offered admittance to other reach and safety schools. Well for this child, though she mets or exceeds my older child academically we are wondering if the schools that we did not accept will in anyway be influenced by my son’s choices not to attend their school. My son actually attended and graduated from the Ivy and did not accept the school that offered him the full 4 year scholarship. My daughter happens to really like the school that offered my son the scholarship but I’m concerned that they will look at the fact that my son did not accept their offers. My children have different last names. My older child has my maiden name while my younger child has my married name. In short do you think they track parents names which is the only way that my daughter can be identified as a sibling? I would hate for my youngest to be at a disadvantage. This may be a no brainer for some of you buy i would appreciate any input. Thanks.
I can only think of two reasons a school would go to this kind of trouble.
(1) They’re insulted that they were turned down and want to get you back.
(2) They’re worried that if one sibling turned them down the next is likely to also and they don’t want to waste the acceptance and reduce their yield.
I don’t think either is likely.
(1) Adcoms are not made up of 12 year old girls and are unlikely to be insulted and out for revenge 10 years later become someone turned them down. They understand that everyone applies to multiple schools and they don’t expect everyone they admit to enroll.
(2) Adcoms are made up of generally intelligent and sane human beings. They understand that siblings are different people and because one sibling said no, doesn’t necessarily mean anything about how another sibling will feel about the school.
So, while I can’t tell you that I absolutely know for a fact that this doesn’t happen, I’d urge you to make it Item #4000 on your list of things to worry about when making your daughter’s college list.
Thank you. Part of me said not to worry about it but there was that nagging 'what if". We also did follow appropriate etiquette when declining offers by notifying each school as per their request. I remember the first acceptance arriving very early (Christmas Eve) and requesting a very early response date prior to any other acceptances arriving. I requested an extension which I was granted in order to see what other options my child would have.
Obviously it didn’t matter last time, and I agree that it is unlikely that they track, but for next time: contacting Admissions is definitely your student’s job, not yours. Parents doing jobs that the applicant should be doing is the kind of thing that AdComms notice and are explicit that they do not like. This I have heard, multiple times, directly from AdComms.
Thanks you. At that time we were new to the process and had little to no guidance so we were really figuring things out on our own. With a decade between graduations I imagine that much has changed but this time I do have more assistance and guidance with the process. I just didn’t think to ask this question.
Absolutely no. The staff have turned over and they are just trying to get through this years applications. Cross referencing every application from ten years ago isn’t possible except for the nsa.
@privatebanker NSA?
Relax! I don’t think colleges are interested in keeping track of thousands of applicants every year who didn’t accept.
I wouldn’t worry about it.
@Sarrip I was only suggesting the level of computing power and resources necessary for a college to keep track of every past applicant on a go forward basis.
Then warehouse their decisions and cross reference the data many years later. It would also have to account for changes in addresses, high schools, parental data, deaths, tax info etc. it would be quite. A project.
Point was don’t worry. Your college admissions department is not the NSA.
I absolutely would not worry about this.
Do they even keep that data? I know at least one of my alma maters actually destroys application records of applicants who don’t take up places (though that’s not in the US).
There are so many things you cannot control in the application process…just apply to places where you want to go and have safeties, matches and reaches that you would be delighted to go to.