I was responding to your comment, “I would still have the GC make a call”.
I wouldn’t advise that. NYU said they don’t want that.
Seems to me the statement, " Please do not ask that anyone calls to advocate on your behalf" is pretty clear.
^ just a note, Cornell is huge in applications but NYU is bigger. Last year Cornell got 51k applications, NYU got 75k. I think (if I remember correctly from an article I read) only the two big UCs are ahead of it in numbers of applications. No idea what the size of their admissions offices are, could be a staffing issue too.
@olfort, I found the comment about misinterpretation of student essays curious - given the point of the essay is to make the college understand the applicant, it doesn’t reflect well on the student writing it if they didn’t? In other words I’m not sure how that is a mitigating factor?
If a school gets 75K applicants then it should hire 50% more AOs than Cornell to review applications and respond to applicants. I don’t think it is really that hard. It tells you something when a school says “We have no capacity (or want) to deal with you.”
As far as essays - an applicant could write something he/she thought was a great topic and turned out to be inappropriate or lacking. How often have we had students asked on this forum if a topic was appropriate. By getting information from NYU AO is more than trying to get off the WL, it could be good information on how to make RD applications better. As far as I could tell, OP’s kid has good stats, certainly within NYU’s range. There could be other factors, or there were just too many good applicants. It may not be her essays, maybe it’s her application (lack of ECs, awards, etc).
What harm would it be in trying to contact AO? When my kid’s GC was contacting AOs on her behalf, another friend’s public school GC would have nothing to do with it. My friend ended up calling/emailing the AOs herself. For all the chatter we have on CC about never have parents call adcoms, she was quite successful. She got her kid off 3 WLs that year, all top 20 schools.
I don’t think OP’s kid will be admitted to NYU if she is not even deferred to RD, so what does she have to lose?
I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this, @oldfort. I think it is the task of the GC, not the AOs at the college, to identify any weaknesses in the essay, and that might include a conclusion that the essay is actually fine and that school is just not a fit for the student. While it’s nice that some AOs might take time to help students refine their applications for other schools, it’s hardly something I’d expect or criticize them for not doing -especially via a GC, part of whose job that actually is. Of course, one is perfectly entitled to take the attitude of “I don’t want to stay on a waitlist at a school who has these policies”, and that’s fine.
I don’t quite agree with your last sentence either - deferrals often lead to waitlists anyway and sometimes or often rejections. I think the message to the child here is “we like you enough to put you at the front of the waitlist” rather than “we still want to see the rest of the pool before we decide if you’re good enough for the waitlist yet”. Of course that’s unfortunately still a large degree of uncertainty for OP.
By the way I think the “many good applicants” is a given at this stage judging both by NYU’s past couple of years of statements and the number of people with great stats who got rejected/deferred/waitlisted in the CC ED thread this year. OP’s D has also applied to a very tough school within NYU where the admit rate is believed to be around 10% and student stats are definitely higher than the averages NYU shows.
I don’t think I said it was AOs job to “identify any weaknesses,” but AOs can share their reasons for not admitting an applicant. I do think good GCs should have relationships with AOs for them to have that dialogue. It is unfortunate most of GCs do not have the time to cultivate that kind of relationship. My kids’ GCs had conference calls with many adcoms ahead of announcement.
OP here - you know what? Were following NYUs instructions - update on any new accomplishments and that’s it - no more contact.
DD was admitted yesterday to Fordhams Ignite business honors program, 4 years of big $$ and housing. Many wonderful options ahead for this kiddo.
Time for everyone to let it go. Let NYU play their admissions game.
@wondering2233 that’s great news! Congrats!
That may be the case, but if the student was deferred to RD then it would mean the adcoms are going to further review the application during RD. It would mean the student could and is expected to send in updated transcript, awards, etc. In the OP’s case, my take is they are done with reviewing the student’s application and unless they don’t fill all of their seats then most likely OP’s kid is not going to get admitted. I could be wrong because I have not heard of WL during ED.
A 17-18 year old is not exactly a child. There is no need to sugar coat it. If I were to say that to my kid, she would say, “How would you know? What make you say that?” I would rather tell my kid as it is and tell her to move on in this case.
It would be nice to live in a fantasy land where every one of the thousands and thousands of GCs across the country could cultivate relationships at all of the many schools that their students apply to, and for all of the AO’s at elite schools like NYU and Cornell and scores of others, to want to have relationships with each and every one of those many thousands of GCs across the country. Just like they have with the GCs in private schools in NYC. Call me crazy, but I think that just might be a little more feasible for your average Dalton/Horace Mann/Brearly et al GC than the one with three hundred advisees from NamelessSuburb HS in Cal, or Podunk HS from Iowa, or even BarelyAdequate High from NJ.
But YMMV. As they say.
Did they attend an elite high school where the GCs have privileged connections to the elite universities?
Most high school students do not attend such high schools.
'Grats.
wrt NYU: just be prepared to pay sticker if she does get off the WL…and if you can’t afford sticker, time to get excited about somewhere else.
Fantasy land may not exist for everyone, but everyone certainly has the option of picking up the phone and talk to an AO, which is exactly what my friend did. You work with what you have.
OldFort - My oldest attends the US Naval Academy. During his admissions process, I fought and won 3 appeals with the Department of Defense for a medical disqualification related to my sons old football injury. He’s now a very successful junior at USNA. All parents and prospective students should know when to push the envelope on an admission and when to let the process play out.