<p>"Imagine you are the adcom, sitting at the table with the rest of the committee presenting your/your child's folder, and the adcom has summarized the student's strengths with 3 lines on an index card, what would those 3 things be?">></p>
<p>I also remember ID saying this and have repeated it to my daughter. I think it is very good advice.</p>
<p>This is a great thread, but having gone through the admission process, and having watched others do the same thing, I read too much angst on this thread.</p>
<p>The truth is more than 80% of the students end up in a college where they are happy.</p>
<p>There are only about 65-75 colleges that are very selective in the US out of 3,000+ schools. Most students end up with their first choice or at the very least, multiple choices.</p>
<p>Unless you are looking for a very specific thing, like a music school, or a school where you can play a varsity sport, most of the stress is unnecessary. </p>
<p>You really don't have to game the system to get into a good school.</p>
<p>
There is a lot of truth in both comments -- in a lot of ways things were easier with my son. He researched colleges by reading the guidebooks, narrowed down his choices, sent in the applications --without all the second guessing and strategizing. He took the SAT once and stopped - his 1440 score was higher than any of his public high school friends achieved, so it never occurred to him or to me that better scores were needed. He got into all but one of the schools he applied to. There was no stress about trying to fit whatever it was the college wanted - he wrote what he thought was a risk essay, with the idea that if the college didn't like him for he was, he didn't want to go there anyway. </p>
<p>I do think that on the whole, having more information is valuable, but only if it is used to understand the process -- when you start to try to use the information to manipulate the process, then I think it is going down the wrong path. The issue shouldn't be, what does my kid have to say or do to get into X college? It should be simply, what is the most effective way for my kid to demonstrate her interests and unique qualities to X college? It is useful to know, for example, that a certain quality may help at college X, but college Y is not likely to care - but that doesn't change the decision of whether to apply to college Y or who the student is. It just means that at college Y it might be more effective to emphasize some other quality.</p>
<p>dstark, I think the 80% number is really high. I would guess more like 50% are happy or at least learn to adjust. If we look at all colleges, there are a lot of students who really don't belong and don't graduate. </p>
<p>Since I am just guessing, I looked at the Dept of Ed webpage and checked graduation rates and transfer rates. The top selective schools have a dedicated student population and graduation rates are high. I was shocked when I looked up some state universities and less selective private schools. Many had transfer rates of 30% and graduation rates of less than 50%.</p>
<p>I forwarded the article information to S's college counselor, knowing full well that every kid from last year's class who applied for financial aid at a well known ranked #8,#9 university was rejected and that the HS called a meeting with the admissions staff from the U. They were given the pablum that it had nothing to do with it. In replying back to me, He stated that it's business done on the college level and was well aware of the impact it's having.</p>
<p>" Many had transfer rates of 30% and graduation rates of less than 50%."</p>
<p>I've seen evidence that lots of this is due to financial aid problems. Students can't keep grades up while working a lot, and they decide that carrying huge amounts of loans isn't worth it.</p>
<p>If you check out the graduation rates, the highest graduation rates are at colleges that are the most generous with need-based financial aid. State u's are not a bargain for students who don't get much aid yet come from families that are struggling.</p>
<p>As a life long New Englander I thought I should jump in a comment. I believe that New Englanders in general are happy where they live and see no need to go elsewhere. Personally I think that there is no better place to live between April 1 and January 1 . . . January 1 to March 31 is a bit difficult but that is when we travel to skiing or Florida, etc.</p>
<p>Here is some anecdotal evidence, which is evidence but insufficient to draw a conclusion, about my childeren's high school. I live in the smallest state in the union, Rhode Island, that also officially has the longest name. I believe that we are an exagerated version of the other New England states. Their private HS graduates a pretty good number of students each year, however, a large contingent stay close to home. </p>
<p>By that I mean that they do not even leave RI. They go to Brown, PC, Bryant, RISD, URI, Roger Williams, CCRI, Johnson & Wales, etc. There is nowhere in the state that you can not get into CT or MA within 1/2 hour yet over half of these students go to school in RI.</p>
<p>My oldest applied to a few schools 'close' to home by my estimation but far by RI standards. He also applied to a number of schools across the US. His results were quite good in general but he is one of about 5%-10% of his HS class to go to school outside New England.</p>
<p>On the plus side for us Rhode Islanders is that those that do choose to go out of region probably have more choices because so few do it. In my oldest son's college freshman class he was the only Rhode Islander.</p>
<p>The other side of this is that for a number of students who apply locally they get the legacy benefit. Thier parents went to school here in New England and decided to stay. A good number of schools here provide a legacy benefit so I guess it all balances out . . . unless you want to go to one of the schools where you are not a legacy, i.e. Harvard to Brown, etc.</p>
<p>With that all said I do not think it is a uniquely New England phenomenon. Many in the south would choose to go to school there than elsewhere. Similarly, for the midwest, etc.</p>
<p>"There is much "forgiveness" when it comes to academic standards of admitted students at U.C. One of the common myths about UC admissions is that its supposed transparency makes it easier to track the reasons for admissions decisions. No it doesn't, actually."</p>
<p>Actually, this was much truer prior to the 2002 reforms, when there were essentially two "tracks" for admission. Now the point formula limits non-academic performance to approximately 10% of the class, though class rank is now more heavily weighted.</p>
<p>The result is that the average GPA at Berkeley is 4.2+, the median SAT is 1350, and the entire difference in SAT scores is attributable (if you believe the CollegeBoard) to the difference in family income between matriculating Princeton students (with, in 2008, 9% on Pell Grants) and those at Berkeley (36%). </p>
<p>That 10,000 UCLA and Berkeley first years wouldn't have gotten into Princeton goes without saying (with the reverse being true for a couple of score of Princeton freshmen - again, start with the athletes in the big sports). But it wasn't "purely" because they were of lower academic caliber. </p>
<p>"Zollman Scholarship: Based on academic merit and affords a grant to cover one-half of Smith's tuition in each of four years at the college. Normally, five Zollman Scholarships are awarded in each entering first-year class. Zollman Scholars are also offered the opportunity to work on a STRIDE Program research project."</p>
<p>You've got it - a total of 5, or significantly fewer than exist at Swarthmore. (For us, the Zollman didn't make a hill of beans worth of difference - the offers at other "need-blind" (doesn't exist) were virtually the same. The fact that it was labeled "merit aid' was irrelevant to us - as far as we are concerned, it is ALL merit aid. The big difference - and the draw - was in the academic opportunity offered by the STRIDE, which has made a huge difference, and was simply unavailable elsewhere.) If the $125,000 per class (the total paid out in $2,500 increments), out of a $33 million financial aid budget, were all that was necessary to attract 50 topflight students, colleges would be falling all over themselves to do it.</p>
<p>musictoad,</p>
<p>What you are referring to is one of the reasons I would like to know the breakdown of acceptances at certain colleges for students at different types of high schools. </p>
<p>Let me explain, the type of HS may be part of the enrollment management systems. The yield rate of students from a certain high school may be lower than average because the enrollment management algoriithms show that those students tend to go to a particular type of school, i.e. small high school to small college. Note that this does not have to do with ability to pay but with projected yield from a certain segment of students. Thus the admissions office at certain colleges choose not to compete and reject a student of similar stats to other private or public schools. Kind of a Tufts syndrome for these students. </p>
<p>The schools all want to be loved . . . but so do the students. If my conjecture is true I find this troubling because it would continue to foster a certain feeder system that I thought more meritocratic admission programs were designed to eliminate. Or at least that is what the nice brochures would like us all to believe.</p>
<p>
[quote]
sometimes I honestly wonder if too much knowledge about the process is a good thing.
[/quote]
Yes, I think you have something there. The whole thing is way too much stress, and quite unpredictable as well. My son is not attending his first choice school because of a lousy financial aid package, but he is quite happy where he is. He'll be fine anywhere because that's the kind of kid he is. In the future,I would not try to change what my child essentially wanted, but I would be smarter about the financial aid process.</p>
<p>Eagle, colleges certainly do track the types of schools their students come from --- most often it's reported on the freshman profile.</p>
<p>And, they know in advance at which type of schools they're mostly to find the recruits they want...actually, scratch that, they have the capability to know which specific schools where they're most likely to find the recruits they want. Consider what the College Board has to say about just one of it's services, the Enrollment Planning System:</p>
<p>"Pinpoint your most promising high schools...evaluate your enrollment yield by high school...identify your top feeder high schools...segment high schools by average household, incomes, ethnicity and race, religion, language spoken at home, academic profile, and percentage of students going on to college..."</p>
<p>Eagle,
I think you are right on the money. I know my S's HS is a feeder for several schools in the top 20. A few Ivys and Stanford but not MIT. You still have to have the grades and the scores and the recs but it's such an egghead school that ECs really play second fiddle. athletics are miserable but improving although slowly. At his hs, there is little desire to continue at a small school. very few kids even think about davidson, much less Pomona, Amherst, Williams, et al. They are much more into Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Chicago, Rice, WUSTL. Sometimes you look and see an odd one and then realize that we parents are broke after the 4 years of tuition and need a full ride for an undergrad degree. It was very interesting this past year with the rush from Northwestern, someone's programing must've gone berserk</p>
<p>mini,
Cite all the websites you want. There is no question that there are certain rubrics. Whether those rubrics are always followed, is another matter. This is not unlike what curmudgeon or someone else said about the drill that is repeated (& sworn to) regarding 100% of need met, etc., at rep hosting mtgs. And I'm sure theese reps can state that because it probably similarly on their "official" literature.</p>
<p>Lots of people seem unwilling to believe what they cannot read on a website. That is not a personal criticism of you; it's just definitely a trend I've noticed, especially on CC. I do not think that this is more true for the UC system, btw, (i.e., getting around the official rubric) than it is for private schools.</p>
<p>As you know, an average is the result of a mathematical calculation; that is all it is; it is by no means an indicator of any particular student's record. I'm sure there are averages at HYP even among non-hooked applicants that are also not in line with a particular profile of a student who may be way off target from that average. </p>
<p>The student in question was nowhere near a 1350 SAT I, nor a 4.2 UC GPA, yet the student was admitted to a top UC campus <em>this year</em>, not before '02.</p>
<p>Really, in order to see what it takes to be considered "capable of doing UC work," one needs to look at the full range of accepted scores, the full range of accepted GPA's. Naturally the administration would consider this info confidential, so it could only be self-reported and/OR reported via Naviance or some other publicly accessible statistical measure. I have access to the actual statistics, so this is not guessing on my part.</p>
<p>Northstarmom: You stated that high transfer and dropout rates may be due to financial pressures. That does not seem to be the case. The most expensive, selective schools have the highest graduation rates. Some of the state U's and private schools with low tuition have the worst transfer and dropout rates. I checked the stats for the large State U near me. Less than 40% of students graduate within 6 years. Costs are 1/10 of many private schools with rates over 80%.</p>
<p>My point was, though, that the more expensive schools like HPYS are more generous with need-based aid. State universities often lack the funds to provide needy students with much scholarship aid.</p>
<p>What seems inexpensive to middle and upper class families is extremely expensive to lower income people. When I taught at a second/third tier public university, many of the students with the worst scholarship aid were low income. The best aid went to the most well off students, who earned great merit aid due to their scores.</p>
<p>I saw low income, first generation students who were having to work 30 hours a week while taking a full load. Sometimes they were also sending $ home, and also had major loans, far more than the $20,000 that's the average that college students in the US have. Some students were literally selling their blood to earn money. Many students couldn't afford text books, and were too embarassed to tell the profs, so they had difficulty keeping up with coursework.</p>
<p>I'd never heard of anything like that when I went to an Ivy. I had a couple of friends who were from very low income homes, but they still were getting good scholarship aid, and sacrifice for them meant taking the bus hundreds of miles to go home for Christmas. They didn't have to work 30 hours a week or sell their blood.</p>
<p>...that what seems inexpensive to some people is prohibitively expensive to others. Reminds me of the old story about the wealthy prep school girl who wondered, when confronted with a news story about some disaster or other that affected poor people, why they "couldn't just sell some of their stock."</p>
<p>I volunteer at a regional university where one boy was distraught over missing out on some minor (to me) opportunity, which meant that he would have to come up with $25 for a required fee. He was willing to do a lot to get out of that $25 fee - that was real money to him, and he was deeply worried about where he could get it. He was working full time but had no insurance, etc.</p>
<p>I may personally see this school as virtually free, but the commuters, immigrants, etc. who go there are constantly struggling, sometimes trying to hold down a full-time, 40-hour a week job while going to school with a full credit load.</p>
<p>It's no wonder at all to me that graduation rates at expensive, elite schools are so good and those at lesser schools are not.</p>
<p>My wife taught at several community colleges and encountered many students who dropped out due to financial or family reasons. I don't believe that explains the dropout rate at the State U that I mentioned. I don't know how to assess the financial demographics, but this is an affluent area of the country and there are certainly a lot of expensive cars in the parking lots. I do know for sure that the State U is very generous with financial aid especially when compared with private colleges. I don't know why they dropout but the statistics do imply that a lot fewer than 80% are happy.</p>
<p>A slightly differnt topic but in the same vein. I am wondering how the enrollment management systems view the Common Application. Under the Common Application agreement all schools agree that there is no additional benefit in submitting the school application instead of the common application. However, there may be a difference within the enrollment management algorithms.</p>
<p>The reason I ask is that using the Common Application may be viewed as not as committed to a particular school as it would be if they had used the institutional application. Again, perhaps impacting yield. And maybe a reason USNews eliminated yield in determining its rankings.</p>
<p>Further, if schools are looking at the CSS profile to try to determine school preference is there something similar in the Common Application information provided to schools? For example, do the other schools have access to whether a student applied EA at another school? Even if it is an open EA school? Do they get a list of other Common Application schools to which students applied? Perhaps this is a bit moot if they get this information from the CSS Profile anyway. Just wondering.</p>
<p>Good questions, Eagle; also on line vs paper...?</p>
<p>
[quote]
sometimes I honestly wonder if too much knowledge about the process is a good thing.
[/quote]
I, too, discovered cc after all of S's apps were in. I have often lamented not finding it earlier because of the wealth of information and, more importantly, wisdom that is here. However, upon reflection I believe it is a good thing I discovered it <em>late.</em> We were fortunate to have excellent GC, reasonably adequate info via the usual suspects of USN&WR, Princeton Review, CB website etc. Had I found cc in advance, I think I would have put even more pressure on S - not consciously - but with all of the added ideas/direction/insights I would have had. He would not have wanted it.</p>
<p>The one thing I would have been most been able to better guide him on was better preparation of his app to the one school which denied him (Stanford). Whether he would have wanted that guidance and stepped up to the plate, I don't know.</p>
<p>That said, for those without decent guidance at the hs level and those students without access to parental support in their admissions process, this place is a godsend.</p>
<p>And, my addiction is well established. So... as to "too much information?" Bring it on! :D</p>