Two cents from a current high school senior who was rejected from both Questbridge CPS and NCM (despite having stats above the mid 50 range) but accepted early at one of the non-binding Questbridge schools with a near full ride in need based aid.
Pros
- Allows you to apply early to and hear back early from a lot of great schools
- Plus you technically can’t be rejected – only matched or not matched
- Connects you with other low income students who are applying for Questbridge or have been through the process and are now at great schools
- Gives more space to talk about their circumstances for the applicants who need it
- Encourages low income students who may not see themselves as good enough for top schools to give it a shot and apply
- Lets you stay on top of the college process with its early deadlines – you’ll have recommendations and some essay drafts ready well before some seniors have even made their Common App accounts
- Gives some students who may otherwise not have had access to fee waivers access
Cons
- Can destroy someone’s confidence very early on in the college application process, and many low income students already start with little confidence
- Not everyone wants to talk about their struggles and family hardships
- Misleading – often does not accept families with assets over 100k even if their income is below poverty level
- Match rates to specific colleges are even lower than the school’s normal acceptance rates, and even in total, less than 15% of Finalists get matched
- Earlier deadlines with more essays to write might be hard for some students
- Some counselors may not be as familiar with Questbridge as with the Common App
- Not always a full ride – for some of the top institutions they just give you what you would’ve normally gotten from financial aid anyways
What could Questbridge improve on?
- Give a reason for rejecting Finalist applications. Was it financial? Was it the essays? Something else?
- Be more transparent. If it’s not a true full ride scholarship, don’t say that it is. And don’t just say a lot of Finalists get in through Questbridge RD. Publish some stats, and I don’t mean just the Finalist profile. What % of Finalists get in Questbridge RD? And make the Finalists who were Matched profile more visible.
- And those kids who become Questbridge Finalists and only rank 1-4 of the hyper selective schools, do they really need Questbridge? Maybe it does help them, but I would argue that the kids who would be happy simply going to ANY top school on a full ride need it more.
So all in all? Questbridge can help, but it can also hurt, and it’s certainly not the right application for every low income student.
A lot of the stuff you ask for questbridge to improve on is not their resistibility.
- they don't reject students, the SCHOOLS do. Thus, it is the SCHOOLS' responsibility to provide information on why you were not matched - if they wish to do so - not QB.
- This depends on the partner school. Mostly all of the schools do in fact provide a full scholarship, albeit for some you might be doing some student and summer work to pick up some of the tab (this also depends, as some schools do not mandate student and summer work, and may pick up the rest of the tab), but even the student work, which may not be mandatory, is typically no more than $5,000. Also, they DO in fact provide stats on the percentage of finalist that get in RD, it's 55%. And again, it is the school's responsibility to provide matched statistics.
- And how in the world is it QB's responsibility, or fault, that deserving kids got matched to highly selective schools?
Also, the difference between need based aid and full ride scholarship is that for one, need base aid doesn’t cover nearly everything; you typically still have an extra mandated $5,000-$8,000 in student work, plus about $2,000 in loans, which you must pay back. Also, need based aid is subject to change depending on you or your family’s income, while the scholarship is not.
Lastly, i just don’t understand how QB is a negative UNLESS YOU MAKE IT ONE. Dont want the stressful and heavy application load? Don’t apply to do many colleges. Not sure that you want to commit yourself to the binding process, don’t rank binding schools; better yet, just opt out of March entirely. Don’t want your confidence lowered? Don’t be so thin skinned. It’s only a negative if you make it one.
@IsaacTheFuture You go on about it not being Questbridge’s fault or responsibility. I never said it was their fault. I’m saying that Questbridge is not the application for everyone and that being Matched through Questbridge for some schools doesn’t actually give you a full ride scholarship (and also you don’t need Questbridge to get great aid).
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Going through your post:
I never stated it was Questbridge’s fault that students don’t get matched. I was talking about the Finalist selection process, which is something that Questbridge has full control over.
I did not see the 55% for Finalists that get in RD, so thank you for letting me know.
And I’m not complaining that Questbridge doesn’t have matched statistics, I’m simply pointing out that they’re not very visible on their website and could easily be made more visible.
Did I say it was Questbridge’s fault that these kids get matched to highly selective schools? I’m just stating that the kids who are only interested in those Questbridge partner schools don’t seem fully aligned with Questbridge’s target audience, which to me is the low income kids who would otherwise not end up going to a selective school. How I see it, the kids only interested in YPSM would have ended up going to a great school with or without Questbridge (ofc I could be wrong but this is what I believe from my experience thus far), so it almost feels like a waste to have them be Finalists because they don’t need the Questbridge boost. Ofc I realize it’s not like Questbridge can go “you’re overqualified. Don’t apply for Finalist.”
Your concluding point: you know what? You’re exactly right. Questbridge is not negative unless you make it one. And I didn’t say it was negative. I said it’s not for everyone, which many people don’t get. A lot of kids apply for Questbridge because they believe it is the only way they will be able to afford and by extension attend a Questbridge partner school (which is far from the truth). They see it as something magical, which it is not. But because that’s how they see it, they lose hope after rejection. And it’s easy to tell people to get thicker skin. But the fact is not everyone can just instantenously get thicker skin. If they could, there wouldn’t be so much heartbreak from college rejections. And of course, it’s not like Questbridge is trying to lower these kids’ confidence by not selecting them as Finalists. Questbridge has their own criteria for Finalists, and I respect that. But it would be more constructive for everyone if they would just provide some feedback for why a kid was not selected as a Finalist.
I will have to disagree with you on the people who only apply to YPSM. For one, MANY people only apply to these four schools not because they think they’re overly qualified, or because they would have ended up at a great QB school anyways (most finalist will in general), but because these are the only 4 nonbinding schools, and i previously alluded to, many finalist where afraid of the commitment. Also, the freshman profile for the YPSM students and other elite schools (Rice, Northwestern, UChicago, CalTech, UPenn, Williams, etc) have stats just as good, if not better, than many of those 4 schools. So it is more a car that they don’t want to commit themselves rather than they’re overly qualified. Lastly, QB’s target group is HIGH ACHIEVING, low income students, not slightly high achieving, low income students. These are students who would not have attended these schools because of financial constraints, not academic inability. So, if they have a 1600/4.0 SAT, but have an efc of 0, so what? They deserved it, and they’re exactly the type of students QB wants to connect with these schools (along with other criteria, such as hardship and character).
And it is a bummer that you didn’t become a finalist, as indicated by the fact that you were obviously qualified. However, maybe you didn’t become a finalist because of high income, or not having much hardship. Furthermore, QB only admits people as finalist if they believe that you (the student) can be admitted and strive at these schools (not saying you can’t, obviously) in the first place, which is why a total of 61.75% of finalist get into a partner school through match, ed, or rd, which is drastically higher than the national average. They obviously have very good judgment.
I’d have to agree with @IsaacTheFuture. Sure kids that apply to only YPSM may seem like they’re being pretentious by doing so, but in reality, when QuestBridge picks finalists, they don’t have a quota. They pick how many they see are qualified, and that’s why the amount picked this year reached a record high (although of course the applicant pool increased as well).
One pro I felt with the QB application is that there’s A LOT on there. You have the short answers, your self-reported financial information, your personal information, and the two essays as well as the additional information section. Meanwhile, the Common App does not have all of these components, which is why schools asks for additional supplemental essays to account for that. With QuestBridge, you show off a lot more about yourself, and for some schools, you don’t have to bother with their supplemental essays, you’re done. For other schools that still require the supplemental essays, the QB application seriously gives the admissions officer a lot more information to go off of when considering you for admission, which allows for a more holistic view of your application as well as a way to connect with the reader of your essays, as if they really got to know you.
One con I felt would be the intense deadlines. They’re really early into Senior year, so you really have to stay focused, and you need to manage your time well. Start early during the summer! But, once it’s all done, you’re good to go. All you have to do is wait for Match Day, which is nerve-wracking but also fulfilling because you’re watching as everyone else scrambles to finish their apps.
Concerning students who only apply to the hyper-selective schoos: maybe they only want to attend three or four of the Questbridge partners for whatever reason? If I’m applying to a program that could potentially give me binding admission to a school in January of senior year, I better be 100% certain that those schools are all my absolute tippy-top first choices.
As of now, I plan to rank UPenn, Columbia, Yale and Princeton (in that order). Most of Questbridge’s other college partners are tiny and located in the freezing middle of nowhere (or are so far from home that it’s laughable for me to even attempt to go there, like Rice and Stanford). If I can’t or don’t want to go somewhere, it makes no sense for me to rank it.