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My husband tonight said her safeties were Amherst and Middlebury.
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<p>I disagree with your husband that these schools are not a safety for anyone. I know during the 5 admissions cycles where I have participated on the CC boards, I can tell you first hand that there were students whose profiles I have read and were a lock years ago, have been waitlisted and rejected this year. Even as a URM, there is still the adage of those to whom much has been given, much is required. The net-net is your daughter is going to be evaluated in context of the opportunities she's had and how well she took advantage of those opportunities. Since admissions is a holistic process at many elite schools, even in URM admissions there is going to be diversity. It is just as important to bring low-income URM students and to learn from their experiences as it is to bring middle class/affluent URMs to schools to show them that yes, there are other URMs who are successful and you can be successful too.</p>
<p>What I have also noticed over the past years is that the URM pool is becoming more competitive with more URMs applying and those students stepping up their game taking more AP courses, bringing better scores, etc.</p>
<p>Will her SAT scores get her to committee? Absolutely. But as others have already stated, it is important to show who she is outside of these scores because colleges admit real flesh and blood people and build well rounded classes that are aligned with their institutional mission. </p>
<p>You state that your D is in the top 20% of the class. Your school profile is going to be very telling as far as the strenght of the curriculum at your school and how your D compares in context to her counter parts.</p>
<p>If you have access to the online version of the Journal on Blacks in Higher Education, I would recommend reading the following articles:</p>
<p>*Black Students Are Beginning to Seize the Early Admission Advantage
*</p>
<p>At the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities, the percentage of college-bound blacks who apply for early decision has always been far below the black percentage of the total applicant pool. The reason that college-bound blacks generally shun the binding commitments of the early admissions process is that their acceptance commitment cuts them off from the process of negotiating a favorable financial aid package from competing universities. </p>
<p>But JBHE statistics show that black students are now beginning to apply for early admission in much larger numbers.
In past years college-bound blacks have been much less likely than whites to seek early admission to the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. African Americans have avoided making the binding commitment to enroll if accepted because the rules of early decision eliminate their chances to "play the field" and consider a wide range of financial offers from competing universities. As a result, blacks have not been able to take advantage of the fact that early decision applicants generally achieve a much higher acceptance rate than applicants who choose to go the regular route. </p>
<p>For African Americans, the early decision process is assuming greater importance for the simple reason that early decision applications now make up a very large percentage of all admissions decisions. For example, this past winter Princeton University admitted 581 students under its binding early decision admissions program. This group is about one half of the freshman class that will enroll at Princeton this coming fall. </p>
<p>Blacks Who Applied for Early Admission in 2004</p>
<p>JBHE has surveyed the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities to determine how the controversial issue of early admissions actually affects black access to higher education, particularly admissions to our most selective institutions. JBHE asked each of the nation's 25 highest-ranked universities and the 25 highest-ranked liberal arts colleges for this year's early admissions data. Some of the nation's highest-ranked institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, Stanford, Dartmouth, Duke, and Columbia declined to participate in our survey. </p>
<p>We believe that the reason for this reluctance has to do with the fact that at most highly ranked colleges and universities there is only a very small trickle of black early decision applicants. Publication of this shortfall tends to hurt a school's reputation for its commitment to racial diversity. It is likely, although by no means certain, that universities and colleges missing from our statistics have a low percentage of black early applicants. </p>
<p>**For College-Bound Blacks, the Wait List Is Not the Place to Be </p>
<p>**</p>
<p>Increasingly, America's highly selective colleges and universities are using wait lists as a kind of enrollment insurance to make sure the schools fill their freshman classes with highly qualified students. But it turns out that for African Americans a notification of receiving wait-list status at most high-ranking colleges and universities is tantamount to a rejection letter.</p>
<p>In the Spring 2004 issue of JBHE we examined the status of African-American early admissions to the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. Our report found that blacks made up 4.7 percent of the early applicant pool. This is about 25 percent lower than the black percentage of all applicants at these colleges and universities in the regular admissions process. We also found that blacks were slightly more likely than whites to be offered admission during the early application process. </p>
<p>On page 6 of this issue of JBHE (Autumn 2004) we publish our annual survey of application, acceptance, and enrollment statistics for black first-year students at the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. </p>
<p>Now, for the first time, JBHE examines black admissions data for a different group of students — those assigned to the admissions waiting lists. Again our data is limited to the wait lists at the nation's highest-ranked universities and liberal arts colleges. </p>
<p>According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling, about 36 percent of all colleges and universities nationwide place some of their applicants on a waiting list. But nearly 75 percent of all highly selective colleges and universities have a wait list. </p>
<p>A wait list gives college admissions officers an insurance policy against unexpected low yield. College and university admissions offices construct sophisticated computer models based on the socioeconomic and demographic profile of their applicants. They also consider the college's past admissions statistics to predict how many of the students they accept in the current cycle will decide to enroll. They then adjust their acceptance numbers accordingly.</p>