<p>Dear OP:</p>
<p>I’m glad that SlitheyTove have posted the link to Andi’s story—I actually think that particular thread should be stickied to the top of this forum.</p>
<p>My own daughter is a junior in high school and we’ve been visiting colleges. We are not shooting for the Ivies, but we are going to make every effort to find colleges where she will be happy attending regardless of whether the school is a reach, match or safety school.</p>
<p><em>Hugs</em> to you.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not true as a blanket statement. My daughter transferred and received excellent packages as a transfer student from Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Boston College.</p>
<p>It depends on the school.</p>
<p>There should be a thread here soon of colleges still accepting apps - maybe there is something in there that speaks to her more than the safety you have left?</p>
<p>If financial aid is an issue, better to take a gap year and apply to colleges as a freshman rather than a transfer. </p>
<p>In hindsight, she should have applied to schools with a broader range of selectivity levels. She can do that next year after a gap year.</p>
<p>I’m sorry this didn’t work out for you. </p>
<p>I don’t like the idea of taking an unplanned gap year. This is a shame. I think it’s worth getting on the phone and looking for schools still taking applications. </p>
<p>1) There is a list of schools that still have openings that comes out around the second week of May. There are often some good schools on that list. Some recent examples include Hendrix, College of Wooster, Denison, St Johns College, Gustavus Adolphus, University of Pittsburgh, Marlboro College and others. What happens is some schools overestimate their yields, or simply have standards that they don’t want to lower, and didn’t have enough applicants. </p>
<p>2) Clemson’s deadline is May 1
3) Beloit has rolling admissions, they may not be full. That’s a great option. It’s worth a phone call.
4) There are schools in Canada like Mt Allison, Simon Fraser and St Francis Xavier that have April 30 deadlines. It is far less expensive than US schools.
5) University of Edinburgh has a “Freshman year abroad program” with I think a June 1 deadline.
[Introduction</a> | Freshman year abroad | Visiting and Exchange students](<a href=“http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/visiting-exchange/2.742]Introduction”>http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/visiting-exchange/2.742)
6) Truman State College also may take late applications. It is a liberal arts honors college in Missouri that is very inexpensive.</p>
<p>She no doubt qualifies for admissions to all these schools, so it’s just a matter of finding a fit.</p>
<p>So sorry to read of her disappointment. It sounds as if her GCs were less than worthless during the past year. They did her a real disservice. If this were my child, I’d let her take the lead, but I’d want her to follow the great advice given in this thread in this order:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Check the NACAC ( [NACAC</a> Homepage](<a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org%5DNACAC”>http://www.nacacnet.org)) list and other sources for schools that are still accepting applications after 5/1; apply if there are any schools of interest. Your d might especially like Denison, if it happens to be on this year’s list. Ohio school with a New England LAC feel. University of Pittsburgh has great academic opportunities for a student like your d; if it has openings still, she’d have a great chance there. And if she decides to take a crack at applications next year, I highly recommend applying to Pitt in early October. She’d have an answer within a month and might well qualify for merit aid and Pitt’s Honors College.</p></li>
<li><p>Do a service gap year in a field she’s fascinated by; if that can’t happen, work at any jobs she finds. Not only will she have more money for college next year, but it will differentiate her from the zillions of applicants who don’t have real-world experience.</p></li>
<li><p>I’d suggest community college over the 4-year school she’s not happy about. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Last suggestion - read CC all the time and ask any questions you have. Good luck - hoping to read she finds a great option.</p>
<p>Another good thread to read through is this one: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html</a> and there are more along that line in the Financial Aid Forum. Some of the posters in that forum are financial aid officers themselves, and have good advice on handling the whole process.</p>
<p>14,000 is too much to borrow for one year! The Stafford Loans are the only ones a student can take out without a co-signer, and the maximum for freshman year is 5,500. This means that your daughter would need to find someone who can co-sign for 8,500 (at least) for each year of her education, and she would end up with more than 52,000 in total debt. That is way too much! The folks at FinAid.org have put together a number of useful calculators that can help you evaluate financial issues. Have her run this one to see how long it would take to dig herself out of a debt that size: [FinAid</a> | Calculators | Loan Calculator](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Loan Payment Calculator - Finaid)</p>
<p>If she wants to start college this fall, and doesn’t really want to enroll at your local community college, she could take a look at the lists of late and rolling admissions colleges and universities at [List</a> of Late Deadline Schools- Locate Colleges with Late Application Deadlines at Petersons.com](<a href=“http://www.petersons.com/college-search/late-deadline-schools.aspx]List”>http://www.petersons.com/college-search/late-deadline-schools.aspx) Some may still have financial aid available.</p>
<p>“We didn’t find this website until after my D had the disappointments. We really under-estimated the competition and field out there.”</p>
<p>I hate to think where D and I would be had I not stumbled over this site! Honestly!</p>
<p>Sure. There are the ridiculous “Chance Me!” and anti-AA threads, but there is also a wealth of information and advice here that we would have been lost without.</p>
<p>My vote is for the gap year. But, make sure that it is a productive gap year (i.e., work + volunteer work in a field that she is truly interested in).</p>
<p>I’m sorry you found about this site so late in the admissions game.
Gap years are always nice, but it depends on how passionate your D is about volunteering/traveling/helping out the community etc.</p>
<p>Applying to four schools … with three being reaches was not the best idea. You should have applied to more reaches around six or so reaches, four matches, three or so safeties. Your daughter would probably have been accepted to one of those reaches, if not the matches would have been fine and as a lest resort the safeties.</p>
<p>If she needs financial aid, her best bet is to give the process a try again next year, and make sure she does not reach transfer student status in any courses she may take over the course of the year. I say this because though there are funds for transfer students, there is not as much available as for freshmen and it will limit her options to be a transfer.</p>
<p>Goucher in Baltimore is a very fine school that has appeared on the May 1 lists with some fin aid funds available. Finding schools that will pay a good part of her costs is a problem when you are picking off of that list, I’m afraid. </p>
<p>Next time around, look at some Catholic schools. Many offer wonderful scholarships for kids with high stats. Yes, the competition is fierce out there.</p>
<p>My son did not apply to schools with such low accept rates, but he still applied to about 15 colleges because he had some issues with his profile (low test scores) and we had cost constraints but did not qualify for much if any aid. So we had to really sweep a wide area. All but 3 schools that accepted him met our cost requirements in the end of the search. But it could have gone another way easily as it did to his early childhood friend who has better stats over alll than he has. She was wait listed at 8 schools, some where DS was accepted, and was denied at some on their mutual list. Tougher for girls at LACs, by the way, that was pretty clear. </p>
<p>Some of those schools supposedly at the next tier are not matches for anyone except those who are clearly top school acceptees, by the way. Vanderbilt, BC, to name two are not easy admits at all. BC is tough for girls. Same for Wm &M, Tufts, NYU. Not to say they should not be on the list, but certainly not as a match. I suggest schools like Dickinson, Gettysburg, Goucher, Muhlenberg, Fordham, Lafayette as matches and Williamette, Marquette, Sienna, St Joseph’s, Marist, Providence, Hartwick, Goucher, Duquesne as some safeties that can come up with some money. It’s not easy gettting a substantial scholarship. A good student can get up to a $5K merit awards at a number of schools but close to a full ride is tough. These days, even a $30K award is only slightly more than half of what a school can cost. It’s what you end up having to pay in loans or by check that counts in the end.</p>
<p>It might be worth sending a letter to one of the colleges where she was wait-listed and add her second semester senior grades and something unique about the school that really makes her want to go there. For example, my son loved the cross-department cooperation at CMU and I think showing his love for that in his application really helped him get in. Colleges are looking for love and for a student who matches them perfectly. Find something specific to say about the school and something specific to say about you and how it makes you a perfect match. It might get her off the wait-list.</p>
<p>
That puts her in the top 1% of students. Pretty impressive! But when you run the numbers, this is one of the peak years for number of students applying to college. With around 3 million HS graduates, that means your D sits in a group of about 30,000 kids. And with the internet the smart kids all know about the top schools, so apps there have surged. So she’s hardly a sure thing at competitive schools, deserving as she may be. </p>
<p>To be honest, the waitlists at many schools are a consolation prize. The kid gets the satisfaction of thinking they got in (sorta) and the school has a pool of kids to replenish any shortfalls. The problem is many schools put literally thousands of kids on the waitlist (probably less at LACs that have comparatively fewer apps to begin with) and then take a small percentage from it. According to an article a few years back in the NY Times, the chances are not very good: [COLLEGE</a> PREP; Wait-List Limbo - New York Times](<a href=“COLLEGE PREP; Wait-List Limbo - The New York Times”>COLLEGE PREP; Wait-List Limbo - The New York Times)</p>
<p>She can try sending an update letter to the colleges that waitlisted her if she has any new awards, an uptick in grades, etc. but that’s still a longshot. Best plan might be to take a gap year, do something to make her a stronger candidate, and reapply. One thing to be careful of is taking any classes at a CC. At some schools you are considered a transfer student if you have enrolled at any other college except for summer classes immediately after HS. I know this is true for the UC system, so you’ll want to check into this for places she is considering if you go this route.</p>
<p>I’m really sorry for your daughter’s problems. </p>
<p>How were you/she going to pay for Middlebury and Bowdoin if she was accepted? Did I miss something? You said that she was going to have to borrow $14,000 her first year for the small school (Gordon?), and that was with financial assistance. How was she going to to borrow that much? Wouldn’t Middlebury and Bowdoin be even more costly? Maybe you should consider the state school where you are now located. Perhaps they have spring admissions.</p>
<p>Just admit that you messed up in terms of crafting an application strategy in the current hyper-competitive environment. I am not being harsh–I did it to some extent with my first son, but did way better on the second go. So admit it to yourself, apologize to her, and move on.</p>
<p>Give her a $10k budget to plan gap year activities/accomplishments. Spend a couple thou on a college consultant who really has the game dialed in (I could extend a referral by PM, if you like.) Apply to a series of 8 LACs, any one of which she would happily go to, evenly distributed between #1-100 rankings in the US News. Your first list was way top heavy and too small. Kenyon, Macalester, Whitman, Grinnell, Oberlin etc. are all fine schools and much easier to get into than the ones you tried this year.</p>
<p>She will come out having had a great time, matured a lot, cost no more than going to a school she is not excited about, and being a stronger candidate to a more strategically sound set of schools. I would expect next April to be much more joyful.</p>
<p>yet another case of bad advice from school counselors to apply only to a limited number of schools…</p>
<p>sad to see these things happening to qualified students</p>
<p>Another vote for the gap year: Check out The Gap Year Advantage by Karl Haigler and Rae Nelson. Check out The Center for Interim Programs run by Holly Bull and for articles written by her (she’s one of the early gappers in the US). </p>
<p>I would also ask the counselor at your school to call the admissions offices where your daughter is wait-listed to talk to the admissions person responsible for your area. If they understand your daughter’s situation, and the counselor makes a persuasive case, it might cause her application to rise to the top of the pile.</p>
<p>We don’t have much information on the OP’s financial situation. </p>
<p>Her daughter was wait-listed at Middlebury and Bowdoin and has strong stats.
With respect to admission only, her matches might include schools like Bates, Colby, Kenyon, Whitman, Mount Holyoke, and Smith. These are all fairly similar to Middlebury and Bowdoin.</p>
<p>With respect to aid, her matches may be a different set of schools entirely. If for example she has a high EFC but her family is unwilling/unable to cover it, she may need to focus on less expensive or less selective schools. A school like Hendrix or Earlham might give good merit aid to someone with her stats. But if her EFC is low, LACs in the US News 20-40 range should be good admission and financial aid matches.</p>
<p>I agree you and your daughter received bad advice from people who are paid to know better.</p>
<p>The waitlists may or may not come through. I’d express strong interest then put the idea to the side and focus on what you can control. I’m in support of taking a gap year and starting over again with a fresh and balanced list next year.</p>
<p>Gap years are VERY positive experiences. Remember, no one (except the adcoms of the four colleges that your daughter applied to) needs to know that a gap year wasn’t her FIRST choice. Proceed as if it were what she’d planned all along, and a year from now I have no doubt that she’ll have some wonderful acceptances.</p>
<p>Good luck and let us know how she does.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Last year, at Middlebury more than 10 percent of their admitted class came from the waiting list. The school is known to under-admit in April and use the waiting list and deferred admissions crutches. To put things in perspective, 134 WL is substantial considering an enrollment of 587 students, out of which 325 were Early Decision admitted students. </p>
<p>Number of qualified applicants offered a placed on waiting list 1958
Number accepting a place on the waiting list 865
Number of wait-listed students admitted 134</p>
<p>You should also know that Middlebury is sensitive to deferred admission (full year or FebAdmits.) You might be well-served to contact the school and express how committed your daughter is to ACCEPT a deferred admission to the less popular entrance dates.</p>
<p>Here are links to the Common Data Sets of Middlebury for the prior years.
[Common</a> Data Set | Middlebury](<a href=“Assessment and Institutional Research | Middlebury”>Assessment and Institutional Research | Middlebury)</p>
<p>It’s generally suggested to have the guidance counselor call the waitlist schools–in your case, I’m not sure that’s the best strategy. I think you (or your kid) should make the call, or at least also call.</p>