Fwiw, dealing with an overinvolved (or with too high expectations) is a LOT better than the alternatives. Dealing with parents who do not want or cannot be involved in the decisions (and the bills) is a LOT harder.
My recommendation is to play around and enjoy the last years of a possible collaboration on such an important decision. Trust me in that you will come to cherish to last years before your independence. In a way, the “helicoptering” and heavy involvement comes from the realization that the kiddos are about to start making their own decisions – albeit that they will remain financially dependent for eons!
Again, make it a game and accept to bend a bit and honor your dad’s decision. He will soon realize that the process is not easy,
@mom2and, top colleges certainly cut students from feeder HS’s they were familiar with some slack back then. Please don’t assume that your HS was like all HS’s.
Also, the OP said her dad had a poor HS GPA. She did not say that he had a poor college GPA.
Also add to my previous list schools like Vandy, WashU, and ND, which I’m almost certain had admit rates at or above 50% in the '80’s.
Well, your Dad only sees you twice a week? Maybe he is looking for some sort of focal point. Your task over the next 9 months is to get to know yourself better and how you react to differences in college experiences. Do you like leafy campuses with lots of space? Urban? Rural? Sororities? how do you like your classroom and teaching to be structured. By the end of this calendar year you should write down what attributes are most important to you in a college.
By visiting colleges, you can get a visceral feel/reaction, and start trying to pinpoint what is causing that reaction, to help build your list of what you want in a college. By visiting “best in class” colleges, you can really pinpoint your likes and dislikes.
Then, when you have a list of attributes, and you start getting the GPA and test scores and ECs gathered together, you have a starting place to search for a list of appropriate colleges you may like (a year from now). This is the beginning of the road for you and for your dad. Take it as it comes, and use it as grist for a conversation and an opportunity for a more honest, deeper relationship with your dad.
"@MiamiDAP I don’t want to go look at colleges that are highly unlikely for me to go to because I would be so sad if I fell in love with one that I could not get into. "
-C’mon, be a bit more adult, this is an adult life that you are entering, got to know how to navigate this new to you waters. Compromise somtime is the best that you can do with the least of efforts. I bet, you will enjoy thise trips anyway. I would be very happy if somebody would take me on the trips on their dime. You do not know what you are missing here, it is fun after all. If college application is not fun, then I do not know what is. Stay cool, take it easy, life is good and more so when somebody else is paying to entertain you, take advantage!
One or two visits to intensely selective colleges might wake Dad up, too, if the admissions presentations include data sets for incoming classes, and overall admissions figures. If he hears that the 25th-percentile of admitted students have SATs and GPAs well above what he had, he might cool his jets somewhat.
Also, the OP and parents need to figure out the if the costs of the various colleges will be realistic (check net price calculators and scholarships). If the parents are divorced (if the OP only sees the father once every two weeks, that is a possibility), they need to be aware that many colleges use both parents’ income and assets to determine financial aid. If the parents are divorced and uncooperative with each other on kids’ (i.e. OP and any siblings) college financial matters, then the OP would be best advised to build a merit-seeking application list.
<<<
With 3 in college at once, even if the family was comparatively wealthy, their EFC would be cut in 1/3. So they should hopefully not have to lay out that kinda dough for college annually.
<<<
It appears that the parents are divorced.
The OP mentioned that his dad was from a very rich family. That and the fact that he’s a physician suggests to me that his income/assets are high enough that they may not qualify for aid even with 3 in school. But, that is just speculation.
It sounds like mom is pretty well set as well because the custodial family is living in an affluent area.
At CSS schools, the family contribution doesn’t cut in 1/3. It’s more like 40/40/40…but that’s not necessarily 40% of COA.
When income/assets are high enough, you don’t see any aid even with multiples.
Get a copy of The Gatekeepers by Jacques Steinberg. You can get a paperback or used online from Amazon for cheap. It explains the current college admissions crunch pretty well right in the begining. It also describes the admission process at Wesleyan University. You can ask your Dad to do you all a favor and read it to bring him up to date. Actually it is near 10 years old and admissions is only more selective since then. It also has some interesting admissions stories, following the kids journey. A very interesting and entertaining read.
@mom2and “the change in admit rate is due, at least in part, to rising numbers of applications”
This is a common belief, but it is not accurate. The rising number of applications per student pushes down the average college’s yield, causing the need to admit more candidates, so average admission rates should not be impacted by a rising number of applications per student.
Top schools have falling admission rates because they are drawing better applicants from farther away than they were able to in the past. More OOS and International applicants.
It was much easier to get into colleges back in the 80’s. There were far fewer applicants (fewer students, less international), people only applied to the universities that they wanted to go to - which was usually a state school - , the was little financial aid (but tuition was lower). Also, that was before grade inflation was prevalent so a 3.5 was pretty good. People didn’t study for ACT/SAT - there were very few resources and even fewer college advisors and average scores were lower for college bound students.
I don’t know if you can directly compare the 80’s with today. Maybe you can convince your dad of that by showing him some admitted student profiles. There were certainly more slackers. My HS class of 400 students had only about 40 in AP track - even in a well regarded university town.
Much2learn: The top schools have very high yields. If Harvard got half the applications it now receives, it would still admit the same number of students because its yield would not change. The percent admitted, however, would change.
The number of admitted students is far fewer than the number of applications. Even if 20% more students are admitted, it would only change the admit rate by a couple of percentage points. For example, for the class of 2018 Duke had 32,513 applicants and admitted about 11% or 3,617. Of those, 1,728 enrolled or 48%. Let’s say in the past Duke’s yield was 70% (pretty high). For the same class size, they would have only had to admit 2,469 students which would push the admit rate down to about 7.5%. So yes, it went up by about 3.5%. If the yield remained 70% and the number of applicants was half of what is now, the admit rate would double from 7.5% to about 15%. Similarly, if the yield remained at 48%, the admit rate would double from 11% to 22%. Thus, the number of applicants has more impact on admit rate than yield.
Back in the dark ages when I was applying to college the wealthy kids in my high school that were shooting for the Ivys and other good schools took “Stanley K” for SAT prep. It was around even then. Not as common as it is now. The admit rates were still pretty low at top colleges. It was not easy to get into Harvard, even back in the 1970s. It is much harder now, but was not easy even back then, especially if you were a BRWK from the northeast.
Fomr Harvard Crimson.
[quote]
Fifty years ago, Harvard sent acceptance letters to 20 percent of roughly 6,700 applicants to the Class of 1969. By 2006, that figure had dropped to 9.7 percent for the class of 2010 and since then has continued on a downward trend overall, reaching a record-low 5.3 percent acceptance rate earlier this month.
According to admissions experts, the historic decline in admissions rates will continue and has been driven by students applying to larger numbers of colleges, as well as universities stepping up recruitment efforts to grow their application pools. [\quote]
He doesn’t expect us to become physicians but it has always been a huge possibility because most people in our family are doctors so growing up that is what we wanted to be.I used to be really set on becoming one but strayed away from it because I would not want to go to college for 8 years.Our dad just wants us to get jobs we enjoy where we can support ourselves.
If you do go and visit colleges this summer, you can try to take a step back and not “fall in love” with any of them. Instead, try to figure out what it is you like and dislike about each one. See if you have a strong preference between large and small, urban vs. rural, etc. If you do find that you really like one and that it is a high reach, you can research (or come here and ask) and find similar colleges that may be more of a match for your stats. In other words, while I understand that he is choosing colleges that you wouldn’t pick to visit, if he insists on this list then you can still get something out of those visits. I do think it’s good to point to your school’s Naviance (if you have one) and show him what your chances are based on your stats. Our first college trip was to one major city, where my D was able to tour a large public, large private, medium private and some LACs that were outside the city – from that trip we were able to figure out which other colleges she might find interesting.
You can also try to add in a few nearby schools that are more in your target range.
@mom2and “According to admissions experts, the historic decline in admissions rates will continue and has been driven by students applying to larger numbers of colleges, as well as universities stepping up recruitment efforts to grow their application pools. [\quote]”
Well, if you are talking about Harvard, then that may be correct because, as you say, the yield will probably not change very much.
However, it is just a math problem that the average admission rate is not impacted by increases in the number of applications completed per student. The reason is that if every student in the country submitted twice as many applications this year, then the average school would have to accept twice as many students and their yield will be cut in half. The result is that the admission rate doesn’t change, on average. The quote just tells me that admissions “experts” can’t do the math.
much2learn,
Every college that has huge increases in the number of student applications has seen its acceptance rate plunge.
Most of those same colleges are not increasing the number of slots, so more students are turned away. thus the acceptance rate goes down.
Its simple math, like playing musical chairs- if 50 students vie for only 10 chairs then 40 end up without a seat 10/50=20% acceptance rate.
If 100 vie for 10 seats then the acceptance rate is 10%.
the number of applications submitted by each student has no bearing on individual college acceptance rates. colleges dont know how many other applications a student submits. they only deal with the ones in their in box.
“the reason is that if every student in the country submitted twice as many applications this year, then the average school would have to accept twice as many students”
this is a false premise. Colleges dont have to accept more students than their yield calculations suggest would be a safe #, unless they had lots additional beds for more students, in case their yield did go up. The # of slots for freshman has not gone up at most established colleges in the last 20+years .
Menloparkmom,“the number of applications submitted by each student has no bearing on individual college acceptance rates. colleges dont know how many other applications a student submits. they only deal with the ones in their in box.”
Right, but they all end up in some college’s inbox. They don’t just vanish. Students applying to more schools leads to students being admitted to more schools per student, which leads to falling yields. Falling yields cause schools to raise the number of students admitted.
@Much2learn, @menloparkmom, what seems to be happening is that more colleges are entering the “exclusive” ranks with acceptances well below 20%, while some colleges are failing to attract enough students (Sweet Briar and Mills College are recent examples). There is a sort of consolidation around the “more popular” colleges; and colleges are trying to become more and more exclusive, since lower acceptance rates seem to drive increased applications.
Therefore, schools are motivated to market in order to increase the number of applicants and to maintain very high yields. Some do this through monitoring “demonstrated interest.” Others use tactics that are helpful to the college but compromise the applicants options such as Early Decision (with increased acceptances from this batch), and reduced acceptances, but larger waitlists with the added wrinkle of asking for an answer verbally before “officially” pulling a student from the waitlist.
So, the net effect is that some schools are becoming more exclusive, with high yields and low acceptance percentages; while other schools are foundering with increasing acceptance percentages. Schools that are playing with the knobs (increase tuition and supply merit discounts; Early Action; Large waitlists & verbal prior to notification; “demonstrated interest”; etc.) are seeing their “stats” improve preferentially and differentially from the global average.
While overall, a similar number of students are going to college from year-to-year, and therefore the global average admission range (sum of all students applying divided by sum of all students admitted) isn’t going to change much; there is much jockeying for ranking and prestige that has a large outcome on admittance rates at a specific school.