How often does kid not get into any colleges?

Parent Cafe
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@3littlebirds

Before I started this process (sophomore at a very good LAC and high school senior choosing between some nice options) I would have never believed this post could be true. But, while my kids have done okay … they have been on the wrong side of yes at places they “were qualified” for.

We were on the wrong side of an ED two years ago … and it hurt a lot. Being that he was our oldest, we were panicked.

It’s maddening. I am sick thinking of your daughters predicament.

Good luck and I hope that she gets a break.

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This has been a fascinating discussion and I’ve learned so much from all of you. I have two younger kids so your words of advice will very much be useful in the future.

I am still trying to process how this all went down. In the end, it totally worked out. My daughter is 100% over the moon happy and will attend USC next year. And we feel very lucky and grateful it did go her way. We realize it so easily could have broken the other way with devastating results.

The number of applications she submitted gave us peace. There were better odds and more chances.

We tried to submit early apps to give her some early positive results (which were expected per her counselor) but none of those panned out early. I suppose applying to a school with auto-admit would have reduced some stress there but I wonder how much since she genuinely would have liked to have attended any of the schools she tried for in the early rounds. Had we expanded into schools she had no interest in just to have something… hard to know if that would have provided any more peace.

Clearly, our failure to visit some of the schools for which we were advised she’d easily get accepted hurt her (I believe-no demonstrated interest). In the future, my younger kids will find a way to visit every school and show lots of love too. It seems to matter.

I also feel college admissions is a game and quite a lot of luck is involved too. It’s a system and there are ways to gain advantages. Understanding odds (we had no idea how slim the RD statistics really were) and using those to better strategize is essential. This whole “showing love” to schools is ridiculous but necessary. Who would have guessed that? I’ve reflected on how it could be improved and the only answer I come up with is to go back to pre-common app days when more effort was required to apply to each school so you had to really love the school to apply (which would keep app numbers down). But that will never happen because the schools and system want more apps. So I think we’re stuck with “the game”.

Finally, for any kids and families who find themselves in a similar situation, my heart goes out to you. There are lots of unfair things in life, I know, (and this is not a terminal illness or tragic event) but it is especially unfair when your optimistic and enthusiastic teen busts his/her a** for 4+ years, sacrificing so much along the way and there’s no pay off at the end! When it’s not working out, it’s so hard to reconcile all of the blood, sweat and tears. For those who do receive a disappointing result, I can only hope that karma will catch up and reward your teen and family tenfold down the line.

This community is a special place. From moral support to answers to humor along the way, grateful for CC and all of you. Hoping you all have sons and daughters who are feeling proud of their efforts and excited for their futures. Cheers!

Below is her final result. She is so happy with USC and wants closure so will not pursue any of the waitlists.

BC - ACCEPT
BU - WL
Cornell -denied
Dartmouth-WL
Duke - denied
Emory - denied
Michigan - deferred (never heard back)
Northwestern - denied
Penn-denied
Princeton-WL
Tulane - WL
USC-ACCEPT and attending
Vanderbilt-denied
Villanova - ACCEPT
Wake Forest-don’t know (on spring break)

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Congrats! I’m glad it ended with a school she is really happy to go to!

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Wow! Congrats to your D and to YOU! She was admitted to three GREAT colleges and got to choose from among them. Also, she got waitlisted at Princeton and Dartmouth!! Clearly, she was in the ballpark.

In looking at the final outcome, I don’t see anything shocking. I think she was WL at Tulane and BU for yield protection. I believe that if either of those was her first choice and she showed some love and committed to attend if taken off the list, she would have been admitted.

Cornell, Duke, Northwestern, Penn, Vanderbilt are all extremely difficult admittances—particularly without an ED application. She will hear from Michigan. A love letter after the deferral would likely push her over the top.

The only one I’m a little surprised about is Emory. But, again, it’s a crapshoot. You are well armed for your next two children!

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Thank you for the update and I am glad your daughter is happy with the outcome!

However, I think you have drawn the wrong inference from results — I doubt that visiting any of those colleges would have made a difference. That’s like rationalizing that if you toss a coin and call out heads, and it comes up tails – that the result will be different if you blow on the coin before tossing the next time around. So that really is magical thinking at best. Your daughter’s results are entirely consistent with the admission odds of these schools.

If a college has a 25% admission rate, that means that there is a 75% chance that the student will not be accepted. These highly selective universities are not making the decision based on whether the kid visited or not – they have more than enough qualified applicants and they are using holistic criteria to select among them.

So really: next time around make sure that your younger kids apply to safeties. And if you aren’t sure what’s a safety vs. match – you can always come back here to ask for an opinion in the fall, before application deadlines.

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I was not thinking a visit to the Ivy’s and selective schools would matter (we actually visited most of the selective schools on the list anyway); rather the schools engaging in yield protection. Our counselor called Tulane to see what the issue was when she was placed on WL as our HS sends many, many kids to Tulane each year and nobody with her stats had ever not been accepted. Tulane told our counselor that she didn’t seem very interested. Recommended she visit and apply ED2. So visiting and showing love does matter at many of these schools. Some schools even state “demonstrated interest” is looked at by admissions. Who knows how many others gauge it too? Another example-Cornell admissions told a friend during her visit that kids who visit get extra points.

Can you get in without demonstrated interest? Sure. Does demonstrated interest help at many schools? Yes. I’d never heard of demonstrated interest until the apps were pretty much done. Now I know. And I believe it can provide an extra edge (or hurt a higher stat kid).

And she actually did show a lot of love to USC. By accident. She just happened to stumble into some interactions with admissions there. It was not intentional. Don’t know if it mattered but it did happen.

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“Some schools even state “demonstrated interest” is looked at by admissions. Who knows how many others gauge it too?”

Good place to look is each school’s common data set, section C7, and there’s lots of other helpful data there as well. Here’s Tulane’s
http://www2.tulane.edu/oair/upload/CDS_2017-2018.pdf

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Thanks for the C7 info. Very interesting. I will definitely check those stats out before my next kids apply.

Just thinking about things further. And I do not think admit/deny magically changes with a visit but… councidentally, she did visit Dartmouth and Princeton (both WL). She did NOT visit Cornell, Penn, Emory,Vanderbilt. (As I recall, Penn asked her for several connections she had with the school on the app). Those four schools were last minute adds (when we started getting nervous about results) so did not have chance to visit. Princeton and Dartmouth were part of the original plan so she did visit those schools.

I checked Cornell’s C7 and they report demonstrated interest does not matter. But their admissions officer said visits will get you an extra push as reported by a friend from an admissions tour…

Penn’s C7 says they do consider level of interest which is consistent with the questions on their app.

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It seems to me that a student could “demonstrate interest” just as well be sending emails to their regional admissions rep and asking specific questions, preferably stuff more detailed than what is answered on the college website.

But I really do think the idea that a visit to the college campus makes much of a difference is naive view of competitive college admissions. All colleges are concerned about “yield management” but they rely on algorithms based on multiple data points, not simply college visits. They also use data mining :

When a high stat applicant is denied from a college that accepts a majority of applicants – it is enough of an oddity to justify the thought that the applicant was rejected or waitlisted because the admissions didn’t believe the student would come.

But when a high stat applicant is denied from a very selective college --Tulane, for example, now has only about a 20% admit rate - the reason is because the admissions committed decided that they preferred other qualified applicants. Unless you can answer the question “what does this applicant offer college X that sets her apart from the other applicants” – it’s a matter of making the cut.

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OP - congratulations. Glad your D has some options. USC is a great school. She will enjoy the sunshine.

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So happy it turned out so well. In the end she can only attend one and she’s thrilled. You now have a better plan for next time.

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C7 section of the Common Data Set only tells part of the story on demonstrated interest. Even if C7 indicates the college doesn’t consider “demonstrated interest”, almost all of them still track (and VALUE) applicant’s interest in other subtle ways. Among the private colleges, the only ones that truly don’t are Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Caltech (and perhaps Princeton, which I’m somewhat uncertain). These are the best of the best, of course. I would recommend applicants do all they can to demonstrate interest for all the other colleges they are applying to.

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@3littlebirds Congrats! Your post was great and summarized a lot ofthe issues but I agree with @calmom in that the one thing you missed in your summary was: Find one or two true safeties ** that your child likes/loves ** and make sure to show them the love. This is probably the HARDEST part of the college search.

Also, I recommend all future parents to pare down the reach list. Too many reaches generally hurts the application because students only have so much time and there is a law of diminishing returns in application writing. High Reach schools all have extensive essays and they must be written individually by the student to slightly tailor their strengths to what the school is looking for. Just ‘pushing the button’ to one more reach with recycled supplements will not do it. Apps to these reaches are a waste of time and money and feed this ridiculous process.

My recommendation: 2 Reaches, 4 matches/likely, 2 safeties (if possible, early action schools). If the early apps don’t turn out as expected, then add a couple more ‘shot gun’ ** safeties **, if the early apps are better than expected (with good match/low reaches), then remove safeties for RD and maybe add another reach.

According to what I see- your D had 10 Reaches, 3 Low Reach/Match, and 2 Matches. But she got lucky - she got into one of her reaches, so it all worked out!

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@3littlebirds Thanks for posting the update, and congratulations to your D on USC! You all must be so relieved and happy. Now go have yourself a big ole glass of wine this evening! :smiley:

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My younger son felt that the applications he wrote suffered for the colleges he hadn’t visited. It was not a question of demonstrated interest, but being able to really target his essays at the college. The one exception was U of Chicago - there he had fun with the uncommon essay and because his aunt and uncle had gone there he had more of a feel for it. He actually said, that in terms of choosing colleges, he felt in retrospect the visits were overrated. So he was a bit inconsistent!

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If schools are far away, you can also show interest by contacting the local rep and talking to them at a college fair or at your HS if they visit, and requesting an alumni interview if offered.

The Tulane answer is quite telling and may be the case at BU as well - high stats kid that doesn’t seem that interested and so may not attend. Her results are somewhat surprising as getting a WL at Princeton certainly suggests she is very well qualified. Glad she is happy!

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First of all, congrats to your daughter on her successes!!! I agree that visiting Emory, Tulane and safeties and matches is important or at least make substantial contact with admissions for those that live too far, cost of visit too high and such. Though visiting “ivies” can be fun and helpful in finding fit, etc. I doubt it makes a difference in the final admission decision. Most of them don’t count demonstrated interest at all in their decisions. To everyone out there… it is wise to build the college list from safeties up to match then low reach and, last, reaches. That way, your student can focus on the safer affordable options first and find ones they like, before being distracted by the least likely options.

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I actually do not quite agree with this. Reach schools tend to be more of a crapshoot. Even if you have the stats (if you don’t have the stats then it really doesn’t matter how many you apply), it is hard to know why you would be accepted at NU and not at Cornell (maybe NU wanted a dancer and Cornell didn’t), or Harvard, but not Yale. If it is your aspiration to go to those reach schools, to get into one of them you may need to apply to more. As far as essays (it may have changed), we found next tier down schools sometimes asked for more essays, and it was their way of weeding out some “why not” applicants.

Both of my kids were able to recycle their essays for many of those schools. The toughest one was the main essay.

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@3littlebirds Congrats! I would add a couple additional recommendations to the list that you put together for anyone with kids applying:

  • []Be sure to include schools that have rolling admissions in your college search and applications. Try to find at least one that is a great fit for the student. This is very different from schools that have EA/ED. Applying very early to a rolling admissions school can get you a decision before the EA/ED deadlines, allowing the student to adjust their application strategies and reducing the stress of applications (and potentially costs) if accepted.
    [    ]Be very careful of building a list of safety schools comprised of only smaller private schools (especially for high stats kids). These schools seem to be much more sensitive to yield protection than larger privates or public universities, and their admission numbers may be misleading.
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“Be sure to include schools that have rolling admissions in your college search and applications”

This is a good idea, but there are very few schools with rolling admissions, right? Do you know if there is a list?