https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1138 indicates that USC does not consider level of applicant’s interest.
Note that these collegedata.com pages appear to be subsets of the Common Data Sets, so that if you have difficulty finding a college’s Common Data Set, look on collegedata.com .
Possibly in the limited realm of highly selective but not super selective private colleges, but most selective colleges are only moderately or minimally selective and do mainly stats-based admission. For example, most admits to the numerous Texas public universities are automatic by stats, and the CSUs in California admit by stats without any subjective criteria.
It is true that even purely-stats-based admission colleges need to make yield estimates, but they can make decent yield estimates even with just stats (higher stat admits are less likely to yield than lower stat admits) without having to make level of applicant’s interest guesses.
You can web search for “colleges with rolling admissions” and get some links to lists. Some of the lists appear on sites that may not be permitted to link from these forums.
The lists that come up tend to be large and filled with colleges that are only moderately or minimally selective (i.e. those which most students on these forums will probably consider “too far beneath them”, though they could easily be admission safeties for many). However, the accuracy of such lists needs to be verified on college web sites.
@SuzyQ7 Purdue University has rolling admissions. GREAT school for engineering and sciences (and perhaps other majors too)
Purdue did away with rolling admission but they still notify way earlier than most schools. Non binding early action released in mid January.
I definitely agree with having a rolling admission school in the mix. My daughter knew she was accepted to a regional university’s honors program with full tuition two weeks after applying. It was a blessing for her to know that she was accepted somewhere and it made the rest of the process much less stressful even though that was a safety school.
@suzyQ7 D applied to two (Pitt and SLU). I was able to Google a list, but CC isn’t allowing me to post with the URL included. There were a surprising number of schools including all of the PA public universities (PASSHE, Pitt, Penn State, and Temple) almost all the FL universities (FSU and UF being the most notable exceptions), UMass campuses, and many others.
University of Minnesota Twin Cities does rolling admissions (or at least did this year anyways.) Very good school, incredibly nice and friendly people, right in the middle of a young and happening city.
@ucbalumnus True that most of the rolling admissions schools aren’t that selective. However, there are plenty there that are selective and/or highly ranked (Michigan, Northeastern and Penn State surprised me by being on the list that I saw), and many more that would make great “safeties” (Arizona State, several CSUs, SUNYs, etc).
Penn State gives priority to students that apply by November 30 and they do tend to offer a lot of 2+2. Having said that, there should be some movement in their accepted pool in the spring when accepted students determine $52K OOS might just be too much too spend.
@shortnuke I saw that same list (prepscholar), but it must be outdated. Northeastern does not have rolling admissions, not since I started looking at it. So this list must be very old.
Depending on how far you are willing to go (and if you can be full pay), UK schools can be good early safeties for strong applicants. S18 applied by the Oct 15 Oxbridge deadline and had an unconditional offer back from Kings College London in the first week of November.
Unfortunately my daughter did not fare as well. As noted in my previous post, her stats certainly deemed her a suitable candidate on paper for the schools she applied to. But given the relatively consistent results, there clearly was something missing from her app. Whether it was an essay that didn’t hit the mark or lackluster recommendations (won’t ever know because we waived right to read them) it seems safe to say that she was not a compelling candidate for selective schools.
REJECTED: Penn, Cornell, Tufts, Georgetown, UVA, Johns Hopkins
WAITLISTED: Lehigh, Bucknell
ACCEPTED: Ohio State, Penn State, Maryland
I will say that in retrospect we put too much stock in her high stats carrying her through this process and probably didn’t anticipate how hard it would be to get in to some of these schools even with those high stats. I’m not implying that she didn’t work hard on her application, I know she did. I’m just not sure we approached it from the point of view of “packaging” it to make her a compelling candidate. Whether we consciously realized it or not (and I think we did not realize it) her high stats probably created, to a degree, a sense of complacency. I was very hands-off with her college applications because she didn’t seem to need any help. I should have spent more time reviewing her essays or requiring her to have other third-parties read her essays.
This has been an absolutely painful week with insult on top of literal injury given DD got her wisdom teeth out earlier this week. She is demoralized and depressed as am I because since we started this college journey with her we all imagined being at this point and celebrating her going to some school that she was excited to attend. It would be the culmination of 4 years of hard work on her part. I feel sad for her that she will be spending the remaining months of her high school career not looking ahead in anticipation but rather looking behind and wondering what she did wrong.
I am treading softly with her for now and not trying to be too intrusive with the “you can bloom where you are planted” and “hey look Maryland just gave you another scholarship, they like you, they really like you” type of encouragement because she’s just not in a position to be able to process that. It’s truly like a dream has died and she will need time to mourn that dream and think about a different path forward.
I hope that over time she can begin to look for aspects of the 3 schools to which she was accepted that appeal to her. The Lehigh waitlist stings more than any of the rejects quite honestly as I have always felt that would be a great place for her and the idea of her going to my alma mater obviously made me happy and it wasn’t supposed to be as reach-y as any of the other schools (excluding Bucknell). My daughter reached out to her admissions rep and as an alum I also reached out to a contact. We emailed her guidance counselor who replied that she has seen more waitlists than expected for our high school. She is going to reach out to admissions as well but doesn’t seem optimistic about her ability to either get feedback about what was lacking in her app or influence any movement on the waitlist, but at this point it can’t hurt.
@adigal Sorry about your D. One suggestion if you haven’t done it already for your D to let admissions know in no uncertain terms (if it is true) that “if admitted I will attend” – she can reference your alumni connection and anything about the school that speaks to her. If that doesn’t work out, I truly hope she will be happy wherever she ends up.
I would say make sure to apply to big public state schools, not just private ones. I got waitlisted at a few private schools with sat ranges way below mine. Some of those private schools will not accept you if you are over qualified and don’t show enough interest. I’m guessing that’s what happened to her
Hang in there @adlgel , we feel your pain. Have hope and work the waitlists as best you can. We’ll keep rooting for you.
@happy1 Thanks. She definitely let admissions at Lehigh know that she would attend if admitted. But the odds are not in her favor based upon data from the common data set for the past few years. They take 50-60 kids off the waitlist.
She seems interested in looking at the list of colleges that still have spots as of May 1 so maybe she’ll see a college there that interests her. I feel like we were pretty thorough in developing her college list and there are colleges she’s talking about now that she’d apply to if they had openings that she outright rejected before. I don’t want her to jump at schools that she previously had no interest in attending. But if she saw a college on there that she hadn’t previously considered and wanted to explore that I would absolutely support her in doing so.
My heart goes out to you and your daughter. I know Maryland is a fantastic school (as are the other two) but dreams are dreams and that was not her dream. I have heard chatter that many schools may rely more on waitlists than in the past. Also, when I was concerned about our situation, our counselor essentially told me that during the waitlist period is when the counselors make their calls. Perhaps ask what type of relationship they have with each college. Our counselor told me which schools enjoyed close relationships with our high school and where she thought she might be effective if it came to that.
Hoping good things come your way. Definitely thinking of you all.
You know, don’t you, that Ohio State, Penn State, and Maryland are three schools that people are often crazy about? they don’t have (quite) the air of exclusivity of the colleges that rejected your daughter, so I understand why she feels diminished by the process. No one likes being rejected under any circumstances, and she has experienced a lot of rejection.
But there’s absolutely no reason not to feel excited about the prospect of attending one of those three excellent flagship universities. Each of them will have plenty of kids who are her intellectual peers, and each of them has wildly enthusiastic students and huge, committed alumni networks. What’s more, they are different in style and location. She can have a great time deciding which one of three great choices would be best for her, but only after she stops thinking that they are diminished by having accepted her when more exclusive colleges didn’t.
Sorry for your daughter’s crappy week. I would keep pressing on the waitlist. Email the admissions officer often explaining that she will attend if admitted off waitlist. Don’t worry if she seems to be ‘bugging them’. She’s not.
She’s not at all interested in Ohio State, Penn State, or Maryland?
Yes! The head of our counseling office had instructed my daughter to work waitlists by emailing the admissions rep every other week (when it looked like we may need to work waitlists). There are some other ideas in this thread on how to work a waitlist toward the beginning.