<p>Colleges</a> look beyond grades and test scores - The Boston Globe</p>
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In the most intense debate of the morning, the panel splits over a hearing-impaired student from a rough neighborhood who travels more than an hour to a magnet high school...She grew up speaking Spanish, ....and she helped care for her siblings from a young age
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<p>I wonder where they get the details for these thumbnail profiles of students.</p>
<p>Is it from the student's essay? Or a description provided by the guidance counselor?</p>
<p>Very insightful article!</p>
<p>If you see yourself, you're in!!!</p>
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The admissions team at Tufts University embraced the Yahtzee enthusiast and budding engineer who built a wooden catapult in his backyard and the straight-A teenager who described herself as a "wise old owl" whom her friends turn to for advice.</p>
<p>Amherst College eagerly admitted the son of a New York City cab driver, a Bangladeshi immigrant who had flunked gym class but founded a newspaper dedicated to economics. The school's admissions committee also delighted at the math wiz from Queens who loses sleep when he's stumped by a problem and lives for bowling nights in his mother's league. </p>
<p>Tufts admits a student from a blue-collar Italian family who wrote movingly about his love of "food and family" and his relationship with his developmentally disabled brother. The student, who attends a Catholic school and works summers as a golf caddy, is judged a "smidge weak academically" by one reviewer.</p>
<p>But the group clearly takes a shine to him, and admits him unanimously.
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<p>And if you're these people, you didn't:</p>
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public high school in suburban Chicago, ranked behind about one-quarter of her senior class. Reviewers had given her the lowest overall academic rating, and panel members wonder why she hadn't already been denied. Discussion is brief. "Do you want to hear any more?" Roper-Doten asks. No one did. Later, the group wastes little time in rejecting a straight-A student - a Girl Scout, dancer, and peer tutor, to boot.
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<p>If all i had to go on was this article, I would say my son doesn't have a shot at either school despite both being in the top of his choices. His story is one of relative opportunity, and his taking advantage of it. However, his scores aren't perfect and his parents are college educated, not in jail and gainfully employed. Seems to me that this is not need blind admissions because a lot of these students mentioned seem to require aid - and a lot of it.</p>
<p>One can only hope that there was another day where those students that seem advantaged arent written off as inconsequential because they have a happier tale to tell OR don't wish to capitalize on their misfortunes, personally or within their family. Cuz believe me, everyone has dysfunction if they want to look at it that way.</p>
<p>An important sentence to put these stories in context:</p>
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. . . the college has [already] admitted 2,200 whose top-notch qualifications made them shoo-ins, leaving about 10,000 students competing for just 1,100 offers.
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<p>In other words, the stories are those of applicants who did not have top academic ratings, and who are being considered because of other qualities they bring to the admitted class.</p>
<p>Whether a kid is from an advantaged or disadvantaged background is not critical. The key is the student's ability to bring him/herself to life on paper, to tell a story only he could tell and in so doing demonstrate one or two core characteristics. Regardless of background and opportunities, the kid who is able to portray himself as a multi-dimensional human being has an advantage in the admissions process. </p>
<p>That's undoubtedly why the Yahtzee-playing, catapult-building kid trumped the straight-A earning, dancing, tutoring Girl Scout. I assume he met the minimum threshold with respect to grades, curriculum and scores. That hurdle met, he was then able to give a group of strangers an indication of who he is and how he became that person. She, on the other hand, probably wrote something that any one of a thousand other applicants could have written. There are humans reading those essays, fatigued humans. Boring does not win points.</p>
<p>This is after the admit the 50 plus percent full pays.</p>
<p>Aren't both Tufts and Amherst need-blind in their admissions policies?</p>
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This is after the admit the 50 plus percent full pays.
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<p>Both of these schools hugely promote their need-blind admissions. Are you suggesting that isn't the case?</p>
<p>That's what I thought. Maybe hmom was referring to the "soft denial." A college that admits without regard to need then offers the student a financial aid package that doesn't enable him/her to attend. Even at a school that promises to meet 100% of financial need, the college gets to interpret the family's financial data as it chooses, so need-based offers can vary dramatically.</p>
<p>wjb and Modadunn - </p>
<p>If any school is truly need-blind it should not ask about need on the application. I can't believe that the admissions committee doesn't notice the answer and consciously or subconsciously take it into consideration. Not cynicism, just reality.</p>
<p>A school that is need-blind will make its admissions decisions without regard to need even though, as you point out, they know who is applying for need.</p>
<p>But when it comes time to put together a financial aid package for students admitted without regard to need, the concept of enrollment management may come into play. That means that a less desirable admit who needs financial aid may be offered a less attractive aid package (bigger gap, fewer grants, more loans, more work study, etc.) than a more desirable admit. So he's in, but he can't afford to go. It's known as "admit/deny."</p>
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A college that admits without regard to need then offers the student a financial aid package that doesn't enable him/her to attend. Even at a school that promises to meet 100% of financial need, the college gets to interpret the family's financial data as it chooses, so need-based offers can vary dramatically.
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<p>Considering that Amherst meets 100% demonstrated need and has eliminated loans from their FA package, wouldn't the admit-deny come on the part of the family who either cannot or does not want to pay the EFC?</p>
<p>In addition, Amherst, the college board, CC all have FA calculators, a family could have a decent estimate of how much an Amherst education is going to cost the family.</p>
<p>As the parent of a Girl Scout/dancer/tutor, I'm a little miffed/surprised at the way the Tufts committee just blew off the one applicant. What were her test scores and was her essay really that bad? Good thing my daughter decided not to apply to Tufts.</p>
<p>That sounds right, sybbie. I guess the EFC would be larger or smaller depending on how the college interprets the family's financial data. And that interpretation, in turn, may depend on how much the school wants the kid.</p>
<p>Kathyc, I'm a student but I felt the same way! For such a 'holistic review', the admissions comittee seemed to write her off after a glance of her ECs.</p>
<p>The FAFSA EFC is going to be pretty straight forward and the family will get an estimate the moment the press the submit button. Yes, there may be some latitude as far as how the school distributes institutional aid. </p>
<p>However, the CSS profile does allow you to explain your situation (unreimbursed medical bills, taking care of elderly parents, special needs children, paying high school tuition for other children, etc). </p>
<p>It has been my experience both as a parent and a GC advocating for my kids that many schools are amenable to families requesting financial reviews, when they get their FA packages and they believe that there is something the school may have over looked. Amherst and its peer schools are also amenable to meeting the FA packages from their peer schools (this I can attest to first hand).</p>
<p>OK.. I am just going to stick up for rejecting the straight A kid. Maybe it wasn't her scores or her EC's.. maybe it had more to do with something in her recs/counselor review. I know "perfect kids" who don't work well with others, are always and forever right just because they get A's and pretty much think they are better than everyone else. I could see how a girl scout who is a peer counselor could fit that bill easily.</p>
<p>The Girl Scout/dancer/tutor may have written really dull and generic essays. Or she may have had mediocre recommendations from teachers or GC. Or, even though she got straight As, she may have earned them by choosing an undemanding curriculum when academic challenges were available. There are so many ways to torpedo an application at schools as selective as Amherst and Tufts.</p>
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Later, the group wastes little time in rejecting a straight-A student - a Girl Scout, dancer, and peer tutor, to boot. There were plenty of others just like her, says Daniel Grayson, a 25-year-old Tufts alumni on the panel.
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<p>To me it seems as the school was trying to find out what was it in the student's application that made her stand out from the plenty of other student with similar profiles. They could not find anything that made her stand out from the other grl scout/dancer/tutors so they denied her. I don't think it was anything personal against girl scouts, against dancers or against peer tutors (my D was all three also but she also brought other things to the table).</p>
<p>Why is this shocking when we have been discussing this ad nauseum for how many years now. We talk constantly about BWRKs, answer the same questions over and over, year in and year out about following your passion, instead of doing things that may simply look good on the application and differientiating yourself from the pack.</p>
<p>I recently had a conversation with family of my top janked junior (who will most likely be Val next year). She is a nice kid, but despite 3 years of talks trying to get her involved in
other things, other than her grades, scores, she brings nothing else to the table and that could be a problem in her application cycle.</p>
<p>Modadunn, the kid on my caseload is just like the kid you describe. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, she is very condescending toward the other kids, she really has no friends in school and is not looking to make any. The other students do find her hard to work/get along with (it is going to be an uphill climb).</p>