If she wants a smaller LAC but can give up the N England part, lots of LACs in the East and Midwest give lots of merit. Kalamazoo, for example, is giving $42k if money were an issue. Or schools like Depauw and Allegheny are aggressive.
In the end, if she takes advantage, it will work out for her. Even a school like Bama, you can make it smaller.
It’s tough for the kids - as parents, potentially on the hook for $325k, we naturally salivate at some of the crazy offers out there like the one you got at Bama.
Kids don’t have real life experiences yet so they don’t quite understand how much that expense can impact a family. And as parents, we have a hard time saying no to them.
I’m sure it will all work out. How wonderful sue should feel that someone wants her so badly that they’re willing to pay for her. That’s super cool.
There’s nothing wrong with doing admitted student visits in spring of senior year when you a) know you have been admitted and can afford it and b) are months away from matriculating and are much clearer about who you are and what you want. In fact, it’s a great time to decide.
It’s def hard when your child doesn’t get accepted but either deferred or rejected. We understand, going through the deferral process (SCEA) now too. Very heartbreaking to watch. However reach schools are hard to get into, parents start training and working with their kids from elementary school to get into these schools. My daughter only seriously even thought about colleges her junior year. But I do believe that we are strategically placed where we were meant to be. My husband’s CEO (his sons are also seniors) told him he listened to a TED talk recently which said that the top 5% of Harvard students who publish and go on to do great things is the same as top 5% of students from a no name school and do the same level of great things. Whereas the 50% of Harvard students don’t do anything great but just graduate and live life technically are “stronger” than the 5% of top students who graduate from a no name school who go on to do great things and publish etc etc but never do. it’s super fascinating. We talked to a Yale professor at the beach this summer and he encouraged my daughter that yes you can go to even a good state school and still produce amazing work at that school and be the top student- technically that student could have gone anywhere but maybe it wasn’t meant to be an IVY. So, this means it’s all about the student and what they make out of their college experience.
I agree with the general idea of individual students primarily driving their outcomes rather than prestige/name of college attended primarily driving their outcome. For example, I’d expect similar types of outcomes between students who are accepted to Harvard and choose to attend Harvard and students whoa are accepted to Harvard, but choose to attend a less selective college.
However, I dispute the specific percentages and wording. For example, “50% of Harvard students don’t do anything great but just graduate and live life.” It sounds like you are defining “do anything great” to including publishing papers… and perhaps other things? Was the 50% number for not doing anything great a guess or is it based on a published figure?
Compared to a good portion of publics and LACs, few Harvard students go on to get PhDs. In the senior survey, only 15% of students said they planned to continue education after bachelor’s, and only a small minority of that group pursues PhD. Most Harvard students don’t prioritize a career in academia, but that doesn’t mean that they “don’t do anything great and just graduate and live life.” There are many possible ways to define a great outcome or doing great things.
I don’t know. My husband told me on Friday evening about the Ted Talk (didn’t remember the title of the talk) he heard about from his CEO when he and his CEO were talking about college apps on Friday and results of E.A. or ED.
That video does appear to be a similar idea, with comparing publications and percentiles at Harvard to less selective colleges.
Gladwell is referencing the paper at https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.28.3.205 which looks at research productivity of economics PhD students in 6 years after graduating. The paper suggests that a very small portion of PhDs are publishing multiple papers, and the vast majority publish 0-1 papers. Some specific numbers are below, comparing Harvard to average non-top 30 college. Percentiles reference students ranked from highest to lowest number of publications.
Gladwell argues that if the non-research productive Harvard PhD students had attended a less selective college they’d have a higher publication rate since they’d be among the top students at the less selective college. For example, the 60th percentile publications at Harvard was 0.12 papers. If that 0.12 papers kid attended a non-top 30 college where his stats were >95th percentile, then he would publish >0.31 papers – more than if he attended Harvard.
There are a variety of flaws in this reasoning. One is assuming that all economics PhD students primary goal is to have the largest possible number of publications within the first 6 years after graduating. Many have other focuses soon after graduating. Another is assuming that rank within former PhD class and related feeling of inadequateness compared to fomer classmates primarily dictates future publications after graduating . There are other factors that contribute to research productivity besides just being relative rank within former PhD class.
In any case, they are talking about economics PhD students, rather than students attending Harvard for undergrad. As noted earlier, few Harvard undergrad students pursue PhDs. The vast majority instead pursue employment after undergrad. By far, the 3 most common employment fields in the Harvard senior survey were as follows (percent only include grads working after college). In general, employers as whole pay little attention to prestige of college name. However, college name can be more influential in consulting and finance, and a large portion of Harvard grads seem to choose to work in these fields after graduating. Attending Harvard likely increases the chance of a student pursuing consulting and finance due to being more likely to see recruiters on campus or in career fairs, imitating peers, and direct preference. I expect this also contributes to why relative fewer Harvard students pursue graduate degrees than at many other colleges. Whether consulting and finance counts as a great outcome is debatable.
Curious what major your child applied to at Clemson as that can have a significant factor for capped majors (example: nursing). From the stats you listed it looks like they would have been competitive for EA admit to Clemson. So maybe it was a close miss. Also, since this is the first year of EA at Clemson that could be a factor too. Clemson has usually prioritized gpa, rank, rigor, scores, and in-state vs OOS. Did they submit SAT/ACT? I have a sophomore engineering major there and my DS senior in HS got in earlier this month in EA but we heard lots of deferrals.
She applied for Psychology. And submitted a 33 ACT score. She’s top 20% of her very large high school class. I’m sure a lot has to do with it being their first EA admission but my main point was that you hear their best odds for admission are to apply early. It just doesn’t seem like the case in this specific scenario.
I am surprised she did not get in during the EA round. I would think she has a great chance during RD. Though I know that might sour her on Clemson. Up until this year Clemson would only send out early acceptances in Nov and Dec to some high stats kids (no deferrals or rejections before February). So in the past most applicants didn’t hear anything until February. By deferring so many now they run the risk of turning off a lot of those kids who will turn their focus elsewhere.
So be it, based in her stats both the schools and the chance of merit make them very likely. if nothing comes through she can go to Bama for free tuition, or commute 45 minutes to our good state school. Or go to the school her dad works at for free, and we’d just have to pay for housing. June 1 deadline.
According to Clemson’s admission statistics page at Admissions Statistics | Clemson University, South Carolina and Clemson’s CDS , the majority of Clemson’s fall admits were in top 10% of their class. It sounds like your daughter may not be within top 10% of her HS class, and based on previous posts may have also been lower GPA than typical admits. Obviously there are many other factors that contribute to admission decision, but I don’t think it’s clear that applying EA negatively impacted chance of admission in this instance.
Whether applying EA increases chance of admission over RD depends on the college, as well as the particular student. Some colleges do seem to give a substantial boost for applying in the early round. Others do not. Some students present a substantially better application in spring of senior year than in the fall. Others do not.
I find Clemson’s merit distribution (and maybe this year, acceptance) based on class rank tricky. That really is an arbitrary number because the rigor of the high school largely determines rank. My 2020 kid went to a very competitive HS with 100% college matriculation. He was NMSF and had a very good GPA so was accepted in the early round his year but was not top 10% of his class so no merit money. He took all APs and honors and was compared to kids with neither from less competitive schools. Seems like comparing apples and oranges to me.
It’s all relative - every kid had the same opportunity to take advantage of the rigor or to not take advantage, etc. and of course, still had to perform grade wise.
So if you’re looking at a school rank, in that sense, it’s still a level playing field - within that school.
I think part of the issue is people are seeing an average + state school whereas their acceptance rate will likely be sub 40% this year and their stats are impressive.
The other thing is people are assuming a deferral is a rejection. But we don’t know why they deferred so many. Is it staffing, was it planned, etc.
Not necessarily the rigor of the school but, if it’s a tuition/private or a testing public high school it’s usually a self-selecting group of students that are usually high performing students (at the top of the class at least). In my kid’s case, the top 10% attended T20 schools. While he was very smart and took aggressive classes, he was probably in the 11%. Compare that to a school that offers no APs and grade inflates. The top 10% of those kids might not perform as well in a more competitive high schools, yet are given the top 10% designation (and the merit that goes along with it). My other kid went to a less competitive HS, took just honors and was in top 10%. Different metrics.
And yes, too early to know about the mass deferrals this year, but those deferred kids can predict their potential merit based on their class rank. They could have very high stats but if they are not 10% they might not get any.
