Is the GC crazy?

Parents Forum
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<p>This is like standing right in front of the speakers in a rock concert. Yes, it is loud and clear to me that even the best of best students may not get into these top elite schools. Yes, it is even harder to get any merit aids. That being said, it is very difficult to put in practice. It is like Appalachian State Vs Michigan – it could happen. </p>

<p>If it were easy, I would not have come here over and over talking about the same thing. I wanted to have a conversation with DD last night but I didn’t even know where to start. </p>

<p>Our State U is a top tier school and it has an excellent honor program. With that as our safety, we really don’t have that many schools to select between PHY to State U. Remove those the like of GT, Rice, Tulane and Emory in the South, the like of JHU, U. Maryland and GW from DC area, the like of UVA and U Michigan of huge state U, the like of UCs of high %Asian enrollment, what do we have left? Each and every one of those remaining schools are highly selective and their merit aids difficult to get.</p>

<p>DD and I both have little interest in any of the LAC right now. Since DD’s is awarded as a Furman scholar, she will take the 20 minutes to fill the application out (She is still under the impression Furman is in MA). </p>

<p>As of last night, there are 4 firm selections – Duke (requested and got the nomination) Cornell (NE location, and agriculture college), WashU (explorer program, visited), and State U (visited and overnighted). DD will look over P and H to see which one’s application is simpler and she will just put her name in the hat per se. We did not pick Y because they still have their early program. I am still pushing Vanderbilt and will try to do a weekend visit (within driving distance). </p>

<p>The debate now is how to pick the last two slots under our 8 applications cap. One way is to roll the dice and pick two of those who need 100% of the needs. The other is to go low to pick two out of those ranked in 40 – 55th for the sake of getting good financial aid. </p>

<p>Then we are leaving the entire 20 – 40 range out. THIS IS difficult.</p>

<p>Here is my rating of chances. What do you think? </p>

<p>University_<strong><em>P/H</em></strong><strong><em>Duke</em></strong><strong><em>Cornell</em></strong><strong><em>WashU</em></strong><strong><em>Vanderbilt</em></strong><strong><em>State U<br>
Admission</em></strong><strong><em><5%</em></strong><strong><em>10%</em></strong>_<strong><em>40%</em></strong>____ 35%___<strong><em>90%</em></strong><strong><em>100%
Financial aid</em></strong><strong><em>N/A</em></strong>_<strong><em>5%</em></strong><strong><em>N/A</em></strong><strong><em>10%</em></strong><strong><em>50%</em></strong>_______100%</p>

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<p>Would she consider the likes of Boston University or George Washington University? I don't know what they offer in terms of her interests, though BU has a decent engineering program. Both give nice merit aid packages as well as financial aid; BU's criteria is clearly posted on their web site.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bu.edu/admissions/apply/scholar_merit.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bu.edu/admissions/apply/scholar_merit.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>
[quote]
DD and I both have little interest in any of the LAC right now. Since DD’s is awarded as a Furman scholar, she will take the 20 minutes to fill the application out (She is still under the impression Furman is in MA). </p>

<p>As of last night, there are 4 firm selections – Duke (requested and got the nomination) Cornell (NE location, and agriculture college), WashU (explorer program, visited), and State U (visited and overnighted). DD will look over P and H to see which one’s application is simpler and she will just put her name in the hat per se. We did not pick Y because they still have their early program. I am still pushing Vanderbilt and will try to do a weekend visit (within driving distance). </p>

<p>The debate now is how to pick the last two slots under our 8 applications cap. One way is to roll the dice and pick two of those who need 100% of the needs. The other is to go low to pick two out of those ranked in 40 – 55th for the sake of getting good financial aid.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>DadII, I might be in the minority here, but I find your analysis a woof of contradictions. Honestly, I do not get it! While you seem to have invested a considerable amount of time in handicapping your chances (I am using the collective you and your for both you and your daughter) and expressed that financial aid will be important, you now make comments about looking for simple applications and tossing out schools that are EA --Yale is SCEA.</p>

<p>Why do you follow a path of least resistance ... now? Your daughter has worked very hard for the past years, and when the BIGGEST effort is needed, you're looking for the simplest and easiest applications! Again, I do not get it! Fwiw, unless people "lucked out" everyone who has received substantial merit aid worked extremely hard at it, by filling many EXTENSIVE applications. Trust me that college applications are a LOT simpler than scholarship applications. Have you looked at what is necessary for the top scholarships at WashU and Vanderbilt? Have you looked at the Robertson and Morehead-Cain? </p>

<p>Another point I don't get is the self-imposed limitation of 8 schools. Does your school limit the number of applications? As far as applying to more schools, I may again have a different viewpoint. I do not think you need more safeties. It does, however, come with a caveat: a true safety is one school one would be VERY HAPPY to attend. No ifs and buts here! Once you have a true safety, you can afford to throw the dice with more abandon and apply to more reaches. </p>

<p>Because of your interest and need for financial aid, I would think you'd be better served by pursuing more avenues. This means MORE applications, more essays, more scholarship applications, more LOR, and all those other requirements. </p>

<p>Take a look at the calendar: the next 6-10 weeks are the most critical ever. If you want a happy month of April 2008, this is not the time to seek simplicity and ease. Forgo all this analysis of handicapping, and throw brute force at the process. The more cards you'll have in your deck, the better the chance to hit a royal flush.</p>

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<p>No advice, but FWIW I'll share what I learned form my experiences. </p>

<p>I'm a geek, and I did the same thing in estimating prob of admission after looking at Naviance charts for a number of high schools (ours doesn't have). </p>

<p>Here are the schools my S applied to along with my estimated category, probability of acceptances, decision, and merit aid if any. Schools 1-4 are top 25, 5-7 top 50ish.</p>

<p>School.....Category...Est prob....Result</p>

<p>School 1: Long Shot, 5%; Rejected
School 2: Long Shot, 5%; Rejected
School 3: Slight Reach, 40-50%; Waitlisted
School 4: Match, 70%; Rejected
School 5: Easier Match, 90%; Accepted EA; ~1/2 tuition
School 6: Easier Match, 90%; Accepted EA; ~1/3 tuition
School 7 (Flagship): Safety, 99%; Accepted; no $$ </p>

<p>No real surprises on the letters from Schools 1-3 and 5-7.</p>

<p>But #4 was a surprise. That's where I figured he would end up. After all, he was above the 75th percentile for SAT V+M. Acceptance rate was just a little under 50%. Not nearly as competative as 1-3. Should be a pretty safe match, right? I guess not.</p>

<p>So what happened with #4? Probably one or more of the following:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Tougher competition this year making Naviance obsolete. I just checked the new admission statistics on School #4. There was a 60% increase in applications, and their acceptance rate dropped from 42% to 28%.</p></li>
<li><p>I overestimated his chances. As a proud papa, I focused on his strengths and rationalized those areas where he wasn't as strong. Maybe they weigh GPA more than SAT and there were too many B's on the transcript. Maybe his ECs weren't as strong as I thought they would be.</p></li>
<li><p>Random occurrances in the application process. Maybe the teacher recs weren't well-written. Maybe being from a neighboring state didn't help their geographic diversity. Maybe they didn't appreciate the humor in his essay. Who knows....</p></li>
</ol>

<p>There too many unknowns to get a very accurate estimate of admission chances for schools with lower acceptance rates. I don't know how to calculate confidence intervals on these estimates. I thought he would get into #4, but recognized there are things I didn't know about, so I assigned it a 70% chance. I guess the other 30% came through this time.</p>

<hr>

<p>Happier Postscript</p>

<p>After the rejections came in, we visited 5,6, and 7 (hadn't really visited them before--after all they were all safeties, more or less). They are all were excellent schools academically, and S would have done well at any of them. </p>

<p>We visited #7 and he wasn't thrilled with the large size. We visited #6 and he like it--was 95% sure he would go there. Visited #5--he quickly knew that he like this one better based on the campus and location. The bottom line is that it was great having choices.</p>

<p>S is happy in his 3rd week of school. I made the decision years ago to pay for whatever schools were "best" for my kids, but am happy to get a break on the tuition. I'll be suggesting a few merit $$ schools to my D in a couple of years. I have learned that the "best" school for a given kid may not be the one closest to the top of the page on a ranking sheet.</p>

<p>xiggi--In our case, we did luck out with the merit money, but we're not talking about top scholarships. Just applied early with common aps. These two schools are known for awarding merit aid for high stats.</p>

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<p>I agree with Xiggi, but I need to make one slight correction. There is one category of merit scholarship (full tuition and fees) at Vanderbilt (the 'non-named' honor award in the School of Engineering, maybe in A & S also) that does not require a separate application. Very high scorers on SAT, with very good course records are selected from the applicant pool and the names forwarded to a scholarship committee at the College level. After that point, selection depends on a whole lot more than scores, but there is no separate application. In the case of my son, there was also no interview, but I won't swear there never is. As I mentioned , the initial cut is based on SAT scores; the web page mentions the number 1500 (M and CR) as a minimum, but I may have seen a print reference recently that gave the number 1550 (might be wrong there.) FWIW, the scholarship awardee that I know had an SAT I score of 2380. Dad II, if your daughter's ACT score is less than 34, I do not think she will make it past the first cut of this category of scholarships.</p>

<p>Other merit scholarships do require special applications, additional essays, etc. As for Washington Univ., the extra effort is considerable. And then there are finalist weekends.</p>

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<p>Dad II, I have to echo most of the above posts. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding, but I think you said you have no interest in any LAC right now, yet she is seriously looking at Princeton. Why? Yes, P is a university, but it very much has more of a LAC feel than a research university feel. Many LACs have significant research opportunites for undergrads since there are no grad students to compete with in this arena. Why is UVa too large, yet Cornell is not? I just don't understand your focus, I guess. </p>

<p>You seem so focused on your D's HS past admission results and her stats relative to this data. As a mom with kids in a top public HS with dozens of classmates each year scoring over 1550 (M/V), I can tell you first hand that there are surprises each way in admissions and no one is a lock. We see Presedential Scholars and Intel finalists rejected from schools while classmates who don't seem as stellar gain admittance. Bottom line is that it is a subjective process and there are NO guarantees and a lot of decisions will not make sense (for example, S1 got an early write from Amherst, yet denied from Swarthmore).</p>

<p>Re. Wash U, they are one of the toughest schools to predict. S1 was admitted under the university scholars law program but did not receive any merit aid. At least a half dozen of his classmates also applied and were denied. He filled out numerous scholarship apps and even with all of his nat'l and int'l awards in humanities and math, only his true safety offered merit aid.</p>

<p>This brings me to my last issue of confusion. It seems that you want / need merit aid, yet you are applying to schools where the chance of receiving this is next to nil. Why not add some more schools to your list? There are some excellent Honors Programs that award significant merit aid along with lots of other perks.</p>

<p>My strongest piece of advice is to have your D be absolutely sure that she feels that she would be happy at each and every school she is applying to. That is truly the only way any school can be a safety. The best thing S1 said after submitting all of his applications was that while of course he had favorites and hoped he'd gain admission to those, he truly felt comfortable with his final list and could see himself being happy and content at each of the schools he applied.</p>

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<p>I just have one question. Is she interested in environmental science or environmental engineering? Environmental science is usually though the college of arts and sciences and environmental engineering is (duh!) though the college of engineering. I'm confused but I don't think that either are an unusual or odd college major, in fact I think that both fields are becoming pretty popular. Also, many girls that go into engineering pick either bio-med, environmental or chemical. It is much less common for girls to pick mechanical or computer engineering.</p>

<p>Anyways, Dad II, your D can pick any schools that she wants. Just make she's not too over-confident. GC's are only human, they don't know everything (just like us over here on CC!) and college admissions are changing so fast that GC's can't keep up. That just my .02</p>

<p>Do I think that she should take her ACT's over again? No, but that's just me. If she wants to and has the time, why not. It's her life.</p>

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<p>I am not really up on colleges yet - my older son is only 14 - but I am going to make a suggestion. Have you considered Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA? My son has been there for the past two summers doing CTY courses. He absolutely loves the college and the town. At the closing ceremony this year, a representative from F&M admissions gave a short presentation, and I was very favorably impressed with what he had to say. For one thing, a large percentage of the students do some sort of "knowledge generation" (his term) during their undergraduate years, and a substantial fraction of the professors' publications include students as authors. I can't remember the numbers now, but you could easily find out. The campus is very beautiful, and the facilities seemed great to me. I know that they are trying to attract top students (hence the presentation to CTY participants). I know one girl from our neighborhood who was offered a full merit scholarship, room and board included. She was also accepted to (one of) HYP and is now there (with no FA).</p>

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<p>O.k. Looks like this is the list.</p>

<p>Stanford and UPenn (because best friend applies); Duke (because earned a recommendation for scholarship); WashU and Cornell (really want to go to one of these two); Turfs and Vanderbilt (match); and finally State U (safety).</p>

<p>Wish us luck!!</p>

<p>DD is taking the SAT II Math II and ACT much more seriously this time around. Because her best friend did not do well on that Math II test and because only a high score on ACT will matter.</p>

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<p>I hope she really loves Vanderbilt and the state u cause those are the only real sho-ins.</p>

<p>Best to your daughter.</p>