My son was wait listed as many others were the other day. In the event he does not get off of the wait list I was thinking of calling the admissions department to see what was “lacking” in his application. I would not try to persuade them to admit him, I just wanted honest feedback. Was it is EC’S? Lack of leadership etc. Also, and I know this may sound crazy, but I wanted to see how he came off in the interview. The reason I want to know is to maybe help him in the future even though he is young, I feel that interviewing skills are very important.
Now, the admissions department may not be able or want to give me an answer, but I was wondering if this is a crazy idea? Again, at that point, I would not want him to attend Lehigh even if they had a change of heart(which they would not anyway), I would be doing this out of curiosity sake.
I know. Why would any admissions office open themselves up to lawsuits based on what they say etc. Believe it or not, I am more interested in how my son came off in the interview, but I will not waste my time.
@euve69 Someone on a parent thread mentioned their experience trying to get their child off the waitlist for an unnamed school. I think it was the “How often does kid not get in college” thread, but I could be wrong, and I can’t find the comment now. Anyway, the parent called admissions at the college and stated that their child would definitely go to that school if they got off the list. They also asked if there was anything else they could submit that might help their case. Admissions would not say what the application was lacking, but said that an additional recommendation might help. The parent thought was strange because the student had solid LORs, but they submitted an additional one. The student was admitted and, a couple of years later, they were able to review their application. They discovered that one of their LORs was pretty weak. They were surprised because they knew the teacher well, and the teacher had even offered to write the recommendation.
I would not contact admissions unless your son is actually interested in attending, but it seems there are cases where contacting them could help get you off the waitlist.
I would suggest asking your guidance counselor to use their connections (assuming they should have some connection to the admissions department) to try to get that feedback. Again, I don’t know if they will be successful but in m opinion it’s worth a shot. Likelihood of success could be higher if your high school typically sends a lot of kids to Lehigh.
Thanks for the insight. I just wanted to address something you mentioned and I asked some folks on this thread the same question. You mentioned that I should not contact admissions unless my son wanted to attend, and I agree with that. After all, why waste time in contacting admissions unless you want to attend.
My point is, maybe my son will change his mind? He Loved Lehigh and would love to attend, however, what happens if he calls, states his interest and by the time Lehigh calls him back he cooled to the idea? I mean these are 17-18 yr old kids here, they are fickle. I mean, will Lehigh send out the firing squad?
I understand that you want to be as honest with the admissions folks as humanly possible, but you cannot give them a written guarantee either. I guess what I am getting at is that we all have to do what we have to do just like the Colleges do. I do not see Lehigh or any other institution losing sleep over rejecting students with 34 ACT scores, great EC’S who have shown alot of interest. Do not get me wrong, they have every right to accept who they want to accept. No child has a G-D given right to attend any school, however, when elite institutions worry about their yield, or worry about their acceptance rate to look more elite why is that ok? Why can’t a student play the same game and indicate interest, and then change his or her mind? Why are we cowering to these so called elite institutions? Or any institution for that matter?
Again, we do not want to waste time, and we do want to be as honest as possible, but my basic question is this: If my son would call the admissions department to express interest and then change his mind if he were taken off of the wait list, what would happen?
I’m sure admissions knows that circumstances change. If they offer your son a spot and he turns it down, they will just go on to the next person on the waitlist.
Thanks for the feedback. For a moment there I was getting paranoid that Lehigh would somehow find out where he sent his deposit in (another college) and bad mouth him. LOL You never know these days, but I think Lehigh has better things to worry about.