It’s the time of year when we see a lot of posts from people who are shocked that they only got into one or two schools, or their safeties, or worse, nowhere.
To help shed light on the big question—Why didn’t I get in to…?—and to help people come to terms with their reality—I’ve only got two colleges to choose between—I’m linking these two threads:
Fwiw, I don’t believe we are seeing anything terribly unusual about this year as opposed to any other year since I joined this site back in 2014. The test optional trend continues. Students are applying to ever more colleges, especially top colleges, in the hopes of hitting the jackpot. (As has been stated many times, college apps are not lottery tickets.) Making a great list based on your stats and submitting a strong application to each school on the list is still the best way to ensure that a student has good choices come April.
Good luck to all still waiting on decisions tomorrow!
While I appreciate you are trying to be reassuring, there is nothing normal about a year in which several schools got over 100k applicants, and Brown had a sub 4% acceptance rate in RD. Nevertheless, Good luck to all the applicants; there are many good options and college is largely what you make of it.
Definitely crazy, but I expect numbers will go back down a bit next year as many colleges will probably bring back test requirements.
The fact remains that students do not need to submit 20+ apps to get into college. If students devote time to making their apps the best they can be, and applying to a good range of colleges, they will have a college to attend.
Two points, neither meant to be reassuring, but rather just fact.
FAR too many kids are applying to FAR too few schools.
As a result, the average stats of rejected students will be essentially the same as those in the profile of accepted students.
Students and parents need to know this. From the outside, there is a randomness as to who gets into the most highly selective programs (the exception being those that admit by objective algorithm). It doesn’t mean the students denied are less qualified. They aren’t. It is a testament that everyone need not only cast a wider net, but a deeper one.
Did anyone see the piece on The Today Show this morning where the anchors were all singing the praises of the student who applied to and was admitted at 49 schools? I just don’t feel that this is something that should be celebrated. Even with fee waivers, there is no reason for any student to feel the need to apply to that many schools. Bringing national attention to earning so many acceptances and portraying it as something to be admired will only perpetuate the problem.
There are stories every year about a student applying to 100 colleges or some other crazy number. Usually that’s because a high school is trying to incentivize students to apply to college in the first place. Typically, those kids aren’t applying to HYPSM and every other single digit acceptance rate school,
From the parent of a B+ student, I think more students need to apply to more B+ colleges. There are lots of great ones out there doing fantastic things.
When every 4.3+ student in the country sends out apps to every Top 20 school, guess what, they can’t take them all. Some of them will get rejections.
My B+ student applied to 5 schools (4 of them EA) and got in all of them.
Something else to consider… many colleges have significantly different selectivity levels across different majors.
It might look odd that an A- student got rejected by SJSU while a B- student got admitted, but not when you find out that the A- student applied for the computer science major while the B- student applied for the physics major.
Yes, I think many kids seem to be missing that point lately. Applying as a CS major at a public state Uni can be just as difficult to get into as an Ivy in some cases.
I think recent things have been different because of the pandemic. I have a 2019 son and 2022 daughter. Our strategy was different for D22 because of the pandemic. We didn’t know how she would stack up to other applicants because she didn’t have test scores until later in the process and we didn’t know how shifts in grades during online school would be interpreted by colleges. She continued to be active in one EC but didn’t have a feel for where she stood in terms of the national applicant pool. We’re also in Texas where schools were technically open early on but her particular school was essentially closed to in person learning until fall of 2021. Due to the pandemic and related family circumstances (needs of grandparents) she had only visited one of the many schools she applied to prior to application. I’m sure that visiting would have resulted in removing some schools from her list.
She was apparently part of the larger trend of submitting more applications because we weren’t comfortable gauging what was a safety, match, and reach. Based on her number of acceptances, she went a bit overboard on the safeties and low matches. She will be attending a reach which also happens to be her most affordable option. Overall her results were not predictable. She was deferred and then admitted to two what we thought were safeties. She was waitlisted at a few matches but then admitted to reaches.
At her high performing high school, it seems like everyone is getting put on way more wait lists than usual. And, admissions seem less predictable overall. This seems to be mirrored by comments on this board.
She applied and was accepted to two women’s colleges, Agnes Scott and Hollins. I loved both of them. Really great programs.
She also applied to a couple of our state schools (we are in NC), UNC-Asheville and UNC-Greensboro. They are both more artsy and she’s that kind of kid.
She ended up falling in love with Warren Wilson College, which is part of the federal work college program. It’s very small, but she found her people there.
Other schools we/she considered were Appalachian State (she felt like she knew too many people who go there), Virginia Commonwealth University (we both loved Richmond), Knox College (almost visited), thought about Guilford or Earlham, maybe Goucher, but we visited WWC pretty early on and she dismissed the others.