<p>Pizzagirl and TXA - this is why CC is so cool . . . by reading all these threads we get to be people that are in the know :)</p>
<p>“I guess it’s a case that “you’re darned if you do, and darned if you don’t.””</p>
<p>Yep. This isn’t just a problem in mailings – many CC posters have described tours or info sessions where they perceived the school as saying “Most of you won’t get in, but thanks for playing.” Most of those families disliked that message and some crossed the school off the list as a result, even when it was mathematically true. We’re not just talking about HYP, either. I’ve heard this following visits to, for example, the University of Richmond. Colleges have to walk a fine line.</p>
<p>Pizza- tried it at the local gas station and got:</p>
<p>Army/Navy, Notre Dame, Penn State. And then a long vacant stare.</p>
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<p>Or my favorite: University of Pennsylvania = “Some state school back east.”</p>
<p>^^ Many schools – most schools – have zero name recognition, especially the LACs. But you need to stop and think: the kinds of people you hope to associate with and work with and fall in love with the rest of your life WILL know those names and will understand the kind of dedication and resilience it takes to get to those places and do well there. You are breathing really rarified air at the top twenty schools, and in some sense you should be PLEASED that the local butt-crack plumber has no idea what a Swarthmore or a Williams or a Brown is – it proves that you have crossed over into a completely different world with a completely different set of people, cultures, expectations, and, yes, intelligence. You should HOPE that most people are clueless about the school you go to (outside of the obvious Ivy names), if only because you know that the people who really matter and get things done in the world come (for the most part) from schools only those in the club recognize.</p>
<p>^^^yes, that.</p>
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<p>This is only true if you assume colleges are perfect at differentiating between applicants to admit those types who they claim to want. I do not make this assumption. For example, despite universal claims to seek authenticity of passions/interests, colleges struggle and sometimes fail to weed out highly accomplished students on paper who in real life are only going through the motions to pad their applications. They are doing their best with very limited time and highly self-selected data in the applications, but they are not perfect. There is a video on the cc Stanford page where a freshman is interviewed and admits relief at not having to keep up the busy resume-padding schedule she had in high school. It is a cringe worthy moment if you are a Stanford adcom in my opinion. I think you increase the notional number of admits like this woman when you solicit so many excessive apps. You may also find a few more diamonds although I think this becomes a little less true each year. My feeling is that the reject rate is the primary motivation for seeking out so many apps (and it doesn’t have to have anything to do with some magazine’s rankings). At some point (maybe once every high school senor applies to Harvard), the claim that these schools are seeking out that one kid who isn’t aware of their finaid policy will become unbelievable.</p>
<p>If you think the reject rate is so all-important, then why do you think none of HYPS or MIT has ED? That would instantly drop the admission rate by a full percentage point or so. Why did Harvard and Princeton abandon early admissions altogether for four years? That increased their admission rates by a meaningful amount. It decreased their yield, forcing them to accept more people. </p>
<p>If lowering their admissions rates was the thing they cared most about, they would behave differently.</p>
<p>And as for diamonds in the rough, perhaps I have a broader definition of “rough” than some. I think you can find diamonds among the test-prepping, resume-padding set, too. Not all of the kids who are responding to social cues by overvaluing “stats” and “ECs” are mediocre intellects! If I were Harvard, I would certainly want those kids to apply, too, especially the ones whining on CC “Oh, I don’t have a chance because I’m Asian and I haven’t cured cancer or gotten a gold medal at IMO!”</p>
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<p>I searched for this to make sure I wasn’t misremembering the details. I was unable to find it so I will retract the comment…</p>
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<p>They are primarily concerned with each other, first of all. So the relative rates are more important that the independent rates. Also, I do not think the number itself is as important as the general sense of exclusivity. Everyone after all knows that these schools don’t have ED and the admit rates would be even lower if they did. That is enough, so long as no one breaks rank and goes to ED without the others. Plus, I think these schools are already exclusive enough so that they can afford to not have ED and therefore make the claim that they want to preserve maximum diversity (which I think for the most part is sincere as well as advantageous for reputation reasons).</p>
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<p>Because they incorrectly presumed everyone else would follow suit. When this presumption proved incorrect, they ran back to EA with their tails between their legs as a cynic might have predicted.</p>
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<p>I agree and did not state otherwise (it is the primary explanation for the massive late push for extra apps, this is not the same as being the thing they care most about). They care most about their reputations and would never be crass or obvious about wanting to maximize their reject rates. As a result, the reject rates are lower than they could be. </p>
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<p>All good points. I do not think there is some massive conspiracy going on here. I question whether there is any measurable increase in ‘strength’ of incoming class due to 35k vs. 25k apps though. These schools all claim that they can fill up multiple, equally strong, classes with any given application pool. I do not think they accomplish much with all those extra apps outside of shuffling a super highly qualified deck. Management though loves the lower admit rates and so long as peer schools are pushing for more and more apps as well, there is very little reputation risk.</p>
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I think this depends on how you define “strength.” If you define it in terms of academic ability, you’re probably right–it won’t happen that often that the “diamond in the rough” is a super-genius of some kind. What he or she is likely to be though, is a person who brings some kind of interesting characteristics or diversity to the school. I think this kind of “strength” does improve as you cast a wider net. If you really want to recruit some kids who live on ranches in Oklahoma, you can’t just wait for them to come to you.</p>
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<p>I understand your point. It is very similar to how colleges themselves respond when criticized for soliciting excessive apps simply to reject them. This implies that diversity on campus is constrained by the number of apps. Although true at some point in the past, I am not persuaded that this is true at all today (at the super selective schools). We are talking about an extremely small pool of admitted applicants who applied to a school simply due to a last minute marketing blitz. Of these students, only a portion of them will fit into one of the diversity buckets that the schools are interested in. I would predict that virtually all of these students supplant someone else from the same bucket (perhaps someone with a slightly less engaging McNugget anecdote), not some wealthy prep-school kid from the northeast, and therefore have no impact on campus diversity.</p>
<p>If I had to guess I would bet that the vast majority of last minute apps ** that result from these 11th hour marketing blitzes** come from panicked suburban kids who are worried about getting rejected by all their reach schools… the reject rate from these apps is extremely high and colleges know this… they do this primarily to increase their reject rates with the ancillary benefits of being able to make marginal (and in most cases debatable) upgrades in the quality of students in the various demographic buckets but they do not adjust the relative size of the buckets… and they are hubristic in their assessment of their abilities to separate authentic and sincere super-students from highly skilled and disguised resume stuffers and therefore put no weight on the possibility that their numbers are slowly increasing on campus. Finally, I appreciate that many if not most people would bet differently. I am simply sharing my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Just another data point…</p>
<p>I gave an admissions talk tonight at the public library in a middle-class suburb. I was talking about sticker price vs. real price, and how for a median Illinois family, the University of Illinois has a lower sticker price but much higher real price than top private schools. I said, “If you make under $60,000, Harvard is free,” and there were several audible gasps around the room. More than one parent asked me to repeat this – I had to say it three times.</p>
<p>This is suburban Chicago, not a rural area, and they were the kind of invested parents who come out after work on a winter night to hear a college admissions lecture. It was a good reminder of how much marketing work the Ivies <em>haven’t</em> done. They may be overselling in some areas, but there is a lot of virgin ground out there.</p>
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<p>Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I guarantee that this wasn’t known at my kids’ middle-to-upper-middle-class suburban high school here either. Why would it be?</p>
<p>No disagreement at all, get the word out to the next generation by all means necessary. The general public generally knows very little until they get knee deep in the process.</p>
<p>I doubt there was anyone like the OP gasping at that meeting though. Not unless they were burning their mail for the last year.</p>
<p>PG: This was near your neck of the woods, and one of the families (the best-informed one in attendance, non-gaspers who helped me convince the gaspers) came from your kids’ high school.</p>
<p>I think the biggest myth is that everyone could get a scholarship to go to college, may it be FA or merit. My sister and her H make close to 7 figures, asked me if they should apply for FA because one never knows. She was a bit shocked when she found out what the cut off was for FA. We may all laugh about it here, but there are a lot of parents out there count on their kids on getting some sort of aid when going to college, they really do not expect to have to contribute that much to their kid´s college education. A lot of families do not start thinking about paying for college until their kids are in high school.</p>
<p>^ Yes, my spouse is still in disbelief neither of ours gets any merit money. Back in the 70’s, when some of us parents were going to college!, merit money flowed.</p>
<p>“Because they incorrectly presumed everyone else would follow suit. When this presumption proved incorrect, they ran back to EA with their tails between their legs as a cynic might have predicted.”</p>
<p>I guess they were not the cutting edge leaders they thought themselves to be.</p>
<p>There is still a lot of merit money out there that people qualify for. However, the kids like mine (I am guessing oldfort’s too) are dropping it in favor of other choices that spend parents money. So full tuition waivers from state schools are getting ignored in favor of going to a much better private school which will only provide FA.</p>
<p>It is not surprising at all that the audience are very uninformed. First, most people that have not gone through the process with kids in the pipeline simply rarely would take the time to research such topic long before the moment you need to information. Second, if they already have gone through the process or have pretty good idea, most would not have shown up to listen to such lecture again. This seems to be the case for most of the parents I encounter at a similar lecture I attended at the beginning of my first born junior year. I wonder how many of those in attendance actually have kids that realistically have a chance at Harvard.</p>
<p>I think most gifted and high achieving students are smart enough to know and cognizant of the existence of these schools. And yes, casting a wider net can yield a few more interesting applicants but let’s make no illusions about it, it should also naturally yield mostly more applications from predominantly less qualified people. And would the schools mind if it happens that the highly publicized admit rate happens to get pushed down quite a bit also? Simply, there are benefits derived from such practice and it is a big stretch to say the schools do not care at all about one of the benefit and the only thing they are after is the other.</p>
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<p>And I think you are not listening to what Hanna and others are saying here. Here in Illinois, for example, the University of Illinois is a <em>perfectly fine</em> and well-regarded choice for anyone academically, even our hypothetical perfect-scoring-valedictorian who is captain of the football team and president of the class. And the thing is - they’re right in thinking so; there is little that couldn’t be accomplished other than entry to a few investment banking firms with a U of I degree. I’m telling you, the “mental lock” that the Ivies and similar elites have for those of you who are sitting in suburban Boston, NY, Phila and Balto isn’t true everywhere, and it is VERY possible that very bright, high achieving kids wouldn’t have heard of those schools. </p>
<p>Look – look at all the CC’ers from the east coast who express sort of shock and awe about the oh-so-difficult logistics of sending their kid to school in the midwest or south, I mean, you have to get on planes and all, it’s just crazy, and act as though sending a kid to Minneapolis is falling off the face of the earth. Well, what makes you think most people elsewhere are different? Most parents still want to send their kids to someplace relatively close and sending your kid to school in (say) Boston is just as much falling off the face of the earth from their perspective. I love CC and love the info I have found here, and I’m a college snob, and I schlepped my kids all around the country to do their searches because to me the country’s their oyster, but please … Hanna is absolutely right, you all have got to stop acting as though there aren’t PLENTY of high achieving kids who really aren’t thinking about Harvard, etc. until it’s sort of put right in front of them - whether by a rep (who can only visit so many places) or via a mailing.</p>