Waitlisted at hc? Wow, your stats are impressive! I wonder what the acceptance rate is this year…
I’m sorry to read you are not happy with your acceptances. As others said, they are all strong schools academically, so you have done very well in that regard. But it sounds like the financials and campus vibe are not fits for you. That is tough. I hope you receive good news next week from a better fit school.
I agree with the previous comments about the pros and cons of the three options you have presented… so without additional information IMO it is in your best interest to choose a college option and do your best to get involved on that campus.
If you do want more detailed feedback, you will need to give us a bit more information. What is your target budget (taking no more than the $27k student loans)? Do you qualify for need-aid or will you need merit to meet your budget? What do you want in a college experience (size, location, weather, politics, sports, etc.)?
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I completely agree. The OP says that he can afford the costs, so I don’t know what the issue is. Maybe he just wants to know that he’s a valued, priority student. We just don’t know. Another student I’m working with, recently appealed his award from a SLAC. The school bumped the award up by a mere $2500 and that made all the difference. You never know. Each situation can have unique circumstances.
Holy Cross has special circumstances. Last year their yield rate projections resulted in a significantly larger freshman class than they wanted. So, I expect that they will be admitting a smaller freshman class this year to compensate for that. They had already been trending toward admitting a high percent from their early decision pool - 80% last year, 83% the year before. I suspect that guidance departments have noticed this because ED applications jumped by 40% from 2 years ago to last year. If, in fact, there was a similar jump this year and if HC has continued to accept ED applicants at the same rated, and knowing that they want a smaller freshman class this year, they could fill up almost the entire freshman class from the ED pool. It makes sense for them, given their faulty yield projections last year because ED applicants are committed, so risk goes way down in projecting incoming class size.
In light of all of this I imagine that admit rated from even from EA as well as from regular applications was very low.
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Based on what? Appealing because they “hoped to receive more aid” likely won’t result in more aid.
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Wow - you got into 3 amazing schools, two of which are brutally hard to get into.
People go to CC hoping to get to U of NC or Nova.
So you wanted more momey?
Why didn’t you apply to schools that give money - Alabama, Arizona, Miami of Ohio, U of SC, etc. You can still apply to lots of schools that are cheap.
Besides money, what else is missing?
Unless you can’t afford them, you have a gift.
If college isn’t for you or you need a year to mature, then sure a gap year. If you want to stay home, sure go to a CC.
To think you’ll get more money, hmmm - unless you apply as a first year to schools that give more money…the no.
So if you wanted money and many do - you needed to base your app strategy on doing so - and fortunately for you, there’s still time.
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Assuming you don’t get an acceptance that you like better, I’d advise you to go to UNC. But if you really don’t want to go to any of the schools that you got into, you could zoom through the community college near you that has a transfer agreement with Rutgers, transfer even to start in sept of 2024, with an associate’s degree, and finish after only two years at Rutgers. But if you’d wanted to go to Rutgers, you’d have applied there.
You absolutely should not take a gap year to do community college with the intent to transfer into some highly selective school that you got rejected from, or any other highly selective school. Even a 4.0 at community college from summer and fall of '23 will not improve your application, since colleges know that community college classes are usually far less rigorous even than 4 yr state college classes, let alone the classes at highly selective schools. If you had some incredible opportunity to do something amazing, that far outshines anything that you did in high school, then MAYBE a gap year to do it starting the day after high school graduation, and reapply in the fall, but it’s highly unlikely that you have such an opportunity, and without such, you’re unlikely to see any different results.
Swear word! You got into UNC Chapel Hill, a dream school for many students, which is sure to have any major you’re interested in. Why in the world wouldn’t you want to go there? Especially since it appears that your family is willing to foot the bill for it.
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Actually it has resulted in more aid multiple times in my experience.
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I just saw that hc acceptance rate this year is 21%.
I guess that explains it!!
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Yes, and last year it was 36%, and the before that it was 43%. The funny thing is that the dive to 21% will instantly make it more appealing to more applicants despite the back story. It only became more selective because they had to reduce the size of the incoming freshman class to accommodate the previous year’s overenrollment. But many people evaluate quality and prestige by acceptance rate, so at 21% it immediately becomes more appealing than when it was close to 40%. Nothing else has changed. Go figure. 
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They also had a 23% increase in applicants… according to their Facebook
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Wow! The number of high school graduates and the accompanying number of college applicants have continued to increase each year to historic highs. It’s interesting to see the ripple effect as the top tier becomes increasingly impossible admits, the next tier begins to see an increase in applications, and so on from one tier to the next. I was beyond shocked last year when Northeastern received 90,000 applications. It was never considered a top tier school, but there it was with a 7% acceptance rate. Holy Cross seems to be experiencing this same phenomenon.
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That acceptance rate was unusually low last year because they had over enrolled the previous year and had to cut down the class size drastically. Should have been 10-12 points higher. Still a crazy low number for NEU, I agree. They’ve done a fantastic marketing job over the past decade to attract applicants from all over. They combine that with fee waivers and no supplemental essays to increase the number of applications.
You’re absolutely right - and these schools know it. Lowering the acceptance rate makes a school look more attractive because people associate “highly selective” with “great school”. 
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Wow! A lot like Holy Cross.
It was the 90,000 applications that got to me as much as the 7% acceptance. I’d expect that kind of number at UCLA, but not at Northeastern.
The co-op seems to be a big draw. 40 years ago it was quirky and experimental. Today more and more schools are doing something like that as today’s students & families want an internship or something of that nature.
This current cycle Northeastern received 96,000 applications. From postings here on CC it appears that most of the entering class in Boston were ED acceptances. The acceptance rate has not been announced yet.
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Remember the Northeastern accepted data do not include those applicants accepted to NU IN and NU Bound, which is just more game playing by Northeastern.
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