<p>Pizza girl - I was referring to adcoms visiting the schools or doing seminars in different towns, not the otherway around. Granted they dont visit every town and school. </p>
<p>The only burden the student truly has is to put a check box when they take the SAT/ACT/PSAT to say they are interested in schools contacting them and when the schools send out the cards and emails asking the student to express an interest, the student or at least the parent respond showing an interest. </p>
<p>If I was an adcom, received an application from a student, my database says the student was contacted multiple times but never signed up to show interest in my school, dont I automatically know the student is using my school as a safety if I know the studentâs resume is really good but he/she had no previous interest shown?</p>
<p>I am only stating that the student or parent on their behalf should shown the least bit of interest before submitting an app and it is as simple as sending back one of those cards the school sent or registering online when an email is sent their way.</p>
<p>I know ND contacts anyone by email and mail within a specific SAT/ACT/PSAT range if they have checked the box when they took the test.</p>
Funny, I qualified for National Merit, checked the box, and indicated my religion as Catholic, yet Notre Dame never contacted me.</p>
<p>I think itâs safe to say that a school turning down high-SAT students isnât automatically practicing yield protection. All selective schools turn down such students in droves.</p>
Some schools explicitly state that âexpressed interestâ is one of their criteria for admissions. I would assume that they are telling the truth when they say this. Of course, this doesnât mean that you have to visit, especially if itâs far away. But there are other ways of showing interest, and many of them can be done online.</p>
<p>Thatâs a huge âgranted.â Of the 18 colleges that my kids were looking at â a whopping 2 of them actually visited my kidsâ high school. And weâre in the suburbs of a major city, not the middle of nowhere. My kids went to other high schools on occasion to check out schools they were interested in. They had me to drive that process, and they had me to make a car available to them for that purpose. Other kids donât have such luck. </p>
<p>I agree that interest can be shown online, but interest isnât all that important to many schools. </p>
<p>The only burden the student truly has is to put a check box when they take the SAT/ACT/PSAT to say they are interested in schools contacting them and when the schools send out the cards and emails asking the student to express an interest, the student or at least the parent respond showing an interest. </p>
<p>If I was an adcom, received an application from a student, my database says the student was contacted multiple times but never signed up to show interest in my school, dont I automatically know the student is using my school as a safety if I know the studentâs resume is really good but he/she had no previous interest shown?</p>
<p>I am only stating that the student or parent on their behalf should shown the least bit of interest before submitting an app and it is as simple as sending back one of those cards the school sent or registering online when an email is sent their way.</p>
<p>I know ND contacts anyone by email and mail within a specific SAT/ACT/PSAT range if they have checked the box when they took the test.</p>
<p>BillyMc Sorry to hear that Notre Dame has nt contacted you despite being national merit. </p>
<p>At 235, My child will be national merit for 2012, we are not christian and we keep getting their mailings and emails.</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt (it comes with a nice picture of the dome with the caption nowhere else but Notre Dame)-</p>
<p>The University of Notre Dame is the worldâs premier Catholic research university. For 170 years, weâve been providing students like you an academically rigorous and tradition-rich educational experience. You probably know a little bit about us.</p>
<p>But thereâs so much more to learn. As you consider where to apply to college, we invite you to learn all you can about Notre Dame.</p>
<p>Weâve created a web site specifically for you that will bring you beyond the dome, behind the scenes and straight to the heart of the Notre Dame experience: </p>
<p>Click here to visit your personal webpage</p>
<p>Join the 2012 Notre Dame community on facebook </p>
<p>There are a whole bunch of emails that have come from every school of every type and some of them have actually sent 4-5 emails since they were never responded to asking why there was no response, all within the last 6 weeks. Almost all of them refer to information being received from collegeboard.</p>
Well, theyâve contacted me since my acceptance. And youâre right, actually. I just did an email search for âNotre Dame,â and it looks like they sent me a couple emails back in 2009, and one after I submitted my application.</p>
<p>Thank you Billy Mc for actually checking your mailbox to confirm (where are you planning to go?). </p>
<p>All that the emails require a student to do (I do think parents need to be involved in this process since I know my kid never checks the emails or responds to any colleges since anything not pertaining to the already interested colleges are completely ignored) is to confirm/ update what they have received from collegeboard.</p>
<p>Edit: It looks like BillyMc is already in college.</p>
<p>Anyway, back to the topic on hand. I believe a number of schools have said that they use the SAT as a benchmark, and after a certain point, the scores are treated very similarly. For example, I believe MIT says that after a certain point (around 750 on the math section), they know that a student has what it takes to succeed at MIT, and so move on to other factors. I would not be surprised, then, if they turned down a student with a perfect score in favor of other still high scoring students.</p>
<p>Or maybe they are just bright kids who preferred ND to Ivies! There seems to be a belief on CC that one would always prefer Ivies over all other choices. NDâs a fine school; weâre not Catholic, so we donât have that particular tie, but I wouldnât find it surprising at all to turn down an Ivy or top20 for ND.</p>
The one I saw (who decided on ND over Penn) didnât say anything about it in the long original post of the thread, and thatâs likely something that would have been mentioned. However, a schoolâs worth is hardly measured by its yield or how many people choose it over a member of the Ivy League Sports Conference.</p>
<p>
Technically, Notre Dame is a âTop 20,â though college rankings are, by their very nature, flawed.</p>
<p>I have several friends from my generation and country who have attended Notre Dame coming in as foreigners to this country and not being Christian but they went as graduate students where no one ever checks yields. I do not want you to perceive that I mean any disrespect for Notre Dame since I know it is a great school and they have provided great opportunities (research/teaching assistantships to go to Notre Dame) for some of my close firends in the past. </p>
<p>Having said that, if adcoms want to ensure they admit kids who they expect to show up at their school using their standard yield curves etc and dont want to admit more people simply because their resumes look great how do they do it? </p>
<p>Here is your hypothetical and from what I understand it is what truly happens during decision making process - They have 5 slots left and 15 kids with great resumes, all national merit, high SAT scores, high GPAs - how do they choose the final 5?</p>
Personally, I would go with quality and effect of essays.</p>
<p>The way I see college admission, there are three key factors that need to be addressed in considering an applicant.</p>
<p>1.) Is this applicant qualified? Here is where we see grades, scores, and teacher recommendations play the largest role. Obviously, answers to this are more varied than âyesâ or âno,â but basically, to have any chance, you need some form of a âyesâ here.</p>
<p>2.) What can the school do for this applicant? Basically, why does this applicant want to go there? What does the school offer for them? This isnât a method of yield protection, itâs a method of building a student body based on how applicants fit with the school, regardless of their SAT scores. If they write about wanting to be an engineer, yet the school doesnât have an engineering program, it isnât as good of a fit for them. If they address the great things the school has to offer them, then it is a good fit.</p>
<p>3.) What can the applicant do for this school? Why should the school admit this student, what will they bring to the campus community that is unique or special or interesting? As many students will be qualified and many students (nearly all at these top universities) will be genuinely interested in the school, it basically comes down to this. Intellectual vitality, which can be displayed in essays, recommendations, activities, and course selection, is a good reason, while XXXX SAT score is not a good reason. The former will make a big difference, the latter wonât matter at all once a student is admitted.</p>
<p>I think it helps to break down the process and figure out how things work. Of course, Iâm not an admissions officer, so my guess is as good as yours.</p>
<p>Well, Iâm not Silverturtle, but my son had similarly perfect academic stats and I did get to see my sonâs 3 letters of recommendations: they were indeed of the âbest in my careerâ variety.</p>
<p>My son had rather similar results to Silverturtle, too: Rejected from MIT, Yale and Princeton. Accepted at Brown, Amherst (early write), Williams (early write) and Northwestern. Silverturtle and my son both hail from Illinois and also got significant merit scholarships from our flagship, UIUC.</p>
<p>I also think that Silverturtle is slightly more qualified than my son, based on whatâs he posted on CC, and that slight edge is reflected in his acceptance to Princetonâs waitlist. There does seem to be a certain consistency in what these colleges are doing.</p>
<p>LoremIpsum - Thanks for sharing. It improves the knowledge base for those of us applying next year to hedge our bets well. I have this refrain - âwho the heck knows what they are looking for!â</p>
<p>I do see you have put a lot of thought into your answer and you actually may be adcom one day. Most schools seem to have their recent grads working in the admission office screening the applications (my recurring nightmare - how am I entrusting my childâs future to these 23-25 year olds! I do pray they know how to select the most suitable candidates for their schools.) I do agree with all of your points except that the yield piece is integral to their final picks. For all I know the people rejected at Chicago with 2400 score said they plan to do engineering as you suggest or people rejected at Notre Dame forgot to change their essayâs ending why they need to be Harvard. But ultimately, it does come down to some level of interest.</p>
<p>Do you know the yield for Notre Dame? I was looking for some numbers and could nt find them in terms of how many they admitted (I saw 2000 or so as expected matriculates).
I do see an easy way they identify interest though. 25% legacy!</p>
<p>The article you link to says, in the little blue box, that 3,984 students were accepted. If the expected 2,000 enroll, then it will be a yield of 50.2%.</p>
<p>
Yes, that seems excessive to me. However, it was pointed out to me that itâs in some part a result of the self-selecting nature of the applicant pool. They received 16,543 applications this year. Peer schools, such as Northwestern (30,975), WUSTL (28,826), Duke (29,689), and Chicago (21,773), received many more applicants. This is, in large part, due to NDâs strong Catholic reputation. Naturally, Catholics (only 25% of the population) are much more likely to apply. Of those, legacies are even more likely to apply. Legacies obviously have parents who graduated from a top school, and so are more likely to be wealthy, whereas the general Catholic population is less likely to be wealthy, for religious, cultural, ethnic, and historical reasons, and we know that wealthy students fare better in college admissions. Add this to the fact that Notre Dame receives far fewer apps than many of its peers, and it isnât surprising that theyâd have more legacy students.</p>
<p>However, 25% is still very high, and it seems like unfair favoritism is occurring.</p>
<p>I think I now have a decent sense of what it would have taken to cross the acceptance line: A significant national award or a significant community service accomplishment, the latter being something done beyond the pre-packaged stuff that the high school itself provides. One of these accomplishments would probably allow a student to get in with slightly lessor stats â say a 2320 or a class rank of 2 or 3 in 400.</p>
<p>Texas, if you have a kid interested in applying to HYPSM in the next few years, here is what I suggested to a junior on another thread:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My son actually started such an independent project last summer, then wasnât able to build on it due to a 10-class course load (including college and online classes) and the extra time necessary for college essays, presentations and the like (He is a 3 year high school graduate, so everythingâs been crammed in very tight â weâre happy he was able to accomplish mutually-opposite goals of finishing in 3 years AND doing enough to satisfy at least some of the top schools.)</p>
<p>Curiously, both early-write colleges, Amherst and Williams, specifically commented on his âcommitment to his community,â NOT his stellar academics. And the Brown interviewer lit up when my son described his project. I suspect that if he had had the time to take his project up another level, he might well have made the HYPSM cut.</p>
<p>What % of those who APPLY are legacies, and what % are accepted? If 40% of the applicants are legacies, 25% of the class being legacies isnât a big deal at all.</p>
<p>Anyway, Iâm not sure itâs âunfair favoritism.â Part of what you buy when you buy the ND package is this explicit generations-go-here, part-of-a-big-family thing. Thatâs just part of what that particular school is / offers, IMO â coupled with the self-selecting Catholic nature.</p>