Sorry if this has been asked on the thread, but do ND applicants have a few favorite “first-second or first-third choice” schools if ND ends up being a deferral or denial? Holy Cross, BC, Villanova, Providence, Loyola, others?
My daughter’s other schools are Dayton, BC, Wake Forest, Clemson, and UNC. So far she’s only heard from Dayton and is in there. She’s not telling anyone what order she has her schools in but she does really like both BC and Wake. She switched out Syracuse for Dayton - otherwise it would’ve been an all ACC slate of schools! Good luck to everyone!
Universities/Colleges which Notre Dame considers “peer institutions” include Washington University in St. Louis, Vanderbilt University, Baylor University, Duke University, Northwestern University, University of Portland, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, Stanford University, Marquette University, Columbia University, Boston College, and Georgetown University. Of those listed, only four identify as Catholic.
@RFM1617 I applied to Villanova as well! also I know this is wishful thinking, but I hope we find out in the earlier part of the week because I can’t really focus on midterms with notre dame on my mind 
The following is a letter written to a student from his parents. You may have seen this before but I found it helpful. Its an excerpt from a op ed written by Frank Bruni from the NY Times. I wish my parents wrote stuff like this to me. Ha!
Dear Matt,
On the night before you receive your first college response, we wanted to let you know that we could not be any prouder of you than we are today. Whether or not you get accepted does not determine how proud we are of everything you have accomplished and the wonderful person you have become. That will not change based on what admissions officers decide about your future. We will celebrate with joy wherever you get accepted — and the happier you are with those responses, the happier we will be. But your worth as a person, a student and our son is not diminished or influenced in the least by what these colleges have decided.
If it does not go your way, you’ll take a different route to get where you want. There is not a single college in this country that would not be lucky to have you, and you are capable of succeeding at any of them.
We love you as deep as the ocean, as high as the sky, all the way around the world and back again — and to wherever you are headed.
Mom and Dad
@billshears65 what a lovely letter. May have to rewrite that a little bit and give it to our daughter. Thank you for sharing.
How do you know the decisions are coming out this week? Is this confirmed?
"Students who apply in the Restrictive Early Action process receive an admissions decision mid-December. Three decisions are possible:
- Admission to the University
- Denial of admission to the University
- Deferral of Decision until Regular Action."
When our D shadowed there were a couple kids she met wit the Gateway program. Is that only Reg Decision?
@HM0527 No, some of the Holy Cross/Notre Dame Gateway students originally applied to Notre Dame through REA. It is possible that some of them initially got deferred, yet the important point is that they were invited to join the highly successful Gateway program.
@billshears65 Thank you for sharing that. I had a similar conversation with my D about a week ago. I think it is so important for our students to know how proud we are of them - no matter where they attend college.
@RFM1617 My sense is that the Notre Dame applicant pool is much more diverse in the set of other schools students are applying reflecting the fact that (i) there is a high degree of self selection in ND applicants given its truly unique attributes, (ii) Catholic heritage and active faith community, and (iii) midwest location (despite drawing students from all over the county). So naturally you see Catholic schools, more conservative schools, and midwestern schools show up - as well as academic peers from coast to coast. You don’t get the kids who decide to apply to all of the Ivy League schools just because…well…they are Ivy League schools. And typically you don’t get a lot of cross applications to excellent, but smaller, liberal arts colleges. Excellent state flagships also typically show up in cross applications and, as Don Bishop has pointed out, account for about half of the students who end up not attending ND due to favorable financial opportunities and honors programs. I think a student who has applied to Notre Dame has given serious thought to what they like about ND, and that shows up in the rest of their selections. That is, their application sets are not determined primarily by college ranking lists. ND’s REA program also impacts, to some degree, where other early applications go - i.e. Georgetown, BC with similar REA programs and state flagships like Michigan, UVA.
So, bottom line, those “back-up” or alternative schools (as “back-up” is increasingly a meaningless term in competitive college admissions) could comprise a very broad list of schools. My son, who got into ND in the REA round, had applications into alternative schools in the early rounds to Georgetown, BC, Michigan, UVA, and McGill. RD schools were Stanford and Dartmouth. Schools taken off the application list after getting accepted to ND early were USC and Holy Cross.
Hope that’s helpful!
If a parent went to a 4 year college but did not graduate, does that count as “first generation” and does ND consider that?
@CCSavant Do you have a link to where Don Bishop talks about what colleges students attend when they are accepted at Notre Dame and decide against attending? My daughter has been accepted at our state’s flagship and declined to apply anywhere else other than Notre Dame. If she is not accepted REA to Notre Dame, I’d like to encourage her to consider applying elsewhere, since the state flagship does not have the sense of community that Notre Dame has. Her expected major is engineering which eliminates liberal arts colleges.
The sourcing is suspect, but this online tool compares the “odds” of a student choosing one school over another. Again, I don’t know where/how they got the data…
@katrina1 I can’t help you on the Don Bishop talk you referenced, unfortunately. Therefore just from our own personal experience: when our daughter, who is now a sophomore Engineering student at Notre Dame, applied to Colleges of Engineering two years ago, her college list included the following universities (listed in no particular oder):
Duke University
Bucknell University
Columbia University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Purdue University
Rice University
Stanford University
Johns Hopkins University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
University of Notre Dame
Vanderbilt University
Washington University in St. Louis.
Even though her list was rather reach-heavy, she was admitted by 5 Colleges of Engineering (not necessarily directly into her preferred Engineering Major, as most have a First-Year Engineering entry program). She ultimately decided on Notre Dame, a decision she continues to be extremely happy about.
Hopefully you daughter will be admitted REA at Notre Dame this week, which would safe your daughter a lot of additional work, time and effort, and you as parents quite a bit of money! Best of luck and success!
Very interesting! The basic problem my daughter has is that, in her judgment, University of Notre Dame does not have a peer group. It is unique. I’ll look at this tool this week to see what options she might have if not accepted REA. Thanks!
Again, the Parchment tool doesn’t recommend or advocate for a specific school, nor does it suggest colleges with similar selection criteria. It just shows a “predicted choice” for students that were already accepted to two schools.
If you look at the 2019 Fiske Guide to Colleges, you’ll see a ND application overlap with Boston College, Northwestern, Harvard, Duke and College of Holy Cross.
@katrina1 I can only go by our own experience, but I would say the schools that students typically attend when denied from ND are Boston College, Villanova, College of the Holy Cross, and others. My sense is that Boston College is probably the most popular alternative because it is highly ranked and Catholic. Georgetown is another option, but my S did not feel the same sort of community there as the others. He applied to BC and Villanova along with some others.
You could easily come up with scores of plausible peer schools for ND depending on your criteria. Just like you could do for any other school too. Top 20/30/50 schools, Catholic schools, high academic schools with big time sports, high academic private schools with big time sports, midwestern schools, mid-size private schools, AAU research schools, schools with a good undergrad biz school, etc. etc. etc.
For kids that apply to ND REA, there’s a consistent pattern of early cross-applications to a cluster of a few other top schools because the early rules among those schools allow it. Basically, the club of high ranked schools without ED and without SCEA. So frequent early cross-app schools with ND REA are UVA, Michigan, UNC, USC, Tulane, plus many of the Catholic schools – BC, Gtown, Fordham, Santa Clara, Villanova, etc.
Once you past all the various restrictions of ED/SCEA/REA/EA and get to RD applications, the applications go out in all directions to hundreds of different schools.