<p>It’s looks like Berkeley is becoming a reach.</p>
<p>[UC</a> a tougher bet this year for Californians, with 10,700 wait-listed - latimes.com](<a href=“UC a tougher bet this year for Californians, with 10,700 wait-listed”>UC a tougher bet this year for Californians, with 10,700 wait-listed)</p>
<p>U.C.L.A. accepted only 21 percent of in-state applicants, compared to
21.4 percent last year, and U.C. Berkeley admitted 24.5 percent, down
from 29.5 percent.</p>
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<p>If somebody with “top grades, stats, and scores” has a “dream to go to a top selective school like Harvard or Yale”, I’d advise him/her to apply to Harvard or Yale if both of those were his/her dream schools. One or the other. That’s called a “reach”. The chances are pretty good (around 94%) that said student won’t get into either. Why apply to both?</p>
<p>Then there’s a safety. And then there are two matches. That adds up to four. Nowhere, anywhere, did I suggest that somebody like that should apply to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Tufts. Waste of time, waste of money, lack of focus, and a big contributor to the waitlist problem that everybody here is whining about.</p>
<p>I’m not a guidance counselor. But if I were, I’d look over student’s grades & stats, SATs, letters of rec, ECs, and interests. That should hopefully narrow things down as to school possibilities. Then I’d ask a million subjective questions, some of which might be:
<p>If the best I could come up with to counsel student was Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Tufts, and state flagship after doing my interviews with said student, I’d deserve to lose that job.</p>
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<p>The post to which I was responding above specifically related to “unhooked full pay students”. Of course cost is an issue, but Berkeley et al. do not cost more than top-rank private universities, at least for non-recipients of aid.</p>
<p>And, of course again, none of the institutions mentioned is “a walk in the park”, but supposedly we were talking about what wjb would consider a student with a legitimate claim to a spot in HYPS, someone for whom applying to multiple Ivies would meaningfully increase his chance of acceptance at one of them. And my counter-assertion is that precisely that sort of student DOES “match” up at any number of institutions that are significantly less random, if not exactly safeties, so that there would be no need to apply to a dozen of them.</p>
<p>Somehow the English survive without allowing students to apply to both Oxford and Cambridge. I imagine we could survive on something like the same basis, if (and it’s a big “if”) we could get over the antitrust hump.</p>
<p>heyalb: How does applying to Harvard, Yale, and MIT contribute to waitlist problems? None of them has an especially big waitlist, because they don’t need to.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove…that video was interesting–I think I am going to watch all of those segments…pretty fascinating…</p>
<p>I had thought a bit about the “options” thing as our student has put together “the list” which right now is an excell spread sheet of some 40 schools…a good %–maybe half are schools that hold little if any real interest for our student…some are amazing schools…</p>
<p>Why have they not been “deleted” all together? Well–options…meaning when the Jr yr transcript is done, and the SAT/ACT scores etc are finalized…THEN its time to really trim it down–until then–after all of the research for schools with xyz major and abc sport, tracking correspondence, CDS etc…we are keeping the options there…
and
I suspect that the real “list” come fall will be a bit longer than I would like only because there is often no rhyme/reason to admissions.</p>
<p>A friend’s son–for example
–great student, honors and AP classes, amazing vol service with handicapped kids etc
…he got into Vandy and Wake Forest and DID NOT get into the state flagship–
though
a girl in his class–with lesser gpa and not the honors track–got in…</p>
<p>Has the waitlist trend driven more students to apply ED? My eldest applied to one rolling and one ED, was accepted at both and was done. It seems like a great option to me. It’s like playing musical chairs and having a chance to sit down before the music stops.</p>
<p>I know that I am going to get flamed for this but…part of the problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are still a good number of kids out there who are solely interested in “collecting skins.” </p>
<p>As others have said it’s hard to imaging how anyone could find that they were a “perfect fit” at all the Ivies, yet far too many kids apply to all. Add to that the kids who actually do get into their number one choice highly selective school EA yet leave their apps in EVERYWHERE else. All that is about is bragging rights and I’ve seen it far too many times.</p>
<p>Back when S was applying to undergrad schools one side of me would have liked to see what might have happened at all the schools he actually submitted apps to but after getting into his top choice SCEA he withdrew most of his other apps only leaving in another true peer school to potentially use for FA leverage, another highly selective peer school also known for good FA and the lone public school to which he had been named a finalist for their premier highly renown scholarship. His reason for withdrawing the apps was that he knew he would not pick any of them over the other schools and he had classmates who really wanted to go to those schools and he didn’t want to hurt their chances. His maturity made me very proud.</p>
<p>Moving forward, this year D is applying to Law school…with the enormous economic uncertainty and lack of jobs, Law School applications are through the roof. She has three admits, five wait lists, two rejects (her biggest reaches) and is still waiting to hear from two schools who have published on their sites that they are overwhelmed by the number of apps and in one case are hoping to have decisions out by mid May!</p>
<p>With absolutely no data available on how big the wait lists are, how they compare to last year or how many were taken from wait lists last year the process is more than frustrating.</p>
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<p>Because s/he might get into just one of them. Again, I suggest reviewing the stickied admissions threads on the HYP boards. Many, many, students have a mixed bag of results. In at Y, rejected at HP. In at H, rejected at YP. You get the picture. Why on earth would a student with the chops and desire to go to an elite school arbitrarily limit his/her choices to just one? It makes no sense. </p>
<p>JHS: I don’t disagree with your post No. 186. I never intended to suggest that <em>any</em> student adopt an “elite or die” approach to college admissions. It’s both reckless and unnecessary; as you point out, there are wonderful schools out there apart from those with single digit acceptance rates. But <em>if</em> super-elites are part of student’s balanced list of reaches, matches and safeties, it’s wise to apply to several (unless, of course, you only like one or two of them).</p>
<p>I am convinced by all of the marketing techniques that these colleges desire a huge application pool which turns into a huge wait list pool.</p>
<p>S2 received this today from Princeton: Dear John, your academic blah, blah, blah…I invite you to consider Princeton. I know better than to assume this is a sure bet, but for all those non-CC parent and kids this type of letter could really get their hopes up.</p>
<p>^^^Kajon, I have to fight this attitude constantly, even among my own family. My niece has been to the Harvard Invitational for debate twice and she has gotten on their mailing list. Both my B and SIL are convinced to a moral certainty that this means Harvard is recruiting her and she has a real shot of getting in. Ummm…no. I tell them college mail is junk mail/spam and should be regarded as such.</p>
<p>On a different topic – I am a fan of EA, but then again, both my kids benefited greatly from it. They both avoided ED and SCEA. Both dropped several schools after EA results and probably could have dropped even more, in retrospect, but we wanted to see how FA/merit played out. S2 had eleven apps this year: 4 acceptances, 2 rejections, 2 waitlists, dropped 3 more after EA results. Two years ago, S1 also had ten total – 4 acceptances, 2 rejections, 1 waitlist and dropped 3 after EA. A student I helped this year went 7-2-1, but only had two workable FA packages, with one school gapping in an amount equal to the family’s EFC. </p>
<p>We’ve also been hearing of spring admits and no honors programs for kids who would have been slam dunks even two years ago.</p>
<p>Kajon, CD, ^yup. I still chuckle at the three-page letter that Harvard sent to both my kids. D1 was never a realistic candidate. And it´s going to just continue to get worse because these schools have a virtually unlimited supply of foreigners to entice into applying, thereby continuing to lower their admit rate. I saw somewhere the disproportionate percentage of Harvard applicants who were internationals,(wish I had saved the figures) although their policies will always ensure that only about %10 per cent of the admitted class are foreign nationals. Believe me, I can attest to the ignorance of many internationals about their actual admissions prospects. It is a really horrid practice, IMO.</p>
<p>The “recruitment” letter we got the biggest chuckle over was from Brown. It asked S1 if he had even considered majoring in computer science. </p>
<p>um…let’s see…</p>
<p>Kajon & CD: My D got that Harvard (and Princeton & Yale) letter. I understood that it was a piece of marketing & that while my D might have had the stats to be eligible for the applicant pool, that it was still a lottery school. My neighbor’s D got the same letter. Very bright girl, athlete, etc. Her parents think that she’ll be a full ride admit to Harvard. I tried very gently to explain about the marketing based on buying mailing lists dependent on test scores, but to no avail. Sigh.</p>
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<p>Yes, but they don’t, heyalb, unless the student is at a very top well-staffed public or a private school. My kids attend a “good” school. Silver medal, in the Newsweek rankings, among the top 6% in the nation, blah blah blah. Not the New Trier or Short Hills level, but one level below. But their counselors haven’t the manpower or time or knowledge to do any meaningful counseling. 95% of their effort is spent doing the paperwork and trying to find scholarships for the kids going to state schools. Their “elite” knowledge consists of maybe knowing a few tidbits about our local elites (NU and UChicago and maybe Notre Dame) and whatever they’ve guessed based on the handful of kids who through their own efforts wound up at Stanford and Penn and whatnot. They have a huge caseload. Their interaction with the kids is limited to 10 minute sessions once or twice a year where they review next year’s registration and ensure that the kid is indeed taking his required fine arts courses or whatever. Their “knowledge” of my kids’ interests comes from my kid saying “I like chemistry” or “I like history.” The schools that we’re looking at, generally top 30 unis and LAC’s? Many are schools that no one from our school has even applied to, and the “knowledge” that the counselors have is superficial. (“Brandeis? That’s in Boston, right? Lot of Jewish kids?”) So for you to suggest that they should be gatekeepers of ANYTHING, much less be reliable sources of the-few-schools-my-kids-should-apply-to, is ludicrous from my POV. </p>
<p>And frankly the advice they give IS indeed the advice of “you’re smart, apply to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, maybe Northwestern, and you can always go to U of Illinois if you don’t get it.” Advice that is so generic as to be useless. LAC’s aren’t on their radar screen.</p>
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Are you serious? That’s the worst advice I think I’ve seen here.</p>
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<p>I think you’re failing to realize that some of those issues are non-issues or at least non-discriminators for kids (my kids are looking both at suburban and small town campuses – why do they have to pick or prefer one over the other?) and that finances is a huge, huge issue that often overrides all the other concerns.</p>
<p>From JHS:
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<p>Where, precisely? Let’s pick a school that you thought from previous comments was a tier below (certainly not on the radar screen of “better” Philadelphians 
– Vanderbilt – just for the sake of argument. Their admission rate just plummeted to 16%. How can someone say that the kid who “deserves” HYPS can rest assured that he’ll get into a school at that level, so he only needs one of those?</p>
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Quote:
I’m not a guidance counselor. But if I were, I’d look over student’s grades & stats, SATs, letters of rec, ECs, and interests. That should hopefully narrow things down as to school possibilities. Then I’d ask a million subjective questions, some of which might be:
<p>If the best I could come up with to counsel student was Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Tufts, and state flagship after doing my interviews with said student, I’d deserve to lose that job.
I think you’re failing to realize that some of those issues are non-issues or at least non-discriminators for kids (my kids are looking both at suburban and small town campuses – why do they have to pick or prefer one over the other?) and that finances is a huge, huge issue that often overrides all the other concerns.
[quote]
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<p>(I didn’t do the quotation properly, but I am quoting Pizzagirl quoting an earlier post. Anyone know what I did wrong?)</p>
<p>I agree with @Pizzagirl. For some kids, the weather or the size/ location of the campus are not deciding factors. They know they can be happy in various environments. What is important to some, however, is the peer group. I see nothing wrong with a kid wanting to sit in a classroom with the brightest possible minds. I’m not saying that you won’t find amazing kids at all levels of universities (I teach at a second tier school and I have some of those amazing kids in my classroom). And there are certainly some kids at top schools who are not intellectually engaged. But as a general rule, the higher ranked schools have more academically oriented kids. And of course, the financial considerations can trump everything.</p>
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<p>Useless for our kids, yes, because we are involved enough in the process to have already moved beyond this level of advice. But I have been surprised by how many kids and parents know so little about college that even this paltry advice is an improvement over their default approach. (It’s still pretty bad advice. I’m just saying that it’s a step up from whatever these kids might otherwise do, such as apply to U of I as their reach and Northern Illinois as their safety, thus setting the bar way too low.)</p>
<p>As an aside, my son’s counselor when we lived in the north 'burbs told us that they had significantly better placement at Northwestern and UChicago than at U of I, because U of I was more interested in getting URM’s from the city than upper-middle-class kids from the suburbs, even if that meant a lower caliber of student on average. Have you heard this?</p>
<p>We do fine with U of I in the northern suburbs…but they can’t take the entire class from the northern suburbs…I would assume the chicago metro suburbs could fill U of I with completely qualified students, but…that would probably not really achieve their mission. Most kids around here would rather go OOS anyway.</p>
<p>Yes - I agree, m-s, that U of I isn’t a slamdunk for the Chicago 'burbs any more and that there are more than enough affluent suburban kids that they’re tired of them, but my point is a general one. (Feel free to substitute a directional state u for U of I if desired.) </p>
<p>Back to the broader issue - if more schools did EA / ED I / ED II, would it lessen the problem? I myself am liking that ED II strategy bit.</p>
<p>But there are different types of people - maximizers and satisficers. Satisficers like myself - we say “these are all good options” and we’d rather pick a good option and close the door and be done – so to us, a waitlist is anathema. The maximizer would rather hang on and hang on and hang on just in case a better option comes along.</p>