<p>This is fine, except for an unhooked high stats kid for whom it is virtually impossible to determine a “match.” Especially when the need for really significant FA is factored in. For a student for whom a $20K or $30K “merit” award against a $50K COA is not going to make school possible it is not so simple. </p>
<p>I know you said “virtually” all, NSM. It’s really not you to whom I am responding, but to the previous posters who confidently declared that no parent should “allow” their kid to apply to a lot of schools.</p>
<p>There’s an old joke: Q. What is a yuppie? A. Someone who makes more money than you do. The same thing holds true for college applications: how many is “too many”? One more than YOUR kid submitted.</p>
<p>I admit that I have been bemused by people without pressing financial need who encouraged their kid to apply to 8 matches and safeties, especially when the schools in question have acceptance rates of 50% or more.</p>
<p>When your “matches” are schools like Carleton, the U of C, or Bowdoin, it is difficult to just pick a couple, simply because their percentage of acceptances is so low. Some people argue that those schools shouldn’t even be considered matches for anyone. </p>
<p>Based on my kid’s results, he could have picked one safety (he did), two “matches” and 2 or 3 reaches and ended up getting into 2 or 3 schools with completely unacceptable FA that would have left us with a gap exceeding our annual income. (And don’t bother to lecture me about how our state flagship should be a financial safety. It isn’t, and moreover it would be a complete academic mismatch. We don’t all live in CA, VA, or another state with great state alternatives.)</p>
<p>The adcom person at Case Western Reserve said that. Personally I think it’s only common sense that you should get apps in earlier rather than later if at all possible.</p>
<p>"When your “matches” are schools like Carleton, the U of C, or Bowdoin, it is difficult to just pick a couple, simply because their percentage of acceptances is so low. Some people argue that those schools shouldn’t even be considered matches for anyone. "</p>
<p>I agree with those people who say those schools aren’t matches for anyone.</p>
<p>I could find matches for unhooked, high stat students who need merit aid. Those schools would be probably in-state publics and second tier colleges that are very generous with high stat applicants. I wouldn’t consider any first tier college a match for a high stat, unhooked student who is depending on merit aid.</p>
<p>I posted the first portion of the comment below on the other thread on this topic in the College Admissions sub-forum:</p>
<p>This is ridiculous. No school needs more students on their waitlist than the size of their incoming class. And no school needs that many wait-listees to maintain flexibilty either. First of all, these schools already accept more students than they can enroll. Beyond that, they have a waiting list. That’s fine. But do they really expect us to believe they NEED a pool of 3,382 or even 1,740 students to fill out their class and fill in their spots if more students decline than anticipated? For us to believe that, we’d have to also believe that they have the time and resources to have set up in advance a complicated filing and sorting system whereby if an oboe-playing Hispanic girl from Texas declines, they can quickly find on their wait list another oboe-playing minority from the same geographic region. Really??? I’m not buying it.</p>
<p>However, I still wouldn’t advise my child to submit fewer applications. Even if it’s true that different top schools look for different types of students, it is not always easy for the student to figure out what that means for their chances. For example, after looking at the Columbia application, my son thought that of all the Ivies, Columbia would be mostly likely to accept him. He felt their application best showcased his strengths as an applicant. Guess what? He got waitlisted and never got off the list. At Princeton, there was a moderately high-level employee of theirs who wanted him there and pushed for him. He was still waitlisted and never got off the list. At Yale, he had been courted as a minority applicant, was invited to special programs, etc. Since he had very high stats and course rigor, he might also have expected a positive result from Yale, especially since he applied EA to boot. Nope. Fortunately, he was admitted to other top schools. Had he thought it out in advance and applied to just those 3, he wouldn’t have gotten into Dartmouth, where he is now.</p>
<p>There’s no residency-type match system, or British style system, because of the need to let people evaluate financial aid offers, which are required NOT to be harmonized among colleges. So put that idea to rest, unless you want to get Congress to change the antitrust laws to permit it.</p>
<p>Sure, under-admitting and taking lots of kids off a waitlist will improve yield by some infinitesimal amount. A couple colleges have been accused of doing it, but mostly they don’t. When they take a lot of kids off a waitlist, there’s usually some obviously good reason why they underestimated how many to accept initially.</p>
<p>This seems like a huge deal now, especially if you are a waitlisted kid or the parent of one. But the kids have a perfect solution – treat the waitlist as a polite rejection, and walk away. Then it won’t matter at all anymore, unless you let it.</p>
<p>Lots of kids do that, which is one of the reasons why the waitlists are huge. Unless it’s Harvard or Yale, two months from now when they start phoning kids on the waitlist to see if they are still interested, most will say no. And good for them!</p>
<p>NSM: I don’t think you get it. Not “needs merit aid.” Needs a virtual full ride.</p>
<p>There is NO SCHOOL that you could point me to that would have been a “match” for my kid that would give him the money he needed. Maybe you could point to a <em>safety</em> where he <em>might</em> have been a candidate for their biggest scholarship…but a safety is not a match.</p>
<p>The ONLY schools with the deep pockets and FA policies to give him the kind of money required are all reaches for pretty much any unhooked student: Ivies, Pomona, et al.</p>
<p>But by all means: tell what this “match” that would give him a full ride is. :)</p>
<p>Anecdotal only: The only kids I know who have gotten off waitlists at highly selective schools were legacy (one a legacy at Penn, one a double-legacy at Northwestern). </p>
<p>A good friend of mine has a D who has acceptances to some very fine schools, and waitlisted at 2 very selective schools, and she thinks that the waitlist means “we’ve essentially admitted you, we just don’t have the housing yet.” I tried to gently send her an article that indicated for one of the schools that its waitlist was miles long and it upset her, so I’m not bothering, but I think it’s unfortunate to not just cut bait and move on. The schools she has been accepted to are of equal caliber, so there’s no “sacrifice” involved, and FA is not an issue.</p>
<p>"NSM: I don’t think you get it. Not “needs merit aid.” Needs a virtual full ride.</p>
<p>There is NO SCHOOL that you could point me to that would have been a “match” for my kid that would give him the money he needed. Maybe you could point to a <em>safety</em> where he <em>might</em> have been a candidate for their biggest scholarship…but a safety is not a match."</p>
<p>You’re right. I didn’t realize you were seeking a full ride.</p>
<p>I think that a high stat, unhooked kid may qualify for full rides at some schools where the student’s stats would put the school in the “safety school” category, but it would be next to impossible to find a match school for such a student.</p>
<p>Yes, I unfortunately made the mistake of being the bearing of bad tidings to a friend whose D was waitlisted at Cornell. Since she had already been through the mill before with 2 other children, I didn’t expect her to be as naive as she was about the waitlist. I thought she was going to cry when I told her how many people were on Cornell’s list!</p>
<p>“Quote:
For anyone reading who is representing the Class of 2011 and beyond, if THIS isn’t incentive to get your app in before the final countdown to the deadline, I don’t know what it.
I know that it’s important for the student to get their apps in early for rolling admissions, and, if at all possible, for EA. But for RD, does the order in which apps are received really make a difference in when they are read by the adcoms? If a kid gets an app in, say, a month early, will that really lead to a greater likelihood of it being read earlier on than an app that arrives right on the deadline?”</p>
<p>If Duke was so overwhelmed they didn’t even get to set up folders for a lot of the applicants, then it would make sense to me to get things in early enough to be in the group whose things at least were read. </p>
<p>(How do you guys set up that quote box? I don’t see any tabs for doing it)</p>
<p>My kids might wind up at that level, though. Their safeties each have admin rate of 50%+, but that’s just it - 50%+, which doesn’t really rise to “safety level” as far as I’m concerned (though I’m pretty risk averse). The rest are places where their standardized scores are generally at the 75% mark, but these are schools with acceptance ranges varying from around 20% - 40% (some due to extremely self-selective places) and so I can’t possibly consider any of them any kind of done deal.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, I know what you mean. People often say that a “safety” should be a school a) where they are absolutely bound to take you based on stats, b) that is definitely affordable, and c) the student would like to go.</p>
<p>For my S, there was no such school. His safety school did accept him, but gave him a grossly inadequate FA package. Luckily, he was accepted at a couple of the deep pockets schools.</p>
<p>If the majority of the kids on the list are actually only courtesy waist-listers, then just be honest and reject them outright. The problem is that while we CCers may understand what’s going on and the odds involved, there are plenty of kids and parents who think a waitlist spot means so much more than it does.</p>
<p>rodney, I agree with you completely. In fact, that’s my point. If your “matches” are really lottery schools (which a lot of these schools are - I mean seriously GWU is now super selective?) you pretty much have to apply to MANY of them, just to have a decent chance of getting into one. </p>
<p>Of course this just perpetuates the problem of low yields and huge waitlists because a child can only really choose one school.</p>
<p>The GFG, I agree. ^^^ And even though you got a negative reaction from your friend, I think we still need to get the word out to less-informed parents and kids, no matter if they want to kill the messenger.</p>
<p>I stand corrected (I think). I did not realize WL yield was added to the overall yield rate. If so, then yeah, colleges can manipulate their yeilds using the WL. That’s too bad.</p>
<p>But…does anyone know if this is true? It’s from one of the commenters on the Choice.</p>
<p>I agree that there are too many kids on the waiting lists, but I also think some of you misread the Times article. </p>
<p>As long as you get your app in by the deadline at schools which have ONE response date–NOT rolling admissions–it has NO impact on your chances of being admitted. </p>
<p>The Duke ad com did NOT say that Duke didn’t read all the apps. What he said was that after reading all of the apps and designating some admit, some deny, and some WL, Duke realized that it had too many on the WL. But the date to send out decisions had arrived. Culling the WL to a more reasonable number just wasn’t a high priority. So, with little time to do it, it just wasn’t done.</p>
<p>As to the quote above, it’s sort of a half truth. I doubt Princeton called 926 people who said no. What happens is that lots of those folks who Princeton wait-listed got into Harvard, Stanford, MIT or some other college they’d just as soon attend. I don’t know about Princeton in particular, but many top colleges ask you to say whether or not you want to stay on the wait list. </p>
<p>Lots of kids say no. So, it may be that 900 kids chose NOT to stay on the wait list. It’s NOT the same as saying they were OFFERED admission–I really doubt that. Many of those who choose not to remain of the WL would NOT end up actually be offered a spot.</p>
I think the key here is that the list isn’t “long,” it’s big. It isn’t rank-ordered one through 3,000 in terms of admittability. It appears it’s more like, “we need somebody from Idaho.”</p>
<p>That quote provided by HurtLocker might be relevant, if it’s true. Maybe schools find that if the waiting list is too short, they end up enrolling people who don’t fit their needs that well.</p>