<p>Umm, how does Vanderbilt have numbers already for the 2009-2010 year? It can’t possibly know yet how many waitlist offers it will make that (this) year . . . . Something is screwy.</p>
<p>^^ those are numbers from the CDS of the 2009-2010 incoming freshman class…</p>
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<p>It doesn’t matter what the percentage is. Let’s say for the sake of simplicity that Duke has an entering class of 100. They would actually make more than 100 admission offers, but again for simplicity let’s say that it offers those 100 slots to 100 applicants and puts another 100 who really, really love Duke on the waitlist. </p>
<p>But 30 of those 100 kids who got offers are mean kids who cruelly applied to more than one school, and they like the other school more than they like Duke. So the 30 kids decline Duke’s offer opening up 30 vacancies in the incoming class. Duke then offers those 30 slots to the top 30 kids on the waitlist. Since Duke is going to choose the 30 kids on the waitlist it likes best, it offers the spots to pretty much the same 30 who would have gotten offers in the first round if those selfish meanies hadn’t applied. </p>
<p>So the 30 rotten kids did, in the end, NOT take up more than one slot. They went to the school they liked best and the 100 best kids who wanted to go to Duke got offers. The other 70 kids still on the waitlist are out of luck, but they weren’t going to get offers in any case, whether the mean, cruel, impolite kids who declined Duke had applied or not. No harm, no foul. </p>
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<p>I agree that the system is broken but not because kids apply to a lot of schools. They system is broken because it is not transparent an very unpredictable. Since no one can determine with any sort of reasonable degree of certainty which is the best school that will accept them and offer them enough finaid, they feel compelled to apply to many schools of the quality they aspire to and think they can qualify for. </p>
<p>Except for a few trophy hunters, no one in their right mind would go to all the work and expense of applying to 30 or 15 or even 5 schools if they could tell in advance which schools will accept them and which won’t. But as long as the schools themselves continue to play an elaborate game of “Maybe” with the applicants, the applicants are going to continue to hedge their bets. And I don’t blame them.</p>
<p><a href=“https://virg.vanderbilt.edu/virgweb/CDSC.aspx?year=2009[/url]”>https://virg.vanderbilt.edu/virgweb/CDSC.aspx?year=2009</a></p>
<p>JHS: 2009-2010 is the date of the data set.</p>
<p>I don’t know how large the waitlist is this year. Perhaps they are figuring out what to expect from their large applicant pool. Or perhaps not.</p>
<p>I don’t see how you can blame kids for applying to more than 10 schools, especially if you also take the position that no school that admits less than 25% of its applicants can be anyone’s “safety school”, or for some even a “match”. My son applied to 10 colleges a couple years ago. This may have been a bit on the high side, even for high-achieving kids at his school, but there reasons besides general admissions that drove some of his selections. BTW, I agree that the Common App has *really[i/] driven up the number of applications. Once my son had finished the Common App and a supplemental essay, most of the work for 8 of the 10 colleges was done. I think that most of the Common App schools had supplemental forms, but really they ask the same questions for the most part.</p>
<p>His Big State U was a true safety, but clearly not where he wanted to go. The remaining 9 schools were all admitting less than 25% of their applicants and 6 of the 9 were “T20” schools. After looking at Naviance for his school, I was convinced that 4 of the 9 were safeties; 2 of the 9 were matches; and the remaining 3 were reaches (all Ivy, although I thought 1 should be a match/reach). But…two years ago everyone was saying that it was the largest demographic class ever and you can’t use even last years results as an accurate predictor. So, for several reasons, he applied to these 10. His results were 8 acceptances, 1 WL (the match/reach) and one denied. Maybe I did better research, or maybe our Naviance site is more accurate, but it seems like a lot of posters on CC would have said that he needed at least one more school that admits greater than 50% of the applicants and probably at least one more match school.</p>
<p>While a kid who over-applied might not technically take away a spot from a kid who really want to attend a particular school, his pointless admission will nonetheless influence the outcome for that other waitlisted student. It’s not as simple as you paint it, coureur, because the waitlisted student isn’t going to just float around in limbo until he gets the call from the more desired school. In the meantime, he has no choice but to be realistic about his chances (1 out of 3,000 or so) and thus assume he is unlikely to get off the waitlist. He will have to go ahead and chose a school, send a deposit, fill out housing forms, etc. He will accustom himself to the idea of attending that other perfectly good school. So when the call does come in, he may actually find himself saying “no.” Why? Well the other school really wanted him from the beginning, whereas for this school he’s a second choice, a B-list invitee. This is a different psychological and financial place compared to what the student would have been in had he been accepted outright.</p>
<p>The most depressing book I ever read about college admissions is “The Gatekeepers” by Jacques Steinberg, focusing on Wesleyan University.
Therein was a long power struggle between an admissions officer, a high school guidance counselor, and the Dean of Admissions about whether an applicant should be rejected or put on the wait list. The admissions officer used up his reservoir of influence getting the young lady put on the waiting list. None of the three professional actors had any illusion that the student would ever be offered admission.
Nobody bothered to let the applicant know this, of a piece with admissions offices generally.
IMO, the size of wait lists is obscene, but no different from discouraging almost no one from applying to schools with admissions rates less than 10%, or wait listing the strongest students because they are likely to go elsewhere.
At least in a job interview you may be told are over-qualified. I’ve yet to hear of such candidness from an admissions office.</p>
<p>One thing that perhaps deserves discussion: the near-total irrelevance to many (not all) of the elite colleges of how much an applicant loves the college and wants to go there. Of course he does! Who wouldn’t? As far as the colleges are concerned, the relationship really starts when someone enrolls, and it lasts a lifetime. They will accept and try to attract students who don’t especially want to be there (yet), because they know that those students will turn into engaged community members and alumni in no time at all.</p>
<p>They want whom THEY want, and it’s not always the kid who loves a college the most while he’s in high school, sorry to say. Most of them don’t have a system favoring the kids who most want to be there, because that’s not necessarily the kids they want most.</p>
<p>JHS - if colleges accepted all the kids that really wanted to go their then Princeton would have 200,000 students in its freshman class…</p>
<p>ha!</p>
<p>just kidding
<a href=“but%20not%20really”>I</a>*</p>
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</p>
<p>You can:</p>
<p>[APOL:</a> Summary for Apollo Group, Inc.- Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=APOL]APOL:”>1912746 (APOL) Stock Price, News, Quote & History - Yahoo Finance)</p>
<p>Long thread, not sure if somebody has already said this, but…</p>
<p>The students bring this on themselves, and the highschools perpetuate it by not counseling students very well. Students should be limited to four applications (one safety, one reach, and two matches).</p>
<p>Applying to 16 schools, which has become the norm, means the student has not done research. We hear it all the time (applied to huge universities, small LACs, urban schools, rural schools, southern schools, expensive schools, state schools, etc.)</p>
<p>Hey guidance counselors: limit the number of apps you’ll allow students to submit.</p>
<p>Hey seniors: do your research! Don’t apply willy-nilly. Just because the common app allows you to apply to 16 schools, doesn’t mean you must do it.</p>
<p>Blaming the common app is like giving a DUI ticket to a bottle of scotch.</p>
<p>Guidance counselors have no legal authority to limit the number of applications a student submits. We want to be sure every student has at least 2-3 acceptances to choose from, unless they applied ED. With the economy and cost of college the way it is, many families want more acceptances to choose from so that they can compare FA pcks. It’s just not that simple.</p>
<p>For those of you, and I say this with great respect, who “think” it’s better to be waitlisted…</p>
<p>[Op-Ed</a> Contributor - The Wait List Is the Hardest Part - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/opinion/15khan.html?ref=opinion]Op-Ed”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/opinion/15khan.html?ref=opinion)</p>
<p>Totally disagree w/heyalb. I don’t think just because a student has applied to a variety of schools – large, small, rural, urban, uni, LAC – means their list was unfocused or lacked throught. Ds applied to all those kinds of schools, all for very good reasons. His list is narrowed to three, and still in the running are two LACs with fewer than 2,000 kids and an in-state uni with more than 40,000. Each type of school appeals to him for different reasons. Nothing wrong with that.</p>
<p>The other thing that is driving application #'s up at Vandy is their adoption of “no loans” in FA packages for undergrads beginning last year. Their blog talks about the waitlist process: [2010</a> Waitlist Information The Vandy Admissions Blog](<a href=“2010 Waitlist Information | The Vandy Admissions Blog | Vanderbilt University”>2010 Waitlist Information | The Vandy Admissions Blog | Vanderbilt University)</p>
<p>My D was waitlisted at Vandy this year & sent her “no thanks” form in right away. But she knows a few kids who did decide to stay on the list. For us, it wasn’t a surprise although she was above the 50% of admitted student stats. We knew going in that a school with a 19% (last year which dropped below 17% this year) admit rate was a reach and I had told her to expect a wl or rejection. We took the wl as a “you meet our expectations but we’re full!” complement and moved on.</p>
<p>I had a long conversation with D’s GC yesterday and she thinks 10 apps is reasonable. 13 years ago with the other kid, she thought 4-5 was fine and 8 was ridiculous.</p>
<p>It’s the schools turning down kids the GO thought were good matches, and the incredible increase in #s of apps to everywhere, that have changed her mind. </p>
<p>The 10 apps, of course, she breaks down as 1-2 reach, 1-2 safety, and the rest for well researched, genuine matches that the kid will fit into well, and so many more of them because of the crap shoot the whole thing has now become.</p>
<p>Our GCs are basically ATMs who dispense transcripts, as far as I am concerned. They don’t know my kid beyond superficialities, they don’t know the schools beyond our state, and I’d be damned to give them any “power” in limiting the number of apps. Any more than I’d ask the bank teller to weigh in on what stores I should shop at when I withdraw money from the bank. </p>
<p>And that goes double for families needing to compare FA. </p>
<p>What top schools don’t take commonapp? Gtown–any others? Do they have fewer waitlist issues, anyone know?</p>
<p>I do think when schools provide waitlists, they should at least say there are x kids in this waitlist and/or release previous year stats. However, I guess from a game theory perspective no one school would want to provide those stats.</p>
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<p>Nothing wrong with that at all. If he’s on a waitlist, or three, then I assume there are no complaints.</p>
<p>People who complain about the waitlist, and then perpetuate its size, should look to themselves as part of the problem.</p>
<p>And as far as GCs having no legal obligation to limit the number of applications, you’re correct. Just like people have no legal obligations to act morally or ethically. ;)</p>
<p>And before you jump down my throat, I’m not saying it’s immoral or unethical to apply to 15 schools. I’m saying that the lack of a “legal” obligation does not preclude *taking on *that obligation.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl–</p>
<p>Haha, I suggest you go find their alumni ass’n website and see if there are any articles about waitlists, admit rates, and such! They love bragging to the alums about how many more apps they got than last year, etc…I got an email this morning from my alma m…</p>
<p>Sorry about your GCs at your school. We are at a public school in suburban NJ where teachers & staff pretty much come in for life and are drawn very much from the local area. I think they feel invested as a part of the community. I crochet baby blankets when the teachers or their wives are pg. My D’s gym teacher a couple years ago was the daughter of the Presby. pastor. </p>
<p>It’s not a ridicuously small town but there is a lot of knowing everybody & their business. Which has its pros & its cons!</p>
<p>Well, I think what’s being said here is that for certain students there are no real “match” schools because their stats and ECs put them where all the match schools accept 20% or so of the applicants. With the increasing number of applicants, these particular students, in order to find an actual “match” school, actually NEED to apply to more schools to create that set of circumstances. I support kids doing whatever they need to do to make that happen.</p>
<p>Then, add in the need for financial aid or merit based aid for the upper middle class with more than 2 kids in the family, and then an even bigger increase in app numbers becomes necessary.</p>
<p>I see all of this as valid. School is an expensive proposition. Both the schools and the students are playing the odds, to some extent, and so they should. If one entity is going to change the game, though, it is going to have to be the schools, not the students…It costs the schools less to reduce thier waitlists than it costs the student to risk not having a viable acceptance. Schools have the power and the ball is in thier court to change the game. I strongly believe this.</p>
<p>Good luck to all the kids who are sticking with the waitlists. Good luck, too, to the parents who are still stuck in the waiting game, as well. Everyone will be happy and settled by the Fall. :)</p>