Curious. First time through all this with D24. We have found that some schools are fantastic about replying to emailed questions, follow through on tours, signing up for interviews, ease of communications, etc. (I’m looking at you, Elon!)
….And some AO, Financial aid offices don’t even reply to emails (not naming names, but these are top 50/ top 100, smaller private schools). For those of you with kids in college, did your experience during admissions process resemble the on-campus experience? I’m pretty turned off by a few schools that she would otherwise love. Wonder if those same schools are difficult to register for classes, financial issues, etc.
I’m not sure I would assume that a school where admissions doesn’t do a great job is reflective of the internal communication for matriculated students.
If you have a specific school in mind, you could ask the question on that school’s sub-forum.
Nope, not really. Right now, every financial officer is being slammed with fall 2023 student issues, actually I imagine all departments are. Most of mine went to large publics, they needed to hustle to get what they needed. Most of mine were very driven and got everything they needed (note I say most). I really don’t get involved except listening to venting (and usually it all works out).
I’m wary of outing them. But we’ve got two where she has sent three emails since April with a specific q. Tried her AO and the general admissions and never heard back. Same schools haven’t replied to a specific financial q. Makes me wary.
@thumper1 beat me to it. Was going to say that there will be very little reason to have communication with the admissions office again, unless your kid is going to be a tour guide or something.
I think students learn to navigate, one of my kids’ colleges had phone queues of over 100 for financials this week, however folks who went in person had no issues. At another of my kids’ colleges there is no one in person, they are still working from home.
I would say the schools my kids went to were very accommodating and never had the issues the OP is having but this was just pre - covid.
I would email the head of the department or the Provost,if not getting any replies. Or just call. Something is off if it continues to happen.
BTW - listing the school here has no reflection on you and they can’t track you on here. There are many people that are “experts” with various schools and might be able to help you or give suggestions.
I would be turned off by a school like that but it’s “usually” not reflective of the school as a whole. Same as bad student tour guides can turn you off from a school. Don’t let that happen… Lol.
It’s not about being a trend or not. If you want to eliminate colleges based on their responsiveness, that’s as legit as any other way.
Some colleges are more communicative than others. If you are asking questions easily found elsewhere, you are less likely to get a response.
At both my kids’ colleges, I had good luck just picking up the phone. Think about the thousands of emails they must get, clogging up in-boxes. I actually think there are times when it must be close to impossible for them to respond to each and every email. Especially when students are applying to so many more colleges and probably sending so many more emails.
Nope. The fact is students have nothing to do with admissions once they enroll in a college. Unless something is egregiously bad, I would not choose or eliminate a college based on experiences with admissions.
We probably allowed non-responsiveness to affect our opinion of one school that came off the list in the end.
There were other factors, but the admissions rep was slow to respond to emails. Also, when we set up a campus visit, we were specifically invited to schedule a department tour but the department never responded to our response affirmatively requesting a tour, the tour never materialized, and we received no follow-up. In addition, our main campus tour was lackluster. It seemed like our guide was untrained and winging it. He skipped by major points of interest and spent a weirdly long time half-way through taking random questions with us standing inside a small, drab, generic classroom, among other things
It wasn’t JUST the lack of email response, but it certainly felt like admissions was suffering from a lack of resources. Other peer schools seemed so much more organized and polished. It made us wonder what other areas lacked attention and resources, to be honest. And it left a bad taste to have to beg for info about something the school wanted us to pay big bucks for.
In the end, peer schools offered the same benefits (as far as we could tell) with fewer hassles. So our student decided not to pursue that one further.