OK, both trees are up. House is nice and clean and ready for Christmas. I think we did that too fast as D21 and I were trying to get our minds off the darn ED 1 results. She said that didn’t last long. She’s back to worrying. Ugh, is it Friday noon yet? The good thing is she COMPLETLY understands the chances are very low. I’m glad she was able to visit the summer prior to starting 11th grade with her friends & school counselors and not me! She found the school all on her own which is also why I think she is so stressed as she says it’s perfect for HER. All her other options (which are all great) are here in California. I think she just fell in love with the East Coast. She told me the east coast did the brick buildings right. She loves Architecture as well.
LOL. I can almost relate! I am paranoid with 6.5% acceptance rate and prob lower since S21 is Asian male. I don’t want to jinx it.
We are in the home stretch. S21’s ED is super reach x 100 but he’s written so many essays that he’s wants to apply to Vanderbilt, Yale, and Penn. he’s holding on til ED decision day (I have no idea) before submitting.
D21 asked me yesterday, “Wouldn’t it be great if I got into XXX (second likely EA school) next week so I could just be done and not think about this anymore?” I told her she could still feel like she’s done since, if she likes that one so much, it doesn’t matter whether or not she gets into any other school after that. I think she just wants to be done with the whole process and wouldn’t actually mind if all her matches and reaches told her right now NO so she could just get on with feeling like she is knowing where she is going next year. Well, okay, she would actually mind (very much). But you know what I mean.
(I promised D21 I would not publicly tell anyone where she was applying until decisions came out so as not to jinx her chances. Yes, we can be superstitious around here).
ED apps to Cornell increased from 6630 for Class of 2024 to >9000 for Class of 2025
https://admissions.cornell.edu/december-2020
Ouch. Cornell is not on the lists here, but this is downright scary for reach results.
@evergreen5 I wonder if this policy News | Undergraduate Admissions
of score-free testing for 4 of their colleges also contributed to their increased numbers as well as the fact that three of their schools (CALS, Human Ecology, and ILR) give reduced tuition for NY residents. That way they pay reduced tuition, can stay closer to home, and attend an Ivy.
Holy cow! Those higher ED numbers this year blow me away!
seems like it’s only for some schools though. Others are pushing out their deadlines which makes us guess that their ED apps are down. Increased ED apps for tippy tops makes sense because (1) everyone knows ED is a bump and (2) test optional option. I’m still a little surprised since so few kids got to visit schools but maybe some families just decided it was worth a shot even without a visit.
Those are crazy numbers! I wish other schools ( and D21’s ) would let everyone know the number of applications. I am guessing almost all schools with ED have higher numbers this year.
I don’t think so. The tippy tops like the Ivies and equivalents are up big, but the level below that will struggle to get a strong ED class. I think Students are more stingy with their ED choice and it has to be a safe choice academically and financially.
As for Cornell, NY state has had very severe travel restrictions and it’s difficult to come and go from NY. Some kids I know at Cornell had to find places on their own to quarantine before fall - parents had to find Airbnb’s for them to stay in for two weeks and figure out food delivery etc. I’m willing to bet that the uptick at Cornell is also a lot of in state kids because every time that come and go from NY, there are a lot of Covid hoops to jump through. Why not stay in state and try for the local Ivy.
Yes, UVA’s ED numbers are up 35% (however, ED was just reinstated last year) and EA is up 15%. UVA is also TO.
Breathing into paper bag intensifies
On the positive side, even though you are going to see an increase in ED/RD apps for the top colleges this year, I think the quality of the student still needs to be there and those students who just wanted to “shoot their shot” (what the heck) approach with a low and/or no test score and not a compelling app will probably be easily weeded out to the reject pile.
The strong applicants (like the students of the parent’s here) will still be very competitive applicants. Cross fingers…
On a separate note, if the TO process this year at many colleges is “successful” I wonder if more and more colleges will incorporate that into next year and beyond. It’s very seductive to colleges to have 20-30% increase in apps, driving down their acceptance rates. Might be hard for them to not want to continue this trend or will they be ok reverting back to making all applicants submit test scores? Just wondering…
Lurking for awhile. Wanted to share briefly. My oldest child, a boy, is going through this process now. He is a carefree, grounded, kind, social boy who definitely wants to go to college but is not 100% certain where, or what he wants to major in, or how important prestige is to him. This laissez-faire attitude is partly his personality but is made much worse by COVID since college seems to be a very abstract concept to him. I am a little obsessed (unhealthily I admit) with him going to a nationally known, highly ranked university. This is because his father and I did, and we did honestly feel it opened doors for us. That is a whole other debate though.
DS 21 has a GPA of 3.65 UW at a rigorous private school (no curves, retakes or make ups) that does not rank; he would be in top 10%, but towards the lower end of that if they did. He has taken AP (scored 4s and 5s) and Honors classes. He got a 30 on the ACT at a test date months after his prep (due to COVID cancellations) that was mostly passive (my son is not the type to study on his own but will show up and do what he is told). I think he could have probably scored a 32 under ideal circumstances. He is not an incredibly intellectually curious, studious kid, but he gets his work done on his own and does have some internal motivation to do “well enough”. What I mean by this is he can be a deep thinker, and he is a fabulous conversationalist, but he is not motivated to independently read or study outside of school. This has manifested in college apps as him doing what he is assigned by me (write this essay, fill out this grade summary) but not proactively doing anything. He is applying an an Econ major as he enjoys behavioral economics and thinks he may want to go into management consulting. He also likes and does well in biologic sciences. He is not an engineering/computer/math kid. He is not a foreign language/English Lit kid either.
He is a state ranked tennis player, but not playing in college. He also plays soccer. I would stereotype him as a “smart jock”. He has an active social life, and that is a priority to him. He wants a medium to large school with school spirit surrounding athletics that is suburban or urban, but with a distinct campus experience.
He was accepted early this summer due to rolling admissions to AZ State and IA State so we could just exhale. Then he was accepted to our flagship university - University of Minnesota - TC - which means he is 100% certain he can go to a school he will love. What is left is a bunch of more highly ranked schools (near reaches, far reaches and lottery schools) that “fit” him OR schools I picked because I thought they might be a good option to explore if he gets in. He has a few more high matches (Wisconsin- Madison and U of Miami) and one more safety still on his list.
I look forward to vicariously following everyone’s kid’s journey here. Good luck!
I guess not so brief. LOL.
I honestly can’t figure out if college counselors and all the so-called “experts” know what they’re talking about or what is going on. Every school seems to have a huge number of applications. At first glance, when schools have extended application dates you would have thought it was because of low applications, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Cornell extended theirs by 2 weeks. The UC schools extended theirs and rumor is that theirs are up. Michigan extended by 2 weeks - it’ll be interested to see what their EA numbers are. Huge I bet.
@homerdog I totally agree with you about being surprised at the numbers at Cornell because people couldn’t have official visits. You couldn’t go into campus buildings if you weren’t cleared with a negative covid test, etc. so the only way people could “see” or “visit” was by driving through the campus or walking on their own, and trust me, plenty did, but clearly many did not. People from the west coast or further away didn’t. Internationals also didn’t. They make up a big part of their ED applicants also as they have previously said they’re increasing every year as a bigger part of that process. It is too bad they don’t break the numbers down further by NY and OOS/international.
@alwaysmoving I will be anxious to see that but somewhat agree. I have a friend the daughter already got into her reaches. They were so surprised she went and applied to bigger reaches which included schools like Michigan and Wisconsin. So that goes along with your thinking to some degree. Less strong applicants as ED students pull out once accepted. I wonder if ED classes will take more students in this round. I have heard some will. I think I read BC took more in ED1 than last year.
@homerdog re travel restrictions I think the big draw for Cornell is actually how well they combatted Covid and the fact that they had in person classes. They were all over the news also. I bet syracuse also has a huge number of ED apps, for the same reason. Everything with Cornell was at the last minute for their planning of where kids had to quarrantine but few kids were staying alone in airbnbs and for many Cornell accommodated them and provided food. Upper class generally live off campus but for many it was a big cluster. That only affected students who’s states were on the hot list not all OOS students. But 100% I do think a lot are the in state kids vying for their one opportunity at an Ivy without a test score coming from good schools but also paying a tuition most of us would pay for an in state university. It would be interesting to see if that ED thread shows most applicants a) from NY and b) applying to those majors are not looking at scores at all and/or are resident tuition. Who wouldn’t apply there then? With the exception of not wanting to be with everyone you know and their brother? Of course why my kids didn’t go to our state school which is highly ranked for their majors. Sigh…
It’s all good. We can’t accurately explain our kids in a few sentences!
It could simply be they extended deadlines to allow kids more time to take the SAT’s . Although they say they are test optional it has to be easier if applicants have a score.
S23 took the test yesterday and the amount of seniors still testing was high.
I don’t know if you know kids at Cornell but I know four and only two of them had an in person class and it was just their lab.
S21 knows two kids (sophomores) at Cornell and they both had most of their classes in person/hybrid. S21 said they only had 1 remote class.
I think you meant this for me.
Yes, I do. My daughter attends Cornell '23 and she had 2 in person classes. I think a lot depended on the course size and professor and maybe even class year. When you registered you could also see which classes were online, hybrid or in person.
But relative to many other schools this was a somewhat normal semester. Where they did not do a great job was with socialization of freshmen who were there and definitely could have done better. I think it may have gotten better for some at the end, but relative to a school like Syracuse who really had great orientation activities for everyone where it was easy to socially distance, Cornell didn’t or had everything virtual. That was sort of lame I would think for them. Many kids who were remote first semester are now coming back second semester since they were so successful with containing covid.