My daughter is excited for PT- she was accepted to several direct admit programs. Leaning toward Sacred Heart with Neuroscience as the undergrad in the 3+3. Hope you feel better soon!
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Sorry about that but glad that he has good offers in hand and that he can make a choice. Good luck with your deliberations!
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Thatâs great, congratulations to her!!
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It is beautiful. D21 is proceeding as if she may go here, but she has several other schools that she prefers. We are still waiting on the rest of any admission offers and financial packages, so she will decide in April. She is considering UT Dallas because of NMF, but I donât know if that is going to happen either. She really wants a small LAC. Like other teens, she wants to move âawayâ to college and not go here in her hometown.
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I am a licensed SLP and I recommend my field as well, despite the copious amounts paperwork in adult settings and the large caseloads in schools. I spend the majority of my career in early intervention and private practice, which worked for me. D21 graduated college a semester early and has applied to graduate school for SLP. She is into two schools and waiting for her last two results. I donât know how it is for PT(I expect the same), but for speech I donât think it is worth it to pay full freight to attend the top ranked school (Vanderbilt) if you can go for a well regarded/well ranked state school for much less. I tried to talk her into PT, OT, NP or PA but she decided SLP was the best fit for her. BTW I love those direct admit programs for the kids who know what they want to do already!
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Sorry there is a paywall but sharing for those who have a WSJ subscription Long Waitlists this year
T20 schools (Stanford, Yale) had a significant drop in yield 2020. 15%ish
Much longer waitlists predicted this year (or deeper pools as they say).
Wait lists to be used by top colleges as early as early April and well into summer (even past July) so schools donât overenroll but get enough tuition. This creates a domino effect as each student commits and turns down other spots.
More gaming like @homerdog saw where you have to indicate you will come before you get off the waitlist with an offer 
School unknowns: can internationals make it, financial problems of families, virus/vaccine trends.
But some less selective schools may admit more students off the top. Example given of rising private school (Furman) with pre-pandemic 30% yield rate. They will accept more even though applications are up because they were short students in 2020 class and had a yield of only 18%. Noted they donât have the luxury of depending on competing with other schools and successfully using the waitlist.
G Techâs Clark anticipates that people will put in multiple deposits to keep their options open 
, but ultimately can only attend one school.
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It will be very interesting to look back and see how each school had to use their WL. Like, how many kids in the freshman class were originally waitlisted? Every family will have to decide on their own if they are willing to play that game or if they just choose from their studentâs acceptances. This year has been stressful enough for people and I bet a lot of kids want to make their decision sooner rather that later.
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I wonder about this too, but the way people went for reaches this year makes me think a lot of students will tolerate the wait list game. S might for the right school I think but there are only like 2 of those that are likely. For us, it would be good if other people are fed up and opt out by 5/1. The upside to the wait list this year is that you know more about what fall will look like if itâs mid-late summer. Saving up that travel budget!
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The bigger waitlists are why Iâm hoping colleges do not push back the May 1 decision date. If waitlists are going to be heavily utilized this year, that is an awful lot of students who would have an extra-long wait to know where they are going.
I do understand that kids havenât been able to visit colleges and will have a harder time choosing where to go. Also, students want to see how the pandemic plays out with the vaccinations to try to figure out what the fall will look like at each of their choices. So I get delaying decision date also⊠and see where that will lead to double deposits.
Back to the general pandemic issues of nothing is fair and everything is frustrating!
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Iâm just ready for all of this to be over. We had been planning a trip to see two of his top 3 schools but realized itâs in Indiana during NCAA tournament. Thatâs not great. But Iâm still all for May 1. I need this to be done.
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whatâs up with the double deposit talk? Um, thatâs not allowed. Was anyone caught doing that last year? I thought there were rules around that with the consequences being stiff enough that it would not be worth risking it.
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Anyone who double deposits really I have no respect for them. Iâll just say that straight up. Itâs one thing to put down a deposit and get called off a waitlist and change your mind. Itâs entirely different to take spots and two schools so you can make up your mind. Thatâs not fair to anyone.
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Inside Higher Ed: Mostly a rehash but has updated common app data. âThe number of students applying has increased by about 2 percent over last yearâŠBut they have submitted 11 percent more applications than last year â primarily to colleges in the Southwest (up 22.73 percent and in the South (up 15.47 percent). The mid-Atlantic and New England schools saw single digit increases.â
âThrough Feb. 15, [only 44 percent] of people using the Common Application had submitted SAT or ACT scores. Last yearâs total was 77 percent.â
"At the most competitive collegesâŠthey will probably just use the waiting list to make up for any yield decrease. But the numbers suggest to her that most colleges will have to admit more students this year.
First gen, lower income and under-represented minority students are fueling increases in applications to the more selective institutions, public and private, in part because many of these schools are now test optional," Massa added. "Students from lower income families tend to have lower test scores than do those from families of privilege. They believe their chances of admission to these so-called âtop schoolsâ are better without their scores. But there is a catch. Understanding that students are applying to a larger number of colleges this year versus last year, the highly selective schools will likely admit a slightly larger number of students to compensate for a potentially lower yield. But their acceptance percentage, because of a larger applicant pool, will be either the same or perhaps lower than last year and they will, of course, pad their waitlists to assure that they have the right number of new students in the fall. Therefore, it really will not be easier to get in.
All in all, Massa said the âthe smaller, less well known schools will continue to struggle as will lower income students who will be competing for a finite number of spaces against many more applicants at the highly selective schools.â
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Thanks for sharing that. Can that title be anymore apropos than it is? Reading that article you can see how the yields at all those top schools were down and ultimately who cares? It didnât affect Stanford or Yale or even NYU getting tons more applications. They need to get over that and stop playing a yield game. At least some are honest that theyâre worried they wonât have space.
My son is waitlisted at UNC. They say there wonât be a âfinalâ decision until late June. I didnât even think about looking back at CC thread for them from last year to see if they started taking people earlier. Does anyone know? They took 5% from their waitlist last year, whereas the year before only took 1%.
Also @NateandAllisMom A lot may tolerate the waitlist game however, if so many went for reaches that were not really competitive candidates to begin with, will they even be waitlisted in the first place anyway? Iâm with you, if mine ends up on more than one waitlist, that people just get fed up and opt out early. Thereâs an upside to the waitlist, but thereâs a big downside to being taken off also. A lot of things are already done for those freshmen and theyâre late to the game and have a lot to catch up on. Iâve seen it with my other kids and the one thing I swore I would never do is have my kids switch schools at the last minute but I donât see how that may not be avoidable this year depending on how things shake out. Canât pick a roommate, canât make travel plans, etc.
@spaceaquarium Totally agree. Pushing back commit dates, just make it that much harder for other students. It was no different last year when kids just couldnât visit. Sometimes you just have to pull the trigger and make the decision.
I donât understand the double deposit. What is the point of it really? Everyone has a spot until May 1 so why does anyone need to hold 2 prior to then? Is is because they can go through the motions of housing and other admitted freshman stuff? Thatâs horrible that people do that and a complete waste of money. At least in our case paying $ now gives no advantage for housing so not rushing to do that. Like @skkm0906 Iâm ready to be done. We have a few more schools to hear from in RD which may help whittle things down and narrow the playing field but then we see the big picture. Not sure how much past May 1 I can go.
Also, someone the other day mentioned something about being pulled of a waitlist and being a full pay student. Is there some correlation there? Do waitlist students that accept spots not get financial aid or not know their FA package? Also, how often does someone get pulled from one waitlist, then a second waitlist as Iâm assuming that hopping around happened a lot last year too which may be why colleges will start early this year again?
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We have yet to get some big answers and have a hash out session. But I suspect there are only two schools we havenât seen that my S would accept a WL spot, one being a T20 and he would go sight unseen. If the wait listing school is marginal and across the country, we would pass since heâs already got a good EA admission, we will negotiate and deposit with them unless he picks another he is accepted to this month.
Does anyone have experience negotiating merit? I heard it can take up to 3 weeks, but we canât get into that until we know our April 1 answers. So I guess early April you get on that?
So, except for those who double deposit, people like us who applied at many schools will likely shed a lot of them in April, more by 5/1, and then turn down WL spots. So maybe it wonât go as long into summer except at like T25.
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While Iâve never tried negotiating merit, all Iâve heard recently is that top schools donât negotiate and it sounds like this year from groups Iâm in schools are being more stingy about it also. Some schools also say right on their websites if they negotiate or not (Purdue for instance will not).
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Great article! I loved this quote:
Aaron Fulk, director of college counseling at Marin Academy, a high school in California, said he is frustrated by the current system in which schools want high application numbers and a low acceptance rate, but also want to predict and protect their yields.
âTheyâre trying to have all the things, and thatâs how you create a very complicated, deluded and highly inefficient system,â he said.
The admissions profession has been heartless when it comes to the kids theyâre leading on in order to protect their numbers. Itâs hard to feel sorry for them now.
btw, if anyone wants to read the article, here is the non-paywall version.
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Thanks. I suspect that his best EA will negotiate because of the virus uncertainty, their high pay business model, and being closed all year but I could be wrong about that.
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I think itâs more like a kid deposits at their best option and everytime a new best option becomes available they deposit there. The colleges want a high yield for deposited students.
Interesting nugget from the article:
Yale Universityâs yield for the fall 2019 entering class was 69%âand fell to 55% this past fall, meaning nearly as many students declined or deferred their invitations as accepted them. Stanford Universityâs figures were 82% in fall 2019 and 68% in fall 2020. And Georgetownâs slipped below 45% this past fall.
LOL classic:
âI like you, but only if you say you like me too,â
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