My daughter just got into Wellesley!
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Big hugs to your daughter. If I had to do this again (I wonāt), I would have encouraged my child to limit the reaches. Given the year our kids have had, their resilience is worn down and it makes the rejections even harder to process. Iām sure your daughter will end up someplace great!
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Emotionally very tough week for us as a family. Just yesterday, S21 got rejected by JHU, accepted by UCSD and WL by UCLA. With a close to perfect GPA, SAT score over 1550 in one sitting and national recognition in Math and CS, 8 years of high level sports, it is hard to prepare for these results no matter what we heard or thought before going into the admission process. It has shaken his confidence and has him question whether all this hard work is worth it. He has hopes for Berkeley and Northwestern (My alma mater) next week. Hoping for a miracle at this point
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S21 got accepted to UCLA yesterday. A much needed break from decisions going against him. Next two weeks should be intense.
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This week was pretty rough. We really felt like we had identified a solid list of schools with our son. After talking to his high school counselor as well as a private consultant we had a list of safety schools, targets and a few reaches. As it turns out he didnāt get a single acceptance from schools identified as a target or reach and was even waitlisted at a couple safeties. With multiple waitlists we are now focused on his acceptances while remaining hopeful he can get off a waitlist. Iāve posted stats in other threads but in short UW GPA 3.7 W GPA 4.4 1460 SAT, Great EC with leadership, volunteer with leadership, part time work, three sport athlete, AP Scholar, 32 semesters of AP and honors. 38th in class of 550. Applied under biochemistry at almost every school.
Accepted: University of Oregon (Stamps invite and Merit), University of Arizona (with Merit) Arizona State (with merit and honors) Loyola Chicago (presidential scholarship)
Waitlisted: UC Santa Cruz, Cal Poly, University of Washington
Rejected: Stanford, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA
Still Waiting: UC Berkeley
We are grateful to have the options we have and Cal Poly has always been his #1 choice so things may still work out but Iām really stumped by the fact that he didnāt get a single outright acceptance from an in state school. We assume Berkeley will be a rejection. Since he is identified as ELC (top 9% in CA) he may get offered a spot at UC Merced. The moral here is that the UC schools are unpredictable if not a lottery of sorts. If we had to do it again I think we might focus more on privates out west. Best of luck to all with decisions. All these kids deserve a better first year of college.
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As the mom of a junior gearing up for this whole experience I would love to hear more of this from the groupā lessons learned, tips, what you would/wouldnāt do again. Wishing good news for all your kids!
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I have four kids and this is my last so Iām happy this is my last but it has been crazy. My first kid had some issues so we used a college counselor for him but that was it. For him it was needed and worth it. For the rest of my kids I found that we could do a lot of the research for ourselves and save a ton of money. We live in the Chicago suburbs where most of the people donāt want to use our school college counselors (who have changed numerous times since my oldest graduated in 2015 and really are kind of crappy right now) so they go and spend $10-$20k for their kids. I donāt know what you spent but it is crazy and this year I think 100% many of those counselors had no idea what was going on and gave really bad advice, including our school counselors who told us a school was a likely for my son when I knew it was definitely NOT a likely based on experiences with my past kids and that this year would be tougher. This was also a year ago when she told him this so not sure what the heck she was thinking. Ultimately my son got into what is considered a big reach, got waitlisted from the program she said would be a likely although did get into the school just not the program (which is where she said he would get in), and waitlisted from schools we expected rejections from. I throw my hands up wondering what he is missing or what it takes.
Regardless, it is rough, but Iāve seen so many people apply to every UC school and many get in to many of them, so donāt give up hope because as Iāve said about other schools, these kids cannot go to every school theyāve been accepted to. Hang in there and be grateful he has options. I think there are students that applied to many schools that are normally considered reaches and no safeties or likelies. Not sure what those kids were thinking, so at this point I feel itās better to have some acceptances than none.
Youāre absolutely right that these kids deserve a better first year of college than what theyāre getting now.
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Interesting article but the females physicians in the comments section disagreed pretty vehemently.
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And how does one do that? Not one of the 9 schools that my daughter applied to has provided any information on how to withdraw an application. Not in any of the endless paper material they have mailed. Not in any of the email communications that they have made.
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Your son sounds amazing! He has applied to many schools that will likely be on D22ās list, and we also see UCs as the core of that list ā so your experience is sobering.
What West Coast privates would you have considered?
How does the Stamp process work at UO? You said invite, so they donāt initially apply? I think there could be a great opportunity being in such a selective program.
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We just spoke to a counselor once to have them look over his list and essays. He actually did it for free. I was just pointing out that everyone we spoke to (including many AOs at the schools he applied to) felt he had a good chance to be admitted.
IIRC some schools have a withdraw option in the studentās portal.
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I think we would have looked harder at schools like Santa Clara, USF, Whitman, Puget Sound and Lewis & Clark.
He was invited to apply as a Stamps Scholar at UofO. Itās a competitive scholarship. They award it to five OOS students per year. He did ultimately apply but he was not shortlisted for an interview. Just keep in mind that the high stats kids that may not even get admitted to UC will likely be offered very generous merit at many private and out of state schools; costs can end up similar if not lower than in state tuition at a UC.
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Right. And if thereās not the option in the portal, send an email to the kidās AO. If everyone did this, some schools would be able to go to the waitlist before May 1.
So, if you deposit to one school, decline the others you were accepted to.
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SAME. As my husband and I are both SLO alumni, a rejection for my daughter (1 month later?) really set us off. My daughter has a 4.56, amazing ECs, varsity sports 4 years, whatever. Whatever! Moving on. No more yearly alumni donations to them though lol (Yeah, Iām petty and more upset than my daughter.)
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Hi,
I am a many years-long lurker and mom of a senior who has gained so much from my quiet participation in this forum. There has been so much expertise, experience and generosity shared over the many years - I vowed I would pay it back after my daughter was in school.
We are not done yet, but for those with kids on waitlists I wanted to share a bit of a blog post from Michele Hernandez. I donāt necessarily endorse her business, but I thought she made a good point when she noted how SCEA deferrals causes a waterfall of panicked, super-strong applicants who screw up the system for everyone else. Here is a bit of it:
When Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford invented āsingle choice early action,ā they artificially made themselves the most selective/desirable colleges.
These four colleges accept fewer than 14% of the students who apply in the SCEA round. If we add up all the denied/deferred students in a typical year, thatās 23,000+ students, most of whom are world class, who do NOT earn admission to each of these top four schools. Once denied or deferred, those 23,000 students panic and apply to 15-30 schools in the regular round. That means all top colleges are flooded by applications not only from those 23,000 students, but also from another 150,000 students thanks to the ease of the Common Application. Itās an inefficient process with the same cohort applying to dozens of schools in the regular round without a way to signal that a school is a true top choice.
So this year, when these schools attracted more applicants to SCEA than ever before AND Princeton skipped an early round AND Harvard accepted FEWER kids than the year before = a unprecedented tsunami of super-strong applicants going forth applying to a ton of elite schools, and probably gobbling up huge numbers of spots. AND these elite schools, uncertain about yield and deferrals, are being conservative in their offers. The net result IMHO is that a lot of kids WILL get off waitlists this year, possibly starting really soon. Itās a totally sucky and unfair process for kids and families, made even suckier this year. Best of luck to everyone!
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Does CA have a cap on OOS students like Texas? If not, they should.
@NateandAllisMom We are lucky that we no longer need Cal Polyās WL with the UCs S21 got, but just checking in on the other kidsā status and then many in āpendingā for weeks after people already got accepted made me so annoyed at SLO. They had every capacity and capability to just be straight up with the kids but no. I told D24 we are not going to waist our time/$ on SLO again. Had a friend whose S22 is interested from OOS and I recommended against SLO. Terrible first moment of truth. Iām with your hubby!
@Momof0ne Congrats to your daughter on Wellesley!! Hillary Clinton is one of my idols so Iāve always wished I couldāve gone to W!
So many amazing women have gone there, including one of my good hs friends!
@mozwo123 Congrats on UCSD! I think our kids have similar stats and we lived a similar spectrum yesterday. At least they were consistent at JHU (4.5% ish acceptance rate) and UCLA.
@CRHeel94 Woot!! Congrats and what an accomplishment, especially this year! Your kid stood out among 139k+ applicants. Iām just so darn proud of any of the kids who got into UCLA yesterday. Two of my close mentees got in. One got regents invite so I knew heād get in but the other one was a surprise since he is ranked between the top 10 and my son (#25) and only one of our top 10 got in while the rest were waitlisted w/ my son. It was incredible and he and I cried together as he said he was still on the floor so happy and could barely breathe. Way to go Bruins acceptances!
@Southoftheriver My son most applied to UCs, deferred from Brown ED, but the rest were East Coast reaches. Our friendsā kids who have about a 3.6-3.7 GPA applied to Santa Clara U and Loyola Marymount U and both got in EA (not restricted) w/ scholarships. I know University of the Pacific wouldāve been a safety for my S21 also but way too close. In Seattle areaāSeattle U, U of Puget Sound, Pacific Lutheran You
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@Aguadecoco Yes, we do. OOS acceptance rate are higher but then they require higher stats. In addition, yield from OOS is usually much lower due to not much aid to OOS students.
We were searching for merit oos-warm climate and D didnāt apply for any reaches (no regrets) but I probably encouraged a few more safeties than necessary since we didnāt know how the covid situation would impact scholarship generosity. It was nice to have plenty of options but probably could have not applied to 2 or 3 if she had researched them more or been able to visit. I learned from this site to apply early for best chance at scholarship $$.
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