Woo hoo! Let us know when it’s official! Go Raiders!!!
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Naviance: looks like the minimum for the bar graph for apps, acceptances, enrolls got adjusted for our high school, so I can see a little bit more than before. Not all data is there yet for 2021, though for example, I can see that so far, 6 kids have enrolled at college A and at college C.
So, we have a shirt waiting in the wings, er, bag, for college A, but no deposit just yet - perhaps it will be reassuring that a handful of kids from the high school will be attending.
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Wow. It’s great that Selingo got those numbers out of those schools…and I’m thanking my lucky stars that D21’s test optional applications seemed to work. Where she was denied, Midd and Vandy, was no surprise even if she did submit test scores. Getting the nod from Colgate, with an acceptance rate of 12% TO, seems pretty good! And I’m assuming that’s both RD and ED so RD was likely even lower. Phew!
Of course, it felt very risky going without scores when none of us knew how this would work out.
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Wellll the trigger has not quite been pulled yet but stars are aligning. Yesterday on Fb my S’ school posted that a kid in his class is going to Santa Clara. This kid is not in any of my son’s honors or AP classes and when I asked my S who he was he said he hangs with the “druggies”. Soooo H is having a bad taste in his mouth after that.
Meanwhile Boulder just offered merit aid all of the sudden. Since he hasn’t decided we kept a couple on the list just in case. He declined about half of his offers after the NE tour.
This is so distracting still. I can’t wait to buy plane tickets and be done.
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Sometimes I wonder whether AOs will fully “get it” on the reliability, or lack thereof, of pandemic grades for the purpose of applicant comparisons. Seems like there was lip service last year, but TO is unfortunately not grade-optional. I feel for class of 2022, who will have it worse in that regard.
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Right…and the 2022s are going to have a hard time figuring out what test scores to send. IMO 2021 test score data for submitters is probably going to be unusable. So, I guess they should go back to 2020 data, but that’s not perfect either!
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I agree, 2021 data unusable. And 2019 may have been a high-water-mark for scores and app numbers for the pre-TO world. I guess I’d go with 2020 scores for determining whether to submit.
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Yeah Colgate was 60% filled early! Both lucky.
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The medical profession is a pyramid.
Only a small fraction of those who apply to medical school actually get in.
And then, only a small fraction of medical school graduates get into the most lucrative and sought-after residencies like dermatology and orthopedic surgery.
And then only a small fraction of those are able to establish practices or obtain employment in the top or most popular urban areas of the country.
Someone has to fill out the jobs and needs in other areas of medicine like primary care.
And someone has to take those jobs in places like Oklahoma and Arkansas that may not be the most popular for current grads.
Medicine is more meritocratic than most other professions. Not everyone can get those top residencies in the top hospitals. But I suspect the process is more fair than how positions like supreme court clerkships get assigned, or internships and entry level jobs at top finance and consulting firms are handed out.
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They don’t always make it easy for kids to decline. For example, my daughter was accepted into Occidental but will not be going there. She got a recent email from them saying “Remember, the deadline is May 1st, and if you have decided not to attend you can let us know here” and provided a link to click. When we clicked through to that link it brought her to the Occidental student applicant log-in page or portal. But since my daughter had never actually created an Occidental applicant account on their portal she couldn’t actually decline the invitation. All she had ever done was include Occidental in her common app application. She took one look at that page and said, I’m not going to bother creating a whole new Occidental account just so I can decline their invitation and that was that.
Could she go around and decline the invitations at 9 out of the 10 schools that she applied to and isn’t planning on attending? Sure, but each one is different and it’s own hassle. And not one of them actually provided easy one-click instructions on how to do it. In fact, Occidental was the only one who even asked her to decline if she isn’t planning on attending. The rest are still madly sending promo materials. Maybe if they refunded some of their application fees to those who decline early they would get a lot more results.
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My S got a few combo reminders and invitations by email even before decision day making it easy to decline but I definitely agree that would have made things easier on everyone. I’m sure a very high percentage of students blew it off. That would help explain the number of waitlist offers right before May 1.
Any thoughts on whether colleges will be more generous than usual with policies on rescinding? There doesn’t seem to be any data on this even in normal times, beyond the usual warnings - but I wonder about this year especially.
It took our D less than 5 minutes to decline 8 offers, but she had set up portals for all of them after applying, to make sure information had been received and to check status updates. If she doesn’t have portal access, a simple email to the general admissions address at each school should do the trick.
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On declining spots, most of those will have expired by Sun or Tues morning anyway. I don’t know that it’s a huge help to anyone to do it today.
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I don’t really know, but it seems like they would have to be, no? I sure hope so.
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S got a refund on all his AP exams, no need to take them and the teachers all warned that they will not get to cover all the material.
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Jumping in to share a quick story and give info for those still on waitlists. I have been helping my good friend’s D this year with her college search. She’s a great kid, works hard, lost one parent a few years ago. She didn’t take all my advice but she did include some meets need schools and ended up on waitlists at two. Once the decisions came in, she realized that Davidson was really her first choice and we worked on a LOCI with a senior year update and a statement that she would definitely accept a spot from the waitlist. This week she was down about her choices and was likely going to commit to one of our great state flagships, but she was really hoping for a small school with lots of discussion in her classes. She wrote one more heartfelt e-mail to her admissions contact on Tuesday night. Yesterday, she received a call with an admissions offer and an amazing financial aid award. I teared up as if it were my own kid! I’m so excited for her!
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From what I’ve gathered, TO negatively impacted kids who would have been competitive in a normal year. Let’s say a selective college normally admits kids with 95th percentile scores (or 98th, or whatever). This year, the kids who submitted scores would likely be in that range. The kids who didn’t submit scores either didn’t have scores or had mediocre scores (that they knew wouldn’t be competitive). So, of the TO applicants, how many would be competitive in a normal year? Very few-- almost none of the ones who withheld scores would’ve been, and only the students who would have otherwise been top scorers in the no-test group. So even if a school only devoted 20% or 30% of the class to TO, those are spots taken away from the applicants with scores who would traditionally fill up almost the entire class. I think this is why some kids with strong credentials (including strong scores) are facing disappointing results this year. But of course it had to be this way due to pandemic restrictions.
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I don’t understand the angst of declining one’s spot. It’s thru the portal or an email, no biggie. It seems the respectful thing to do…the school did take time to review their app (and yes, I know for many schools and/or applicants there is an application fee). But really, in the time it took to write your post, you probably could have sent three emails to AOs declining your D’s spot.
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Thanks for sharing about your daughter and that is what I’ve always told my kids. It doesn’t have to be permanent and they can always transfer if they want. My daughters each wound up at their first choices but both have friends who transferred after first year and one who is transferring now. Often times though, once kids are away from high school and the constant talk of “what school are you going to” they get over the fixation of feelings about their own school not being what they wanted. Your daughter clearly is a smart girl seeing as she is going on full merit ride so that is nothing to sneeze about at all. Once she is away from all of that, she will find her people! Just remember if it doesn’t look like she isn’t going to go on to grad school by junior year, either start spending the 529 money or transfer it to someone else so you aren’t penalized if you have to withdraw it for non educational use. I have 529 money still sitting in my 24 year old account that is going to be used by my last kid eventually but the $ is owed to my son so I haven’t moved it yet so I know how much I owe him from non-529 funds.
As for the medical salaries, thanks for bringing it to the earth that I know and have experienced as well. I think the bottom line is like anything it probably depends on where one is practicing, what insurance companies are paying out, and what hospitals have basically taken over all the private practices. Years ago our pediatricians office starting to charge $25 for every physical form per kid they needed to fill out. So if it was camp and school that was $50. I had 4 kids. Fortunately, they did cap it per family at $100. Obviously insurance didn’t cover it and this was a huge revenue stream for them. I would also fill out most of the form, so it was really just printing the immunizations or photocopying them back then and 1 or 2 other things. But, they still charged me. I even put in the current weight, height etc from our visits those days before giving them the forms. Anyway, my husband couldn’t believe they charged as to him the mountains of paperwork is just part of his job. It isn’t exciting doing dictation and other paperwork but it is part of the job. The minute the practice was bought out by a large hospital system they stopped charging that fee. Good riddance. If I didn’t like our pediatrician so much I would’ve stopped seeing her over that. When we complained her excuse was that it was the business manager’s decision, however, she was one of the 3 partners in a small practice so no, the business manager didn’t make the decision on her own without input from the partners of the practice.
Anyway, medicine these days is something else. Recently we switched insurance companies and it is amazing what different companies and plans do cover based on their contracts so I guess that is another problem with health care. Also, hospitalists are taking over as well. Not sure that’s a plus or a negative. I guess when you’re in the hospital and only want to see your physician, it’s not a plus. If you’re the hospital and want to get off cheap, it’s a plus.
Ahhh…congrats to your daughter in any case…she will find her place and I’m sure she will find her people and forget about the ones at home soon enough!