I scanned through the thread but the search function on here is pretty difficult. Does anyone recall a post where folks summarized a detailed list of things to compare when deciding the final college choice? S22 is now in a situation where there is a marginal favorite but there are 2 other options that look equally or more compelling depending on the day of the week.
I’m trying to stay away from the actual decision but I would love for him to see how people are thinking about the process.
Stanford is a sweet treat to a long and roller coaster journey for the year of college decisions. This college application process is new to us, we never studied in the US. It took us a while to get used to the whole process. He goes to a large public school, so not much support from the counselor there. But this forum was our biggest resource and we soon learned quite a bit, so we thought. Early decisions were not what we expected.
Deferred from U-Chicago
Deferred from Caltech
Deferred from MIT
So the list of colleges went up significantly for the regular decision. He requested a new recommendation from his professor at the university where he takes dual credit courses. We swapped that with one of the teachers on the Common App. He reached out to many seniors who were successful last year to review his essays. We only sent 5s for the AP scores. His younger brother pitched in to review essays and wrote a nice peer recommendation for Dartmouth. We are so blessed and humbled by the unbelievable acceptances he had:
Accepted: Harvard, Stanford, Yale (Likely Letter), Columbia (Likely Letter, $10K research grant), Brown, Dartmouth (Jack Byrne Scholar - $15K research grant), CMU (CS), Berkeley (EECS), Georgia Tech, U-Michigan, Purdue, Vanderbilt (Cornelius Vanderbilt Full Tuition Scholarship), WashU (Langsdorf Fellow - Full Tuition).
Waitlisted: MIT
Rejected: Caltech, U-Chicago
His Stats:
SAT: 1530 (730/800M)
GPA: 3.99/4.64
AP: 13 full year AP courses+15 Dual Credit courses including 6 graduate-level courses in Math and CS not included in HS transcript.
Awards:
Math: USAMO, National Math Modeling competition winner
Research: ISEF Award, STS Scholar, numerous Science Fair, SO awards, ML Research at a prestigious school, and summer camp.
Community Service: Prudential Spirit of Community Award, Baron Prize, etc.
No hook, no financial aid, no consultant help, Asian (Indian).
We are very grateful for all the support this community extended to us.
And this marks the end for my DD too!
Accepted: Harvard REA, Stanford, Dartmouth, UMich EA, Georgia Tech EA, Purdue EA, Case Western, RPI, BU (Presidents Scholar), UCSD, UMass Amherst (Honors)
Waitlisted: Northeastern
Rejected: MIT, UCB, UCLA
She is interessted in doible major - engineering and government/public policy
She has some decisions to make! Truly benefited from the CC threads and will be back to check it out in a few years for my younger one! Thank you all!
Amazing ride indeed especially after those early deferrals. Congratulations to your son and your family for working together as team!
I think all the AO’s enjoyed reading your daughter’s application. Amazing! Good luck to her and your family.
We are also finally done with this grilling process.
17 applications. 1 REA, 16 R.
6 acceptances, 5 waitlists, 6 rejections
Now to decide between Berkeley GMP, U Chicago and Northeastern
We did sign for wait list at Brown, Georgetown and UCLA.
Although we are happy with the choices we have.
Will appreciate comments regarding our choices. We are California residents and do have merit award for northeastern and many kids from her school going to UCHICAGO through early decision
I know!!! I took a screenshot of the college list because I couldn’t believe the UC waitlists for a kid who got into MIT and Cal Tech! Definitely making my kid who was waitlisted at a few of those same UCs feel better.
ss2022, I am surprised that your DD was accepted by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, etc., but waitlisted at Northeastern. Did Northeastern invite her to apply ED II, like Case Western was doing for extremely high stats students? Was Northeastern one of her safeties?
I think some of the results in this thread are great examples of yield protection and schools knowing/understanding their applicants. A student who is accepted by MIT, Caltech and quite a few ivies is most likely using UCs (and possibly northeastern) as likely/safeties. Why would those schools use an admit on a student that’s highly unlikely to attend? Schools don’t want to have to use their waitlists. They want the kids that want them as their first choice (or at least in the top 3) school; hence the increasing number of applicants chosen during the ED rounds.
My son has a few friends accepted to MIT but rejected at Cal and UCLA. He was also rejected at Cal and UCLA and waitlisted at UCI and UCSD but accepted to CMU. This is why I’m wondering how to guide my youngest who is a sophmore. We have always focused on rigor but I’m not sure what the UCs are looking for now in addition to that.
I think you should remain focused on rigor as you have been (successfully it seems). Unfortunately, even academically strong students can’t rely on any acceptances - they need to apply to a range of schools in numbers probably more than necessary. I think that this is the only way to proceed in the presence of so much uncertainty.
The link shows the 13 areas of criteria the UC’s use the evaluate applicants. Each UC campus will weight these areas differently so the UC acceptance results you see can be unpredictable. Top UC’s like to see leadership in the EC’s, not just Class president but taking a leadership role in community service, special projects that shows a students passion etc….
Spend a lot of time crafting the EC list on the UC application and give as much detail as possible to the UC readers to they can really get to know your student.
PIQ tips:
Students need to think of the PIQ’s as interview questions and respond to them thus”
What works:
• Examples and details are helpful. Examples should be recent (focused on events in high school) when possible. If students reflect on life before high school they will need to explain how that situation impacted them as a high school student.
• The student doesn’t need to add details which place the reader in the moment with them. We don’t need to know that it was Tuesday at 2:15pm when the blue skateboard they were riding hit a green shard of glass and caused a 40 degree angle turn of their front wheel. Details should be about the experience instead (example – ‘I fell off my skateboard and ended up in a foot cast for 3 months walking on crutches.’ The detail here is due to their fall they had three months on crutches.)
What does not work:
• It is important that students understand the purpose of these responses is for
admissions readers to get to know them. Literary or descriptive language is not helpful in introducing the student to the stranger in admissions.
• Admissions readers cannot make assumptions about what they read. Therefore,
flowery language, metaphors and analogies are not helpful since they create
ambiguity.
• Quotes, lyrics and dialogue may note be the students words, thus making them
unnecessary as they often detract from the response.
• Students should avoid attempts to entertain or “hook” the reader and should
instead use their own words to share their story and voice.
Also utilize the additional comments section to write about more details regarding your academic history, health and family issues etc… Anything you think the readers need to know about you.
Best of luck with your next student, apply widely and make sure you have at least 2 very likely/safety schools on the list. Just remember that 6 of the top 10 most applied schools in the US are UC’s so there are many more qualified students than spots available at these schools.
Nope. My kid applied TO, one rejection, one wait-list, 13 accept
My mouth actually dropped open reading that list of acceptances. 
Good luck to yours son – I don’t even know how I would decide with that list, holy moly!!! Does he have it narrowed at all??? CONGRATULATIONS!!!
This is really great advice!!!
Very good advice. We have started working on ECs this year, freshman year was full remote so we are getting a late start. She did play her sport some last year,after driving to Arizona, but she has no interest in pursuing a recruited athlete so that EC probably will not count for much. She is focusing on activities revolving around writing,which is her passion.
Northeastern was probably protecting its yield rate. She applied RD and was quite interested at that point. It was definitely not a safety since she had no idea what her chances anywhere were while applying.
Would love your opinions!! Since my D22 is completely undecided and confused – I’ll ask here! What are your thoughts – the money is the same for the two private schools because she got similar merit scholarships, and the money won’t play a part in our decision even though the State school is free. She will probably be a psychology or public health major, but I do not think any of these choices would be better over the others. The only thing I will say is that she has always wanted to go out of state, and is probably leaning towards either Tulane or GW. If anyone has any personal experience with any of them, would love any insider insight.
So, what’s your vote …Tulane University, George Washington University, or University of Florida?
UCs are not safeties. If “safeties” rejected applicants they were sure were using them as a “safety,” there would be no “safeties.” And every college provides a different application; it’s not like they’re all looking at exactly the same information. Colleges have a collage of students they’re trying to complete.
I’m sure you know but UCSB does not offer Cognitive Science. UCSD, however, is a top school in that field of study.