Parents of the HS Class of 2022

[granitegirl]

We are at the end of this long journey, thought I would summarize my DD results in case it helps other TO kids in the future. With Covid, she had one awful SAT experience (middling results) that she decided was not worth stressing and focusing on to retake. So, TO it was. She has a 3.9UW GPA, lots of leadership ECs, varsity captain, rigorous schedule etc. etc. & we were told great LORs and strong essays.

Applied to 14 schools on advice of college counselors-8 acceptances, 5 WL, 1 rejection:

Cornell Hotel School ED - deferred and now waitlisted - accepted her spot on WL
Michigan EA- postponed and now WL - accepted her spot, not sure will stay on it
UVA EA - deferred and now WL - accepted her spot, not sure will stay on it
Tulane- EA - deferred to Waitlist - did not accept spot on WL -not enough demo interest
William & Mary - RD - waitlist with spring admit option (they offer to all WL) -did not accept spot

UW-Madison - EA- Accepted - LOVES it after admitted student events and visits - Commit
UMD - EA - Accepted - Honors - did not love school as much as others
UMass Isenberg B-school- EA - accepted with $15K merit per year
GWU - RD- Accepted with $25K Presidential Merit for 5 years
VATech- EA - Accepted
Clemson - EA - Accepted
Elon - EA - Accepted $7,500 Presidential Scholarship, chose not to pursue Honors apps
U Arizona- Rolling - Accepted Sept 3rd (which was nice stress relief) $30K merit

WashU - RD- reject - did no demo interest and was a last minute add with a fee waiver

For some schools, TO may have meant the difference between an acceptance and a WL. For the Cornell Hotel School, it did NOT because they are TEST BLIND.
The information that we have received from AOs and college counselors is that the sheer numbers of applications this year coupled with many schools over enrolling last year meant fewer straight admits and more WLs. They expect WL movement because of this, but not sure how much. . .

DD has gotten very excited by Wisconsin and is now only keeping on the Cornell waitlist since it is such a specialized school in a field she loves. Otherwise, she is thrilled to be a Badger even though it is not where she expected this all to end up.

Thanks to all of the parents out there sharing their wisdom and venting along with me- what a crazy ride!!! (only 3 more year till DD25 gets to do it again-lol).
Good luck to all of you!!!

[blessed101]

thanks very impressive run !! good luck to your DD.

[UnsentDementor]

Like Granitegirl I wanted to post TO results to help future applicants see how that fares in relation to submission of test scores, but I posted in the TO thread, so here’s a link:

Test Optional Admission Data

Test Optional Results I’m going to write this in general terms so as not to make my kid identifiable. Main intent of this post is to add a data point regarding test optional outcomes. I’m not going to provide state of origin, race, ECs. Generally, kid was top 5% with high rigor. Here’s the tl;dr: safeties 1/1, matches 4/4, reaches 1/13. Category 1: HPYSM: Applied to 4, rejected 4 Category 2: Next tier top private schools - rest of Ivies plus top 4 LAC (A,W, Swat, Pom), Caltech, Northwestern, Duke, U Chicago, Vandy, WUSTL, Rice, ND, Georgetown, etc: Applied to 6, rejected 4, WL 2 Category 3: Tippy top publics (Michigan, UCB, UCLA) all are OOS; note UCs are test-blind: Applied to 3, accepted 1, WL 2 Category 4: Next tier public and similar largish private - Northeastern, CWRU, Wisconsin, McGill, Emory, Tulane, NYU, UVA, UCSD, CMU, USC, Tufts, etc: Applied to 2, accepted 2 Category 5: SLACs ranked in 20-40 (USNWR) range: Applied to 3, accepted 3, unsolicited merit money from a…

[granitegirl]

oh thanks, went brain dead that there WAS a TO thread - lol. It has been a loooooooong few weeks, no brain cells left.

[Educatormum]

Do you mind expanding on what she loves about the hotel school at Cornell and what might have helped? I have a student who might be interested. Thanks

[momsons2]

So wonderful to see all the acceptances for the kids on this board. A lot of extraordinarily talented kids !!
All of my son’s decisions are in. It was an interesting process for us, at times challenging, as me and his dad didn’t go to college here, didn’t know what to expect, but my kid took charge and did the best he could. Proud of him!

Accepted for Engineering :
In-state : UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSB, UCD, UCI, UCR, UCSC, Cal poly SLO, SJSU
OOS : Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, UIUC, UMD, UW, Case Western, Penn State

Waitlisted : UCSD, Umich (Declined the waitlist)

Rejected : UPenn, Stanford (Both were total shot in the dark)

My son cast a wide net because everyone warned us about UCs which were his first choice. Happy that he did well there and finally deciding between UCB and UCLA.

Good luck to all the kiddos for the next phase in their lives. I am sure they’ll do well wherever they end up.

[CMA22]

Way to go with all the California schools! Your son did a great job of making himself “seen” by virtually all of them — a rare and impressive feat!

[boo1]

Great job! He cracked the UC nut.

[MAmom111]

Seems like this thread is mostly for high stats kids but thought I’d add my son anyways. 3.8UW GPA, 4.2W, no ranking, 1320 SAT which he submitted everywhere. Plays a couple sports, captain of one. No other EC’s besides some personal hobbies. Summer job as a camp counselor for a couple years. Started a small business during covid. Applied as business major and we don’t qualify for FA.

Admitted to all:
Clemson- no merit
Penn State- no merit
Providence College-no merit
Univ of Dayton 35k COA
Miami Ohio 37k COA
Rollins 40k COA
Univ of Tampa- $29k COA
Univ of Denver 46k COA
Indiana University 7k merit
UNH 10k merit

No decision yet but will not be attending a full pay school. Really liked the Midwest schools.

Congrats to everyone on all their great acceptances! Lots of amazing kids.

[13street]

If he hasn’t visited, IU has a very pretty campus and a great business program.

[CMA22]

Sounds pretty high stats to me! Congrats on all the acceptances!

[MAmom111]

Well I guess it’s all relative! Thanks!

[lll1]

We cheer on all kids! Congrats to your son–it looks like he has lots of good choices. Let us know what he decides!

[blessed101]

Nice acceptances, congrats to your son.

[1923girls]

I’m just a lurker this year as I don’t have to go through this again until this fall, however my D19 is a junior psychology major at Tulane and we are from Florida (and turned down the free tuition acceptance).

In general my D is very happy with Tulane. She is not a big partier so there are times where that can get overwhelming, but that’s her biggest complaint. Nola itself is a fascinating city and we go all the time to visit and find new things to do. We all personally love the location because it’s beautiful around that area and close enough to go downtown if you want (but not too close). My biggest concerns have been the weather (and we are used to hurricanes) and the crime rate. Tulane does a great job of patrolling but unfortunately, that area can be targeted because it is a wealthier section of town and students are often distracted.

My D has loved the psychology program and is seriously considering applying to their +1 program. Feel free to message me with any questions.

[Beammeup]

My D22 has slowly gone thru all her accepted colleges and needs to choose between Hofstra and Syracuse. The are both for film and television in the communication schools. She is leaning to Syracuse, we are leaning more towards Hofstra.

[ACH1]

Syracuse and Rochester are also good options for cog sci

[Vineyarder]

As someone in the media business myself, I think of Syracuse as having a higher profile, though I don’t know much about Hofstra’s program. What inclines you toward Hofstra and your D toward Syracuse?

@MAmom111, congrats on those acceptances, and don’t fall into the CC trap: Those stats are plenty high. Higher GPA than my NYU-bound S, for one thing.

[FreshCoastal]

Now the fun begins! D22 has committed to Indiana University at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering. She is very excited and we think she’s made a great choice. Pitt was her #1 until they deferred her, then once she was accepted she started to feel like the CS program there wasn’t going to be the right fit for her. She loves the campus and vibe of the school overall, but the order of importance is Program, Price, then Location.

IU’s CS program really fits how she wants to study that major. She’s not interested in engineering, so both schools had that going for them, but IU’s flexibility and Luddy’s resources just felt right to her! I’m so thankful the two schools she swooned over accepted her because she was able to take each rejection in stride! Trying to get into a good CS program is no joke. She applied early everywhere possible, and started the process over last summer so it’s been 8 months of essays, applications, tours, etc. Glad to be moving on to the fun stuff now!

Stats: IL resident / 14140 SAT / 31 ACT / 3.5uw/4.5w / 8yrs Orchestra, job, volunteering, CR-related EC’s, fundraising non-profit, etc.

IU-Bloomington: Accepted CS, Committed! ($5k/yr in merit awards)
Pitt: Deferred, Accepted CS ($8.6k Panther Pride FA award)
CU Boulder: Accepted CS ($8.5k/yr in merit awards) (this one was tough to decline!)
Iowa State: Accepted CS ($13k/yr in merit awards)
Michigan State: Accepted CS (or pre-CS, however they do it) ($15k/yr in merit awards)

VA Tech: Waitlisted CS
RHIT: Waitlisted
UIUC: Denied CS + Astronomy, Waitlisted DGS (grrr)

Purdue: Denied CS and DS, Accepted Exploratory Studies
CWRU: Denied
UW-Madison: Denied
Cal Poly SLO: Denied
William & Mary: Denied

[sparkletown]

Congrats to your son! Incredible list. I was doing a search for CS, I have a 2023 student who is going CS most likely and also sings. He’s also a Bass, can you give me detail on how this activity added to his application? Are schools taking these activities into consideration when they’re filling out a class?