Through your guide, you learned about the requirement for sophomores with < 3.0 GPA to live on campus. Through ours, we learned that freshmen can have cars. We should get the various parents together to compare tour notes for a full picture!
S22 has done sleepaway camps before, and he’s in the familiar pattern: More communicative early, then it becomes harder to text with him as days go by.
RHIT also was accepting applications way into late April this year. They clearly did not meet their yield/enrollment numbers. I can’t remember offhand into when they finally stopped soliciting my son to fill out an application but it was well after he accepted a spot elsewhere.
If that trend is the same this year that should bode well for the rising seniors. This is such a change for RHIT over the last 5-6 years.
You actually reminded me of something else our Rose-Hulman student tour guide said. That this past application year they ended up with more students they expected for fall 2021. Based on what you’re saying, I don’t know if they ended up with a higher yield than expected, or if they gained a lot of students who deferred from fall 2020 due to the pandemic.
Last year’s RHIT yield was 16% for males and 17% for females. I’m intrigued by the number of athletes. My S22 is a gymnast and played soccer for a long time but wouldn’t make their team. Therefore he’d be considered unhooked and might be close to full pay, or $10k off per year. 100% apparently receive financial aid. We may visit along with Purdue and IU.
Jumping back in! I’ve been taking a well deserved break from college planning/assisting with D22 after a long, long haul with D21. D21 applied to 17 schools. Neither of us ever totaled up her essay count or the number of interviews (she was also invited to 3 full ride or full tuition scholarship competitions that were a lot of work)- but it was insane! D21 got in 16 of 17, and that alone was a blessing and a curse. It was SO hard for her to decide. She’s off to Rice in August, and the more I learn as info comes in, the more I’m convinced she made the perfect decision.
D22 is a completely different kid. She wants to stay closer to home and will not be playing the same games. We are a fin. aid fam, so bottom line is very important, and she won’t be competitive at the 100% meets needs reaches D21 got accepted to (nor would she want to go to any of them). She needs to stay in state (VA) or get merit/aid equivalent to in state. She has her heart set on Madison (JMU). We toured unofficially in the spring with a friend/ current student walking us around. It felt perfect to her. If JMU offered ED, she’d be all over it. But they don’t- and are going to the Common App for the first time which typically causes an uptick in applications at schools the first year they use it. And JMU is notoriously unpredictable in their acceptances- so we are nervous, despite her weighted 4.4 (no test scores). She has focused on Dual Enrollment instead of AP knowing she’d likely stay in state and automatic credit is a very good thing since she’s not a strong standardized test taker.
She got her first acceptance this week at her safety school- Longwood. We attended on campus accelerated decision event. It involved a presentation and a tour and then she met with her admissions counselor (who had reviewed her application and transcript) where he gave her an acceptance letter and some swag. She was invited to apply to their honors program when it opens in the fall (invite only), and that would mean merit aid. It’s not where she ultimately wants to end up, but an acceptance already in July is huge.
I did not know JMU will be using the common app this year, thanks for the heads up D22 has filled out most of their online app already but would be better to consolidate! We love it too!
I learned that too! She told us 650 incoming freshmen.
I’m curious what resources, if any, you’ve found that can more accurately help kids gauge their chances. My D22 definitely doesn’t want to hear it from me but I can see that she doesn’t have much of a grasp on how incredibly competitive admissions are at highly selective schools and how many of the schools she has on her list fall in that bucket.
I’ve been wondering if my D22 should start sending in applications to her safeties. The thing that I’m unsure about is how important letters of recommendation will be. Her high school has a pretty formal process, and they do those in the fall, so she’s kind of at their mercy. She has a good head start on 5 essays from the common app list, and I’d like for her to have an acceptance or two in her back pocket because her intended major (CS of course) makes all of the schools on her list unpredictable. There are a couple of schools at the top of her list where it matters if she applies early (Purdue, for example). I just hope the Letters of Rec don’t take too long in September.
@parentofd22 It really depends. S21 applied to 14 schools. The UCs took up a chunk since there were a few he selected but they use the same app on the UC platform so the total number of essays was 4. The balance 8 colleges were supplemental essay heavy. However, he applied to Brown UG and PLME so that was about 7 essays. Adding to the 4 UC essays, it was easier for him to repurpose the supplemental essays for non UC and Brown colleges. I also put a limit on the app budget. The reality was, I wasn’t going to pay full price beyond UCs unless they were Ivies so S21 had to really prioritize and the non Ivy private schools he applied to, he had a shot at scholarships to net down the price to UC level.
That can be a challenge and a key place where parents can really help. It is painful to see the posts on here every year of “I got rejected everywhere” because they didn’t balance their list.
If your school has Naviance or Scoir that can be a great dose of reality. Just seeing those bar charts every year of 25 apps and 3 acceptances, etc can bring it home. Also, it can help to look to students your D knows from this past year if she can find out where they got in/rejected. If your D is in love with a school that you think is a tough reach have her look on this site for the thread on that school and she can see the types of people who got rejected. Even the simple message that the tippy tops give that they could fill a First Year class 5 times over without sacrificing quality is a strong message.
And there is the phrase I heard a while ago that I have never forgotten. There is a big difference between being Admittable and being Admitted.
I’m not sure if you heard the news about Purdue but it’s worth noting that they are 2500 or so students over-enrolled. Freshmen just found out that (in a random luck of the draw process), 1200 freshmen will have to either live in apartments four miles off campus or live in rooms of TEN other freshmen which are being made out of spaces on campus. I have to think (1) that’s going to affect admissions for the high school class of 2022 and (2) the class of 2022 might want to be a little weary of enrolling at Purdue if admitted. Housing is a mess and I have to think the overload is going to affect resources for a very long time.
Wow, that’s crazy.
Purdue is my D22 top choice. Not an encouraging news for us 
I’m sorry for the bad news. They aren’t the only school over-enrolled but schools are handling it in different ways. Some are offering discounts for kids who take a gap year or are offering money to kids who agree to study abroad first semester. Our D is headed to Colgate and they are just a bit over-enrolled and the college is putting some seniors in a hotel two miles from campus but just for first semester. Second semester has enough kids studying abroad that everyone who likes can be back on campus. It’s a bummer that Purdue’s decision is affecting freshmen. Maybe housing at Purdue is mostly for freshmen and they just have no other option but I feel like they should, at the very least, allow incoming freshmen to take a gap year after learning this news. I’m not sure if their gap year deadline has past or if they are extending it.
Purdue was planning for an entering class of 10,000, up from ~8500 last year. Does this mean they are enrolling 12,500 freshmen? This must’ve been an easier year for admission and the flat tuition may be really helping yield. It’s interesting that RHIT is 150 oversubscribed in a class of 500. I thought Purdue’s class growth might cannibalize Rose to some degree. Who would all these extra freshmen come from?
Purdue did plan for a larger class and opted not to tear down two dorms that they already built replacements for.
That said, they are still over enrolled. They emailed upperclassmen in dorms last week to see if they could get them to move to apartments to open up those dorms for freshmen.
My D’s class was way over enrolled and they made it work.
Right but a freshman four miles from campus or in a room with ten kids? I’m guessing your D didn’t have that. It’s not all freshmen, of course, but over 1000. That’s a lot of kids in way less than ideal housing.
The apartments that Purdue uses for freshmen are closer to campus than some of the dorms. NOT 4 miles from campus.
When D was a freshman she was in a “forced” triple that was converted to a quad. It worked out just fine.
Students that were in converted lounges, which did have 10 students, were quickly moved to dorms. I would expect the same this year.
There are plenty of sororities where girls pay good money to live in a dormitory style room for 12+ girls.
There was a ton of angst on our FB parent page, just like I’m sure there is now, but it really does all work out, and students tend to be way more chill than their parents.
@danielleszasz We’ve been using the high school’s Scoir scattergrams but they seem to be poorly updated. Does anyone know how Scoir gets updated? Most of the colleges he is interested in have no data but that may be because no one has ever applied. So we’ve been looking at Common data sets of colleges to see if his GPA is range.
We also used the chancing page on Collegevine. I have no idea how accurate that is but it claims to take into consideration all the data your student put in about themself. It has a nice chart with a graph of your percentage chance at each of the colleges you pick. Your D might like the way that looks. It helped my D22 at least get a general idea.