Of the 20-25 schools on my tentative list for him, hes said yes to for sure applying to 1 school, Jacksonville U.
Baby steps.
I rarely see him due to his crazy busy schedule and joint placement with his dad in summer.
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Have you found systemic non-anecdotal evidence to the contrary? Or if there not substantial evidence either way?
Not sure I follow. If what has risen gradually is average GPA’s, it could be explained by a subset increasing their grades gradually (whether by inflation or merit or both). Inconsistency is neither confirmed not eliminated. To use made up examples, if 35% of schools still have the same GPA’s then did 20 years ago and 65% have substantially higher GPA’s than 20 years ago, it would still show up as an overall increase, and that gap could have widened gradually.
If I gave my youngest a list it would be the quickest way to assure he didn’t apply to them, LOL… Hmmm, maybe there’s a strategy there…
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My son is very financially aware of his limits. He trusts I understand Tuition Exchange and FACHEX tuition benefit through my employer a bit more than he does.
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S23 has ten schools on his list, but we still need to identify more matches. Finding match schools in desirable locations that are within budget has been challenging. On a positive note, he is making good progress on both common app and supplemental essays for his ED/EA choices.
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My kiddo tells me common app and most supplemental essay questions are not available until August 1. Is that not true?
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True, common app will open on August 1. However, in my limited experience shepherding two other kiddos through this process, the common app prompts are usually the same year after year. I would be very surprised if they changed.
For the ED/EA schools on his list, we expect the prompts to be some variation of “Why x college” and he is drafting his essays to fit. He’s not applying to UChicago or other colleges known to have some quirky prompts. Hopefully, it works out. Otherwise, he will be furiously rewriting this fall.
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What is he looking for? Maybe some people will have suggestions.
Common app keeps essays the same. Then there is the why college x. Have to wait for the weird ones. I remember my oldest has to write about a superpower he wished he had. He said it was a superpower to write college essays on absurd topics. He didn’t get in.
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Look, I do not need to needlessly argue. The examples I provided are based on data I got from a regional, solid but not stellar, public college in NC. This is exactly the type of school most kids in America go to. Please provide the evidence to the contrary.
I understand there is a college for everyone but then again, not everyone graduates from college either!
If you are having success teaching 3.0 kids that are test optional in your college then that’s brilliant. All the power to you. I hope the kids are learning and make graduate with marketable skill sets.
The argument for or against TA has been ongoing one. Most studies show that grades AND tests are together a better predictor of success than either one alone. And for every Bates, there is also an MIT that saw the mess and dropped TA.
And yes, I understand that as parents we would definitely want the system that favors our children more. At least most of us would.
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The best response is probably “It’s deuced hard to measure.”
But it’s more straightforward to test for inconsistency—that’s why the null hypothesis is that there is no significant difference between groups, and statistical testing is done to see if the null hypothesis can be falsified. However, the null hypothesis, being simply the default assumption, is incredibly hard to positively prove.
And the studies of HS grade increases over time I’ve seen that break things down generally do so along one or two axes: public vs private (where a clear difference has consistently been found, with private schools having greater increases—some do a 3-way split, where the general finding is that religious high schools as a separate category are somewhere in the middle), and regional (where regions do differ but not by much, especially when public vs private status is taken into account, except for those that take rural/suburban vs urban into account, which generally find that differences can be explained by greater increases in the former than the latter).
Worth stressing: The changes seem to be most influenced by factors that are closely associated with household income of students’ families.
The IMO current gold standard study on this (which is unfortunately a book chapter in a scholarly collection, and so not as easily accessible as a journal article) is: Hurwitz, Michael & Jason Lee. 2018. Grade inflation and the role of standardized testing. In Ben Wildavsky, Jack Buckley & Lynn Letukas (eds.), Measuring success: Testing, grades, and the future of college admissions, 64–93. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Wait, where did this turn into an argument over test-optional admissions policies?
Personally, I’m utterly and entirely agnostic on those. Where I am completely firm, though, is that test scores are much less predictive of college success than high school GPA—and that both is an entirely different issue and has been repeatedly demonstrated.
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College list progress: stuck at 14-16, she needs to narrow it down after the last rounds of tours the next 3 weeks.
She is busy doing so many things this summer but will dig in to application essays in August. It will be a long wait until the earliest first decision in December (EA).
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Yep a looooong and painful way away!
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College list is coming together. S23 really wants to stay in California. He’s applying to 7 UCs and a few CSUs, plus USC. We have some out of state safeties as well. I feel like he should apply to more out of state schools he could be competitive at, but he’s really not interested. I feel like UC admissions is such a crap shoot the last few years. He could get into several or none. I hate that it feels so random.
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D23 has her list together. 10 schools in total. 3 in Texas, 3 in the Southeast, 3 in the Midwest, and 1 safety closer to home (Washington State). Her major parameter was “not in the PNW” so I guess we’ll see! She’s working on her essay and I guess will start on the Common App when it goes live on 8/1. Hoping to get most of these in for Early Action so she can be finished by Christmas break.
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DS23 doesn’t want to leave CA, so it will be in-state for him. It will be Cal Poly SLO/Pomona (kid is not interested), UCs (Except Merced and Riverside), SJSU, CalTech & Stanford (REA I believe?).
I was trying to encourage for ASU but with new scholarship, it’s no longer in the run.
I will be doing a Chance Me as soon as his SAT scores are out (I know they are not relevant for UC/CSUs). He needs to submit his essays to his AP English teacher beginning week of school and teacher will review the essay (I am not sure he needs essays for UCs but it’s his homework so he will complete it).
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The UCs have 8 essay prompts, they must complete 4. My son is working on those now. We’ve used Purdue as a “safety” if that’s of interest. Depends on major if it’s actually a safety though. We also assume we’ll have Merced as UC ELC.
D21 wanted to stay in CA too. FWIW, if your kid’s stats are at the upper end of the spectrum, but not necessarily at the top, then Santa Clara may be a very good in-state safety-ish/target and they also have good merit.
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My boys don’t want to leave Texas lol…sometimes I wonder if I’m really their Mama 
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