RD decision notification

Colleges and Universities A-Z Smith College
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<p>But it’s not a big chunk out of 4,000 plus total applicants. And it also says on the same website that many of those who were impacted by the exhaustion of financial aid were later admitted off the wait list. What that number also means is that 99-96% of applicants are admitted or rejected with no thought given to their financial status. </p>

<p>Obviously, need plays some role in Smith Admissions. It’s not a need blind school. But neither is it very need aware. For the vast majority of applicants, what financial aid they need never comes into play in their decision. They stand or fall on their own merits, as the school evaluates what it needs for the class for that year. For a small percentage, it can have an impact, as one of a number of other factors. It’s impossible to know which category a particular applicant falls in unless you work for admissions and evaluate cases. So it’s also impossible to say definitively what caused or did not cause a decision. And it’s plainly inaccurate to say Smith bases all or most of its decisions on financial need or heavily values need above other key factors. It just doesn’t play out in the numbers. </p>

<p>Again, I’m sorry it didn’t work out for your daughter. Trying to identify one reason why is going to be largely pointless, but focusing on the way ahead and what wonderful school will be lucky to have her will be much more productive.</p>

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<p>VADAD - your daughter was clearly qualified. It completely sucks that she didn’t get in. But in the end, college admissions are simply a crapshoot. People who are qualified get rejected (and many who seem unqualified are accepted) at every single school, every year. With the number of applicants they get, these top schools could basically fill every freshman class with 2300+ SAT/4.0+ GPA kids and still have to reject many. There are so many different factors at play for every applicant, and at a certain point, it becomes pretty random. And that means some people just get screwed. The college process is inherently pretty unfair. I’m really sorry that your daughter had to find that out firsthand :(</p>

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<p>You are being very defensive. I’m not even blaming Smith for having that policy, but it has a very real impact. </p>

<p>4% is a substantial number when you consider</p>

<p>35% probably aren’t up to snuff anyway
15% are going to be internationals
20% are going to be underrepresented minorities
10% are going to be athetes
10% are going to be artists or musicians or other skilled folks</p>

<p>Then you got the 10% that are just great students…or what Smith would call “the bottom of the pool”…which is a fair term, because they have to let those other people in.</p>

<p>This last group is where my daughter lives, and this is where being part of that 1%-4% gets her.</p>

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<p>userid1234, I agree with you 100%. I don’t even fault Smith for using money to eliminate kids. It’s the notion being presented that it’s rare that I am arguing.</p>

<p>What has happened to my daughter is our own fault. We overestimated what qualified as a safety school. We’ll work it out. Somebody will want her.</p>

<p>Maybe we’ll catch a miracle next week and she will get into Duke. Stranger things have happened.</p>

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<p>Ok, so the way I did that math was kind of like some George Bush fuzzy math, and I didn’t even account for legacy kids, but you get the point.</p>

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<p>VADAD, technically, on numbers alone, your daughter was a likely recipient for at least a STRIDE. The fact that she was waitlisted IMO has to be searched for elsewhere, and financial aid is certainly NOT the answer. It seems from your posts that you, and probably your daughter saw Smith as a safety, which is a major mistake for anyone, all the more so as Smith does not focus as much on GPA as some other schools (and SAT is optional to boot). I suggest the reason your daughter was not accepted is that her essays showed little or no commitment to the specificities of this particular college, or that the letters of recommendation showed that she would not be a fit.</p>

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<p>Sammy, you sure you’re in the right room? :rolleyes:</p>

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<p>i wish your daughter good luck but please be careful with what you say in the Smith forum, when decisions were just released, some of what you are saying could be a little offensive to some people</p>

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<p>Agree with KristinaBrown1, it is offensive… especially to those who got in and needed substantial aid. Smith was very generous in terms of aid. I had lower stats than your daughter, but as most people know these days, stats aren’t everything. Go check out the MIT page and see for yourself. I was waitlisted with a 2170 and a 3.98 while 2400s and 4.0s were being rejected. If colleges admitted only based on SAT scores and GPAs, the classes wouldn’t be very diverse. I mean, who cares about personality or special interests right?</p>

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<p>VADAD, as a dad myself whose daughter was waitlisted last year at more than one school, including one of her top choices, I can empathize with your frustrations and questioning of these decisions.</p>

<p>I have read and reread your posts several times, and am having some difficulty “getting my arms around” your assertion that she was waitlisted due to her need for financial aid.</p>

<p>Decisions to admit, reject or waitlist an applicant constitute a very inexact science. There are no templates, no cookie-cutter candidates, no cut-and-dry criteria for picking members of any given class.</p>

<p>Putting oneself in the shoes of any admissions committee, trying to build a diverse class is a daunting task which involves a great deal of guesswork. Is this candidate using our school as a “safety?” Does that candidate really want our school, or are we just part of her list of 20 to which she has applied due to the ease of the Common App? Did this young lady visit our campus? Was she interviewed? Did her essay indicate a strong desire to attend our school, or were the words interchangeable from college to college? Is this girl strictly a “grind,” or does she show a wide range of interests and activities that will add to the life of our campus and school?</p>

<p>None of these questions are specifically aimed your way. I am just posing some hypotheticals which may or may not apply.</p>

<p>The issue of financial aid as a determinant does not seem to apply. My own daughter required a lot of aid. She was admitted and is on work-study at Smith. She visited Smith twice during her college search, as well as the overnight for admitted students. She also had an interview with a local alumna. She had fantastic recommendations and wrote a stellar essay. She didn’t have “tons” of EC’s…rather she focused herself in one area, and her passion for that pursuit came out in her essay, her interview, and other interactions with the school. She was near the top of her class, had very good SAT’s, but admittedly her stats were not as impressive as those you have listed. But that tells me that stats alone are not the sole criteria for admission.</p>

<p>Every admissions file is reviewed independently and by more than one person. Their decision is a difficult one, and many factors come in to play. I have listed many of them, based on my own experience of three children who have gone through the admissions process. I’m not pretending to have all, or even any answers. Good luck to you and your daughter in finding a good fit in her college search.</p>

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<p>I totally agree with kristina…vadad your posts are offensive–
"35% probably aren’t up to snuff anyway
15% are going to be internationals
20% are going to be underrepresented minorities
10% are going to be athetes
10% are going to be artists or musicians or other skilled folks</p>

<p>Then you got the 10% that are just great students…or what Smith would call “the bottom of the pool”…which is a fair term, because they have to let those other people in."
I get that you are hurting over this decision and I am very sorry for your daughter, but denigrating Smith’s decisions and the new pool of amazing students is ridiculous. As a parent, I, too, would want to know what happened given your d’s stellar numbers. But like it has been said before on this forum, numbers are not everything to Smith.
My d is a firstie; we are not legacy, don’t have a lot of money (d got fin aid), not an URM or international, athlete or artist, etc. Every one of her friends/acquaintances is an amazingly great student with something extra to add to the community.</p>

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<p>I don’t understand why everyone is offended. According to Smith’s own Financial Aid Office, in recent years 40 to 160 students per year have been wait listed because of financial need. That is according to Smith College, not me.</p>

<p>So why do you care if I think my daughter was one of those?</p>

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<p>I got in ! I’m so happy ! I decided to check my portal the the decision was there.</p>

<p>I loved the video , it was so sweet !</p>

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<p>The reality is that none of the schools are “need-blind”. The issue is what they do with the information. My alma mater (Williams) had a reporter sit in on the final decisions meeting. Supposedly need-blind, the dean of admissions literally counted the number of “socio-ec” (read: low income) admits they had as they went along - the implication being that they didn’t want too few, or too many. They had an actual target - which makes sense, because every college has a financial budget that the admissions office is supposed to stay within. Some schools (my alma mater included) manages that partially by admitting a large number (40% of the class) of ED applicants, a very large proportion of whom are full-pay, or legacies, so they know what kind of budget they have to play with at the RD round. (In theory, all the ED admits are coming.) Other schools (like my other d’s - American U.) simply do not pledge to meet full need, even as they define it (their Common Data Set says 93%), and do not make a need-blind claim. Others (Harvard is a good example) make up a significant portion of every class with “full-pay” internationals (Smith has a separate aid fund for internationals - I know, because I’ve contributed to it.)</p>

<p>At any rate, while I feel for any student who is disappointed with an admissions decision, I also know that the admissions office really isn’t admitting individuals, but building a class. Almost 40 years ago, Smith set out to radically diversify its class by routinely accepting a very large percentage of low-income students. It substantially changed the character of the place. It also meant that in order to do that, they had to ((overtime) study the impact of the generally used metrics on admissions - a study undertaken under President Simmons, which took three years. They found that 1) SAT scores among attending students seemed to have no impact on academic performance once students arrived; 2) The use of SAT scores clearly worked against low-income students in admission. The result was that they radically de-emphasized standardized test scores in admissions, and thus enhanced their ability to accept deserving low-income students, but also meaning that more students with high test scores would routinely be rejected. A student (or parent) who believed that high test scores would necessarily mean they had a leg up in admissions is simply missing an important piece of Smith history.</p>

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<p>Congratulations nik! And congratulations to everyone who was accepted! Welcome to the sisterhood. </p>

<p>I wish that they had the video when I applied, I’ve heard great things about it, but I’ve never seen it!</p>

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<p>maybe i can figure out a way to post it lol hold on</p>

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<p>Vadad1, we all hurt for our children when they have to weather dissapointments. The College process is not a fair one. I don’t believe your daughter was denied because of money because Smith is essentially a rich school but stats alone (and hers are excellent and do not put her in the bottom of the pool) are what gain you entry into schools like Smith. No one wants to hear that they are not good enough. However, unless you are told (and rarely do they tell you) - it is hard to know what particular qualities they are targeting in their student population.</p>

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<p>Akebias, I’m guessing you meant to say stats alone are NOT what gain you entry. That’s certainly my understanding of Smith.</p>

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<p>The idea that “stats aren’t that important at Smith” is actually the same thing I’ve been trying to say all along. Their focus is on, as mini said, “building their class”, and academic excellence falls in line behind a lot of other factors.</p>

<p>None of us in this thread really disagree, people just don’t like my bluntness. And I can apologize for my bluntness I guess, it’s been a very disappointing weekend for me and my daughter.</p>

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<p>Same thing. Expanding the applicant pool meant also attracting low-income candidates. Jil Ker Conway talks about that in detail in her book, when looking at the potential impact of deciding NOT to go coed. The Simmons study took three years to complete, and involved faculty, students, administration, and admissions, and it was explicit at looking at the impact of SATs on low-income admissions (it was one of the study questions).</p>

<p>They didn’t make an effort to reach out to needy students. What they did do was ask what kind of metrics to use when (as a result of the marketing efforts) they applied, and what kind of financial aid budget they would need to accommodate a “needier” student body.</p>