<p>We toured a small 2nd-tier Midwest LAC during its Open House; it would be great fit for DS and a perfect match/safety. (Princeton Review likes school too) Unfortunately, during tour, LAC's admissions counselor for our area noted to me that DS' school "sends half-dozen applications each year, but none enroll upon acceptance". Counselor sounded miffed, and LAC skipped last year's college fair at DS' school. Looking at Naviance for 2011 class confirmed LAC's observation. DS signed LAC's mailing list, but not receiving this LAC's mailers despite plenty of mail from other likely reach/match LACs. DS is only a junior. LAC wasn't on DS' guidance counselor's initial list of recommended colleges, which is odd, since it matches DS' interests and our expectations.</p>
<p>Is this LAC "saving paper" or is there a bigger issue between LAC and DS' school?</p>
<p>It’s hard to know the answer to your question - but since it’s what you describe as a “second tier” LAC, if your daughter shows interest and has the stats, I would think she could overcome any concern the adcom might have.</p>
<p>Colleges admissions officers can get quite miffed if everyone from a given high school turned down admission to their school in any given year. </p>
<p>My HS GC recounted that in one year, around 50 kids were accepted to one Ivy and all 50 ended up going elsewhere. As a result, that school’s admissions office decided to reject every kid from my school the following year as a form of “payback” despite them having comparable or superior stats. </p>
<p>All I can advise is if your son is certain it is his first choice to communicate that clearly in his essays, interviews, and ongoing correspondence within reason. </p>
<p>You may also suggest you and/or your son meet with the HS GC to ask what’s the status of the HS’s relationship with that LAC to get to the bottom of it. It is best to proceed with full knowledge than to be kept in the dark about such things.</p>
<p>If he wants to go there he will need to “show the love.” Colleges aren’t hiring admissions officers at a rate commensurate with the increases in applications. It takes work for them to read, review and comment on applications. I was at an info session with our flagship a few weeks ago and the admissions officer was begging kids not to send extra “stuff” and not to exceed the recommended essay “suggested word count.” He said they simply do not have the time or manpower to get through “extras” and that in fact if the essay was too long they just might stop reading…which brought an audible gasp from the audience. So, yes, there are dynamics going on. If there is an “issue” with kids doing throw away apps to this school as “safety” with no clear intention of wanting to attend, then yes, the college might be less than attentive. Are you certain they are producing mailable marketing materials and your son is not receiving them? Schools have cut back on the glossy mailing I’ve noticed since 2005 when I started the search for son 1 and today with S3. If they are producing things, your D like this school and is not receiving them a quick e-mail to her admissions rep should take care of it. Remember too, that the admissions people are very busy with the class that is in the admissions cycle. He’ll get more attention from the school in the late spring and next summer no doubt.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t put too much stock in not receiving the mailers. That’s unlikely to be something “personal.” I’d have DS call the school and say he hadn’t been getting mailers and could they make sure his address is correct on the list.</p>
<p>Then I would call the guidance counselor and say you had visited this school and liked it, what does s/he think about it.</p>
<p>Finally I would ignore the admissions rep. It’s a fact of life for second tier schools to admit a lot and have a low yield. He can complain, but if your S is strong candidate with some demonstrated interest in the school, it’s not in their best interest to pass him by.</p>
<p>Higgins, you characterized this school as a “perfect match/safety”. Given the counsellor’s feedback, better consider it a “perfect match”, period. Then decide whether to apply or not apply on that basis. </p>
<p>The risk here is that your son could become a victim of the dreaded “Tuft’s Syndrome”.
[THE</a> NEUROTIC PARENT? : Help Stop Tufts Syndrome](<a href=“THE NEUROTIC PARENT™”>THE NEUROTIC PARENT™)</p>
<p>Yield is very, very important to schools, and likely even more important to the career of the admissions officer. After all, s/he is essentially a salesperson, and if there is place where s/he can’t seem to close a sale, it makes sense to look elsewhere. That’s certainly what I would do.</p>
<p>The implication is that your S finds it a match/safety which may fall behind some other more reachy (and desirable) schools on his list. If this is the case with others from your S’s school over the recent past, the adrep may feel aggrevated his school is relegated to the back burner. In case your S decides it is his #1 top choice, I’d recommend making that really clear. Have him write an email, at the very least, telling the adrep that. If they have ED, use it. If they have EA, apply and send a note.</p>
<p>I agree with post that suggests you talk to your school’s GC to get the low-down, too.</p>
<p>Yeah we have that too from at least one school. The only way to get into that school is ED, where they know they will get a positive return from reading your application. </p>
<p>A few years back when Washington University in St Louis was waitlisting 75% of the applicants from our high school, and few of them accepted a spot on the waitlist. I speculated that they weren’t even reading all of the the applications until the applicant accepted a place on the waitlist. Some people on the WUSTL board were offended, but if the yield is so low, perhaps their strategy makes sense from their point of view, though it seems unethical to me.</p>
<p>It does seem strange for them to make that comment after YOU took the time to visit their open house.</p>
<p>This college may be developing a bad case of “Tufts Syndrome” as far as your S’s HS is concerned. No College likes to be considered a students “safety”, “never a bride, always a bridesmaid”, college of last resort for students. The Admissions C is wisely letting you know that it may be harder for you son to get a fat envelope unless he shows them that he REALLY wants to go there.</p>
<p>Sounds like a typical GC fantastic tale to me. What kind of high school is large and competitive enough to have 50 admissions’ offer from one Ivy League school and have a GC incompetent enough to be unable to secure a single admission from a superior class in the next year. </p>
<p>I attended one of NYC’s specialized high schools where sending 50 kids off to one Ivy was quite commonplace when I attended. In my senior class of a little under 700 students, around 90 classmates were admitted to Columbia College/SEAS, 118 to Cornell Engineering/A&S, 30 to MIT, and around 45 to HYP combined.</p>
<p>Mini: Actually, 5 people were admitted to P in my year and yes…P accepted the fewest. We’d often joked it was because P had the most issues accepting us because we’re a public school filled mostly with working/lower middle class first generation/immigrant kids. They don’t exactly want us to spoil the sanctity of their vaunted “Eating Clubs” with our grubby presences, after all. :D</p>
<p>We probably went to the same high school! (Except when I was there, not one was ever admitted to Princeton… There was, shall we say, a “bar”.) I don’t the admissions figures, but in my year we sent 18 to H., 12 to Y, about 60 to Columbia, maybe 50 to Cornell, maybe 20 Penn. Not many Dartmouth’s as I remember. I was the only one of 9 applicants accepted to Williams, and six of them were high-ranking candidates than I was, and attended Ivies. They also had the same “bar” as P., though not as rigorous about it.</p>
<p>That is one-half of the story. The salient part is about going from 50 to zilch. </p>
<p>Pay attention to my reference to Fred … as in Fred Hargadon. He might have had questionable motives or justifications, but he was consistent. Athletes versus mathletes, I presume.</p>
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<p>And according to Columbia, all 90 were in the top 10 percent. :)</p>
<p>To be fair, I graduated in a period when Columbia was considered a safety school for most of the Top 5-10% kids at my high school. Most of the Columbia admits were probably within the Top 25%…especially considering our GCs were strict about limiting the number of total college apps to 7 and the number of “reach/high reach schools” for each applicant.</p>
<p>That would be an incorrect presumption. We had athletes, too. Some very good ones (who became Rhodes Scholars). They didn’t get in. To be honest (and mind you, this is a long time ago), the assumption was that we shouldn’t bother to apply. That was true at my alma mater as well (I was the first who came in a long while), and it changed (slowly), among other reasons, because a math professor - an alum of my high school - had became dean of the college, and he shared our common “persuasion”. </p>
<p>Cobrat, you were probably about 3-4 years later than me.</p>
<p>DS hasn’t taken SAT/ACT, but has B+ avg at college prep despite LD, so this particular LAC is a “safety” based on its Naviance. DS likes half-dozen LACs, w/o strong favorite, some on counselor’s list. School directs students to more prestigious schools when possible (parent finances, URM, and/or grades/scores), but this PR-listed LAC has strong LD supports too.</p>
<p>To Higgins, if your son is in love with this school and really wants to go there, then I would actually talk to admissions about what the rep said, and assure them that it is his first choice.
If it is one of several favorites, visit and stay in touch to show interest at least.
If it is just a back-up, then it really doesn’t matter for your son, but it also makes the rep’s comment more understandable.</p>
<p>These days, so many students apply to so many schools, I can’t imagine the wasted time and effort spent by adcoms, reading, discussing, advocating for certain applicants, only to find that the applicant picked a different school out of the 20 schools applied to.</p>
<p>p.s. a school that is LD friendly can make a huge difference in a student’s (and parent’s) life: we are finding that out, in a positive way, this year with one of our kids…</p>