And what I have found (both as a parent and someone who is working in a high school college and career center): What you put into it is what you get out of it. This year (and last year) being outlier years - I think - due the pandemic, made even those who had done research really scratch their heads. If they had done good research, they would have known to have their students apply to a couple more likely-schools than in previous years. No one should be without good college choices. For the most part, students I know of who have complained about “not getting into any school” (and there are not that many), did not target good likely/safety schools. There are always options, but the bigger issue is changing their mind-set.
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That doesn’t mean they expect the next step to be difficult, esp if it’s their first student going to college. They likely assume everything is working out perfectly and the next part will too.
Again, no one knows what they haven’t been exposed to.
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If they’ve done their homework, what that should mean in a worst case scenario is that they are shut out of their reaches and
targets but will attend a safety.
And let me be clear, my point is not aimed at families of kids with 3.0s, whose parents never went to college. But that’s not who is bemoaning not getting into selective schools and believing its because they are Asian.
Probably due to my location, but we don’t get these kids if they went through the whole process. They have safeties or count on cc being their safety (common). We can get students who decide in March of their senior year that they want to go to college - what do they need to do?
A lot of it is setting expectations and the students should have a clear idea of that from their freshman year (the program I work with specifically reaches out to students in underrepresented populations). We tell students that if you have a plan, early on, you will find a good post-high school plan - and this can include vocational school and community college. And we work with students -who want to be part of our program, extensively sophomore-senior year.
For kids who “see the light” late in the game, we have two state universities (one very local) that has rolling admissions, to which they can apply. We also have a great community college network that has awesome transfer plans to 4-year institutions. NACAC also releases (and just released!) their schools who are still accepting students in April and May.
Unless I misunderstood your question…then scratch all of what I just said! LOL!
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Of course, there are different Asian ethnicities, plus a significant Hispanic / Latino population, there.
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Yes, do feel that we did not do right by our kid (eldest). Her school has a wide socio economic spread and discourages outside counselors. Might have helped in our case just to brainstorm ECs when schools shut down.
Very true! And I’m not discounting that as an Asian American student in the PNW, he may be very excited to see more representation of people like him, as well as other ethnicities, on campus. His perspective and experience as a kid growing up here in OR is very different from mine, growing up in the Bay Area.
The college can set up its application reading software to show or conceal some parts of the application.
But, in reality, colleges can be truthfully need-blind for individual applicants, but have their correlated admission criteria adjusted to give a desired financial aid profile for the entire class. For example, increasing or decreasing the weight of legacy preference can decrease or increase the overall financial aid need of the class, even though some individual legacy students will have high financial aid need.
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Well maybe that’s true, since I did. Another task to add to my Second Shift. After getting home from long hours wearing an n95 during a pandemic, after my patient charting was done. Since it must be done, and it can be done, the system must be just fine and not sick…
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Continuing your assertion, they could also practice limiting people from poor zip codes or with uneducated parents or minorities or any attribute they choose in hopes of shaping the direction of the need of the class. Pretty sure that could get them into a bit of trouble.
Congrats to your kid. A friend’s son discounted the importance of having a larger student body in math. Ended up transferring to a school where there were more than 10 kids in math.
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Some parts of the bay area probably look different demographically from when you grew up, as in they can look like “White Flight” has occurred between then and now.
Yes, the whole “individualized attention” needs to be balanced with “resources”. If one school offers 11 math programs for a major and another offers 60+…well, that needs to be taken into consideration 
!
Don’t question yourself that you should have done more. I remember reading all the college websites at the time stating: “don’t worry, we understand EC’s are not as available during the pandemic” & “don’t worry about taking the ACT/SAT a bunch of times” or “we value a job as an EC as much as xyz”. But then I don’t think for certain demographics/majors that they were being fully honest.
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Here’s the thing- we want the “system” to be highly customizable based on our own particular kid’s needs (frats but not too fratty, sporty but not dominated by athletes, great opportunities for inter-disciplinary work but also able to double or triple major, VERY strong career services team but not a pre-professional vibe, close to home but not too close OR far away but only direct flights, no need to change in Atlanta; strong rigor but kid doesn’t want to spend weekends in the library or lab; able to switch majors easily in case she decides she hates neurobiology which has been her passion for the last ten minutes but she might want early childhood education or sustainability/climate science. Oh- and kid is gluten free so having lots of GF options in the dining hall is super important except for sophomore, junior and senior year when he’s going to live off-campus with friends and cook for themselves BUT THERE MUST BE cool restaurants close by, especially ethnic options. And affordable- must be affordable, and must have fantastic workout facilities and lots of opportunities to volunteer in the community especially with medically fragile/underserved population in case he decides to be pre-med. And the dorms- MUST HAVE air conditioning- those cruddy dorms at Yale built in 1860-- no way, BUT also we don’t want big, concrete blocks on campus, it needs to be pretty and quaint, just not as quaint as a college built before the civil war, ok?
So we want it all, we don’t want to have to do “research” to figure out where this elusive combination of qualities exists, we want our kid to be able to get in without too much stress and we want to be able to afford it without taking out a second mortgage.
Look, I get it. But back in the day, that’s one reason why virtually everyone in my HS class who was going to college applied to our flagship U if they could afford to dorm, or the local branch if they were going to commute on public transportation, over and out.
And even now-if you suggest to an upper middle class family that instead of getting aggravated over how expensive it is to send your kid to someone else’s public U (and it IS expensive) they could just apply to their OWN flagship- they look at you like you’re insane. And if the kid can’t get into the flagship, what about one of the satellite campuses? NO. They’re going to be full payers at a third tier private, come hell or high water, and then complain about how much research it took to find a college where little Susie or Johnny could get admitted to.
Not sure the system is to blame here.
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That’s what I read too. And again, not bitter, just wistful. A couple of schools clearly stated that they were looking for ECs in the desired major. It did seem from CC and Reddit that the admits had those in spades. Didn’t think to encourage DD22 to pivot. DD22 had a pretty strenuous paying job in the summer, not related to major.
We had a good list, made all the targets and safeties. On a couple of waitlists for targets so that it is why I think ECs might have made a difference.
For this year, Covid didn’t affect desirable candidates’ academic or EC profiles.
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At one point it may have been safe to say that schools with “less than 20% admit rates” were reaches for everyone, but I wonder if that number needs to be modified significantly upwards. Whatever the number, it seems like applicants and counselors are really struggling with properly identifying reach, match, and likely.
All the more reason to include true safety schools as defined by @ucbalumnus, above. Unfortunately, many kids have trouble finding true safeties that they think they will “like,” and I don’t think it is quite as simple as students thinking that safeties are “beneath” them. Or, if it is this case, it is often the parents, the schools, and then entire culture surrounding higher education that reinforces this belief.
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@audballpdx , I hear you! Kids want to find their tribe, and that’s defined in many ways. In so many ways, the challenge with college admissions is that there is enormous appeal to getting to be in a community of like-minded souls, and yes, if you are like many students there, you are likely to be competing with a lot of students just like you for those seats.
The Maine schools are really really tough now for the outdoorsy boarding school crowd who have long had an affinity for Maine in general and those schools in particular. There are too many of them, especially given that the schools want fewer of them! Much moaning among the families who grew up thinking of those schools as “what colleges looks like” and are now being challenged to look outside New England! And some envy that Asian American classmates are getting courted by them for diversity!
As kids flock to places where they feel like they “belong”, by default they often put themselves into the OR category at those schools.
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I still have pangs over DD22 turning down honors at state flagship. Great program.