I recently added Northeastern to my college list, and was hoping to do EA, but I just realized that they consider Demonstrated Interest.
I’ve also read that the school is known for rejecting/deferring applicants with high scores, because they think the applicants are using them as a backup. With my scores (SAT 1570 / ACT 35), I think I would be in trouble for getting rejected/deferred. Should I just wait until RD, when I’ve shown more interest? Or would that affect merit scholarship consideration?
This “demonstrated interest” thing … how much is enough? Daughter (1540/35 scores) visited the summer before her junior year with full tour et al. She has met with the regional rep at a school event I believe.
I’m wondering the same thing. My S20 (1600/36) visited spring break 2019, so I’m hoping that’s enough. He really likes the school and it’s in the top 25% of his list. He applied EA. Now that 11/1 has passed, I’m not sure what else he could do. With the craziness of the past 6-8 weeks, he definitely didn’t have much time to reach out to admissions counselors ? Fingers crossed!
For any competitive college, demonstrate in your app/supp. If you’re choosing to apply, presumably you know them well enough, right, not crapshooting? You know what they want/look for and can show it? So let your app pkg “demonstrate.”
This isn’t just proclaiming. Nor visiting. It’s, “Show, not just tell.”
“For any competitive college, demonstrate in your app/supp. If you’re choosing to apply, presumably you know them well enough, right, not crapshooting?”
Northeastern doesn’t have a supplementary essay. A lot of people have speculated that it got rid of it in order to increase applications and reduce its admission rate. Every year, Northeastern rejects tons of high stat kids who send in “what the heck” applications.
I do think it’s strange there is no supplemental essay. My S20 would have been able to show specific interest in some of their programs this way, but it wasn’t possible without that. Applying EA hopefully shows his interest somewhat and the rest will have to come down to stats. I can see your point @TheBigChef about them possibly trying to reduce their admission rate - and that’s too bad for the kids who are more than “what the heck” applicants.
Visting is not required to show interest as that would be unfair to many people without the means to make the trip. EA is probably way #1 (a high stat kid doing RD def seems to get rejected more than an EA, though deferral is another way to test interest (some high stat kids withdraw after a deferral) so be ready for that as well.
While I think the lack of supplement had/has its advantages in terms of ranks, it also means you can’t pander to one school as easily. I think part of the advantage of no supplement is that you can see from a common app essay if a student would fit in Northeastern sometimes in a way that takes a lot more effort to “game/research”, though of course, it’s not always true and still has its flaws.
Asking a question or two from your admissions counselor and expressing your interest there is also another good way.
Thanks for all the replies! I ended up not applying EA and will most likely not do RD either. From my common app essay, I don’t think they would have considered me a fit for the school, and I myself only knew the basics about it.
My daughter is a freshman at NEU this year. To demonstrate interest, she did all of the following: (1) followed them on social media; (2) visited campus in person (easy because we’re local); (3) went to several career fairs and signed in at the Northeastern table; (4) applied EA, although I’m not sure how much that demonstrates interest, at least compared to ED; (5) got an account on raise.me and listed them as one of her schools of interest - the side benefit of this is that she earned $17,500 from them by filling out their raise.me form, and that was included in her financial aid package once she was accepted. Northeastern is big on demonstrating interest. They seem to be able to sniff out who is really interested. They rejected a lot of stellar applicants last year, and some speculated that NEU believed they were headed for Ivies and that Northeastern was a what-the-heck choice.
quote=“NUStats;c-22445288” got an account on raise.me and listed them as one of her schools of interest - the side benefit of this is that she earned $17,500 from them by filling out their raise.me form, and that was included in her financial aid package once she was accepted.
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Can you explain the raise.me account? It sounds like Northeastern was notified when your daughter listed them. Is there any merit money in raise.me, or is it only need based?
Sorry, just saw this. It was all merit-based. Every school does it differently, but Northeastern is especially generous on raise.me. After she filled out their form, she had earned $17,500 in “mini-scholarships.” Northeastern gives you a little mini-scholarship for each A, for example, or for each AP class, etc. When you add them all up and submit, that college gets notified that you filled out their raise.me form, and this means that if that college accepts you, you will get at least that much financial aid from them. I’m not sure what the financial arrangement is between raise.me and colleges, but my daughter got a Dean’s Scholarship and the raise.me money was bundled into it, not on top of it. But it clearly showed interest because she took the time to get a raise.me account, list them as a school of interest and fill out their form. I remember UVM was also on raise. me but she only “earned” $6,000 from them, which would be the minimum amount of financial aid she would receive from them if they accepted her (which they did and offered her a lot more).
It seems too good to be true. I even asked the counselor at her school to verify that this was a real thing, and she said yes it is. They seemed to push it quite a bit at her high school.
My D did benefit quite a bit from the Raise.me as well (it might have been called something else but sounds similar). She got enough merit from that, the Dean’s scholarship, plus other local scholarships and other aid to cover about 75-80% of her tuition. NEU was quite generous in this regard.
Just to give you some ideas and stats between my D and S in terms of their application to NEU - D, very organized and ambitious, applied in 2015 EA, it was her #1 choice, visited, etc. 3.6 uw GPA, 34 ACT, 10 AP classes, Neuroscience major, she was accepted.
My S applied in 2017 (well, technically 2018 since he applied at the very last minute literally) since there was no supplemental essay and his S was going there, never had any interest prior, 3.75 uw, 1540SAT 35ACT, 10.5 AP, nationally rated at an activity. Not very efficient, very little planning wrt applications. He wound up getting waitlisted, but did clear waitlist in May since he accepted to be on the waitlist. Even got $18K in merit. (But he had committed elsewhere already).
@NUStats@ProfessorPlum168 Thanks for the replies about RaiseMe. Sadly, the Northeastern deadline was Nov. 1, so I don’t even think they will see that he “followed” the school. But he did go ahead and fill it out for Tulane and submitted. It is an interesting platform.