@CaliCash No the final decision is not exclusively about rankings as I’ve said before, since so many of the schools I applied to are so similar in real-world prestige (no one cares about US News). The final decision between, say, Penn vs. Harvard vs. Princeton, or Fordham vs. Rutgers, will in fact be about fit, distance, some element of cost perhaps (cheaper is still better obviously), etc. Once I get all my results back, then I’ll start visiting over spring break in April.
@redpoodles Haha thanks.
If cost means something to you, you can easily eliminate 1/4 of the schools on your list. Well, it’s too late. Baloney, I wish you the best. If you do get into HYPS, or end up going to Rutgers, Michigan, or UVA, you will be successful. Stay motivated. Once you get into college, it will probably be the first time where you aren’t the smartest person in the classroom and you will be thoroughly humbled. Good luck!
I am also interested in seeing your results, Op.
@Iamthegoat: so it looks like your top ten would be Stanford, HMC, CMC, and USC: “I additionally applied to Stanford (reach), harvey mudd (reach), Claremont McKenna (reach/low reach), and usc (high match), spending 2 months of a lot of revisions on them, too.”
You really worked on these applications as if they were the only top ten and then added 20 more as a shotgun.
It will be really interesting if you end up getting into a top school in the shotgun list. Put it in your phone calendar to post back in April so you don’t forget!
I specifically meant UMich Ross rather than the rest of UMich (huge difference) and Berkeley Haas rather than the rest of Berkeley (huge difference). If you doubt this, please feel free to refer to Wall Street Oasis, a community of people much more experienced than ourselves for what counts as a “target school”.
Also, I know for a fact that Dartmouth does very well in IB recruiting. Please refer to Wall Street Oasis- you will see that they concur 100%. (http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/dartmouth-undergrad).
Furthermore, consider the fact that Dartmouth is the smallest Ivy, so it would be natural to see fewer people on The Street- they are disproportionately overrepresented.
However, I will not argue against your assertion that Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, or Princeton are better- they may be- but, schools like Dartmouth are definitely target schools.
Also, we should not forget LAC targets such as Williams and Amherst. Their numbers on Wall Street may be low in total (because their classes are so small), but they are very disproportionately represented.
@CaliCash “Many of these schools track interest and weight it heavily and WILL reject you if they think you are banking on getting in.”
You speak as if admissions committees have an all-seeing eye at their disposal, tracking my movements, my thoughts, my… “interest.” They don’t. And the vast majority of the schools I applied to don’t even bother tracking visits. The only thing these schools use to track interest is the “Why do you want to go here?” essay. And as long as you bs something about the campus being beautiful, the research opportunities being particularly interesting to you, and the great faculty/etc. (being specific), you’re good. I did all that.
“Most colleges won’t “match” another college’s FA offer. And those that will would only consider it if the schools are comparable. (So you can’t take a better Fordham offer to Dartmouth and expect any movement, for example).”
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It would be highly unlikely that Fordham would offer a better aid package than Dartmouth, unless merit aid was involved (it might be).
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I was under the impression that we were discussing shotgunning as a tactic for getting into “reach” schools. What I meant to say was what if a student was admitted to more than 1 of the reaches they “shotgunned”. This could result in schools matching financial aid offers, which would more than make up for the $2,000 to $3,000 in application fees.
@CaliCash
I’m only trying to say it’s possible to break into Wall Street without a HYPS degree!
@Baloney1011 - I was more or less supportive in a live-and-let-live way, of your method - until this business:
“You speak as if admissions committees have an all-seeing eye at their disposal, tracking my movements, my thoughts, my… “interest.” They don’t. And the vast majority of the schools I applied to don’t even bother tracking visits. The only thing these schools use to track interest is the “Why do you want to go here?” essay. And as long as you bs something about the campus being beautiful, the research opportunities being particularly interesting to you, and the great faculty/etc. (being specific), you’re good. I did all that.”
I really have a problem with the last sentence. It sounds like you’re cheating. If your “why X college” essay is characterized by you yourself as “bs” then that bothers me for its implied dishonesty. I think that if you really think you could be happy at any of these schools, and you pride yourself on being able to apply competently to each of them, then at a minimum this should mean that you can write a real sentence or two about why you might like to attend.
I guess I do hope that Ad-Coms have a sense of who might be writing “bs” and who actually has reason to want to attend their university.
@Baloney1011, I feel that your decision made statistical sense. As long as you did justice to all those supplements, it would have been a rational decision IMO. Good luck, and please do update us on how your decisions turn out :).
“OP does not have the qualities that a top 20 school looks for in its applicants. Just another average, prestige-obsessed kid.”
I suppose I’ll have to withdraw this comment. You did your homework and clearly know what you’re doing.
The outcomes will be quite interesting; I’m looking forward to them.
A student can only take out federal loans themselves for the following amounts:
$5,500 freshman year
$6,500 sophomore year
$7,500 each for junior and senior year
Some students are also eligible for Pell Grants, but I don’t imagine this student is among them. I also don’t see how he is going to be eligible for Perkins loans. Any other loan would be a parent plus loan or a private loan cosigned by an adult.
Did I read that someone applied to 31 colleges? That sounds like more of a machine gun than a shotgun!
@fretfulmother “It sounds like you’re cheating.” …What…? Are you sure you know what cheating is? That’s quite the accusation you’re making there.
@yikesyikesyikes Well thanks, I certainly hope I did. I’m actually scared to even go back and look at them right now, lest I find a problem or something, but it’s not like it’ll make any difference at this point anyway.
@Fredjan Glad to hear that, I suppose. Did something I say make you change your mind?
@Baloney1011 We are in this together haha. We have basically identical resumes and financial situations, even. Good luck to you man. The only significant thing different I noticed is that you have a 35 ACT vs my 2280 SAT. (By the way, I saw that you volunteered in a senior center, and my main place for volunteering is also a senior center lmao.)
@Baloney1011 - Yes, I am sure I know what cheating is. Which is to say, you characterized your own work as “bs” and said explicitly that you were only pretending to write why you wanted to go to colleges C1, C2, C3…C30. You just told us that you didn’t really tell the colleges a truthful answer in your written work. You used the term “bs” - not anyone else. It seemed from your tone (though I admit that is hard to read on the internet) that you were almost flippant or crowing about having done so.
As I said, I wasn’t thinking negatively particularly about your strategy until this point. I wish you well. But I don’t approve of being dishonest, or minimizing the effort needed, on any part of an application to something as important as college. At the very least, have some noblesse oblige so that you realize that for some kids, they actually put in significant effort even if you don’t.
OP, that’s not what demonstrated interest is. Demonstrated interest is doing an optional interview. It’s writing an optional essay. It’s emailing adcoms. It’s going to college fairs. It’s visiting schools BEFORE hand. It’s writing quality supplements that show interest in unique aspects of the school (this —> “the campus being beautiful, the research opportunities being particularly interesting to you, and the great faculty/etc” is not nearly enough. You can swap the names out and they see right through this.). It’s calling the admissions office. They want to see that you care. Even if a school says they don’t consider demonstrate interest, counselors do remember who has reached to them and it factors into the decision. Adcoms are people. A student who’s on the brink of being wait listed could have an edge because they demonstrated interest. Look at the University of Florida. They claim to not track interest. But a kid commented on their Facebook page after getting in and they said something along the lines of “Congratulations! We’ve been pulling for you since August!”. So it matters. A LOT.
PS- Lol, I am telling you OP. You did NOT write 40+ supplements of Ivy League acceptance caliber. You didn’t. You may think you did, but you didn’t. I promise you that. Unless you started writing supplements in Spring of last year, you didn’t.
@IAmTheGOAT LOL thanks man, and what a coincidence. GL to you too.
@fretfulmother Yes, of course I was pretending in some of my essays. And what a fool I would be not to do so! We call that “strategy” - not “dishonesty” - around here. Christ above, if I were to listen to people like you, where would I ever get in life? I extend my, uh, sympathies to the kids that “actually put in significant effort.” Even though my idea of “significant effort” is writing an essay that will get me accepted. I’m sorry that you disapprove of people who try their hardest to be successful in life.
@CaliCash And I am in fact doing a lot of that. I’m going to figure out the optional interviews today or tomorrow, and do as many of them as I can. I wrote all the optional essays, for Duke, for Harvard, etc. I believe the only one I didn’t write was Williams, because I really had no time left, unfortunately. I did mention unique aspects of each school in my essays, including student activities that I find interesting, clubs, specific research programs and opportunities, how I liked the curriculum depending on the school, etc. I’m also in the process of writing these “sucking-up” emails that seem to be ever so popular these days. I’m not going to argue about my supplements with you, but thank you for explaining to me how bad my application was, once again.
OP, I hope you get into a great school. You do demonstrate a liveliness and persistence on this board that, I must say, I admire! You hold your own! Not sure applying to so many schools is the best advice for everyone, or that it will work for you, but good luck just the same.
You did that for 3. What about the other 25 schools you are waiting to hear from. The point is, yes, you can superficially demonstrate interest. And again, aside from prestige, there honestly is nothing about these schools that appeals to you. It’s stuff you made up, which likely will be obvious. You spread yourself so thin that you likely ended up hurting yourself instead of helping yourself. You can fake it really well for 6-8 schools. But for 20 reaches? You’re fooling yourself. Good luck.