<p>annasdad didn’t specifically complain about the GC, but I think the GC gave the wrong answer to the admissions rep, and this may have had a distinct impact on the admissions outcomes. </p>
<p>Of course the GC cannot predict what the student will do. The GC also cannot predict the admissions outcomes at the other colleges to which the student has applied, and the GC may not know the student’s order of preference. </p>
<p>If university A is near the top of the student’s list, but not the very top, then I think it would be entirely legitimate for the GC to say that there are high odds that the student will come, if admitted. (This is true, because the odds of the Harvard-qualified applicant actually being admitted to Harvard are better than the raw odds, but still relatively low.) So it’s most likely that the student will actually wind up at university A (if admitted). </p>
<p>In any event, a GC’s reply along the lines of “How would I know? I’m not the student’s parent,” strikes me as borderline rude, and may have given the admissions rep the same impression.</p>
<p>With all due respect, how in the world would you know that they are " turning away more meritorious students." and especially based on an supposed lack of clearly spelling out they would attend the school? </p>
<p>Will we EVER be able to move away from those silly, arbitrary and SELF-SERVING definitions of … meritocracy, and accept that the schools accept the precise students that happen to form the class that corresponds to that year’s preference?</p>
<p>Who is to say that Student X and more meritorious than Student Y? The test scores? The GPA? The EC? The musical or athletic or artistic talent? </p>
<p>Every year at thousands of schools people wonder (and gossip) about why a student ranked in the 9 percentile did much better than the valedictorian. The reality is that none of us, except the people who DO sit in those admission committees know the exact on a file, and also know how that file might compare with the thousands of similar files.</p>
<p>In the end, most people love the selectivity of a school when they (or their children) get … accepted; when the news is not so good, the human reaction is find justifications and explanations, and alas, also claim discrimination or consider the process a crapshoot. </p>
<p>It is what it is. Not much can be done to alleviate the pain of a rejection, except perhaps to realize that the silver lining of attending a school that will deliver all its promises is just around the corner. </p>
<p>As far as any of us understanding what really happens in the ivory towers of admissions, all we can do is speculating and ascertaining what leaked tidbits are plausible. And, even when successful, most of what we “learn” are studies in contradiction.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone believes he has a crystal ball that’s perfect. Nine years ago, when he was at Yale, Jim Nondorf – talking about Yale’s low admission rate, which was then about what Chicago’s is now – said, “We have a lot of confidence that we can identify the 5,000 super-qualified kids in the applicant pool. The problem is, we can still only admit about 1,800 of them, and we have absolutely no confidence in our ability to make meaningful distinctions among this group. We try to do our best anyway, because that’s our job. And it’s very difficult to be doing that, and sometimes there are tears in the committee room, because people get emotionally involved. In the end, we know that all of these kids are super and are going to do really well somewhere, and the fact that Yale can’t accept them won’t actually mean much in the arc of their lives.”</p>
<p>I would be surprised if that isn’t the attitude at Chicago now as well, except they can still accept a little more than 3,000 students per year, so they have 1/3 fewer tough choices. The fact that they are rejecting some highly qualified kids who go to Harvard, Yale, Cornell, wherever, doesn’t mean they are necessarily protecting yield. It may just mean that they liked some other kid a little better. Chicago has a history of paying more attention to essays than to “stats,” and while I think stats get a lot more attention now, I think they still believe they are looking for interesting voices, not just impressive collections of numbers.</p>
<p>I think it’s important to note that, if you listen to Zimmer, Boyer, et al., they are NOT about improving the USNWR ranking. (They’re not adverse to that, as a means to an end, but it isn’t the end.) They want to – and believe they can – challenge HYPS for providing the best undergraduate liberal arts education. The Chicago Economics Department and Physics Department don’t believe they are inferior to Harvard in any way, and the current administration doesn’t want a culture of conceding that the university’s undergraduates are going to be second-rate, either. You don’t get where they want to go by accepting less-qualified students to manage yield. You get there by accepting what you think are the best students possible, then fighting for them. And trusting that HYPS, with their various priorities, can’t possibly accept and woo all the great students.</p>
<p>No question, the principal reasons for many schools to admit large numbers of transfer students are financial. But these things all work together as a package: More bodies = more tuition revenue. Limited/no FA for transfers = higher net tuition revenue per body. No guaranteed housing for upperclassmen (including transfers) = lower capital costs. Plus at some schools there may be capacity limits on core intro classes, freshman seminars, and the like. All of which makes expanding the student body by expanding transfers more financially appealing than expanding the freshman class. But the big bonus is, you don’t need to worry about transfers putting downward pressure on your SAT medians because they fly under the US News radar; for ranking purposes, the transfers pretty much just don’t exist (except insofar as they count as part of the student body for purposes of calculating S/F ratio, spending per student, etc). But because they’re pretty much a pure profit center, on balance they help more than they hurt.</p>
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<p>Yes, but the extent of the practice varies widely. In 2010, Penn State enrolled 398 transfers and 7,262 freshmen; transfers represented just 5.2% of all newly enrolled undergraduates. At the other extreme, UCLA enrolled 3,229 transfers and 4,636 freshmen; there, transfers represented 41.1% of all newly enrolled undergrads. At UC Berkeley, transfers represented 35.3% of all newly enrolled undergrads. Most publics fall somewhere between these extremes: William & Mary 12.6%, Michigan 13.7%, Georgia Tech 15.8%, UVA 16.3%, UNC-Chapel Hill 17.9%, Wisconsin 18.0%, U Washington 22.7%. </p>
<p>Educational and social policy varies from state to state. California has long promoted 2-year community colleges as an alternative pathway to a 4-year degree; in some other states, community colleges tend to be more stand-alone institutions geared toward technical/vocational training. I have no objection to California following the path it does; in many ways, it’s an admirable and even noble approach. Nor do I think UC Berkeley and UCLA accept transfers in such large numbers in order to game the US News rankings; it’s my understanding that their transfer policies pre-date the dominance of the US News rankings by a considerable margin.</p>
<p>But I do think this wide variance in transfer rates should cast serious doubt on the “objectivity” and inter-comparability of reported SAT/ACT scores as the basis for comparing the “quality of the student body” as so many on CC would have it. When 41.1% of the undergrads at UCLA are transfers whose SAT/ACT scores are never reported or counted in the US News ranking, I’d take UCLA’s reported figures as deeply questionable. (And my guess is the SAT/ACT scores of transfers would tend to be lower, in part simply because there’s no rankings-based pressure on the admissions committee to keep up the school’s SAT/ACT averages when considering transfer applicants, and in part because some non-trivial fraction of community college transfers are very good students who just didn’t have the test scores to gain admission as freshmen but who prove themselves with superior community college GPAs).</p>
<p>Nor is the discrepancy confined to public universities. Most top private universities are in the 1% to 2% range in transfers as a percentage of newly enrolled undergrads. Cornell is at 14.4%, more typical of a public university than an elite private. NYU is at 17.6%, somewhat on the high side of the public university range. USC is at 33.3% (1,487 transfers and 2,973 freshmen in 2010), which would be on the extremely high end of the public university range. Again, how much stock can we put in USC’s SAT/ACT scores when a third of the student body’s scores aren’t counted? </p>
<p>And lest you think this is just a California thing: Stanford enrolled a grand total of 20 transfer students in 2010, while enrolling 1,674 freshman, so that transfers represented 1.2% of its newly enrolled undergrads. Caltech enrolled 7 transfers and 222 freshmen, or 3.1% transfers. Pomona enrolled 10 transfers and 401 freshmen (2.4% transfers).</p>
<p>I think in USC’s case it’s highly like that a policy of taking a large number of transfers is artificially propping up its reported SAT/ACT scores and its US News ranking.</p>
<p>“In any event, a GC’s reply along the lines of “How would I know? I’m not the student’s parent,” strikes me as borderline rude, and may have given the admissions rep the same impression.”</p>
<p>If I were an admissions officer, and a HS GC from my region said that to me, I’d make a mental note that the GC was either responsible for an impossible number of students or had no idea how to do her job. That could affect outcomes – I would know not to attach any weight to information from that GC.</p>
<p>“it does say something about a college’s claim to admit students based on merit.”</p>
<p>this is what the Dean of admissions at Chicago says:
"The Admissions Committee at the University of Chicago considers all of the information you present in your application; it truly is a holistic process, not just test scores and GPA. </p>
<p>I dont see any claim in his letter to admit students based on “merit”. Chicago is not like CalTech which does claim to admit based on Merit- regardless of race, legacy. nationality, etc.</p>
<p>Fwiw, in addition to the mention that this conversation takes places DURING the admission cycles (as opposed to during the waitlist/summer melt cycles,) that is the part that sound so fantastic. </p>
<p>In this case, the adcoms places the GC in a difficult position, and CANNOT count on receiving a truthful and accurate reply. Does the GC reply … “Oh yes, this student has Chicago on the top of her list?” Or does she deflect the question? Regardless, this account shows a lack of professionalism on both sides, namely the question that CANNOT be answered and the dismissive answer. </p>
<p>A cynic might say that nothing that comes out of Illinois is ever surprising, but this story is hard to accept at face value. On the other hand, stories of incompetent and clueless GC are really old news on CC.</p>
<p>annasdad, although I am more generous in my view of the utility of those mailings, I wholeheartedly agree with you that list deduplication is inexcusable. We only got one of each here, so my kid obviously did not cut the mustard on a second+ source list of targets! As to who they target, I also agree with you that schools should be more discriminating in defining targets; of course, my definition of targets will remain more liberal than yours, and my rationale is primarily cost saving vs. the claimed risk of creating false hopes or the claimed motivation to gin app dollars! </p>
<p>I’m not talking about duplicate mailings, which most likely was a mistake. I’m talking about multiple mailings to the same impossible-admission kids, like my D, whose PSAT in no way qualified her for even a cursory look by the UC admissions committee. It’s not personal - my D, bless her, knew she wasn’t UC material - but the D of an acquaintance took a lot of convincing to even bother to apply anywhere else - “Chicago must really want me to be sending me so much mail.” Naive - of course - and in this case there were enough savvy adults to forestall any serious damage. But I’m going to guess that a few kids were seriously damaged because of it.</p>
<p>And while others may have, I’ve not suggested that they’re trying to garner app dollars, nor do I think that’s the case.</p>
<p>In terms of the answer the GC gave the admissions person - if you knew the GC, and had heard the tone in which she repeated the conversation to the parents group, you’d realize that it was probably not in those exact words that she replied to the admissions question… She is a respected professional who has been guiding high-qualification kids into high-prestige colleges for 15 years or so, and given the culture of the school, I can assure you she would not have lasted had she not been super-competent.</p>
<p>Xiggi,
GC’s at some private schools DO get those calls from Admission officers that they have developed close relationships with, and the GC often DO know which colleges a student really DOES want to go to , especially at private schools with very low student/ GC ratios, where GC DO spend MANY HOURS with each student during the college application process . It happened at my DS’s school when he was applying. This should not be a surprise to you at this point.</p>
<p>“I’m talking about multiple mailings to the same impossible-admission kids, like my D, whose PSAT in no way qualified her for even a cursory look by the UC admissions committee.” </p>
<p>Those mailings are NOT generated by the Admissions office at Chicago, but by the ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT COMPANY that Chicago, like many other colleges, hire to scour reams of data like zip codes that have a high income levels, HS’s that have sent a high percentage of past matriculants to the college, etc, etc, etc. Their job is to dig up as many applicants as possible. It is then up to the admissions office to decide who they will accept.
The company that Chicago has used is notorious for their repeated mailings to the same students. Its mailing models are based on demographics.</p>
<p>Our experience ran contrary to the idea of high hopes dashed RE Chicago mail. It got to be a bit like the owl in Harry Potter where D was glad for a Sunday when there might be a break. However, the Chicago postcards and booklets were well designed to paint a whole picture over the course of many months. Kenyon sent similar volume with slight variations on the same message. One booklet might have enticed D to apply, but a barrage of mail that didn’t reflect her told her that if this is really who they are, they are not for me. </p>
<p>On the flip side, as I told D, some kid out there is getting this mail and their heart goes pitter pat because it looks like heaven on earth. It’s the marketing department’s job to cast a wide net to attract students who really see themselves at any given school. If they do their job well, they will attract applicants who are the kind they want. It is the student’s job to see if they have a realistic chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>p.s. a PSAT score that wouldn’t seem to be in the range does not mean that a kids has no possible chance for admission. A kid or parent might know that from the inside given much fuller information, but most mail marketing is a fairly blunt instrument still.</p>
<p>Re OP’s post #172: Cancel the complaint about the GC. Still, suppose that university A is the top choice of the applicant, aside from some subset of HYPSM+C. I think the right answer to the question, “Will the student enroll if admitted?” is that the odds are high that the student will enroll if admitted (absent likely letters, early admissions, athletic recruitment etc. from the other places).</p>
<p>“I’m talking about multiple mailings to the same impossible-admission kids, like my D, whose PSAT in no way qualified her for even a cursory look by the UC admissions committee.” </p>
<p>Is it your general belief that UC (or whatever elite school you want to substitute in its place) <em>should</em> admit primarily by numbers, and therefore <em>should</em> have a very high score cut-off for mailing lists? Because it would seem to me that such a policy would penalize the diamonds-in-the-rough who maybe don’t attend terribly rigorous high schools. Isn’t it kind of better that they “open it up” a bit more? Isn’t the risk of ignoring the diamond-in-the-rough worse than the risk of disappointing some other kids?</p>