<p>So what's the verdict on submitting the common app? How can I be absolutely 100% sure that school X has no clue I'm also submitting to school Y? My worst nightmare would be that school X is all like "Oh man, we'd totally take him but he'll probably end up at school Y" and school Y thinking the opposite.
Thanks for the help!!!</p>
<p>yea they're not suppose to see</p>
<p>Operative word in that sentence would be "supposed" to I guess.
Is there any way that they possibly can? Can I be super sure that they dont?
Thank you so much - I tried searching but answeres were somewhat inconclusive.</p>
<p>I'd love to know this also.</p>
<p>Unless you listed your colleges somewhere in you essay or something like that, they'd have no way of knowing.</p>
<p>Can we say PARANOIA? What purpose would it serve the Common App to have holes in their security? School X pays them big bucks so they can sneak a peak? Get real. They don't care that much to go to the trouble.</p>
<p>So if i check everything off at once and send it out -- no worries???</p>
<p>Why does this matter?</p>
<p>Well, for the reason I mentioned in my first post?</p>
<p>Don't worry about it. If they really wanted to know, they could just check your financial aid paperwork.</p>
<p>the financial aid paperwork shows all the colleges?</p>
<p>EVERY college admits more applicants than eventually enroll, so why should colleges worry about this?</p>
<p>I don't mean to fan flames for those worried about this, but I do think there is <em>some</em> evidence that in some cases, a college may consider whether or not an applicant is likely to enroll in making admissions decisions.</p>
<p>In</a> or Out: Inside College Admissions - TIME</p>
<p>"Students are sometimes asked the number of schools to which they're applying, and some colleges take offense at being one of many under consideration. Rice was weighing one superbly qualified applicant when a reader mentioned that the school was just one of 15 on his list. The student wound up on the wait list."</p>
<p>Getting</a> In To Top Schools - Work & Education (washingtonian.com)</p>
<p>"[Georgetown Dean of Admissions Charles Deacon]: For example, a lot of colleges pay attention to the yield—the number of your offers that are accepted. Despite the fact that U.S. News dropped yield as a factor in its college rankings, it’s still considered a measure of a school’s popularity. So you have places putting the very top candidate in their applicant pool on a waiting list because they think the kid’s using them as a backup. The kid who’s first in the class with a near-perfect SAT score may apply to ten schools and get wait-listed at seven.</p>
<p>We know it’s very hard to yield African-Americans. So schools can improve their yield by passing by the top 100 African-Americans in the applicant pool, where maybe you’d get about five or six to enroll, and admitting the third 100, where you’d get 75 percent. That’s what a lot of people do; they say they’re trying to 'manage their enrollment.'"</p>
<p>But the OP is talking about particular colleges that he is applying to. If he has NO interest in attending a particular college, why is he applying there? If he has some interest in attending a college, why doesn't he just communicate that interest to the college? Every college admission office knows that many applicants apply to other colleges, and they all deal with that every year. It's up to the applicant to show that his interest in a college is genuine and might lead to enrolling at that college if the applicant gets more than one offer of admission.</p>
<p>"Why does anyone care about this, one way or the other?"
Because, in the past [though I'm not sure if it is stilll true] when a student listed more than 1 college on the common app, and hit the apply button- ALL of the colleges could see where else the students was applying. Let's assume that this student has great stats/ grades etc and has applied to HYPS, as well as some safeties. As admissions offices make their decisions, it is possible that they would factor in where else the student was applying, as an indication of the likehood of the student matriculating at their college. If the admissions officers have no idea which other colleges the student has applied to, they have to base their decision on only the application in hand. That is one reason why students don't want to broadcast where they have applied.</p>
<p>Exactly. While I'm not applying to HYPS, the example still holds:
Theoretically, lets say Harvard looks at my app, says "Oh wow, he's pretty fly, let's take him... oh but wait, he's applying to Yale, and if we think he's fly, they think he's fly... He'll probably end up choosing them over us." Meanwhile, at Yale, the same conversation is taking place. The school may pass my up for one of many other highly-qualified applicants because they are afraid I will turn them down for another school on my list. If they do not have access to this information, for all they know, they're the only top-tier school I am applying to. Hope that explains it.</p>
<p>bee3,
In the interview you cite Deacon contrasts "enrollment management" with how things work at Georgetown. ("We’re still true to our principles. If you want the best possible class you can get, you admit them. But some schools are strategizing whom they admit on more than just who are the best candidates.") He does not say that Georgetown uses the tactics you describe, quite the opposite.</p>
<p>"So you have places putting the very top candidate in their applicant pool on a waiting list because they think the kids using them as a backup"
EXACTLY!</p>
<p>I strongly suspect that this occurs--in looking at the scattergrams for my son's high school, I saw a lot of waitlisting at LACs and second-tier selective schools, when it appears that the same students were accepted to more selective schools. Of course, the LACs and second-tier schools may do this even if they don't know for sure that the highly qualified students have applied to HYPS...they may make educated assumptions based on past history.</p>
<p>I would gently suggest not assuming anything here. College all up and down the selectivity scale have to admit more students than eventually enroll (matriculate), because students are still making up their minds about what colleges to attend as the admission decisions come out from December to April. If a student is a STRONG candidate for admission at a particular college, the student is likely to get in, and all the more so if the student has articulated a reason why he or she is a good fit for the college. (The question "Why do you fit this college?" is an IMPLICIT question on every college application, even if it isn't an explicit question.) </p>
<p>In a world in which most applicants apply to more than one college, and all sensible college admission counselors advise applying to multiple colleges at varying degrees of selectivity, why should College X say, "This looks like a strong candidate for admission--oops; he's applying to College Y, so let's not admit him"? College X isn't completely sure how College Y will act on an application, nor is College Y completely sure how College X will act. I contend that the colleges have figured out that they are better off simply admitting the strongest candidates who show up, noting of course whether the student really writes out a rationale for fitting that college or not, and ignoring what other colleges might do. </p>
<p>If any admission officers would like to deepen our understanding of this issue, I'd be happy to hear what they have to say, especially on the factual point of whether colleges even know what other colleges applicants are applying to.</p>