Thank you College Confidential and farewell

Applying to College Admission Stories
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I sent my first post exactly one year ago. At that time, I was a clueless parent with a rising senior, trying to make a college list. Since then, College Confidential has become our daily obsession, seeking advise, reading tealeaves, and discussing strategies. Tonight, my son will graduate from high school, and our obsession with College Confidential will come to an end (at least for now, until my second one comes close to senior.) I’d like to thank the many knowledgeable people on CC as well as other parents/students who shared the ups and downs of the year with us.

Before I say goodbye, I’d also like to give back to the community by sharing my son’s final application and admission status, and a few observations. Hopefully our experience can help other students make informed decisions.

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Here’s my first ever post a year ago. You can find my son’s stats in the first post, and may discussions of college choices in the discussions:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1999559-help-my-son-make-a-college-list-p1.html

I won’t repeat the stats, but here are the major pros and cons of his application:

Positive: 4.0 unweighted GPA, 10 AP classes, 4 and 5 on most AP tests, 34 ACT, 2 SAT Subject tests in high 700s, two varsity sports, Co-captain, and multiple Club leadership positions

Negative: Asian, Male, CS major, no major STEM competition awards, no research

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Here’s the final application and admission status list:

Lottery Reach:

  • Caltech (EA, with baseball hook, rejected)
  • Chicago (EA, deferred to RD then rejected)
  • Yale (RD, rejected)
  • Brown (RD, rejected)
  • Stanford (RD, rejected)
    Reach:
  • Cornell (CAS) (RD, waitlisted)
  • UC Berkeley (EECS) (RD, rejected)
  • UCLA (CS) (RD, rejected)
  • Northwestern (CAS) (RD, waitlisted then rejected)
  • Rice (RD, waitlisted then rejected)
  • Swarthmore (RD, waitlisted then accepted)
  • Claremont McKenna (RD, rejected)
    Match
  • University of Washington (CS, Honor) (RD, Accepted, attending)
  • University of Southern California (CS+Business) (RD, Accepted)
  • UCSD (CS) (RD, accepted)
  • Cal Poly SLO (CS) (RD, accepted, $1,000 scholarhsio)
  • Georgia Tech (CS) (EA, accepted)
  • Washington & Lee (RD, accepted)
  • Grinnell (RD, accepted, $24K scholarship)
    Safety
  • Santa Clara (CS in Engineering school) (EA, accepted, $6,000 scholarship)
  • Trinity University (EA, accepted, $25K scholarship, competed for full scholarship)
  • Southern Methodist (CS in Engineering school) (EA, accepted, $39K scholarship)
  • Whitman (RD, accepted, $20K scholarship)
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Reflection #1: No need for so many Matches and Safeties. The match and safety acceptances are highly correlated, i.e. if one school accepts, other schools are also likely to accept. We’ve seen a lot of students on CC being accepted to the same set of schools, e.g. UW, Georgia Tech, UCSD, Cal Poly SLO, etc.

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Reflection #2: No need for most of the Reach schools. These schools are good, but not that much better than the Match schools. If accepted, we still may not choose to attend. Why bother?

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Reflection #3: Focus on one “spike”, rather than many plateaus. Son was extremely busy practicing for two varsity sports, holding on to 4.0 GPA, and volunteering. He did not have time to do research or participate in Math/Science competitions. In the end, his sport skills were not good enough to hook him into a Reach school, and the lack of STEM research/competition really hurts admission chances as well. It’s better to pick one sport or one STEM competition and stick to it, making it a real spike.

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Reflection #4: Being Asian male applying to Computer Science is the trifecta of sins for college application. Actually, not only in college applications, but also in internship applications and even job applications down the road. Enough discussion on this, so I won’t talk about it anymore.

Reflection #5: Really bad trend (or maybe it’s always like this) – many schools use Merit scholarship for diversity recruiting, rather than rewarding merit. For example, we learned that Georgia Tech’s OOS scholarship is only given to URMs; USC, some people reporting that most Engineering school merit scholarships are given to “women in engineering”.

Reflection #6: State flagship is the best place for middle class students. Really poor students get free ride in private schools; really rich students don’t sweat paying full fare of $70+K per year to attend private schools. For the upper middle class students without financial need, State Flagship presents the best compromise of quality and price.

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Interesting reflections! Thanks for sharing.

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Cool. But Whitman and SMU aren’t safeties. He did well. :slight_smile:

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MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I’ve moved the thread to Admissions Hindsight and Lessons Learned; however, since we don’t allow good-bye threads, I have also closed.