Every year since my kids went through the process I do some free work helping out friend kids and friends of friends. Every year I hear some crazy theory right before decisions are sent that if the admission portal has some random marking or change its meaningful. This year recently it was UMich and the theory posited on CC that if there was an X mark by your transcript in your list of submitted docs it meant you were getting in. Two of my students asked me and their counselor at school about it. We said that was silly. Except …turns out it was apparently true! I am shocked!
We on the Michigan thread are surprised also. Can’t see how Michigan would show their hand like this. When some called Michigan prior to figuring this out they said it was a flaw.
Some programmer is going to get fired, I guess. Very few accepted on CC didn’t have an X.
In a few days @sushiritto will have the current stats with who had an X and all the stats. We asked the students to include this information to get some analysis on this.
For at least a couple of cycles now, the U Pitt app has displayed ‘accept’ or ‘decline’ buttons for students who have been accepted…well before they receive either their email acceptance or snail mail letter.
American may have changed to online acceptance but for a while they sent out the acceptance USmail and there was a way to get into the portal and if you were able to put down a deposit or something similar, then you were in. it must be hard from an IT perspective to have the staff load the information and then on a moments notice “turn it on” for up to thousands of students. As far the UMich “hack” I guess the kids found out only a few days earlier than normal?
the other big thing is that waiting for EA and ED decisions, these schools that these kids wants so much are bad mouthed with " I cant believe they have not released yet" “why are they not communicating” “other colleges are better at releases”. and so on…
I think that schools that don’t commit to and stick to a specific release date and time seem to create more anxiety for students. We can say to just sit tight, that they’ll know when they know but this is just at odds with human nature. This leads to the “ badmouthing”. I also do think I see in many schools a “ we are a sellers market” attitude in admissions offices. I have been floored on college tours by the rude attitudes at some admissions offices. Northwestern was particularly bad. Years ago Rice made a huge error, confirming a time for an information session and tour which were booked far in advance, then changing the time ( to earlier) without notice and with no apology. Michigans admissions office got into hot water a few years ago when it’s Tumblr made fun of applicants for being anxious about admissions decisions. As for the X theory I give kudos to the poster that Sussed it out.
When my daughter applied to Georgetown two years ago they mailed out physical letters. I read on these forums that you could tell whether you were getting an acceptance or something else by signing up for USPS informed delivery and looking at the postage amount on the letter. So the “hacks” extend beyond even the school’s portal but as noted, you are really only getting a few hours or a few days jump on the actual decision.
The year our son was applying to colleges, he accessed the Georgia Tech portal a few weeks after he submitted his app but well before the EA decision date to see a screen welcoming him to GT and providing a link to a form requesting new-student info. His GC called the school. It was a temporary glitch, but they did confirm he was admitted. At next access, the portal screen was back to its original view, but that call took a lot of anxiety out of the process for him. No more tea leaves.