LKnomad, I brought it down to our in-state flagman’s tuition levels just to make a point. I agree, I should have said “affordable to more middle-class families.” Even free education may not mean “affordable to most” since there will always be people who need to work to support themselves or their families while they study.
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I’d like to hear if the older Obama daughter gets turned down anywhere. Actually having a First Kid on your campus could be a real PITA with the Secret Service everywhere {/quote}
I’m wondering how long she’ll keep her security detail. She can keep it for as along as needed, but I don’t think the other children keep their details forever. I don’t think the Bush kids or Chelsea Clinton still use theirs, or maybe don’t use them everyday but do for special events.
@Lindagaf: “At one point, I deluded myself into thinking she and my D could be roomies at Brown.”
After the Barnard story hit, my husband went into a full-blown hypothetical on Michelle calling the house to introduce herself to us, asking for a meet, me flipping the meet from our house to theirs…He went into that crazy ‘female’ voice men use when trying to sound like a woman. It went on for about 20 minutes.
My daughter was thoroughly embarrassed right here in the privacy of her own home.
LOL @Waiting2exhale. Someone my mother knows really did have a similar experience, moving a child into a Stanford dorm and having Hillary knock on the door and introduce herself.
See what you lost out on @delurk1 ? That could have been Malia Obama, knocking on the door of the Delurk Senior Housing Quad. 
We did spot a building with our (very common) last name at one of the reach colleges D and I visited but I definitely didn’t donate any money to that college. D didn’t end up applying there anyway.
I think that many parents look at the middle 50% of admitted students on Naviance, but they need to look at the percent of student who were admitted in that range. For the Ivies/peers, the average admitted student may have a 33 or 34 ACT average, but applicants with a score of 33 and higher may still only have an acceptance rate of 20 or 30%. It is a plus, but the student has to have something more to get admitted.
One category that gets a big boost (I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet) is applicants who are both URM and full pay. Two important boxes get checked off with one person.
For need-blind schools, the admissions committees don’t consider financial need in making their decisions. URM seems to be a boost just about anywhere though.
I know what NPC is, but was is NCP?
Pretty sure it is just a mistake. Otherwise, we are talking about any number of foreign political parties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCP
On another note, I am going to facilitate the spread of a new term, discussed at length in this thread:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1879439-how-do-you-did-you-keep-from-being-a-helicopter-parent-to-your-college-bound-kid-p1.html
If you want to throw in your two cents about concierge parenting, check it out:-)
NCP is non-custodial parent.
Haha, thanks @ciervo ! Quite different from the Wikipedia link above.
@twoinanddone Apropos your comment about Obama’s daughter, the admissions officer at one of the college’s she visited (an Ivy) admitted that there wasn’t a chance in hell she would be rejected. That’s true, but not just because colleges would give “preference” to the fact that she is the daughter of the President. In her case, her school undoubtedly sought a “pre-determination” before she applied. All colleges do this in certain cases. And then there is the fact that she supposedly is at or near the top of her class at one of the best schools in the country and has had some incredible internships (HBO etc).
I sat on an Adcom. I’ll admit that should an application come before us where the address was “The White House” and the applicant listed her father’s occupation as “President of the United States”, we would have been impressed. Sorry if this doesn’t sound democratic but it is life…
I have had my first case of sour grapes. My D has just heard through the student grapevine that a girl at our school was accepted to Brown RD. This girl is an excellent student with top grades and does science research, for which I believe she won some awards. I know she is a better candidate than my kid, but I am still envious. I shall have to heed my own advice!
The good news though is that my D is now getting really excited about making her choice soon. She has spent plenty of time re-researching her top three choices, and hasn’t been thinking at all about the “top two” choices that she has been waitlisted at. That is the right thing to do, of course. She visits her reach school this coming weekend (she had not been able to visit before), and then has to make her decision. Quite interesting to see how the front-runner seems to change every day.
@Much2learn I think that many parents look at the middle 50% of admitted students on Naviance, but they need to look at the percent of student who were admitted in that range
Excellent point! It is very helpful to look at who got denied or wl. People tend to think it is all the kids below the mid 50, when in fact many in the mid 50 (or higher) are denied as well. It is not always evident in the Naviance data, but your gc should be able to give you the info.
Hi Everyone - I am a mom of a freshman boy. I am not new to CC but created a new avatar so I could have targeted conversations about S17. This is a very interesting thread but wondering why it is about girls only. Doesn’t the same apply for boys? In fact aren’t adcoms especially hard on Asian boys as such?
@messifan It isn’t about girls only. It’s just that in my observation those two groups of students have a particularly hard time getting into top colleges, many of which are strongly rooted in Liberal Arts, (which are favored by female applicants.) At many of the top colleges, females submit roughly a quarter more applications than males. I am sure it is also pretty difficult for white and Asian males to get into top colleges.
Actually, it’s easier for boys to get into many schools, except at tech schools where they are over-represented. A number of colleges say that they admit boys with lower stats. Many colleges are trying to have a diversity of students and don’t want lopsided numbers of men and women–but overall there are far more women applying to college.
If the majority of Asian boys choose to jump into the same applicant sub-pool of STEM majors, they are competing for the limited number of spaces for STEM majors. Schools that are not tech schools want a balance of majors. In the cases where the stats are broken down by schools within a university–generally you can see this with engineering–you will see that the stats are higher for STEM students. If you choose to jump into that pool, that’s what you will get. You can interpret this as “adcoms are hard on Asian boys” but I think you are missing the fact that competition for spots as a STEM major is harder for everybody. All this has been discussed extensively on other threads.
Thanks @Lindagaf ! I wasn’t quit aware of those stats being the mom of two asian boys 
Just getting ready to send my S16 to a LAC and people wondering why a boy interested in STEM is going to one. Thanks for getting back, will be following this thread and others more closely. Hoping for a great ride with my S19