To quote someone from the Emory thread: I often use the analogy of “making a salad” as a model to explain the college admission officers’ role. These people are making a “salad” of “right mixes” according to their “recipes, culture,” IF Emory is a Chicken-Walnut-Apple Salad, then even the best cut of Wagyu beef won’t make it on the plate."
Whether you get admitted is never based on just how qualified you are but also based on FIT and what kind of students the college is looking for. Say if Tufts were looking for Chicken-Walnut-Apple Salads and some Ivy were looking for Wagyu beef, there will be some lucky ones who are both Chicken-Walnut-Apple Salad and Wagyu beef (One of my friends was accepted Harvard+Tufts, another was accepted Penn+Tufts) but many other kids are only either Wagyu or Chicken-Walnut-Apple but not the other (Sometimes you just can’t be both). This analogy, of course, also works for Emory, WashU or NYU or any other highly selective school that is rumored to have “Tufts Syndrome.” In conclusion, “Tufts syndrome” simply DOES NOT EXIST for Tufts or any of these other schools stated above and I hate to still hear it being stated. Anyways, @karenlovely congrats on the 2 Ivies! and to everyone else who didn’t get in, it’s OK. Hope you got into somewhere else great and if not, (I know this sounds cliche, but) name doesn’t matter much, life is based MORE on what you make out of your college experience.
Sorry to hear you didn’t get in. @musicbooksandtea I thought I was a perfect fit for my first choice, had near 75th percentile stats and did months of research, writing what I thought was an ideal fit essay. Rejected ED. Sometimes this process just hella random
Congratulations class of 2021! If you choose to come here, and I hope you do, be prepared to have the best education and four years of your life. I found my wife at Tufts on the first day during orientation week!!!
@musicbooksandtea -I do think it exists. I have seen it and I have talked to admissions people who admitted it to me.
You are a high score low yield applicant- meaning you may have been cut out because they felt you were using them as a fall back. Schools are using the fafsa for this purpose now.
I realize it is hard to accept- but maybe it will help you see it isn’t you. YOU are not the problem. The system is flawed and you are not defined by this rejection. If you were my child I would want you to see that the qualities which made you reach for Tufts in the first place are the ones that will make you succeed in another school. The cream always rises to the top.
Sometimes schools act like a business- because they are a business.
I’m sorry but students aren’t salad ingredients and comparing them as such is preposterous. These are multi billion dollar institutions trying to match the most gifted minds in our country to their required financial needs. If they went out handing a spot to every top applicant- they’d end up being rejected by most of them. Look at Emory last year-
They only took in 26% of accepted kids. Why? Because they were the second choice. This year- Emory rejected kids who were accepted from MIT, Harvard, Cornell-- I know as mine was one of them. They were reformatting to accept kids they knew wanted them first.
(Again you can thank FAFSA for them seeing your lists).
Tufts syndrome IS real. Maybe it’s not always tufts that uses it- but it exists. Don’t beat yourself up. Go out and kick ass someplace else and live your life knowing your worth.
I believe this is the first year that FAFSA is set up so that colleges actually CANNOT see the list, which is different from previous years. This was done because of the impact karenlovely describes, but it is no longer a factor in admission decisions, the way I understand it.
Does anyone know if financial aid decisions are mailed or uploaded to the portal? I’ve heard answers on both sides (perhaps we get both? but I got my acceptance letter in the mail today and there was financial aid info), so now I’m confused…
@education1st - is that true? Our GC told us school’s could see it, which made my D freak out- because she didn’t alphabetize and was worried it work against her. That would be a relief.
@tofu123 we got our financial package in the mail today.
@karenlovely, it’s true. Your daughter can feel “relieved” that her rejections had nothing to do with how she listed her schools on the form. If she wasn’t accepted, it’s probably because the admissions committee didn’t see her as a good fit for the school (perhaps they already had enough trumpet players, for instance), and it certainly wasn’t Tufts syndrome (since plenty of kids get into tufts and ivies or other top 15 institutions, as both my sons did). Truthfully, when I see people write that on the Tufts, WUSTL and other schools’ forums here on CC (there’s a kid who also claimed it on the Tufts results thread), it just strikes me as ppl who felt entitled to get into all their schools. At this level, when it seems like Tufts’ acceptance rate this year is somewhere near 12%, the process just doesn’t work that way.
@RenaissanceMom That is certainly a rash judgment. I don’t know if you were mentioning me, but I did not expect to get into my schools. Of course I wanted to get into all of my schools, but I knew there were plenty of students out there who have the same if not better statistics and essays than me. I did not get into every school. I get rejected by more than Tufts and that’s okay. I was simply posting on this forum to better understand what they might have been looking for. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but being who I am, I just wanted to know what they were looking for. Personally, I thought I would have been a great addition to the Tufts’ student body and felt that I had a very similar mentality to the Tufts mentality. Perhaps I didn’t show that well enough in my essays, though I thought I did. My OP was not for attention, nor comfort. It was truly to ask others for their input as to why I might have been rejected from Tufts. Thank you to everyone who has responded, I see now that honestly, it doesn’t matter what the reason is and that the bottom line is that I didn’t get in and I have to work with the acceptances I do have moving forward. Again, thank you to @karenlovely@Bjklw2a
I got it in the mail yesterday! If you live farther away, you should probably expect it (along with the acceptance letter) in the mail sometime this week.
@musicbooksandtea, I’m sorry you were denied by Tufts. Try your best not to take it personally. I’m sure you would have been a great addition to the school and there’s no doubt you are qualified, but you’ll be a great addition wherever you end up. You never know whether this twist will leave you in a better position than if you’d ended up at Tufts. You hear it from kids all the time. After a year at the less than first choice school they can’t imagine their lives anywhere else. You also hear from kids who get into the 1st choice school and find that it wasn’t all they had hoped. Good luck!
@musicbooksandtea, no I didn’t mean to address you at all. I was addressing @karenlovely and some poster whose name I don’t now recall who posted on the tufts results thread, both claiming they (or their kid) didn’t get in due to “tufts syndrome.” At this level of selectivity, I don’t think schools are protecting yield in their RD admissions.
I feel awfull. I got in, but got 0 FA. It makes no sense, so I’m appealing. My mom makes less that the total cost a year yet they expect us to pay everything??
We received Tufts financial aid package on Saturday.
Tufts was pleased to offer a $1750 subsidised loan!
Two in college, EFC ~35k; not sure how to interpret this or next steps.
Suggestions?
@wuddayameen Did you run the Net Price Calculator before applying and get different results? If so, and if you have a copy of it, you can use that to help support your case. If not, go online and run it now to see if you get similar results.
