<p>tealover -my son is a US student. I was just wondering if fin aid was influenzing Amherst's acceptance decisions. A friend of mine said that Amherst would only be taking internations at this point since they won't be getting aid - but that is clearly not the case. They seem to be need blind for both domestic and foreign students. So good luck to the rest of you still waiting.</p>
<p>I applied to Amherst as a transfer student from a junior college in southern California. I was waitlisted about a month ago, and got a call from admissions with an offer to enroll four days ago. I maintained a 4.0 at my junior college over two years, but had absolutely no academic record prior to junior college. I also did not submit any standardized test scores. I feel very fortunate. Good luck to everyone!!</p>
<p>If anyone has any updates about getting off the Amherst waitlist during the rest of this summer - please post them. My son is still on the list and still interested.</p>
<p>so whats going on with the waitlist this year? are they done with it?</p>
<p>no action for more than a week but we haven't yet received a letter stating that its over so I guess its still open.</p>
<p>i was just wondering. oberlin has sent me that its incomming class is currently overenrolled but wants to keep me on the wait list. i wish amherst contacts me like that as well. i am pretty sure i will re-apply to both colleges next year anyways - unless amherst or oberlin gets me off the list and accepts me.</p>
<p>My daughter is in the class of 2011 and when she arrived at Amherst for Orientation Week, a student in her dorm got off the waitlist at Yale and decided not to attend Amherst. So, these openings can happen at the 11th hour!</p>
<p>thanks for that encouraging comment.</p>
<p>thank you for the comment, lmpw. i guess just waiting (which i am getting tired of) is the only answer to the situation. hey drdom, if you dont get off the waitlist, what is your plan of the year?</p>
<p>my son got a letter today from Amherst. It was dated June 23rd. They booted him! The waitlist is over. The class of 2012 has been formed. Yesterday, June 25th my son faxed his 4th quarter grades to Amherst - straight A's! When he called nobody told him that the waitlist was over. He tried to find out if they received his fax. He was connected to three different staff people who were less then helpful, one was ****ed off at his call. Finally, the last person just hung up on him. He then emailed Dean Fretwell and his regional associate dean. Fretwell's email spit out a vacation message that gave a phone number to reach her secretary. That number was disconnected! He tried one final time and was put into another dean's voice mail - but never got a call back! All along they knew the waitlist was closed 2 days before. Well, they don't deserve him. He's off to the University of Chicago!</p>
<p>I so sorry that happened for your son. Somehow the communication in the office should have been organized enough to tell him the waitlist was closed when he called about faxing his grades.</p>
<p>Wonderful for him about U of Chicago, though! I am sure he'll have a great experience there.</p>
<p>I got a letter too; says I'm on the summer waitlist (yay?).</p>
<p>I'm so emotionally committed to my other school that I'm not sure if I'd accept, but I was so in love with Amherst...and still am...sigh.</p>
<p>Man, and I was totally just accepting the fact that I was done with waitlists!</p>
<p>drdom,</p>
<p>I was also waitlisted at Amherst and will attend U of C this fall. Chicago's more of an intellectual environment and doesn't fill half of its class with subpar athletes.</p>
<p>Wow, someone is bitter. </p>
<p>Have you met many Amherst athletes? It is a division 3 school; they don't really lower admissions standards for athletes. I have taken quite a few classes with athletes and many are quite brilliant.</p>
<p>tako - the letter from Dean Fretwell said the class was filled. Someone is not being honest here. Amherst actually violated its original schedule for the waitlist. The said they would start looking at the waitlist candidates on May 10th (a Saturday). The New York Times reported that they started taking people of the waitlist 4 days earlier on the 6th. We didn't have a chance to send in additional updates before they started taking people off the list. So I suspect that Fretwell's letter wasn't quite the truth. This is an "elite" LAC?</p>
<p>unregistered - I know that there are always exceptions, however, the only student accepted from my son's high school by Amherst was a baseball player. And yep - subpar credentials. I checked Naviance - there is only one acceptance in the scattergram. This student athlete has a 3.75 GPA and an SAT score of about 1980. My son is in a cluster of students with GPAs above 3.93 and SATs above 2200. So in this case it is true. Amherst and most other schools have different admission criteria based on athletics, race, geographic location, community college applicants, gender, etc, etc. Its NOT fair but it is the way it is. I accept it because I have to but I don't kid myself about the admissions process.</p>
<p>
[quote]
unregistered - I know that there are always exceptions, however, the only student accepted from my son's high school by Amherst was a baseball player. And yep - subpar credentials. I checked Naviance - there is only one acceptance in the scattergram. This student athlete has a 3.75 GPA and an SAT score of about 1980. My son is in a cluster of students with GPAs above 3.93 and SATs above 2200. So in this case it is true. Amherst and most other schools have different admission criteria based on athletics, race, geographic location, community college applicants, gender, etc, etc. Its NOT fair but it is the way it is. I accept it because I have to but I don't kid myself about the admissions process.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>While I understand your frustration, if you take the emotion out of your argument, how is it not fair? In the latter part of the paragraph you state that you "don't kid yourself about the admission process", yet you obviously are disappointed in the result of your child not being chosen off the waitlist. A 3.75, 1980 isn't chopped liver for anyone, much less a student athlete. </p>
<p>If you would allow yourself to be a little more objective, I think that you would see that most student athletes with those types of numbers do quite well while they are in their respective schools and afterwards. How many student athletes would have the academic credentials of your child and still be able to field a decent athletic team? You should know the drill. An incoming class is made up of all types of students. Amherst's exceedingly high grad rate illustrates that the overwhelming majority of these kids matriculate regardless of what the "numbers" say.</p>
<p>It's unfortunate that you weren't able to speak to someone, to get clarification and closure, but with a regular decision admission rate of about 12.5%, the competition was fierce. Best of luck to your child at UC and hopefully in due time, you"ll both be able to put this disappointment behind you with no resentment.</p>
<p>My child is an athlete going to Amherst. He has a 3.98 (with 10 "dual credit" college classes in that unweighted GPA mix, including upper division courses), and a 2200 on the SAT. Sure, there are lots of kids with higher SAT scores going to Amherst, and lots with higher SATs that didn't get in. On the other hand there are kids who are not athletes with lower scores that got in too.</p>
<p>How can you hope to say "this is why" and "this is why not" as far as admissions goes? Sure, the school has a long tradition of athletics, and smart, capable student-athletes. Why would they want to dismantle that tradition? It's part of what has defined Amherst for a long, long, long time. It's part of the school's identity. Some might say it shouldn't be, but why not? The school and its profile existed long before any of the applicants now interested, and long before any of the staff now working there.</p>
<p>Meritocracy can mean many things. I know my son, while he did very well academically, gave up much that other kids enjoy --like a social life, for starters-- so that he could be both a successful student and a successful athlete.</p>
<p>Being a successful athlete takes immense time and committment. Sometimes 24 hours in a day is not enough and there will be a little give on some test prep or another AP class or whatever. It doesn't mean the student isn't smart, capable, committed, or unappreciative of the opportunity they have at a great college. D3 athletes know they're not going to turn pro, they're not going to the Olympics. They do it because this is the time in your life when your body will let push limits like it will do at no other time. It's youth. And studying and learning and excelling physically are all an integrated part of this stage of life for many stupendous, hard-working kids. </p>
<p>There are plenty of non-athletes at all selective schools, as there should be. But college is also a time to bond, to feel an identity with your school, to root on your team, to feel alive in a multifaceted way that athletes, musicians, artists, scientists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, political activists... they all come together to share an experience of community. It's not just "the way it is" so you have to accept it. It's something brilliant and suitable to this time in their life in a way it never will be again.</p>
<p>There are schools where athletics is a small to non-existent part of the admissions process, but why take a school like Amherst, for example, that has ALWAYS held up that model of the student-athlete as a <em>part</em> of its profile and condemn them for it. Surely that was known going into the application process, and if it wasn't, someone didn't do their homework about the school.</p>
<p>Now... off the soapbox for me.</p>
<p>I made my previous statement from what I, along with many of my peers have observed. I didn't mean to put down all of Amherst's athletes. I agree with you when you said that some of them are brilliant. But some are not.</p>
<p>I go to a very competitive public high school, and, naturally, Amherst is always one of the top choices. The class size is usually around 850. Last year, Amherst let in a student who was ranked in the 70s (and a recruited athlete) over several students in the 20s. This year (which I know more about), Amherst let in one athlete who was in the 130s (~3.4, 29 ACT) and one in the 80s (~3.6, 30) over two students in the top ten (3.99 and 3.98, 33 and 34).
In tabular form:
Accepted 3.4 29
Accepted 3.6 30
Waitlisted 3.98 34
Waitlisted 3.99 33</p>
<p>Hard to argue with numbers. To be sure, Amherst's student body is brilliant. I'm just questioning some of its admissions decisions.</p>
<p>One more thing. Those who were waitlisted had impressive ECs; they just were not recruited athletes.</p>