Waitlisted

<p>Got a heads up from admissions that our D was waitlisted. We are crestfallen. Her sister goes, and the whole family attended before her. We are also big donors and supporters of the school. She has great stats, they just said so many kids applied that they had too many to choose from. We don't know what to do at this point. Any suggestions?</p>

<p>I’m sorry to hear that. There’s still a chance. What do you mean by “great stats?”</p>

<p>31 ACT, 4.0 unweighted GPA, sports, jobs, summer study, great recs, visited, interviewed, the whole shebang. And that’s without the legacy and donor support. We were blindsided.</p>

<p>I thought the decisions weren’t coming out in three days, how did you find out?</p>

<p>The decisions should be mailed tomorrow (3/23) and be online Saturday (3/24) after 8am EST</p>

<p>Is anyone else having issues logging into the Grinnell pioneer portal website? It refuses to let me in even when I type in the correct user/password. When I request for my password to be sent to me it says “Account locked out”.</p>

<p>Sounds like the application spike got her. Bad luck.</p>

<p>no problem. i just logged in, and it says "admission decision is not available, check back on March 24 8:00 am.</p>

<p>OP–it sounds as if they gave you advance warning because of your close connection with the school. Condolences! Your D may still be admitted and she should inform them of any new honors or achievements. Then she needs to consider her other choices. Grinnell seems to be working very hard to increase diversity and males have an edge at LACs now.</p>

<p>WOW - I’m so sorry to hear that. I can’t imagine what they would gain, marginally, by admitting some other student on the cusp rather than your D. This sounds like one of those Stanford, what the ****?! stories (see WordWorld) not an LAC. They did have a huge spike in applicatoins, but I wouldn’t think that would account for waitlisting your D with her stats and connections. Again, my condolences.</p>

<p>Just some information from research I did on this a few years ago (getting in from a waitlist I mean).</p>

<p>First, find out who the admissions officer dealing with you child is. Colleges give this information out pretty easily. Have everything you do directed to this person. The way is works at most schools is that after they find out how many waitlist spots they have the admissions committee gets together and the admissions officer who fights the hardest for their candidate usually wins. The idea of who is where on the list is pretty much thrown out (you still have to be pretty high up but it is not ordinal). But they don’t want to be embarressed for fighting for somebody and then having them not come. You must absolutely convince them you will come if accepted no matter what.</p>

<p>Have the college contact person from your Ds high school directly call the admissions officer and extoll your daughter. This doesn’t usually work with parents, but admissions officers know they need to keep very good relationships with college contact people, that is their life’s blood. As the contact person to get as much information as possible, and get as much information as you can to that person.</p>

<p>Choose one waitlist school and write a letter about why this is your absolute first choice and you really, really want to go there. Also put in your most recent accomplishments, but the most important thing is to show passion. Address it directly to the admissions officer handling your child. At the end of the letter state, “I will absolutely come to Grinnell is I am accepted. It is my first choice in all circumstances.”</p>

<p>Trickier things,</p>

<p>Make a second visit to Grinnell to show how passionate you are. This can sometimes though annoy the admissions office.</p>

<p>Call Grinnell and say you are willing to pay the full cost if you have to. Grinnell will write back and inform you that they are need blind college and this makes no difference, but it helps show how passionate you are about going.</p>

<p>Good luck</p>

<p>CenterUSdad–I don’t know, but I would think OP’s D would have applied EA if they didn’t need FA. A few years ago, a girl with absolutely steller stats and everything else was waitlisted at Grinnell and another school at which her parents were alums, donors and active supporters. Her parents were stunned. she never made it off those waitlists but she attended the wonderful women’s college where she was accepted. It turned out to be a fabulous match for her.</p>

<p>Thanks for all your support. She did not apply ED because a friend’s son did and did not get a merit award, and we didn’t want to take that chance. That said, it has still been tough. She has been accepted at schools that are traditionally tougher to get into than Grinnell, but she really wanted to be with her sibling and go to where her parents went. We will be looking at the options, but everything leading up to this was only positive. We even had a personal visit from a development officer. Oh well, onward and upward!</p>

<p>Well, that does sound strange OP, that you had a personal visit from a development officer and then a waitlist! I’m so glad your D has other good options. It could be that there is some “reason” she needs to be at her “own” school. In the example I cited above, I think the excellent school the student did get into probably turned out to be a better fit for her and one she may not have chosen if she’d had the other options. Sometimes the universe is looking out for us.</p>

<p>My daughter applied ED and got a fairly substantial merit award. I questioned this before she applied and the admissions office said that ED and RD would get the same merit offers. I think Grinnell is a school that looks at the big picture and with only space for about 400 needs to carefully balance their classes. Who knows what they were looking for and how many others had a similar story to your daughter’s. I am so sorry though - this whole process is very stressful and not transparent at all, which just leaves us lots of speculation. Good luck to her and you.</p>

<p>This year sounds like it was ridiculous. So many more apps for the same small class. They do work to balance the class and we’ll never know whether they got 50 apps from fabulous girls from Chicago or whatever. They want students from 50 states and many countries and actors, musicians, athletes, on and on. They can’t admit every incredible applicant.</p>

<p>waitlisted</p>

<p>I was waitlisted, too and don’t really know what to send as additional materials. Any advice on that, please? I am an international so I have no idea what is the kind of things you send.</p>

<p>I’m sorry your D got waitlisted. She must be disappointed, even though she has other excellent offers. It still stings.</p>

<p>For the benefit of future applicants, we too called the admissions office to find out if applying ED would impact S’s eligibility for merit and financial aid. They were very transparent - we were told that he would get the same financial package no matter when he applied, so if Grinnell was his first choice, he should definitely apply ED. </p>

<p>Likewise, D is attending a school at which she is a legacy: The admissions office there made it clear that if she didn’t apply ED, they would assume it was not her first choice and that her chances of admission would be comparable to those of all students applying RD. Don’t know if this is Grinnell’s policy, either implicitly or explicitly, but given how transparent they are, future legacy applicants should ask directly. </p>

<p>Obviously, this is a problem for those who need to compare financial aid packages to make a decision (and Grinnell has been know to match better offers at comparable schools in the past) - but it is also possible in the application to indicate that Grinnell would be the applicant’s first choice but for financial reasons, ED wasn’t an option.</p>

<p>Got waitlisted, too. International from an odd country here.</p>