@Chembiodad I am glad you are rooting for Oberlin. I’m thrilled with the campus and the town and love how much my daughter has grown in a few months through her experiences there. The Google searches you reference are also sometimes misleading and don’t represent what is actually going on at Oberlin, which was my point. I’m sure you can appreciate that so I want to suggest that others listen to actual Oberlin parents about the environment.
You mentioned that with Oberlin being a liberal campus (which most LAC are) that it must be uncomfortable on campus given that Ohio is a red state. I can tell you that it’s not an issue at all for my daughter or any of her friends. They understand that not everyone has the same political opinions and aren’t threatened by that. We visited Hamilton (which my daughter loved and was her second choice school) and definitely saw Trump signs in the area but I’m guessing it’s not making the campus uncomfortable for your daughters.
@LMC9902, Great to hear as both of our DD’s were accepted to Oberlin and the merit scholarships they received were really hard to pass up!
I would also suggest that kids read the student comments on College Niche as our DD’s found them to be very insightful.
Nope, all DD’s notice are the rainbow flags along College Hill Road which extends into the village of Clinton - like most LAC students their life generally revolves around campus.
@Chembiodad LOL exactly - life pretty much begins and ends on campus. In fact for my daughter it begins and ends in her first year dorm where she spends a LOT of time very happily. She is desperate to get back there actually because they are in Winter Term right now and she decided to do a writing project at home and didn’t realize how long it would feel being away from her Obie home for six weeks, especially now that her high school friends are all back at college.
I agree that comments on College Niche are good and for Oberlin I would also suggest checking out the student blogs on the website too. No school is going to be perfect for everyone but the more students can hear from those currently on campus the better.
@Chembiodad Based on what’s happened in prior years, Pomona probably won’t disclose the number of ED apps until late February. The total number of applicants being “over 10,000” was just mentioned in the video so that’s all the info I know of so far.
@Corinthian, makes sense. Hamilton’s was buried in a student article in campus newspaper - no PR from adcoms as those usually come out at time of RD in March. Impressive results all around, and scary results for future applicants as I have a HS Class of 2022 still to go.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: My goodness, has everyone forgotten the rule about no political discussion? I had to delete a bunch of posts. Please don’t make the moderators’ job harder than it has to be.
Hamilton’s overall increase in overall apps at 10% is impressive. The whopping 70% increase in ED apps though is driven in large part because last year ED apps took a big dip. This year it has course corrected, then add Questbridge and that’s a majority of the increase. Overall a good story though.
In our corner of the NYC metro area, big sports does seem to be a big draw, at least with my daughter’s friends.
At our public high school, very few kids apply to LACs, with the exception being LACs with Engineering and/or Business - we get kids applying to schools like Richmond and Bucknell, but not many apply to the more typical LACs.
There are some exceptions to the exception though: there seems to be no love for Lafayette or Union College at our high school, which I don’t understand. They’re both great schools.
Like @Chembiodad, I see a lot of kids interested in USC(University Of South Carolina ) Clemson too. Villanova, Tulane, Lehigh, and Boston College also seem to be hot in our neck of the woods.
@Chembiodad I stand corrected. I may have been looking at only an ED1 number. But @merc just corrected an ED number on another thread too. Nonetheless- a nice increase
@wisteria100, Yes @merc corrected the ED I percentage increase as 63% compared to the 70% I had noted.
While there was the huge increase in ED I app’s, 647 as compared to 396 last year, and a commensurate drop in acceptance rate, 29% vs 44% last year, they also accepted 18 more students, totaling 191 ED I students.
now, we go to ED II. If they also had an increase in ED II applications (I’ll assume 300 total ED applications or an increase of 34%) and they accept a similar 10% more students, totaling 78 ED II students, than there are 204 spots remaining for RD.
so, assuming there are 204 spots remaining for RD (482 students minus 191 accepted from ED I and 87 accepted from ED II) and there is a RD yield of 21%, that means an RD Acceptance Rate of 16% based on 971 RD acceptances from the 5960 RD applicants (all 6,238 applicants less the 191 ED I and 87 ED II assumed already accepted).
I think I got the math right.
question is whether they assume the RD Yield is higher, which will reduce the RD Acceptance Rate.
I recall Bowdoin posted a similar increase in ED I applications. It’s getting scary out there, and I have a DD in the HS Class of 2022 to go.
@WalknOnEggShells, We didn’t see Tulane in our area of MYC Metro, but yes for all others. Also Delaware is very popular as are the traditionally popular Penn State, UMD, and UVM.
Early apps increased a lot this year at a number of selective colleges, in the range of 10-15% for the ones I looked at while back. I’m not sure that’s much of an indication of hotness as much as reflecting a combination of increase in apps generally as kids apply to more schools and some strategy shifting to the early round. But I’m just speculating.
@evergreen5, except college attendance is dropping across the country. So while yes more students are applying to a smaller pool of more selective schools and are applying to more of them which accounts for the 10-15% increase, I don’t believe a 50% increase in ED applications isn’t also correlated to a school’s hotness.
^Probably, but - and this may seem a little silly, but I don’t think it is - in the case of Hamilton, I wonder whether the hit show has added a little name recognition to the pot, putting it on the map of kids who may not have known about it before. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) My kid definitely took notice when she found out there was such a college and that indeed it was a good one, to boot.
@evergreen5, maybe some and the same can be said for Wesleyan, but both have also been ranked as a top-20 school by USNWR since it started in 1983. That said, I definitely think some of the students at both schools can rap the Hamilton musical songs.
I think its more likely a combination of;
greater access to information for all,
Hamilton now being one of only ~40 universities and colleges in the country that are both need blind and meet 100% of demonstrated need,
and the perception that these highly selective LAC’s have a uniquely smart and caring student population and faculty.
I also think that Hamilton is one of those schools that has been very clear about wanting the ED love. DD is applying there, and her GC told her that Hamilton was a “likely” for her for ED, and a low “reach” for RD (she’s a legacy, which also comes into play). It’s a similar dynamic for Wesleyan, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Barnard… I think that kids are getting the message that if they want to go to one of these schools then they should apply ED. Gone are the days of using ED for your Hail Mary far-reach lottery schools and then waiting out the rest in RD, especially if you have a lot of LACs on your list. My DD felt a lot of pressure to determine a 1st choice early on, “show a lot of interest” in the Fall and apply ED to one of her “low-reach” or “match” schools.
“only ~40 universities and colleges in the country that are both need blind and meet 100% of demonstrated need”
A school’s being need-blind or need-aware should be irrelevant to applicants, affecting only the chance of admission, not how much you like the school. Meeting full need is what’s important.
) Clemson too. Villanova, Tulane, Lehigh, and Boston College also seem to be hot in our neck of the woods.