Ditto.
So, that Pandoraâs Box you did not want to open? Itâs open. Please close it.
There is an entire thread devoted to yield protection. Feel free to discuss the issue there, but move on from the topic here.
To play Devils Advocate: isnât there some truth to this? If you have a high stats kid who is academically qualified to get into these top 25-40 schools, doesnât applying to more of them increase their chances of getting accepted into one of them?
Lots of people do care what their neighbors think. Iâm not arguing that you canât get an excellent education at a state directional school vs. an elite college. However, both a Timex and a Rolex can tell you that itâs five past four, people are still buying a lot of Rolexes.
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To guarantee admission, you just need to apply to one that âguaranteesâ admission for someone with your stats.
But these kids are not doing thatâŠif they did that, they can apply to 6 or 8 or 10 or whatever in the top 10, 15, 20- because theyâd have a safety valve.
Balance, My hat is off to you for planning ahead, saving, and giving your daughter a fiscal head start. And kudos to your daughter working hard and making the most of it.
To clarify my point. A thousand percent that all kids need slam dunk safety. Whatever the motivation for getting into an elite school, applying to more increases your chances.
beebee Our son applied to seven MechE programs, including CWRU. So far, he has been accepted by five including CWRU and much higher ranked Purdue, postponed by UofM, and CMU does not send notifications until April. He has attended admitted student events at Purdue and Case, and if he had to decide today heâd probably go to Cleveland.
He set clear guidelines for his list in terms of distance from home, available majors, rankings, etc. To a large degree, his list was informed by conversations with alumni and hiring managers rather than college guides. His list included private and public, large and small, but all except his extreme reach were good fits for his academic record. His only sop to the admissions madness of the last couple years was that he applied to two safeties (if there is such a thing, anymore), rather than just one. I tell this story just to drive home that students do not need to apply to 20 schools to ensure they have good options.
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Just because you applied to 15 low admit schools it doesnât mean you didnât apply to say, your state school.
I think applying to schools solely on rank is idiotic but these students can make a thoughtful list based on their stats/interests/finances and end up with a very tough list.
We talk about the important of fit all the time here yet what Iâm hearing on this thread is âI know you love Williams but your State School will be just the same.â
That isnât what I am reading. What I am seeing is that there are more than x number of schools at which your kid will do well. Not all of them are Top X. If you donât get into a Top X, find another school at which you will do well. Can create problems though if you have a Top x or bust view. And that type of view is common on this site. Not saying everyone here has it but many do (much higher percentage than the population at large).
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Nobody has said this. Nobody.
But if you love Williams, you should take a look at Colby, Beloit, Lawrence, Bard, Sarah Lawrence, Middlebury, Rhodes, Earlham. And if every other kid in your HS is also applying to Williams, you should add Reed, Whitman, Santa Clara, Muhlenberg just to make sure youâve kicked the tires on some places that are either somewhat easier or a LOT easier to get into than Williams.
If you insist that ONLY Williams has what you need, either socially, academically, athletically, or otherwise, itâs time to revisit your list of âmust haveâsâ and recognize some of the ânice to haveâsâ.
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To a certain extent, I suppose. But you are reaching diminishing returns at some point. And if your kid (or you) are bent on top X or bust, you likely need to go down that path. I think what some people here are saying though is thatâs a path you donât need to go down to find success. But if that is the path you want to take, it doesnât make a lot of sense to me to complain about the number of apps it takes to follow it.
So you support picking colleges to be able to brag to the neighbors? Buying the bumper sticker if you will? People will do what they want with their money but seems like at odd thing to admit as a driving factor. Opposite of what is typically talked about here in terms of benefits of Top x school.
Personally, I donât support it. My Mazda does a great job getting me to the grocery store and Iâm sure my neighbors Land Rover does too. Itâs comments that you are baffled that people care about prestige or what their neighbors think than
CĂ©line, Fendi, Dior, Givenchy, [Zenith] (https://www.theceomagazine.com/lifestyle/watches/contemporary-performance-interview-with-zeniths-julien-tornare/), Louis Vuitton and MoĂ«t Hennessy â theyâre just some of the planetâs finest labels tucked under the French umbrella LVMH wouldnât be worth 27 billion dollars.
I am sorry. The way I put it was too extreme. I didnât make my point well. I think that those lists are not exactly Williams or bust, and most people will say (I think) that Colby or Reed are also no ones safeties. I think kids DO see that those are good alternatives and that is why they are applying to so many schools.
There are some other challenges these kids face in forming a balanced list (I am not saying it is not possible and we certainly tried to build ours from the bottom up). The data from Naviance suggests that a top 10% student from our school is much more likely to get into a NESCAC than Skidmore or Dickinson for example, where all have gotten WL in the last 5 years. So even though schools were suggested and a couple checked the boxes so made the list, it did not give comfort.
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I totally get vanity in terms of fashion, clothing, cars, etc. But on this site, when Top X schools are discussed (and they are discussedâŠa lotâŠin many different waysâŠsame cast of charactersâŠmaking the same postsâŠ), you just donât hear people say I paid for X school for the bumper sticker or to impress my neighbors.
@saillakeerie I think if people really treated/regarded elite colleges the way truly elite consumer goods are regarded - there wouldnât be nearly the same sturm und drang, or at least the demands for empathy.
They would hopefully understand that there are waitlists for certain Hermes bags, Bugatti cars, Blancpain watchesâŠand many wonât ever get one, even if they have enough money to buy it because some of those consumer goods are deliberately produced in quantities too small to ever meet full demand.
If you want to look at colleges as an elite consumer good, then donât ask for sympathy/empathy when you arenât allowed to buy that elite consumer good. Just like it isnât solely about if you have enough money to purchase truly elite purses, watches and cars - it isnât solely about whether you have the stats/scores/ECs to get admitted to truly âeliteâ colleges.
If you want to swim in an elite sellerâs market - you need to accept the elite sellerâs market rules, instead of moaning that those rules are so unfair and make your desire for prestige markedly more uncertain.
I appreciate those willing to admit that the choice of elite schools is due to vanity. I always appreciate honesty. I donât feel like vanity needs to be coddled.
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Hmmm⊠OK.
Here are the indisputable facts:
1.) colleges do yield management (to the benefit of colleges) ⊠some very aggressively
2.) more students apply to more colleges ⊠I am not going to judge who does what and why (but it is evident that and why it is happening)
3.) the admission process has become increasingly difficult, taxing and unpredictable and making the students more anxious ⊠(IMO, it is not healthy or good business in the long-term but again, that is my opinion)
4.) everyone crafts their own strategy, pursues their own paths and that is best to be respected (and not judged) ⊠please consider every student has a different HS, background, issues, goals, etc.
There are those who side more with colleges and others who side more with the challenges student applicants face. And many are in-between or have no position. That is fine and let us leave it at that.
I wish all applicants the best of luck. They need and deserve our support.
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Number 4 is not an âindisputable factâ. CC is voluntary- none of us show up at your dinner table and demand to know what collegeâs your kid applied to. People post here, asking for help, and sometimes get hostile when other posters point out the flaws in thinking, missing logic, magical thinking, etc. Thatâs not judging- thatâs being asked for help, and providing it.
Fact- there are colleges which dole out 5 and 10K merit awards. Thatâs a decision theyâve made to maximize their aid budget, given other constraints. Iâm not being judgmental when a parent posts here that they donât qualify for need based aid but will need $30K to make that college affordable. Guess what- you wonât get 30K. That type of award doesnât exist at this particular college. Parent gets mad that I"m being judgmental. This is a lose-lose situation!
Fact- there are colleges that reject 92% of their applicants. It would be nice to fantasize that your kid is one of the 8%. And maybe that will happen. But this is not a viable plan. And applying to 10 other â92% rejectionâ colleges doesnât boost your kids chances to get admitted to a single one of them. You need a better plan.
Just some âindisputable factsâ. Agree that we can all wish applicants the best of luck.
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âAnd applying to 10 other â92% rejectionâ colleges doesnât boost your kids chances to get admitted to a single one of them.â
Are you sure about this? I think that applying to multiple â92% rejectionâ colleges must increase your chances to being admitted to at least one of them, unless there is 100% correlation among their admissions decisions.
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If you have a B+ average and are a decent tennis player who is on the student council and your GC states that your classes were not the âhighest rigorâ at your school, you could apply to all 20 of the top 20 colleges and still get into none of them. Applying to more does not increase your chances.
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Iâm not sure I would agree your âfactsâ are indisputable.
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I would say all colleges do enrollment management, and would wholeheartedly agree they do it for their own benefitâŠthey are a business whose first and foremost objective to to ensure the business survives and thrives. Not sure I would categorize any school as being more or less aggressive in enrollment management the same way you might.
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The fact is that the last two years has seen fewer unique students applicants in college admissions. For the most part, this is due to community colleges losing applicants. There has been (statistically) a slight increase in the overall number of applications being submitted by individual applicants (6.8 applications on average versus the previous 6.3). The raw number of students applying to 20 or more schools may be increasing but it is a still a very small percentage of college applicants.
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College admission has not become increasingly difficult, taxing and unpredictable - elite college admission has become more selective (or rejective, if some prefer) as more highly qualified students cast a wider range geographically and as populations have increased (but the seats available at elite college have remained basically stagnant). Student and parent fixation on a relatively small number of schools does lead to a lot of disappointment and frustration - self-inflicted, in my opinion, as the selectivity/rejectivity of these schools is not unknown.
Most colleges in the US accept the majority of applications they received. Less than 100 schools accept fewer than 50% of their applicants. And only 50 or so schools accept fewer than 30%.
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I do wholeheartedly agree that everyone crafts their own strategy and pursues their own path (as is their right and privilege).
I donât agree those strategies need to be blindly supported or left uncommented upon in regards to their probability or efficacy if those strategies are brought to a public forum with requests for assistance/reflection.
Personally, I wouldnât say I have seen many people on this site âside more with collegesâ. I would say there are optimistic, pessimistic and realistic people on this site who look at college admission through those (and other) lenses.
I believe 100% of all people on this board want students to get admitted to schools they can afford to attend, that will meet their needs as scholars, and that the student can be happy in attending.
I, too, wish all applicants the best of luck.
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