We live in Florida and they were the only state that required test scores for Fall 2021. S21 was suppose to take SAT and ACT Spring 2020 both cancelled.
tried taking over the summer canceled 6 times. 3 each SAT/ACT
He was very frustrated, studying getting ready for test over the summer and they were getting cancelled with less than a weeks notice.
So what to do? We are full pay and UF/FSU instate tuition is about $6500 a year
We had to chased Merit applied over 20 schools and accepted to all except 3 reaches, some were happy to get him at full pay or close to it, while others gave generous merit
He was finally able to take the SAT and ACT in the Fall September and scored high enough to Get accepted at FSU where he is at
He already had some acceptances before finally taking test
Special apps - no fee and donât do an essay⊠Even your elites - WUSTL, Chicago, W&L - are chasing kids with waivers, etc.
Common App - you can apply to 20 - there are enough free schools to apply to (without waivers - just free for all), fee waivers for others, and if they have no essay - so no cost and no extra essay, why not
People read boards like the CC and are seeing - like yesterday - a few 3.9/40 UW with 10 APs and 1500 SATs getting turned down to schools like Florida and realizing - Iâll keep my sights high but I better go low too.
Merit chasing - although everyone doesnât do it effectively. They should really chase affordability vs. merit for merit sake.
Many kids have the fear of god put into them on - maybe not getting in. Truth is, they could keep their 6 or 7 they used to do if they applied to a 100% sure bet - schools that guarantee admission with a 3.0, etc. But kids have egos - and arenât necessarily looking for the right school for themâŠbut the highest ranked schools.
The # of students is down 6% over 10 years yet schools keep admitting more and more - so thatâs all you need to know.
You can tell the schools bursting at the seams - itâs not your U of Maines, your North Dakota or Augusta States of the world.
The system has made it easy and often times inexpensive to apply - and folks have taken advantage.
Even if like @grace27 says and itâs expensive (I think for admissions, we spent $2K on my daughter between app fees, test scores where couldnât self report and CSS)âŠbut she has a scholarship thatâs $3K more than tuition - i.e. they are paying for part of room and board.
So that $2K was an investmentâŠalthough admittedly when she accepted, she did not have that scholarship - she got four or five after acceptance that totaled up to another $25K or so.
Like Field of Dreams - if you build it, we will come. Well it got built - and we comeâŠto ensure we have a hopefully prestigious, hopefully affordable name to call home over the next four years.
I think one more factor impacting this is the increasing number of donut hole kids. Those that canât afford full pay but donât get financial aid. To them cost matters a lot. Merit aid for even the strongest candidates is harder and harder to find because they are increasingly target toward those already getting financial aid or that have some other hook. . When schools assume you should pile on the debt, cost matters. The uncertainty of merit and cost means more appplications.
I see having to test the waters to get merit as a reason to apply to more schools.
If kids have the money, the time, and even extra help, what is the downside to applying to more schools? In a way, it gives them leverage., if yield rates are trending down like with Auburn, then donât colleges as a whole have to accept more kids to reach the same yield?
I suspect at âhotâ schoolsâŠwhich will include most if not all of SEC, they take more for this reason.
Many seem to over enroll. Just like me when my boss asks for my forecast on the first day of the month, I guess. And typically do much better. I am cautious so I wonât miss.
I suspect the same here. Better to rent hotel beds for overflow vs not having enough paying customers to begin with.
This is a fallacy. Schools are targeting a number of enrolled students, not accepted. Now, this may cause some sleepless nights wondering how their yield management model will preform.
Each of the 25 colleges presumably has a yield model that assigns the student a value between 0 and 1 that represents the likelihood of the student matriculating, and therefore how much addition to the class admitting that student makes. For example, if the student is assessed to have a 23% chance of matriculating if admitted, doing so adds 0.23 student to the expected class. At the same college, different students may be given different yield values (stronger students tend to have lower yield values because they have more other attractive admission and scholarship offers; college-offered financial aid and scholarships may influence the yield value; level of interest, even if not used to determine admission, may influence yield value).
A student at the margin of admission probably has a very high yield value, so it may take dozens of overqualified students getting admitted with very low yield values to count for as much of a student to add to the expected class. For example, if a student at the margin has a 50% chance of matriculating, then that student is equivalent to 25 overqualified students who each have a 2% chance of matriculating, in terms of adding to the count of students in the expected class.
I suspect (and hope) that the 20+ applications is a phenomenon that is only present in a very small percentage of graduating seniors. Although there are schools that require no extra essays, supplements, or application fees, those schools are probably the least likely for acceptance because of such high demand. The other schools require school-specific essays and details, and that takes time if theyâre going to be quality submissions. Very few students have the bandwidth to pop out 20 excellent essays that are custom for each school theyâre applying to. The application fees add up as well. I really donât anticipate this becoming a national problem for most seniors; I think itâs going to be for the select few who have the stats and money/willingness to borrow and go anywhere in the country for a particular program.
I think there are several factors at play here. First, the Common App makes it relatively easy to apply to many schools, especially if they do not require supplemental essays. The Common App has been in use for some time, so that cannot explain the recent jump. Second, schools used COVID as an excuse to drop the standardized test requirement, so many students with strong GPAs and ECs, but marginal SATs/ACTs, applied to schools that they would not have if test scores were still required. Third, as college becomes fantastically expensive, people cannot justify spending a fortune to attend a second or third tier university, so more students are chasing highly ranked schools. While applications to top schools are way up, they are down for lessor schools, and many are on the road to bankruptcy. And finally, with COVID many students who were accepted in 2020 took a gap year rather than take Zoom classes, throwing off the admissions numbers for the following year.
My son applied to MechE programs at seven universities, and we thought that was a lot. Because of horror stories from the 2020 application season, he applied to two safeties rather than just one. Rounding out the list were three targets, one slight-reach, and one unrealistic reach. He visited every school on the list, and attended info sessions or spoke with alumni from all but one. In short, he took a far more targeted approach than some students described in this thread. His strategy seems to be paying off. So far, he has been accepted by five, postponed by one, and the last school does not send notifications until April.
I think a lot of students and parents are gun shy after seeing odd results last year. We know a valedictorian that applied to 12 schools, stellar ECs, leadership, etc⊠and got into 1 of 12. It was his safety and he wrapped his head around it and is happy there, but that was a terrifying admissions cycle for his family. It makes me inclined to have my next child apply to more schools next year.
Same thing here. I keep hearing from seniors at my kidsâ high school who are getting waitlisted or offered bridge programs or branch campuses at schools that would have been considered safeties two years ago. Its making me nervous for my junior daughter and wondering if application numbers will continue to increase next year or if things will finally start to level out a bit.
If you put together a comprehensive program - targets, reaches, and safeties - and yes, they can be genuinely sussed out, you can have a fair and complete program - even today.
You can certainly run your desires past the CC crew.
This is a problem and is increasing as many top schools get rid of merit and switch to an pure need base aid program
Personally have many friends in this situation
Both Parents work live in a high cost of living area and donât qualify for need base aid.
So its State School or merit to bring the cost down
Luckily Florida has many great options starting with UF and FSU, plus USF and UCF. Tuition is about $6500 a year and with Bright futures scholarship a SAT score of 1210 gets a 75% tuition scholarship and 1330 100% there are some other requirements as well.
So it is hard to justify OOS Tuition without merit
or privates without merit
My Daughter and your son are on parallel tracks. She applied to MechE at 8 programs all of which she had physically toured. There were a handful more she toured and did not choose to apply. She has been accepted at all 8, most with merit and honors college at the ones for which she was interested. The most surprising aspect of the journey is the constant shifting in how she ranks these schools and where she will finally choose to enroll. Why the constant state of flux? Well, she initially toured all these schools last Summer, so very few students on campus and in many cases she could not go inside buildings (Labs, Dorms, Rec centers). There was a logic to her choices based on the info she had at the time. Then after having made applications she attended targeted virtual sessions gaining more info. Fast forward to now and we have circled back for second round physical tours to most of the schools with the last few to go here shortly. The second round of tours with classes back to normal have allowed her to tour inside buildings, be a part of targeted admitted student functions and most importantly spend hours one on one with current students (coffee talk, lunch and even over nights on some campuses). As she has come to learn, all her choices have great facilities and reputations, but itâs the intangibles that are taking center stage in the decision making process.
For me, I think she would be fine at any of her choices but I am amazed how much she has learned about herself and that makes it all worthwhile.
It has been a very very hard process this year. My daughter had applied to 12 altogether and 11 being EA and one ED2; 5 safety, 3 reach, 4 target. So very weird so far, got into three three safety, deferred by one safety and waitlisted by another. Deferred by one reach and declined by other two and as for Target ED 2 deferred (top choice), 1 EA accepted, 1 declined, another deferred. Ugh
My daughter concentrated on fit above all else (her choice) - she ended up applying to five schools, 4 EA and one ED. Had she not been accepted by her ED school she would have added one additional RD school (her second choice). Three of the EA schools were fairly likely, both in terms of financial and acceptance rates (all above 50% acceptance, one I believe at 70%) so I guess she didnât have a true safety but we were pretty confident sheâd be accepted to at least one of the three. She was accepted to one by December 1 so that was borne out - we donât know about the others since she withdrew the apps after acceptance at her ED school. Overall she had three likelies, 2 true targets and one high target/low reach. Only two of her friends applied to a lot of schools - one out of panic (she was accepted early by an extremely selective school so a lot of wasted effort) and another after being deferred by her ED school. The five apps my D submitted were agonizing; I canât imagine if she had had to do two or three times that number.
