My older D graduated from a low performing school as well, having never written a real paper despite taking all gifted or AP English coursework. She wanted to apply to Williams, but if not for special programs/courses she sought outside the district, she would not have had a paper to submit for their supplemental. She took an “honors” course where the teacher gave out As if the kids simply turned in the assignment. She is currently on a gap year study abroad program and will start college next year, but I have a lot of concerns about how much she’ll struggle with such poor preparation, regardless of where she attends.
The gap between high performing and low performing schools is widening, with schools like the one in our district concerned mainly with graduation rates and churning out diplomas to kids who can barely read but managed to show up often enough to earn a D average. My D ended up largely carving out her own educational path despite the lack of opportunities at her high school, but we would have figured something else out if we had it to do over.
It could depend on how many unique recommendations and other items the colleges ask from counselors and teachers (e.g. 10 colleges that each want a counselor recommendation on a different form with different questions is more work than 10 colleges that want one on a shared form, and the latter is more work than any number of colleges that do not use counselor recommendations).
If you look at the demographics of the kids in the T20 you will see that there was a huge shift. I am not saying those kids are not deserving but Tripp and Buffy are definitely being squeezed out.
The report also mentions that the majority of students using the common app are from top quintile income. Top quintile income kids only represent a minority of the total number of persons attending 4-year colleges, but they are the majority of kids using the common app. This overrpresentation of wealthy kids could lead to overestimating the actual average or median number of college applications per student, rather than underestimating as suggested in other posts. However, other sources that do not limit to just common app generally report similar numbers, with mean or median in the range of roughly 5 applications per student.
College is not that exclusive, since many open admission community colleges and not-very-selective four year colleges exist. What can make college more exclusive than high school is that it generally costs more, and a larger portion of students is out of reasonable commute range to colleges that (a) they can get admitted to, and (b) have what they want to study (versus high schools which are more numerous and where academic programs have fewer options and specializations).
Of course, specific colleges can be much more exclusive. Going CSUDH is nowhere near as exclusive admission-wise as going to UCLA, for example.
The problem is GCs are felling just as lost and anxious. There are schools where no one with average and above stats even got waitlisted in the last 5 years that they refused to label as a likely for anyone.
Also, I don’t see how its extra work for them. Don’t they just push a button and submit the same files for all the schools?
If all of the colleges share the same counselor recommendation form. If not, that can be additional work for each unique recommendation form.
For example, the SUNY system in New York uses counselor recommendations on its own form. So a student applying to one or more SUNYs and one or more Common Application colleges that use counselor recommendations asks the counselor to write two recommendations.
It will take longer than 4 years but I believe it will be the merit based model.
In 1997 Florida started a merit base scholarship , Bright Futures,
Today a 1330 SAT or a 1210 SAT gets a student 100% or 75% tuition paid for by state.
In 1997 the requirements were 1250 and 970 SAT scores
Today Florida has the #1 rated University system Top to Bottom rated by USNWR
UF top 5 Public FSU Top 20 USF top 50
I only mention rankings to show the trajectory of the Universities.
From 2000
Florida was able to do this by making an effort with merit dollars to keep their brightest students instate.
Today kids that would of went to UNC, UVA, UM are staying instate at UF and Penn State, PITT, Georgia or choosing FSU.
Georgia has similar merit programs with Hope and Zell Miller and UG has been moving up the rankings as well
University of Alabama has also made a decision to bring in high stat students with Merit. We will see how this works out over the long term as well
“The real problem is there aren’t enough seats or affordability at the good schools.”
This is absolutely untrue. There are many problems in Higher Ed but not having enough seats is not one of them.
It astonishes me sometimes that people would rather take out a second mortgage to send their kid to a third tier private college, than send that same kid to a top flight public university. Hey, your money, your kid, your choice. But c’mon.
Depends on how you define “good” schools. For some people, “good” is defined by selectivity and exclusivity, so a school that is larger to accommodate more students while being less selective is less “good”. If you use that definition of “good”, then there will always be deserving students on the outside looking in, since that definition of “good” creates an artificial scarcity of “good” schools. Note that this implied definition of “good” seems to be common in the thread about TJHSST’s admission practices and lawsuits relating to them.
The population of the US has increased substantially over the last 30 years. The number of seats at top 50 colleges ( or whatever number) has increased just incrementally. So yes, there are not enough seats compared to the past
Or even for many in-state students in some states. For example, Pennsylvania public universities (both PASSHE and CSHE) in-state financial aid is not very good, based on their net price calculators, the mountainous terrain outside the big cities means that many students outside the big cities have limited commute options, and some commonly desired majors are offered at relatively few campuses.
Very very true and for our case the only public school to have the program my daughter is seeking is UMD which is very competitive and extremely large. We basically had to look outside of the state and then state and private tuition start to balance out both being expensive. The private also tend to grant larger merit then the public from what we are seeing.
Balance, Congratulations to your daughter! Isn’t it great to have options?
Right now, my son’s top two contenders are CWRU and Purdue. He attended an admitted student’s event at CWRU a couple weeks ago with his mother, and his favorable impression of the school was only reinforced. My wife - who did not like the idea of him attending a #30 something school when he was admitted to a top 10 engineering program before the trip - came away liking both the school and its neighborhood in Cleveland. They are going to an admitted student event at Purdue next week, and then I think he will make his decision. These are the only schools he will visit twice.
tsbna, Our son did not apply to any schools we could not afford, and he received substantial merit aid from two of the schools to which he was accepted, including the one he will likely attend.
Realistically, I think students (and their parents) are going to have to expand their definition of a “good” school or risk disappointment. I’ve seen thinking change in my own friend group as we have become aware of just how competitive admission has become at highly ranked schools. While most of us attended selective LACs, Ivy League schools or MIT, the majority of our kids will not (or have not) - even though, in many cases, they have better stats than we ever did.
But concurrently, the quality of the non top 50 has increased dramatically. The competition for tenure track jobs in many disciplines means that even relatively small and obscure colleges can attract fantastic professors. I remember when Northeastern was the safety school for Boston kids who couldn’t get into anything better, or specifically wanted their nursing program. Now I hear about kids getting shut out of Northeastern from all over the country. Ditto American, NYU, GW, Pitt. These colleges have ramped up to meet the demand.
On the public side- Georgia Tech, VA Tech, UMD, Binghamton, Missouri M&T- these colleges were non-entities nationally when we were growing up (except for Georgia Tech which was always fabulous, I don’t know why it’s reach was only regional back in the day).
Affordability- for sure. THAT’s a problem. But not enough seats? That leads to MORE expansion, leading to more costs built into the system (capital costs, human capital costs). Anyone who thinks we need MORE colleges or bigger colleges is begging for higher price tags to get us there.