Balance, Thing #1 is leaning toward Case Western because 1. he was admitted straight into MechE (unlike Purdue), 2. he is interested in other fields like BioChem and Case does not lock students into a major until late junior year, and they encourage double majors or minors, 3. he likes the smaller school, and 4. he likes the surrounding neighborhood. If he decides, instead, to go with a large state school it will be Purdue.
MomofBoiler rocks and is a fount of information. I hope Purdue is sending her brown envelopes full of $20s.
Limiting the total number of applications hurts the âaverage excellent high stat studentâ because they are likely to get yield protected out of safeties. That was the biggest shock we had this year preparing our list. We had, what we thought were a couple of good safeties and meets in the mix, places where his scores were well above the 75% percentile but where he would be happy to attend. Then our counselor told us that the safeties and meets were difficult to count on because he had such high stats. They automatically think he is headed to a T10. In the meantime, the T10s are impossible to rely on. He can get into all the T10s he applied to or none. So, we had to add more meets and more safeties. It is a crazy cycle and it is only working to the benefit of colleges - not students.
Colleges that practice yield protection or play level of applicantâs interest games do not want to be âsafetiesâ, and should not be treated as such by applicants.
But high stats students should be able to find actual safeties with automatic admission or scholarship criteria that they meet. They just need to avoid screening them out as being âbeneathâ them.
This was exactly our experience 3 years ago and why my daughter added another 6 schools to her list. Hoping for a much better outcome this year but we are certainly waiting on pins and needles for the last 12 decisions to come in.
Hmmmm⊠I will only say that it would take a lot of thinking and soul-searching by the various stakeholders to make the admission process more fair and balanced and a win-win for all ( colleges <====> students). Wishing the students the best of luck! Hope it works out beyond their wildest imagination for most. They need our support and encouragement through these incredibly anxiety inducing times.
Another contributing factor to the increased number of individual applications may be that many colleges have pushed their various decision dates out farther into late winter/early spring. Having to wait so long for decisions causes stress, anxiety and second-guessing about how many applications they submitted. Itâs March, and I read on here every day how some of your kids are still waiting on 10+ decisions - thatâs unreal!
I noticed a big difference between my D13 who had 6 out of 7 EA decisions by Christmas and D21 who only had 4 out of 9 EA decisions by Christmas (they applied to 5 of the same schools). Anxiety over waiting for the rest of her decisions, influenced D21 to submit 2 more last minute applications, which she probably wouldnât have submitted if she had more decisions in her pocket (assuming they were favorable). Colleges should work to get EA out before Christmas (and RD out by the end of Feb). Many EAâs are due by October - students shouldnât have to wait until Jan/Feb for the answer. UGA, with 40,000++ applications manages to have a quick turnaround on EA decisions (although admittedly, with a lot of deferrals).
I also wish more colleges would add an early limited rolling period for kids who are ready to submit in Aug/Sept. so they can get quick decisions.
We know multiple students who applied ED, deferred to EA, and now waitlisted, AKA âeternally waiting.â They are, of course, choosing from acceptances, but Iâd say at least a few are hoping to come off the WL at the top choice school. Since some applied in August and WL decisions can go into July, itâs almost a whole year of uncertainty.
Colleges can hire more external readers to deal with the influx of apps, and many have.
One reason many have also pushed their EA decision date out is because they donât want to accept students who get accepted to their ED school in mid-Dec. I expect more EA schools will go to a post-holiday notification date, regardless of the number of apps they are seeing.
This definitely makes rolling admission schools even more attractive IMO. There are a few hundred of those AFAIK, hopefully more students start utilizing them.
A school like Caltech canât just hire more external readers and expects them to be able to do their jobs the way Caltech requires. Few private elites (other than Caltech/MIT and a few other colleges with concurrent ED/EA decisions) and no public elites(?) announce their EA decisions in December anyway.
Maybe for some, but big schools like UGA, UTK & U of SC are managing to turn around EA applications in a timely fashion - and each of these has seen a significant uptick in application numbers.
Iâm not familiar with how UGA, UTK, or U of SC evaluate their applicants. If their evaluation is more âautomatedâ (i.e. less âholisticâ) then theyâre less likely to be affected by greater number of applications.
Iâm not familiar with their processes either but both girls applied to UGA & U of SC and in the 7-year span between them, these schools are still managing to get the decisions out within the same timeframe, despite the uptick in application numbers each year. They also both applied to Elon (which I would say is more on the holistic review side) and the decisions came out around the same time, 7 years later.
If it needs to be a decision between getting the decisions out quicker and allowing for a holistic review - Iâd be interested to see what side most high school seniors (and parents) would lean towards.
I would expect that the kids (and parents) with better stats/face appeal of application would prefer quicker decisions and those with the better holistic app would prefer the holistic review.
I think they could if they made it a priority. If some schools with holisitic admissions and large application numbers can release decisions in December, then others can figure it out as well. I agree with Mwfan1921 that it benefits the schools to wait to release decisions in January, so thatâs why they wait. They are not thinking about what is best for the student applicant when they are deciding these dates.
MIT has a very high yield rate and can release their decisions whenever. If I had to pick a school that would soon change their EA release date from December to January, Iâd pick Case Western. My kid appreciated hearing from them in December. On the other hand, I can understand that trying to run an admissions officeâand land a class that meets the budgetary projections with a 14% yield rateâmust be really challenging.
My point is that few elite schools (private or public) release their EA decisions in December anyway. I donât consider an EA program by schools like CWRU that offer both ED and EA very meaningful (they only keep their EA programs to attract more applicants, IMO). The only reason these schools announce their EA decisions in December is because they want to give the appearance that they give their EA applicants the same treatment.
Iâm in the trenches this year with a S22. Some additional thoughts I have -
17-18 year old kids in our midwest/southern area know of about 15 good colleges - so smart kids tend to apply to one or more of Notre Dame, Purdue, Vanderbilt, WashU, Wake Forest, Richmond, MIchigan, Tulane, Georgia Tech. et alâŠWealthy kids with lower stats head to Ole Miss, SC, Auburn and Alabama. The tippy top kids will try for an ivy.
What I find is kids and parents donât think outside of the box. So this list of popular colleges (in our town of 1m) is likely replicated in a dozen other cities. The end result is there are increasing apps to a certain group of colleges, while other schools are virtually ignored. Parents are stuck in 1985 thinking many of those above schools are safety or target for your 4.0/32-34 ACT smart suburban kid. However, we see in the last few cycles that is not the case.
So the lesson learned from droves of kids getting deferred at Northeastern and others, should be that kids need to expand their list beyond the list that will impress the other moms at book club/bible study/cocktail party.
I do think the ânext tierâ of colleges will benefit from this yearâs results. Some kids will realize, everyone is getting deferred at Tulane so whats another âgoodâ school that is not on everyoneâs radar.
For my student he applied to 15 and is 13/13 right now. He didnât do any T20 schools but included about 5-6 schools in the 30-45% acceptance rate and then a number of easier to get in. But we chose carefully, visited all in person once if not twice, and his essays were very personalized. There is certainly a part of me that wishes we would have done more reach schools but we were looking for unicorns - selective schools that give merit.
If you are looking at high stats kids or any kid, I think you want them to be realistic and not pessimistic. Iâm 100% on board with stressing the importance of having an affordable option thatâs a slam dunk acceptance.
I would say to the high stats kid That you are a strong candidate for many of the schools on this list, and you should be optimistic about your chances. However, you also need to be realistic about your chances. In certain schools, there are more qualified candidates than spots available. Therefore, there is a possibility that you donât get into any of these schools on your list. That is why it is so important to have safety.
Once they have there one or, better yet, two safeties and a few matches. Go for it, put your best foot forward with the top schools you want to get into. If you donât get into one of them, you have a great option.
Maybe Iâm a sucker for the power of positive thinking. You donât want them to be like I was going to visit Yale and MIT, but I might not get in, and I donât want to get my hopes up. The kid will be disappointed if he doesnât get into any of his top choice schools, whether he was expecting it or not.
So UGA (very difficult to get into), Bama and Auburn are filled with spoiled, lazy dopes?? CMON - even the wealthy donât want to spend $300K+ on college - and thatâs why those schools attract people - wealthy and otherwise. Illinois is losing so many of their top students to Bama - not because the kids are lazy - but because if you can spend $75K over four years, why wouldnât you - at least if youâre those families.
I live in a very wealthy county in a very good school district in TN - and I think more go to Bama than UTK - or itâs close. And UGA is very difficult to get into - moreso than your solid MW publics (except for certain disciplines) - Iâm talking vs. a Illinois, Purdue, Wisconsin, etc.
If your son has gotten in everywhere - good for him - well hopefully he applied to schools he loved - and if he wanted to challenge himself, perhaps he didnât apply high enough. I wanted my kids to get rejected - and they had to apply to schools like Rice and Vandy to make that happen.
I certainly was not saying that kids going to any state schools are lazy dopes. That is a pretty extreme comment. There are just lots of kids who love sports around here (boys and girls) who want to go to southern state schools. Those kids would have zero interest in applying to Haverford or Bowdoin. My only point was kids apply to Ole Miss, Auburn, Alabama because lots of their friends are also going there. And many of these kids are paying big out-of-state tuition without concern for costs. We had over 30 kids apply to Alabama from our school - every single one got in. I think this is pretty common. I certainly know that Georgia is hard to get into (I should not have lumped that with the others in my original post)- we had a NMF who didnât get in this year. But we also have kids with mid to upper 20âs on ACT who get in.
I think it is great that your child applied to reach schools, and of course, kids should do it! If you donât try you never know. I went to Vandy back in the 80âs when it was much easier to get in - lots of Duke and Ivy rejects headed to Vandy in those days which of course is not the case now at all!