Which schools care about demonstrated interest?

<p>I think all the selective LACs were brutal this year for some demographic groups such as caucasian females.</p>

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<p>S got into Rochester (with big $$) and didn’t interview.</p>

<p>Muhlenberg and Bucknell both said in their info sessions that showing interest, getting in touch with your adcom, emailing a professor were very important.</p>

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<p>Why not the same vehemence aimed at Brown and Wesleyan regarding this specific application?</p>

<p>I detect some East Coast bias…as in, where does a college in St. Louis get off not accepting someone who got into Princeton?! Harrumph!</p>

<p>From the point of view of the universities, admissions decisions are not random at all. Each freshman class is assembled based on institutional needs for that year, which is why I think the decisions often don’t seem consistent year to year and why “crapshoot” has a certain amount of legitimacy as a description. </p>

<p>Admission to top colleges is simply not guaranteed by having all the qualifications and then some. It’s not like admission is the ultimate gold star for a job well done, which every applicant who deserves it receives from every college applied to, including WUSTL.</p>

<p>Thanks for the great input. Here’s a roundup of your very good info so far. Please keep these reports and anecdotes coming. It helps.</p>

<p>Schools who want to see the love:
WashU (*–or, more to the point, want to discern kids that are likely to attend)
Brandeis
American University
U of Rochester (really like interview!)
Hamilton
Syracuse
Bucknell
Lafayette
George Washington U
Emory
Notre Dame
U Chicago
Pomona (SoCal kids need to interview)
Lehigh
Northwestern
Muhlenberg
Emory
Vanderbilt
College of Holy Cross
Oberlin</p>

<p>and then…</p>

<p>Most LACs
Most privates below HYPSM level (to protect yield?)</p>

<p>NOTE:
For those schools who love being shown the love, recommendations include:</p>

<p>Applying ED – shows ultimate devotion
Communicating with admissions rep with or without campus visit</p>

<p>Don’t care about the love:</p>

<p>Stanford
USC
Boston College
UNC-CH
W & M</p>

<p>and of course…</p>

<p>All 8 Ivies!
State Universities</p>

<p>soze, was Rochester a safety, match or reach? That may make a difference. They may also feel he showed the love other ways. They may have realized he’s in a location where an interview is difficult. (They don’t necessarily expect you to trek up to Rochester.) And just because they really want you to interview doesn’t mean that every accepted student will have interviewed - but it does increase your odds - at least according to what they told us.</p>

<p>Re Vanderbilt: I’m not sure it belongs on the list, based on its answer to the CDS question about level of applicant’s interest (the school’s response is that it is “not considered”), and on my recollection of what we were told by adcoms during two campus visits. Like every other school, I’m sure it tries to maximize yield. But I believe that other factors (geographic diversity, for instance) are likely more responsible for why some applicants are waitlisted when others are admitted outright.</p>

<p>@mathmom:
I would say Rochester was a “low match” for him.
He actually visited and took the tour and info session, but didn’t want to interview.
(it was the 4th college in three days we visited).</p>

<p>He did get the t-shirt just for visiting, which brings up another subject: t-shirt distribution. As in who gives out shirts and when.</p>

<p>Here’s our list:</p>

<p>Rochester: free shirt for visiting
Oberlin: free shirt when accepted
WashU. free shirt when enrolling
Wesleyan: no free shirt (yet)</p>

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</p>

<p>What’s a “lukewarm” acceptance?
Are you referring to the FA or did you just not like the wording of the acceptance letter?</p>

<p>The t-shirt list cracked me up. You do not get a Princeton t-shirt when you enroll. We got a car decal. The best t-shirt design was Oberlin’s. As for the lukewarm acceptance from Oberlin, my daughter got an excellent scholarship plus the their dean called her one night. I would have liked to have toured their campus. It sounded very similar to Wesleyan. Someone also mentioned that Muhlenberg requires a lot of attention from their applicants. My daughter just applied there and didn’t even interview and received an excellent scholarship. However, there was no way she was going there since it’s 2 blocks from our house.</p>

<p>@ronib321:
We visited Oberlin and Wes multiple times.
They are a bit similar but Wes’ campus is quite a bit nicer.
The interior of many of Oberlin’s buildings were somewhat rundown and their student center is frankly a dump whilst Wes has a new modern facility.</p>

<p>S was actually pretty down on Oberlin after sitting in on a class, but everybody sees this sort of thing differently.</p>

<p>Personally I liked Oberlin quite a bit. The only thing that bothered me was the “mandatory non-credit” January term. Two full semesters of classes a year is enough, otherwise the kids get burned-out.</p>

<p>I still think it’s a crap shoot. DS was accepted at UChicago showing zero love and rejected at Bates after being interviewed on campus.</p>

<p>^Personally, I don’t think Chicago needs you to show love, but I think they do want to be convinced you are a good fit.</p>

<p>Soze, interesting take on Oberlin. My daughter thought the students there very much like her liberal minded, into the arts, etc. I thought the nicest dorm I saw on all of our tours was WashU. They had a lot of construction going on last summer. Another interesting thing I noticed on touring the ivies, neither Yale nor Brown showed their dorm rooms. You said your son was accepted at NYU, did he seriously consider going there? That seems so much different from his other schools.</p>

<p>mathmom – your take seems more accurate to me.</p>

<p>Comment about mandatory winter term. Williams has a 4-1-4 calender and the students love it. I don’t think burn out is an issue at all. It was at Barnard where one needed five courses most semesters to graduate on time. The mandatory winter term adds the requisite four extra classes and allows four courses to be a full load.</p>

<p>I think it’s more of an issue for parents because we never see our kids!!! S loves winter study and wanted a summer in the Berkshires so he found a research position for one of his profs. With free housing and an actual salary he won’t be home this summer either.</p>

<p>No burn out, but I do miss him.</p>

<p>Sorry for thread hi-jacking, but I wanted to respond to that one point.</p>

<p>@ronib321:
WashU had the nicest dorms and campus of the schools we visited, and the best food as well. S’s mother commented that it was a bit “too nice, a school should have some grit to it.”
The following week we visited Oberlin and it had plenty of “grit”!</p>

<p>I’ve seen plenty of Yale dorms (from the outside anyway) they seem like a mixed-bag. My S did a week long summer sports program at Brown, the dorm he was in was pretty ordinary, nothing like the 5-star accommodations at WashU.</p>

<p>The vibe I got from the Oberlin and Wesleyan students is that they attract very similar students, but Wesleyan had a much nicer campus and is in a better location. I also think since Wes is considerably more competitive, you have a higher caliber of student. Whenever I take a tour, I ask the kid giving the tour what other schools they were considering. The kid on the Wesleyan tour mentioned Tufts and Bowdoin the kid on the Oberlin tour named four or five LACs that where completely unknown to me.</p>

<p>NYU was really just the close-to-home-safety-school application. He’s not the biggest NYC fan, so by definition NYU would not have been a good fit for him.</p>

<p>Soze, I had forgotten how good the food was at WashU. My daughter did a summer program at Brown and you’re right the dorms are rather ordinary. When she went to that summer program at Brown, we stopped at Wesleyan on the way. It was my idea to look at the school because my friend’s daughter graduated from there. My daughter wanted no part of it because it was not in a big city. However, once she toured the campus and met some of the students she really liked it. While she was at the Brown summer program, she met a couple of students who had also toured Wesleyan. What my daughter liked about Oberlin from what she read was the green sustainable program they have there. </p>

<p>Actually, the worse dorms I saw on our college tours was a tie between Pitt and Boston U. But Pitt had a special dorm for their honors college. BU seemed to have several high rises that were lackluster. Although they did have a brand new dorm which had an extra $5,000 charge to stay there. I couldn’t stand the traffic in Boston. Fortunately, BU fell off my daughter’s list.</p>

<p>@ronib321:</p>

<p>Oberlin is <em>very</em> big on the green thing. All of the video screens throughout campus show a real-time chart of the energy consumption in all the dorms and you can see who’s “winning.”</p>

<p>I remember going to a few parties in those high-rise BU dorms. They were nice thirty years ago, but might be pretty old by now.</p>

<p>I really don’t like the idea of paying extra for the better dorm. This is college, not a resort. What’s next, charging extra for the better professors?</p>

<p>If you were looking at the Boston area, and your D was good enough for Princeton, she would likely have gotten into Tufts or Brandeis (and of course had a reasonable shot at Harvard or MIT).</p>

<p>“What’s a “lukewarm” acceptance?
Are you referring to the FA or did you just not like the wording of the acceptance letter?”</p>

<p>@soze: Oberlin was the only acceptance letter not personalized to a certain extent. Nor did they communicate with us before acceptance like the other schools did. In addition, the financial aid package assumed sources of funding (H’s employer) that didn’t exist. Many schools operate that way, it just seems that’s nor typical for Oberlin and nor was it the case with the other LACs such as Wes that are higher ranked. I thought Oberlin would have been a great match for D (she facilitates peace and community building WS’s) and she absolutely would have seriously considered attending if they showed any interest. I thought maybe it was because she didn’t visit. But, it seems they didn’t think she was as great of a match as I did. One of those non-objective mom things I guess.</p>