Still a little off topic, but back to your quest, I think the sweet spot is good private and state schools that are indeed trying to lure top talent, or good state schools that don’t give much aid, but are well priced to begin with. In my son’s day, the private engineering standouts were places like Case, RPI, Lehigh and WPI, known to be generous with aid. That may have changed. The publics like Alabama, ASU Barrett, Utah, etc. are still pretty similar. Finally, interstate consortiums like WUE offer good OOS value. He ended up choosing the school where he got the least award, but the net price was still very attractive.
This was me taking Organic Chemistry in the 1990’s at a highly ranked private college in the northeast! If you asked a question, he read out of the text book and you could follow along but if you needed clarification, forget it!
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Yes - Wake County and Mecklenburg County are the 2 most competitive counties for admission to UNC-CH (although UNC works hard to debunk the numerous urban legends surrounding its admissions process.) They house most of the highest ranked public high schools in the state and all the highly ranked private schools. We lived in Union County when my older daughter applied and was admitted EA. We live in Mecklenburg now and my D21 was denied with higher stats than my older daughter. It crossed my mind when reading this year’s Union County acceptances - nonetheless, I would never consider a move just to attempt a better position for a UNC admittance (or any college, for that matter). I have known several families over the years who have switched to a different private school or have gone back to the home public school to better their child’s college admission chances.
Of course there’s no way to know exactly what UNC uses in its admissions process. Both my daughters had very similar packages as far as course rigor, EC’s, work experience, varsity athlete, etc., except my younger D had higher test scores and gpa. She was keen on going to college out of state, so the denial worked in her favor. Had she gotten in, my husband would have sent the deposit check then and there, to avoid having to pay out of state tuition 
For some here its considered an art form.
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Yes and it starts young. My older kid came home the other day and told me about a couple of kid in his AP Lang class bragging about their GPAs, SATs and telling other kid (whose gpa isn’t that high) that he’d be “lucky” to get into UMASS. Needless to say, he found it both sad and “douchey”.
My favorite is the young people on the chance me threads of CC that have improved/changed/impacted the lives of thousands of people.
My kids call this type of (really distasteful to me) bragging a humble brag. It’s an apt description.
Isn’t it ironic that we complain about bragging, but not the system of holistic admissions, which implicitly encourages such behaviors?
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Is it really holistic admissions that causes the bragging? Around here kids typically brag about their test scores and GPA not about their ECs. Bragging isn’t surprising, though, when performance is what garners praise.
All schools have some merit scholarships available, even top ones. But the numbers are extremely limited and you have to be a true superstar in most cases. Most tryhard kids and their overinvolved parents are not guaranteed these scholarships. In many cases, schools target a certain population of students for these awards. UNC has the Morehead scholarship, NCSU has Park etc.
In tier 2 and tier 3 schools, this is guaranteed. Here is an example:
https://www.depts.ttu.edu/scholarships/incFreshman.php
Scroll down to NM finalists – 100% if your top choice is TTU.
Also, FWIW, some schools do everything in their power to skew/rise in rankings. As someone pointed out, Vandy, Tulane and Wake Forest are notorious examples. They target affluent kids from suburbs and try to snag a few with these scholarship offers that are high-stat but not ivy league material or are not offered good enough money.
There are many other schools that do not care about USN rankings like Baylor and William and Mary. Both are excellent universities.
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Many of the meet full need schools provide ZERO merit aid, the only non-need based aid would be in the form of unsubsidized Federal Student loans.
I am not sure what Yale CDS shows non-need based aid (excluding self-help loans). The 20/21 Yale CDS (H1) shows non-need based aid from EXTERNAL sources of $434,451 and non-need based loans (unsubsidized) of $833,866. There is no need based aid beyond those two lines. Common Data Set | Office of Institutional Research
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Yes, that was indeed my oversight on Yale. The $700k was from external sources. I was reading the total line. Tufts, also a zero merit school, shows a bit on the institutional line, $180k, while Vandy has $20M from the institution.
There are plenty of such schools. It really depends on what your kid wants to do downstream. A degree in Comp Eng from Texas Tech is nothing to scoff at. Kids routinely get 6 figure offers from multiple companies in the Austin/DFW area even before they graduate. I have a family member that went to A&M on near full ride that works for Siemens with a degree in EE. Ultimately, it boils down to what you can afford to pay, where you are offered a position with good fit and career aspirations.
Now if your aspiration is to become a supreme court clerk or heading up the tech M&A division at a major investment bank, then you may want to try your luck at Ivy league schools given the opportunity.
This might be true now but around my neck of the woods, the ranked schools including UNC and Duke have merit scholarships.
Tufts gives money to NM finalists, but not much - only $500 per semester.
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There are a couple things at play. The biggest is the recentering and it likely extends far beyond the immediate mid 90s jump. To give an example:
In the year or two before tests were recentered WashU’s median score was a 1260. Based upon percentiles from those who took the test, that roughly equated to a balanced 94th percentile on both math and verbal. Today a balanced 94th percentile gets you a 1430.
But…a far greater proportion of 18 year olds are taking the SAT and/or ACT today. The share of total pop has jumped roughly 40%. Test taker percentiles aren’t comparable, which is what I had to work with. That’s not a national norm. Because that additional share of students talking the test today aren’t as strong as the cohort who would have taken the exams regardless of era, the balanced EN/M 94th percentile from before is likely between a balanced 95th and 96th today. That’s 1450-1470. Call it a 1460.
People at the top are also much more savvy about test selection. They’ll take either the ACT or SAT depending upon individual traits. 25 years ago, even the higher scoring kids tended to take either one test or the other depending upon state. Or they’d take and report both. Through discerning which test produces the best relative result, kids getting into elite schools are probably getting another 20 points. So bump the 1460 to 1480.
So over the last 25+ years, the “adjusted” SAT scores at WashU have probably only increased 40 points (1480 vs 1520). That 40 point difference is likely due to two things:
-the top 10-15% of the country has done well for themselves over the last 25 years. Significant gains in wealth (especially in the top 5%) means more educational resources for kids. Including test prep.
-there are many more gifted/selective enrollment options for the other 85% compared to 25 years ago. So access overall has improved to some degree.
There are similar factors with acceptance. 1993 NU acceptance was about 50%. WashU was abt 60%. We also had to type each app out on those booklets, which in and of itself was demonstrating interest. I applied to 5 schools, which was probably about as common as applying to 12 now. I did not bother with reaches and I didn’t even complete one other app, which was my most optimistic target. It wouldn’t surprise me if 20% of the apps back then were from people who had no business applying or who were at best really, really reaching. That percentage could easily be 50% today. Schools will claim 80% of applicants are “ qualified”, but I have a hard time believing that.
So obviously the adjusted admit rates are still substantially lower, but I’m not so sure the quality of the applicant has appreciably improved. We’ve had another generation of legacy accumulation, athletes still getting hooked, some greater recent emphasis on URM/lower SES and internationals, but the meat and potatoes of the T20 overall is non legacy/athlete white+Asian kids from the top 20% SES. The same kids coming from households where wealth has increased substantially and there are more resources for Ed, tutoring, enrichment, EC development, etc. Those additional resources pouring in has turned this into a narrative building spectacle. Given four kids with similar backgrounds/numbers: is kid A who got in with the great narrative any better than 2 of the 3 kids who did not get in with adequate but inferior narratives? Probably not. But that’s the game now. 25 years ago 2 or 3 in 4 from that group would have been admitted rather than 1 in 4.
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Agree completely. Schools normally in the T20 who offer merit aid are accused of “buying stats”. But HYPSM + one or two others now have so much money that every admitted applicant outside the top 20% SES are paying far lower ed costs than they would at Vandy. So is HYPSM “buying students” too?
I don’t think of top 20 schools that offer merit as “buying stats”. First off, these schools are extremely desirable already and admission is Uber-competitive. Second, what they are offering (to a relatively small # of applicants) is true “merit” (requiring a separate application, maybe an interview etc) as opposed to what I consider more or less tuition discounting (don’t need to apply, given out to a lot of students, lesser amounts of $$).
To be clear, I am not complaining about bragging. I find much of the bragging that goes on here to be entertaining. Seeing people twist and turn to get their brags in when they aren’t relevant makes me chuckle.
In terms of holistic admissions encouraging bragging, slippery slope. Without holistic admissions, is it bragging to say I have a 4.0 gpa? Or I got a 1550 on the SAT? How about that I have a graduate degree? To me, context is everything. If its coming up in conversation about the weather and local sports team, yes. If its coming up in the context of a college application or job interview (though at some point grades and tests scores need to be dropped), I would say no. Though you can cross a line even there.
Much of what happens here is bragging. Its not relevant to discussions other than to make the person bragging feel better and trying to make others feel worse. I have had friends to whom I recommended this site who a month or two latter say they found it incredibly arrogant and wouldn’t go back. There is a lot of regulation/editing/restricting that happens on this site in the name of making it better. Next to nothing about the arrogance of many though which I think is more detrimental than other activity/discussions which are restricted/limited. Just my opinion.
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I don’t either. That’s why I made the comparison. Given equal household AGI
and savings for a hypothetical applicant, net price at Princeton could be 12 grand. It might be 25 grand at a Vanderbilt. The latter still represents a steep discount, but it is not price competitive. Vandy has a huge endowment, but large portions of endowments are dedicated to non aid use. Princeton has 6 dollars of endowment per student for every dollar at Vandy.
Merit and need based assistance serve different purposes, but I see neither as “buying” anything. I can respect those who disagree, but if someone does, they should consistently acknowledge that both forms of assistance are “buying” students. Especially when net price is reduced to sub in-state flagship levels. Equating merit aid to buying is a lazy trope used to distinguish maybe 10 universities and a handful of LACs from everyone else.
And now I’m going to try to stop dragging the discussion off topic, but I thought the sidebars were interesting.
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This site is very niche, with a lot of highly achieving students. I came here from r/A2C and I was pretty shocked at what some people said, “decent grades: 4.0 UW” and all of the chance me posters are really top notch.
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