Hi all,
I’m here with another paranoid question. My D will be turning down offers at some schools that we all really loved. But of course, she can only attend one. Do I have any reason to worry that these schools will hold that against her younger sister when the time comes for her to apply?
Definitely not something to worry about!
I don’t think so. I do know, however, that if students from the same HS apply and are accepted to a particular college year after year but rarely matriculate, the college will notice.
No.
@gallentjill - I had the same thought years ago when my D16 turned down offers. I doubt the schools will hold it against younger siblings, but I do agree with @lastone03 regarding the HS and the number of students who matriculate at specific schools year after year. Definitely noticeable.
Nope. D1 turned down a school that accepted D2 & gave her tons of merit.
There was one year that 6 students were accepted to her school and all of them turned down the school. For next 5 years no one got accepted until D2 applied ED. So I think they do hold against high school.
It may help if your kid could send a nice note to the AOs to let them know her decision and thank them for the offer. D1 did that and received some nice response. D2 also did the same after she was admitted ED.
No
I don’t think so, but totally agree with oldfort about letting the colleges know in a polite way why it wasn’t a good fit. Two years ago my daughter was accepted to several schools and obviously could only pick one. Many of the colleges sent her an email asking if she could fill out their form stating why she didn’t choose them. She was very polite and honest and gave then good feed back. Fast forward to this year, my son applied to several of the same schools and was accepted by all of the ones my daughter had decided not to attend. Good luck to your daughter with her college decision!!
Not to worry. Admissions officers don’t have time to track down to that level of detail. The local rep might be aware of what a local high school is (or isn’t) doing, but no one is following that at the individual level.
There are a lot of applicants, and a lot of accepted students. It would be extremely rare for an admissions person to remember one person of thousands, and then make that connection when a sibling applies. That’s even assuming that the same person will be looking at the applications.
They remember schools, because that’s important for them when they want to optimize yield, so they probably keep lists. But to try and list every one of the tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of kids who are accepted and turn them down over the years on the off chance that one of them will have siblings who will apply, and then to look through the applications and try to decide whether the person is a sibling of somebody who rejected them? Too much time and effort for what would only be simple vindictiveness.
I agree with the others. My oldest turned down a full-tuition scholarship at the school that later accepted his younger sister with a good bit of merit money.
My two kids had no schools that they BOTH applied to. But I agree with comments above. The adcom has enough problem getting the acceptance list right, without holding grudges against a family.
gallentjill I have this same question too. Glad you asked!
If AOs do care there is such thing as business intelligence(computer) to check on applicant’s background. It’s not that hard to figure out if an applicant has siblings and if any of those siblings have applied to the school. AOs have known to check on applicants’ social medias, what make you think they couldn’t and wouldn’t check on their siblings (whether matriculated or admitted). I used to tell D1 to do well at her college so her sister would have a better chance.
When top tier schools only admit 5% of applicants, every seat counts. I think by the time an applicant makes it close to the admit pool the AOs are checking their credentials pretty closely, which may include talking to their GCs, googling on the internet, looking at their potential connections to donors, etc.
I disagree that ad coms have time to do do checks like that ^. 43,000+ students applied to Harvard alone. Even if they cull that to 10,000 to more seriously consider, that’s a lot of work. The only scenario where I see an ad com digging deeper is if there is something super unusual in the application that needs to be verified.
Noooo. They will not.
Been there, done that. All goes well.
You would be surprised how fast a computer can work.
I would say an applicant making it to the admit pool is super unusual when there are 43000+ applicants.
I can’t for the life of me think why any school would want to do such a thing.
‘The older sister was admitted and turned us down. Let’s stick it to the younger brother.’
It just doesn’t ring true.
I am not an AO, so take it with a grain of salt. My understanding is the AOs are the first ones to weed out applicants and then come up with a list of applicants they are recommending (supporting). They would need to make the case as to why a applicant should be admitted to the committee, and the committee would then vote on it. Therefore I think AOs would do a lot of due diligence on an applicant before making a recommendation.