Shifting interest in T25 schools

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05/03/2025 17:00

Subject: Shifting interest in T25 schools

quote

Anonymous

Saw this mentioned in a few other posts and then just heard the below on a YCBK podcast so wanted to see if the regulars and parents in class of 25 agree…rise of Rice, stunning interest in Cornell, Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Duke. Limited interest in Columbia.

“I know in our company, we saw less Ivy League EDs this year, and people like those kinds of kids that wanted to look at the most selective schools, they were shifting to places like Duke and Vanderbilt and Northwestern, Georgetown, Rice.

Yeah.

This is like that. I saw it was very clearly printed. I mean, our numbers, I don't know if we can get into numbers, but I know within our company, we had five EDs to Northwestern, five to Duke, and maybe one to Penn.

I don't think we've had a single one to Columbia this year. Wow. We did have a bunch to Cornell.

I think we had four to Cornell this year, one to Dartmouth. But those are all places that would normally have at least as many or more. Penn, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Yale.

Those are places people would do their single-choice early action. Now they're like, I don't want to do it. Brown was not, you know, like just the numbers are down for us in those schools and up for other schools.

Yes.

Do you experience that as well?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Cornell probably was the top Ivy.

“And then it would be Northwestern, adjacent.

Yeah.

And then Duke, but no one, no one to Columbia. Not like, not even like a, oh no, my parents won't allow me to apply their pen. A lot of disinterest.

I saw students look at Rice where it was so hard to talk about it before. Like, like I was saying, okay, we're going to take a trip to Mars. But now people, because if you, you go to, to Rice and you visit, you realize, oh, this is what Stanford should look like.

It's so beautiful. It's so stunning. It's really spectacular.

The residential college program there is.

Yeah, they got that thing going on similar to Yale. They got a nice little program there.

I feel like kids are really tied to one another. They, they love their experience there. Every LA student I've ever sent to Rice has never transferred or regretted it.

So, I think, so I'm seeing this huge, really significant shift away from the schools you mentioned, even Harvard was.

Yeah, no, I agree. And if you look at those applications, they came out. Like Yale was down, Brown was down, Dartmouth was down almost 11%.

You know, they were down. Still had a lot of interest in the Midwest, especially Michigan and Wisconsin. Yes.

Those two schools continue to have a lot of interest. I'm seeing a lot more interest in IU Kelly than I've seen before. You know, I've seen more interest in that program.

They did some really cool things. And I got a chance to meet with one of their leaders at NACAC in LA.

Wow, nice.

Yeah, because they, you know, when you apply to Kelly before, you know, you either get in direct admit, it's just by the numbers or you can do review request. If you don't have the SAT or the GPA, you can do review request, which is an appeal program. And a lot of kids have done that appeal in one.

But now they've added a third one. It was really smart. Now you can come in pre-business, and you have to take six business classes and 30 credit hours.

And if you have a B average without any Cs and core classes, like you're automatically in. So they provided a third way[…]”

From Your College Bound Kid | Admission Tips, Admission Trends & Admission Interviews: What is your advice for a student who is content getting B’s, Apr 30, 2025