Lessons learned so far: 2024-2025

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is very helpful!

My kid is a rising Senior with borderline stats (4.2 W GPA, 1510 SAT)

So Looks like ED is his best chance to get into decently competitive schools? We will be full pay - and I guess ED is a signal to the college that they could count on us to pay full price and hence make it easier to get admit?

Almost all top50 schools are need blind, which means they don't taken into account your ability to pay into their admissions decisions. I have a relative who is a financial aid director at a top20 school and he/she has clarified that when the institution says it is "need blind" it is 100% need blind. He/she is
truly given a list of the students to whom offers are extended and he/she calculates the packages (or lack thereof) on them. As such, his/her aid budget will vary by many millions each year.

So full pay does not matter at the need blind schools (which is almost all the top30 schools). Being a potential "donor" is another class. If the school thinks that you may end up coming with a large check--well then your kid may land in a separate category. Closely intertwined with being a donor is being a VIP or noteworthy parent. Schools of course also like this. They want the influential and powerful within their fold.

For the rest of us, colleges like ED because yield (the percentage of admits that end up matriculating) is very important to them. ED kids almost all matriculate.

Was speculating about the bolded in another thread. Absent a connection to a person at the university, how many schools have their development office run the applicant list through a donor search website to see if any come from potential big donor families?

An AO might, or might not, know if this is the practice at their school. An admissions director would know. But, not a lot of talk about this, except in that thread about the lawsuit, perhaps because it affects only a small number of applicants.

Feels like there are missing pieces to the admission process, beyond the subjectivity of evaluating factors like ECs and essays, that elude the general public. These hidden pieces lead to the uncertainty that ultimately drives the entire admissions consulting industry, so no one in the industry really wants them revealed. Missing pieces that systematically impact decisions. This is just one example. Feels like there is a market for algorithm-based consulting to provide more certainty in helping to make the list. However, my guess is that enrollment management consultants probably sign some sort of contract preventing them from using proprietary info, an anti-compete clause or similar. Sorry, too much coffee this morning.

You mean consultants that could guide us on how to donate and shift assets so we pop up through the college’s algorithm as a potential donor? Interesting…

Maybe, but I'd like to know if we already show up in a database like DonorSearch or iWave Kindsight due to past giving. Obviously there are specific criteria used when they run a search, but I don't have a sense for what those look like specifically. I saw on that other thread that the college admissions platform Slate can push data into DonorSearch and push results back into Slate profiles, though this may not happen at every, or even most, colleges at the admission stage. Sounds more likely for after enrollment.

You won’t show up if you haven’t already been flagged. They need to know who you are before you go through the process. Unless you have a recognizable family or parents are just famous.

Check your LinkedIn.

Flagged by older kid's school upon enrollment some years ago. But, speculating about whether it happens on the front end, in admissions, at certain schools, for the purpose of younger sibs.

[Anonymous]

When I led Development at a LAC, we’d screen as early as prospective student events and then also upon application. And that was 10 years ago…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is very helpful!

My kid is a rising Senior with borderline stats (4.2 W GPA, 1510 SAT)

So Looks like ED is his best chance to get into decently competitive schools? We will be full pay - and I guess ED is a signal to the college that they could count on us to pay full price and hence make it easier to get admit?

Almost all top50 schools are need blind, which means they don't taken into account your ability to pay into their admissions decisions. I have a relative who is a financial aid director at a top20 school and he/she has clarified that when the institution says it is "need blind" it is 100% need blind. He/she is
truly given a list of the students to whom offers are extended and he/she calculates the packages (or lack thereof) on them. As such, his/her aid budget will vary by many millions each year.

So full pay does not matter at the need blind schools (which is almost all the top30 schools). Being a potential "donor" is another class. If the school thinks that you may end up coming with a large check--well then your kid may land in a separate category. Closely intertwined with being a donor is being a VIP or noteworthy parent. Schools of course also like this. They want the influential and powerful within their fold.

For the rest of us, colleges like ED because yield (the percentage of admits that end up matriculating) is very important to them. ED kids almost all matriculate.

Was speculating about the bolded in another thread. Absent a connection to a person at the university, how many schools have their development office run the applicant list through a donor search website to see if any come from potential big donor families?

An AO might, or might not, know if this is the practice at their school. An admissions director would know. But, not a lot of talk about this, except in that thread about the lawsuit, perhaps because it affects only a small number of applicants.

Feels like there are missing pieces to the admission process, beyond the subjectivity of evaluating factors like ECs and essays, that elude the general public. These hidden pieces lead to the uncertainty that ultimately drives the entire admissions consulting industry, so no one in the industry really wants them revealed. Missing pieces that systematically impact decisions. This is just one example. Feels like there is a market for algorithm-based consulting to provide more certainty in helping to make the list. However, my guess is that enrollment management consultants probably sign some sort of contract preventing them from using proprietary info, an anti-compete clause or similar. Sorry, too much coffee this morning.

You mean consultants that could guide us on how to donate and shift assets so we pop up through the college’s algorithm as a potential donor? Interesting…

Maybe, but I'd like to know if we already show up in a database like DonorSearch or iWave Kindsight due to past giving. Obviously there are specific criteria used when they run a search, but I don't have a sense for what those look like specifically. I saw on that other thread that the college admissions platform Slate can push data into DonorSearch and push results back into Slate profiles, though this may not happen at every, or even most, colleges at the admission stage. Sounds more likely for after enrollment.

You won’t show up if you haven’t already been flagged. They need to know who you are before you go through the process. Unless you have a recognizable family or parents are just famous.

Check your LinkedIn.

Flagged by older kid's school upon enrollment some years ago. But, speculating about whether it happens on the front end, in admissions, at certain schools, for the purpose of younger sibs.

Absolutely it happens after enrollment. We have seen it in action at my older kids Ivy.

But before enrollment, I don’t think it’s uniform and makes sense that it would happen more at small liberal arts colleges first.

[Anonymous]

Have a back up plan to the 2-3 LORs that your student requests from teachers. All those my DD asked 8 months prior to when applications were due told her back then that they would be happy to write her a LOR yet when the time came one teacher just did not do so. It caused major stress for my student at a time when the stress level was already high.

[Anonymous]

Don't talk to other parents (in same school) where your DC is applying. They are nosey and jealous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have a back up plan to the 2-3 LORs that your student requests from teachers. All those my DD asked 8 months prior to when applications were due told her back then that they would be happy to write her a LOR yet when the time came one teacher just did not do so. It caused major stress for my student at a time when the stress level was already high.

Mine started asking seniors she knew about their LORs toward the end of her junior year. So before she asked for hers at the end of that year, she knew which teachers were reliable and which ones tended to flake out or make the process more stressful.

Obviously, nobody knows what the teachers actually said in the letters, or whether their LORs had helped, but it’s still useful to know who has a lot of experience writing them, and who does a good job of getting them in on time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I led Development at a LAC, we’d screen as early as prospective student events and then also upon application. And that was 10 years ago…

But what are you screening for? People who regularly give over 100K to charities? People that give millions? Or people that have millions? Or have hundreds of millions?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I led Development at a LAC, we’d screen as early as prospective student events and then also upon application. And that was 10 years ago…

But what are you screening for? People who regularly give over 100K to charities? People that give millions? Or people that have millions? Or have hundreds of millions?

DP. I think they are screening for a regular pattern of giving donations, anywhere that gets picked up by DonorSearch or similar third party database. As far as amount, I too am curious, but I don't think it needs to be millions. We are not talking about schools like Harvard, and we are not talking about a traditional big donor who has already given to the university, but rather schools that especially need to expand their endowments and donors that can be generous on the scale of thousands per year and more with time, experience with the school, and association with the development office.

If PP is around, hopefully they will respond to your question.

[Anonymous]

Screened for wealth and then drilled down into philanthropic history/inclination. The $ threshold at which a prospective parent becomes an interesting development prospect will vary greatly by college based on the status of their current fundraising program.

[Anonymous]

Admits seem to get harder every year…so if you are looking at your school’s scattergrams (which has last years data)…the targets could very well now be the reaches so adjust your list accordingly.

[Anonymous]

That it's a discouraging process favoring rich kids and kids who gamed the process early by picking certain classes to maximize GPA early on, carefully crafted everything, tutored to the max for scores. My only hope is employers realize the cost and general landscape mean good students with potential end up at all sorts of colleges.

[Anonymous]

I think the key problem is that the admissions standards at any given school are a black box, where you don't know in great detail precisely how decisions are made. Colleges COULD release these data, but that would a) lead to applicants trying to game the system; and b) probably reduce the number of applicants, since it would be clearer what factors wouldn't lead to admission. Colleges obviously want more applicants.

With colleges receiving so many applications today, there HAS to be a score or algorithm-based method for sorting them. The idea that each of the 20,000 applicants has an AO looking into their soul just isn't practical. Knowing the true break points -- below this SAT/GPA you're not getting in, above so-and-so level and you're basically a lock, and in-between you're a maybe based on other factors -- would help a lot of kids.

The Harvard lawsuit didn't provide more detail on how the sausage is made. But there's still not a lot of really useful data out there. For instance, simply knowing the average test scores of BOTH admitted and denied applicants would be useful to know, and that's an easy stat for them to produce.


Feels like there is a market for algorithm-based consulting to provide more certainty in helping to make the list. However, my guess is that enrollment management consultants probably sign some sort of contract preventing them from using proprietary info, an anti-compete clause or similar. Sorry, too much coffee this morning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Feels like there is a market for algorithm-based consulting to provide more certainty in helping to make the list. However, my guess is that enrollment management consultants probably sign some sort of contract preventing them from using proprietary info, an anti-compete clause or similar. Sorry, too much coffee this morning.

I think the key problem is that the admissions standards at any given school are a black box, where you don't know in great detail precisely how decisions are made. Colleges COULD release these data, but that would a) lead to applicants trying to game the system; and b) probably reduce the number of applicants, since it would be clearer what factors wouldn't lead to admission. Colleges obviously want more applicants.

With colleges receiving so many applications today, there HAS to be a score or algorithm-based method for sorting them. The idea that each of the 20,000 applicants has an AO looking into their soul just isn't practical. Knowing the true break points -- below this SAT/GPA you're not getting in, above so-and-so level and you're basically a lock, and in-between you're a maybe based on other factors -- would help a lot of kids.

The Harvard lawsuit didn't provide more detail on how the sausage is made. But there's still not a lot of really useful data out there. For instance, simply knowing the average test scores of BOTH admitted and denied applicants would be useful to know, and that's an easy stat for them to produce.

That's true. In the past, even knowing the enrolled scores was helpful until test optional made every 4.0 kid think they had a chance. I think the current season is the first year back to tests-required for Harvard, though the enrolled score ranges for fall 2025 freshman will not be released by Harvard until around May 2026 when they post their 2025-26 Common Data set. And of course that's just Harvard along with a handful of other top schools that have returned to requiring scores. Many probably won't, at least not for another few years, as they hunt both app numbers and try to find URMs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the key problem is that the admissions standards at any given school are a black box, where you don't know in great detail precisely how decisions are made. Colleges COULD release these data, but that would a) lead to applicants trying to game the system; and b) probably reduce the number of applicants, since it would be clearer what factors wouldn't lead to admission. Colleges obviously want more applicants.

With colleges receiving so many applications today, there HAS to be a score or algorithm-based method for sorting them. The idea that each of the 20,000 applicants has an AO looking into their soul just isn't practical. Knowing the true break points -- below this SAT/GPA you're not getting in, above so-and-so level and you're basically a lock, and in-between you're a maybe based on other factors -- would help a lot of kids.

The Harvard lawsuit didn't provide more detail on how the sausage is made. But there's still not a lot of really useful data out there. For instance, simply knowing the average test scores of BOTH admitted and denied applicants would be useful to know, and that's an easy stat for them to produce.

Feels like there is a market for algorithm-based consulting to provide more certainty in helping to make the list. However, my guess is that enrollment management consultants probably sign some sort of contract preventing them from using proprietary info, an anti-compete clause or similar. Sorry, too much coffee this morning.

The algo might be different for different high schools - its why there's so much discrepancy (some HS get 20% of the class into Michigan while others get 1% etc).

It looks like they score, so there probably is some sort of algo already: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/45/1224166.page

[Anonymous]

Basically, someone in a prominent admissions office needs to leak the data. Where are the whistle blowers when we need them?!

Studies like this one, about test-optional admissions at Dartmouth, are helpful if you're wonky. For instance, you can see the gradiant of admissions probabilities by SAT score, which shows that it pretty much always helps, often substantially, to get a higher score. So if your child pulled a 1500 and thinks they could hit 1550, don't discourage them from trying again.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w33389?utm_campaign=ntwh&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntwg2

Also, if your child attends a low-income school or is first-generation, they get a pretty substantial admissions advantage holding SAT scores equal. That's not something I knew before, at least the size of the advantage.


Feels like there is a market for algorithm-based consulting to provide more certainty in helping to make the list. However, my guess is that enrollment management consultants probably sign some sort of contract preventing them from using proprietary info, an anti-compete clause or similar. Sorry, too much coffee this morning.

The algo might be different for different high schools - its why there's so much discrepancy (some HS get 20% of the class into Michigan while others get 1% etc).

It looks like they score, so there probably is some sort of algo already: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/45/1224166.page