college admissions trends and predictions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our experience this year confirms that a high SAT test score definitely helps for top schools.

How high is high enough to tip the scale for top schools?

1609

[Anonymous]

What’s T100

[Anonymous]

Essay will be back as part of SAT. So a timed writing sample on a standard topic. No essays as part of common app.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For colleges with significant budget deficits (and there are a lot of them), full pay is an institutional priority.

It depends on the school. If that is an institutional priority, I'd worry about long term finances of the school. As more top schools go to need blind and give more aid, I could see some lower tier schools taking a full pay kid over a non-full pay kid. As many have already said, the new endowment taxes will force many ivies and similar schools to rethink their strategies. For some of these schools, being full pay may count against you unless you are the child of a potential mega donor.

I am confused by this assertion that full pay will hurt applicants’ chance at top schools. Our private HS and privates in our area are killing it with T15 this cycle. The FA kids, even the ones that are URM are going to lower-ranked schools. Based on what I read on this board, those kids should be the ones heading to HYP, but that’s not what I see in reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For colleges with significant budget deficits (and there are a lot of them), full pay is an institutional priority.

It depends on the school. If that is an institutional priority, I'd worry about long term finances of the school. As more top schools go to need blind and give more aid, I could see some lower tier schools taking a full pay kid over a non-full pay kid. As many have already said, the new endowment taxes will force many ivies and similar schools to rethink their strategies. For some of these schools, being full pay may count against you unless you are the child of a potential mega donor.

I am confused by this assertion that full pay will hurt applicants’ chance at top schools. Our private HS and privates in our area are killing it with T15 this cycle. The FA kids, even the ones that are URM are going to lower-ranked schools. Based on what I read on this board, those kids should be the ones heading to HYP, but that’s not what I see in reality.

Private high schools accept a lot more kids who will qualify for questbridge these days. Boarding schools did it first, now day schools the past couple of years. They push QB and help the families understand need based aid. We have almost half of our private applying for need based aid. They encourage everyone under 350kHHI to apply and the ones who get aid from the private school aretracked into Questbridge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For colleges with significant budget deficits (and there are a lot of them), full pay is an institutional priority.

It depends on the school. If that is an institutional priority, I'd worry about long term finances of the school. As more top schools go to need blind and give more aid, I could see some lower tier schools taking a full pay kid over a non-full pay kid. As many have already said, the new endowment taxes will force many ivies and similar schools to rethink their strategies. For some of these schools, being full pay may count against you unless you are the child of a potential mega donor.

I am confused by this assertion that full pay will hurt applicants’ chance at top schools. Our private HS and privates in our area are killing it with T15 this cycle. The FA kids, even the ones that are URM are going to lower-ranked schools. Based on what I read on this board, those kids should be the ones heading to HYP, but that’s not what I see in reality.

Same here. Especially with heavy waitlist movement, the full pay results are insane from our private.

Kids who ended up needed aid are going down a level for full merit rides to lower ranked schools though grades /stats were competitive.

The top Schools that seem to fully value the full pay element in RD outcomes:

Duke, Penn, Northwestern, UChicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Michigan, UCLA, Cal, WashU, Georgetown, Emory, USC

[Anonymous]

OP to your original question, I would get a college counselor if you can afford one now. I think the landscape is changing and they will be able to help with the new nuances of ECs, testing and apps—as some schools remove essays from the apps, or require videos, or use AI to review them, ECs may increase even more in importance to distinguish oneself and a counselor will be willing to spend the time micromanaging through the bundling and writing descriptions of the ECs for maximum impact. They could help on optimizing videos or essays for AI review.

Separate small tip, we heard from a AO at an admissions event that the app readers weren’t necessarily familiar with engineering, so students should make sure to use talking points of the university in their applications. My son looked on college websites/brochures and made sure his supplementals used some of their key words specific to the college/major at their school and he had great admission results at schools requiring supplemental essays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP to your original question, I would get a college counselor if you can afford one now. I think the landscape is changing and they will be able to help with the new nuances of ECs, testing and apps—as some schools remove essays from the apps, or require videos, or use AI to review them, ECs may increase even more in importance to distinguish oneself and a counselor will be willing to spend the time micromanaging through the bundling and writing descriptions of the ECs for maximum impact. They could help on optimizing videos or essays for AI review.

Separate small tip, we heard from a AO at an admissions event that the app readers weren’t necessarily familiar with engineering, so students should make sure to use talking points of the university in their applications. My son looked on college websites/brochures and made sure his supplementals used some of their key words specific to the college/major at their school and he had great admission results at schools requiring supplemental essays.

This is an interesting take. I do agree that there will be a different kind of value for “connected and in the know” College Counselors who have a deep understanding of what selective colleges are looking for as things change from year to year. Not sure how you find those people but probably the ones who speak at the local conferences (NACAC or IECA) with large volumes?