Lessons learned so far: 2024-2025

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The person reading essays is likely a liberal millennial and has a high chance of being female. Cater your essays accordingly.

or gay male

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some admissions staff drop a very specific hints about what to include in essays if you pay enough attention. If you reach out to them directly they might provide more.

UMD CMNS college (the one with CS) dropped a hint at any admissions event about mentioning something in the application. I followed up using an anonymous email account and asked for more details and they gave us pretty much word for word what to say in the Additional Information section to indicate a real interest in CS.

VA Tech emphasized over and over again how important they view service to be and dropped hints to emphasize it in the essay.

This is definitely true for Michigan and Northwestern. Also, possibly Duke.

[Anonymous]

Best advice: develop a narrative beginning in ninth grade. Not kidding. If your kid likes debate, make sure they attend state or national conferences or write an op ed about a presidential debate.start a debate club at school, find any way you can to get some sort of state or national level recognition over the next four years. It’s all gimmicks but … it’s what admissions committees want to see.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Where did they go? DS at UGA and better get into Terry. He passed up a lot of direct admit. He couldn't be happier so it's fine

UGA Terry is fantastic, that's wonderful that your son loves it. Not surprised at all, I'm sure my student would've loved it as well. It was high on the list but my DC was just not willing to roll the dice on the major, we heard that a lot of students end up being forced into Economics, and my student wasn't interested in being an Econ major.

Ended up at Tulane in Management and Finance and having a great experience so far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kind of an edge case—but when looking at undergrad business programs, it's very important to consider whether students are accepted into and matriculate as freshmen directly into the business school.

In my experience, many students and parents don’t understand this, and our private school counselors also failed to mention it as a major consideration. My concern was: what if DC gets sick, has a bad freshman semester, etc., but chose the school based on the business major—then ends up getting rejected from the B-school and is forced to choose another major? UGA Terry was one of those schools. Great B-school, but only a 40% acceptance rate. DC just wasn’t really willing to roll the dice with other great options where they matriculated as an incoming freshman. Now a happy freshman already taking core classes in a great undergrad business school!

This applies to all majors. There are plenty of great schools, where 99% of the majors are open TO ANYONE. None of this direct admit or you will never get in to engineering/CS/business/STEm majors. Choose wisely. Given that many kids do switch majors, much easier to be at a school where they can easily do this.
Given that many who switch out of Engineering (Because it's too hard/not their thing) go to Business majors, but that needs to be a viable option at their school.

The Your College Bound Kid podcast recently had an episode on how different schools deal with majors: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-college-bound-kid-admission-tips-admission-trends/id1349060136?i=1000682820473

So, I just listened to this. Is it my imagination or did he not finish the quote from the VT AO? Starting around 37:08. "So here's the quote: 'Here at Virginia Tech, you're going to hear me talk a lot about major specifically. The reason I say that is because major specifically is very important here at Virginia Tech.' Now don't miss this line. This is probably one of the key points I want you to take away after today. Now don't miss the final line. And if you take anything away, it should be this. So hopefully you found this helpful...etc."

I thought he was winding up to tell us the final line. It felt awkward after that. Was the final line edited out? Or was the final line simply that major is very important at VT?

Yes, that was a weird build-up but I think the big takeaway is to pay attention to major when you're applying to VT.

[Anonymous]

No insights yet. Wait until May, when we will have answers from my kid's 20 applications. :p

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Coming from a top private:

-Admission to top schools is MUCH easier for boys than girls. It pretty much SUCKS to be a female applicant in 2025. Boys this year from our school are getting in with stats way below the girls. (I have 2 boys in upcoming admissions years so I don't say this from a point of sour grapes as an only girls mom or anything)

-Being a legacy with parents who are also VIPs or big donors is huge. I mean duh. But wow, it just is.

-ED is such a crap shoot and I'm not sure how to play it best. My kid went for a top10 and lost (deferred) and now I have no idea how far down she'll fall. She's hoping for RD decisions to schools where classmates with GPAs much lower than hers got in ED (like 3.9 RD vs 3.4 ED). What is the right/best way to play ED? I don't know. TBD in our case.

did your school's data show you anything in retrospect? was it truly a longshot? too much in-school competition?
Our private's CCO would have advised an ED1 to a school like Vanderbilt, Rice, WashU, Emory (with ED2 to another) for someone that they KNEW would be a longshot to T10.

Agree. I don’t believe ED is a “crapshoot” if you know what you’re doing.

Applying ED to schools that only accept 1-2k students of course will be a long shot (even if your stats are phenomenal). But if you apply to a school that accepts 5-6k students AND your kid has above the 75% for stats, then your kid has a great chance of acceptance.

What colleges accept 5-6k students ED? Do you mean EA?

From this list, Cornell and UVA???

https://www.ivycoach.com/the-ivy-coach-blog/early-decision-early-action/schools-with-early-decision/

No, UVA receives only 4,000 ED apps and accepts about 1,000

[Anonymous]

SAT score really matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No insights yet. Wait until May, when we will have answers from my kid's 20 applications. :p

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had not worried so much about certain EC's that I had to pay through the nose for.

+1 It's more about kids' initiative than pay to play.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In RD, it rarely works out for "oversubscribed" majors (CS, engineering, applied math, business, biology or pre-med). It often DOES work out in RD for niche, creative or humanities majors.

This is very helpful, PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had not worried so much about certain EC's that I had to pay through the nose for.

+1 It's more about kids' initiative than pay to play.

So true. Sometimes the most random, personal or small activities tie together so beautifully and naturally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had not worried so much about certain EC's that I had to pay through the nose for.

+1 It's more about kids' initiative than pay to play.

So true. Sometimes the most random, personal or small activities tie together so beautifully and naturally.

This worked out for DS. His passions are anime, gaming and film and all his ECs in and out of school drew on those passions. Club leader at school, online leader for 2 clubs/Discord servers, self taught coding for game mods and video editing, etc.

He applied as either film or game design and has been accepted to all his schools so far.l with admits to Honors colleges and lots of merit.

Still waiting on RD but so far he’s like a Pokémon trainer!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had not worried so much about certain EC's that I had to pay through the nose for.

100%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish I had not worried so much about certain EC's that I had to pay through the nose for.

+1 It's more about kids' initiative than pay to play.

Right now, it's hard for me to tell the difference.