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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sounds like lots of disenchanted GDS senior parents (like me) lurking here.

Lots of good stuff about this school academically but the CCO is highly variable, but more so is entirely devoid of facts and data, and runs the process like mindful meditation seminar sophomore and junior year and then 0 to 100 senior fall with no straight answers to yes or no questions on whether i should apply here or there.

My favorite was the junior year parents meeting where they started with 5 minutes on whether college is right for your kid. I mean WTF guys - we are at a college prep school.

For the next kid, I will be much more in command of the process, bringing data, and calling out their lack of numerical approach

I also think the 10 school cap has to be raised to 12 or 15. It mostly protects middle of the pack kids but the number hasnt changed in 10 years+. Meanwhile apps are up +20% per year every year since that time.

The limit set at 10 helps the registrar and the CCOs but not the kids.

At the very least, [b]they can make state flagships unlimited.[/b][/quote]

Why?[/quote]

Aren't the state flagships generally the land of the middle-of-the-pack kids?

If you allow your top kids to apply to them, then where do the middle kids go?

Serious question.  Limiting apps protects everyone from the top 20% kids.  This used to work until this year when
SOME (not all) top 20% kids started getting shut out of the top 0-30 schools.  The kids likely applied to a few 
safeties in the 30-70 range and are now attending one of these.  But if you give them the ability to apply to unlimited state
schools in the 30-70 range, then where do the kids who traditionally matched with those schools (the middle-of-the-packers) go?

It's a tenuous balance but these limits are there to help spread the wealth of the admits across the class and protect
the lower ranked kids from losing their spots to the top 20% kids.[/quote]

i buy into the theory of your case but i'd love some analysis or description why 15 would break things for lower students and 10 does not.

See the thing is, like much of the rest of GDS CCO, it's a data free zone.

And yes my kid was one of the top 20% of class shut out this year. Will never know but 5 more targets would have really helped this kid given the math. [/quote]

yeah, my kid is on track to be top 20% as well (3.9 as an 11th grader) but I'm just staying that I can see the side of other 80% of the kids too.

The current environment really pits kids against kids which sucks.  Do you give the top 20% more opportunities or do you try and preserve more for the bottom 80%?

It was surely a different playing field when top kids could somewhat reliably get into top schools.  
[/quote]

having just been through it - and still being a bit raw from it, the one thing I will say is to really ask the office hard questions on odds per school when you have meetings. They mostly cut parents out and so you will need to get much of your info from kid after the sole junior year parent meeting.

Office always seems overwhelmed. Do your own homework, use the data sources you can get access to, and push the CCO hard on odds/likelihood.

Hopefully your kid signed up for some AP tests. They do matter as a rigor signal at some schools (UC, NYU even, UK schools required)

Ask same question over and over to sharpen the list. First list felt like CCOs had gone into a cave and divided up the top 100 schools amongst the kids and decided where they could see everyone. Was very weird after the dozen page survey we filled out that felt mostly unread. Kid wanted to be in a city and we got 9 rural schools. WTF.

Finally, don't trust them on essay advice.  The essay advice from the "essay reader" was not good and that person also seemed overwhelmed and was assigned kids midstream in college process as a first time CCO. i heard from those kids that first time CCO was terrible. Get an outside essay reader if you can afford.

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