Reply to Just figured I'd share because it might benefit lots of folks here...

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Just figured I'd share because it might benefit lots of folks here..."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The only effective advice she gave you was that there are so many high stat applicants and so many applicants per school that it seems like picking rabbits from a hat. For the majority of applicants, the essay is like a bell curve. For a small percentage it will knock them out of the pool or put them above their rating but for the majority it is still neutral. The same is true for for letter of recommendation.

What’s happening now with so many applicants and yield being tied to rankings which impacts bond ratings, schools are using technology to sift through grabbing demographic data to pick people based on factors your kid can’t control. Your zip code, how kids with a similar set of key word hits performed in the previous cycle, your financial status, yes your race, your parents education, your parents profession, your extracurriculars, etc etc.

Your high stats, hitting the threshold for ECs, and essays that don’t knock you out , get you put into a cohort of qualified candidates. [b]This is a very, very large bucket. [/b]The next buckets are subsets with targeted qualities that your kid doesn’t control..low income, first generation, ethnicity, legacy, rural, veteran etc. [/quote]

It certainly doesn't work that way.  They are evaluating kids in the context of the high school.  Your school sends 10 kids to Penn each year, they are selecting these 10 from about 50 applicants in your school.  They don't put the 50 applicants into a "very very large bucket".  No, that's not what happens.[/quote]

It’s very old advice that you are competing just against the other kids in your school. Back in the old days when there was just a boost for recruited athletes, legacy and AA that was true but it’s different now. Now you have first generation, low income, Hispanic, veteran, trauma stories, rural in addition to recruited athletes, legacy and AA. Financial status and yield are even more important. Over concentrated majors are another problem as well as gender imbalance within majors. This why so many high school counselors are saying it’s a crapshoot now. It used to be far more predictable who would get in where but that’s gone. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics